Secular priests attended Menendez’s founding of St. Augustine, and within a year, Jesuit friars began ministering to La Florida’s original inhabitants. Menendez’s plan was to station Jesuits at missions and garrison outposts in strategic locations along the coastal frontier of La Florida, from south Florida to Chesapeake Bay. In effect, Spain’s goal was to create a “pax hispanica” that would assimilate a subjugated Native population, an endeavor that ultimately failed (see also Thomas, this volume Chapter 4). Among the earliest Jesuit missionaries was Fray Pedro Martinez, who on his maiden voyage to La Florida in 1567 became lost, went ashore for directions, and was allegedly killed by several Mocama Indians somewhere between Ft. George and Cumberland islands. Menendez blamed Tacatacuru for this killing and others, leading him to order the capture and death of the Mocama leader. Sensing failure, beleaguered Jesuits officials formally ended missionary efforts in La Florida in 1572.
Responsibility for missionizing among the Indigenous peoples soon fell to brown-robed friars of the Franciscan Order. After first landing in St. Augustine in 1573, the number of friars grew slowly, with missionaries dispersing from St. Augustine to the Mocama frontier in 1587 and north to Guale territory in 1595. As friars gained entrance into these new locations—by being invited to join these communities by Indigenous leaders—existing Native towns within the mission system became known to the Spanish as doctrinas and visitas. Doctrinas were mission communities with a sturdy church and a convento to house a resident friar. Unlike Spanish missions in California, these symbols of Spanish affiliation—fashioned of wood, clay, and thatch by Native hands—have been lost to the ravages of nature and time. Nearby Native settlements, tethered to a doctrina, “were pueblos de visita, so called because one of the [doctrina] fathers visited them periodically to catechize, preach, and say mass.” These outlying visitas purportedly maintained a small church or open chapel to serve the liturgical needs of the visiting friar. Each Mocama town retained its own council house, which continued to serve as the center of community politics. Beyond the mission compound, cleared and maintained cornfields and smaller agricultural plots surrounded domestic houses, as farming intensified to satisfy the demands of both the resident friar and colonial tribute. Regardless of Spanish status as a doctrina or visita, these settlements remained Indigenous communities.
Community leaders retained, and possibly even enhanced, their community authority during mission times. The La Florida colony relied heavily on the cooperation of community leaders, because securing their allegiance enabled conversion, or what the Spanish viewed as conversion, to trickle down through the political hierarchy. Within the colonial system, loyal “chiefs” received rewards in the form of prized gifts, heightened status, and exemption from tribute and other labor requirements. Pages of Spanish parchment testify to the persistence of Indigenous chiefly titles and elite honors (perhaps in name only) throughout the colonial period among missioned Mocama, Timucua, Guale, and Apalachee.
Among the Mocama, missionization began circa 1587 with the naissance of San Juan del Puerto on Fort George Island, Florida and San Pedro de Mocama on Cumberland Island, Georgia. A common practice among the Franciscans of La Florida was to build a mission compound within a chiefdom’s principal town, once permission to live there had been secured. With this said, it is not surprising that San Pedro was emplaced at the town of Tacatacuru, but it is curious that Alimacani was chosen for the site of San Juan over the former capital town of Saturiwa. The latter may have lost its paramountcy following the death of its namesake, although mission period documents never mention Saturiwa as a person or community. Perhaps it resurfaces in Spanish texts under a new name such as San Pablo, a visita of San Juan located on the river’s south side near its mouth.
Two additional Spanish missions emerged among the Mocama during the early years of the seventeenth century. The visita of Santa María de la Sena on Amelia Island, Florida, and an upstart doctrina named San Buenaventura de Guadalquini on St. Simons Island, Georgia each received resident friars. These four doctrinas along with scores of visitas comprised the San Pedro or Mocama Province during the early 1600s.
While clergy worked to save souls, they could not save lives, as disease swept across portions of the Southeast. Mission populations suffered demographic decline via lethal pathogens introduced by Old World peoples and animals to which the American Indians had no defense. Spanish documents identify a series of deadly epidemics among the Mocama between the 1590s and 1650s. The deleterious impact of disease was one component of the structural violence inflicted on Indigenous population through a political and economic framework of colonization that led to weakening health and death. Another contributing factor to Mocama depopulation was outmigration on the part of those disillusioned with the new world order imposed by the Spanish. To combat population losses and to better control those who remained, friars eventually sought to move the residents of nearby visitas to doctrinas. In fact, the last San Juan visita, Vera Cruz, was relocated to the doctrina by 1630. In the Mocama province, the number of Indian continued to drop despite the transfer of hinterland Timucua of southeastern Georgia to the missions of San Juan and San Pedro.
(excerpted from chapter 6)
