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Gov Navarrete had wonderful gifts to regale 700 Indian visitors for three weeks

Source: The Governorship of Spanish Florida #122

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In May, 1752, Navarrete reported an influx of over 700 natives from Caveta, Oconi, Apalachicola, Iufale, Casista, Nadele, and other villages located northwest of Apalache. During their three-week stay in Saint Augustine each male Indian received a blouse, shirt, hat, musket, bold of cloth, folding knife, hatchet, and some powder and musket balls. Squaws received a comb, mirror, and jewelry. Each Indian child received one shirt. The governor made special efforts to outfit each chief in resplendent uniforms, accented by an ornate cane. An optimistic Navarrete was well satisfied with the response of the Indians, who pledged their undying loyalty to him, but he believed that continuance of a gift-giving policy was indispensable for maintaining alliances with the Indians. What is most significant, however, is that Navarrete, unlike his predecessors, had presents to offer the Indians. Lack of money and gifts had hurt earlier Spanish efforts to pacify the natives. Now, well-supplied by the Havana Company, the governor was able to compete more successfully with the English for the friendship of the Indians.

The French and Indian War and the Florida Indians
The loose alliances the governor obtained with Indian tribes of the Southeast in the period of 1745-1752 was the result of two developments—the ability of the Spaniards to regale the Indians with supplies furnished by the Havana Company and the diminishing activity of English Indian agents. While traders from Carolina and Georgia still worked among the natives after the War of Jenkins’s Ear, they made harsher bargains and offered fewer gifts to win over the Indians. In peacetime a liberal Indian policy was too costly and served no useful end. The Lower Creeks and other nations in the Southeast, therefore, forsook their ties with the English and turned to the Spaniards for aid and succor. In Georgia and Carolina, however, the English stood ready to renew their ties if war threatened.

(Tepaske GSF)