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Montiano's alliance with the Uchize got tricky

Source: The Governorship of Spanish Florida #122

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This new alliance with the Uchizes and Lower Creek tribes benefited the Florida colony. It enabled the Spaniards to trade rum, food, and trinkets to the Indians for furs, cattle, and medicinal roots. The alliance made it safer for Spanish residents of Saint Augustine and Apalache to venture out of the protection of their forts and towns to cut wood, hunt, fish, and farm without fear of scalping. Pacification of the Indians may also have been responsible for the rise in the naval stores industry. Still, the Floridians encountered the usual difficulties in supplying the needs of the Indians, especially during 1748 and 1749 when drought ruined Lower Creek corn crops. Then, when war broke out between the Uchizes and the English Calaques in 1749, the governor had a new dilemma over whether to supply the Uchizes with arms. English and French traders were still another factor in preventing more Spanish success among the Indians, although the Spanish seemed to have improved their position. Montiano explained it well when he stated: “The ability of the English to pick out those items of commerce and trade that entices them [the Indians] is inexplicable, and thus we must procure articles to carry on our trade, regaling the Indians with many presents, as, I am informed, the Indians are accustomed to receive from the English and French.” Montiano was hopeful, however, that his Indian program would succeed in spite of these vicissitudes and that the Chicazas (Chickasaws) would soon join the Uchizes as allies of the Spaniards.
(Tepaske GSF)