This text comes from our book, From Sea to Shining Sea.
The Spanish missions in Florida were in peril. Yes, Florida had missions, very successful ones, founded by Franciscan missionaries. In the 1560s, King Philip II of Spain had heard that French Huguenots had started a settlement on the coast of Florida. King Philip did not want Frenchmen, especially not Protestant Frenchmen, settling on lands that belonged to Spain. So it was that in 1560, he sent missionaries and settlers to Florida. They founded the settlement of Saint Augustine and set about driving out the Huguenots. When that was accomplished, the Spanish Franciscans founded missions that extended up the Atlantic coast into what is today the state of Georgia.
An Indian rebellion in the early 1600s destroyed the missions in Georgia. After the rebellious Indians were subdued, more missionaries came and rebuilt the missions. They pushed westward into the interior of Florida and founded more missions among the Timucuan and Apalachee Indians. Two more Indian rebellions broke out in Florida in the 1600s because the Indians felt that the Spanish governors had treated them badly. But by 1655, about 26,000 Indians had been baptized and lived and worked around the Florida missions.
However, these missions would not remain at peace for long. English settlers in Charleston, 60 miles up the coast from the Georgia missions, wanted the Georgia mission lands. In 1670, King Charles II of England had allowed these English, along with Scots and French Huguenots, to settle in what is now South Carolina. The men of Charleston were mostly trappers, and they wanted to look for furs in the lands occupied by the missions. They also saw that they could make some money by capturing mission Indians and selling them as slaves.
The people of Charleston (called Charlestonians) often used pagan Indians to do their dirty work. In 1680, a band of pagan Indians attacked a Catholic Indian settlement on St. Simons Island on the St. Johns River in Florida. But Christian Indians and Spanish soldiers drove off the invaders. A short time after this attack, Charlestonians led a group of 300 pagan Indians against Mission Santa Catalina de Guale. Again, they were driven off, but this attack was a sign of worse things to come. For the next four years, the Georgia missions suffered attacks by land from Charlestonians and pagan Yamassee Indians, and by sea from pirates. Finally, the Spanish governor of Florida decided he could no longer defend the missions and ordered the missionaries and Indians to abandon them. The missionaries and the Christian Indians fled south across the St. Johns River into Florida.
With the Georgia missions gone, the Charlestonians and their Yamassee allies now turned their attention to the missions in western Florida. Fierce bands of pagan Indians and so-called “Christian” settlers overwhelmed the missions, enslaving Catholic Indian men, women, and children. The captives were forced to work as slaves on plantations in South Carolina and in the British West Indies islands.
In 1702, a new war broke out. France and Spain were on one side, and England, the Netherlands, Denmark, Austria, and Portugal were on the other. This war, called “Queen Anne’s War” after Britain’s Queen Anne, gave Charlestonians another excuse to raid Florida. Gathering a force of 600 pagan Indians and 600 Carolinians, Governor James Moore of South Carolina sailed down the coast, destroying the missions as he went. With only 323 soldiers, the Spanish governor, José de Zuñíga y Cerda, could not resist Moore’s army. Governor Cerda gathered both the Spanish and Catholic Indian inhabitants of Saint Augustine and brought them into the great castle of St. Mark for protection. He also sent a messenger to Havana, Cuba, to ask for help.
The castle of St. Mark was far too strong and stout for James Moore to capture. So, instead of assaulting the castle, Moore’s army set about destroying Saint Augustine. Moore’s men spared nothing. Houses, the parish church, and the Franciscan friary—all were destroyed by the savage band of colonists and Indians. But in the midst of it all, four Spanish ships arrived from Havana. Unable to resist the new arrivals, Moore burned all his own ships (so that they would not fall to the Spaniards) and fled from Saint Augustine by land. With him went 500 captives, all Catholic Indians, whom Moore sold as slaves in Charleston.
Persisting in his cruelty, James Moore led another force of 50 Carolinians and 1,000 pagan Creek Indians into western Florida one year later. The Franciscan priest at mission Concepción de Ayubale, Fray Angel de Miranda, went about his normal duties on the morning of January 25, 1704. He had no warning of the danger that awaited him and his flock. Suddenly, through the clear morning air, came the chilling war cries of Indians. Unprepared for an attack, Fray Angel gathered as many of his Apalachee Indian warriors as he could into the parish church. The small band of defenders held off Moore’s savage attacks until Spanish soldiers under Captain Alonso Dias Mejía arrived from a nearby mission. With only 30 Spanish soldiers and 400 Apalachee braves, Mejía was able to drive the Creeks and the Carolinians from Ayubale twice. But by evening, Mejía and his men ran out of ammunition and surrendered.
Even though the mission had been surrendered, Moore, with the Carolinians and Creeks, initiated the cruelest work of the day. They began slaughtering their now helpless and terrified foes, sparing no one. They beheaded and butchered another Franciscan friar, Fray Juan de Pargo Araujo. They murdered Apalachee men, women, and children in cold blood, scalping them and mutilating their dead bodies. But 1,000 other Apalachee men, women, and children did not die that day; Moore dragged them to Carolina as slaves.
Over the next six months James Moore’s Indians and Carolinians laid waste to the missions and Spanish settlements in the Apalachee region of Florida, killing the inhabitants and enslaving those who survived. In July 1704, the Spanish decided to abandon Apalachee. Those Indians who were able to escape came to Saint Augustine or to the French colony on Mobile Bay. In all, 13 missions were lost and about 4,000 Apalachees were killed or enslaved in Moore’s war on western Florida.
Queen Anne’s War was not fought only in Florida. Battles of British forces and colonists against the French also occurred along the St. Lawrence River. The war finally ended in 1713. Though Spain did not lose any of its colonies in America, the French had to surrender the Hudson Bay territory, Acadia (now called Nova Scotia), and Newfoundland to Great Britain. Florida remained Spanish, but its once-great missions were destroyed, never again to be rebuilt.
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