The Chine people were a group of Native American people living in Apalachee Province in Spanish Florida from the early 1670s until the end of the 17th century. They are believed to have spoken the same language as the Chatot, Amacano, Pacara, and Pensacola people, and have been described as a band of the Chatot people. They were served by a series of Spanish missions in the last quarter of the 17th century.
The Chine may have migrated into Apalachee Province in the early 1670s. All of the peoples living beyond Apalachee Province in the 17th century, except for the Chiscas, spoke the same or a closely related language, as did the Chatot, but the Spanish viewed the Chatot and Chine peoples as separate bands. All of those people (Amacano, Chatot, Chine, Pacara, and Pensacola) were likely descended from people of the Fort Walton and, possibly, the Lamar cultures. [1]
The Chine first appeared in Spanish records in 1674, when they were recorded living in association with Amacano and Pacara people in the town of Chaccabi in the southern part of Apalachee Province near Apalachee Bay. [lower-alpha 1] The three people were described as allies, speaking the same language, but as separate "nations". The Chine were probably the most numerous of the three peoples in Chaccabi. [3]
Chaccabi had a mission founded in April, 1674, dedicated to St. Peter the Apostle (San Pedro), to serve the Chine, Amacano, and Pacara people of the town, who were gradually being converted to Christianity. The three peoples of Chaccabi had apparently moved to a new site known as "the place of the Chines" by the next year, when Gabriel Díaz Vara Calderón, bishop of Santiago de Cuba, founded the mission of Assumpcíon del Puerto on February 2, 1675 to serve them. [lower-alpha 2] That mission does not appear in Spanish records after 1675. The mission, identified as "Assumpcíon de Nuestra Señora", was reported to have 300 residents in 1675, which may be an undercount. [5]
The Chines may have moved more than once after 1675. A mission of "San Pedro de los Chines" is on a mission list from 1680, and "San Pedro de Medellin" was reported in 1681 (Medellin was close to the headwaters of the Wakulla River on a 1683 map). A mission named "San Antonio de Chines" was listed in 1694, which Hann says may be the result of a move to a location closer to San Luis. A census in 1681 counted 158 adults. A list in 1689 gave the population as 30 families. Another list in 1697 stated the "Place of the Chines" was one league from the mission La Purificación de Tama, inland from the mission San Martín de Tomole. [lower-alpha 3] [7]
The Chine were known to the Spanish for their experience in traveling along the Gulf of Mexico coast by canoe from Apalachee Bay to Pensacola Bay (the Spanish may have had contact with the Pensacola people through the Chine before 1677). The Spanish used Chines as pilots and guides for at least three expeditions west of Apalachee Province. In 1777, the Spanish and Apalachee sent 190 men to attack a Chisca town near the Choctawhatchee River in retaliation for Chisca attacks on the Apalchee and their neighbors. Chines and Chatots were drafted by the Spanish/Apalachee force to serve as guides to the Chisca town. [8]
In 1685, the French explorer La Salle founded a settlement on the Texas coast. On receiving word of that settlement, the Viceroy of New Spain ordered a search for it. A search party, led by Juan Enríquez Barroto, left San Marcos in 1686, using Chine pilots because they were familiar with the coast as far west as Mobile Bay. In 1693, Laureano de Torres y Ayala, governor of Spanish Florida, led an expedition by boat along the coast from San Marcos to Mobile Bay. Chief Chine (who the Spanish identified as a Chatot) and his son served as pilots for the Spanish. [lower-alpha 4] [10]
In 1702, the Chines were listed as heathens living in Apalachee Province, along with Amacano, Savacola, Chatot, Tabasa, and Catase (Ocatase) people. Native American people allied with the English of the Province of Carolina mounted a series of attacks on the Apalachee and other peoples associated with the Spanish, culminating in 1704 in what has been called the Apalachee massacre. The fate of the Chines in that event is not clear. Some Chines (identified as Ocatoses) may have been carried off by the raiders. Some may have been with the Chatots that went west with Apalachees to the coast between Pensacola Bay and Mobile Bay (people called Ocatoses lived next to the Presidio Santa Maria de Galve on Pensacola Bay in 1707). [11]
The Apalachee were an Indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands, specifically an Indigenous people of Florida, who lived in the Florida Panhandle until the early 18th century. They lived between the Aucilla River and Ochlockonee River, at the head of Apalachee Bay, an area known as the Apalachee Province. They spoke a Muskogean language called Apalachee, which is now extinct.
Tocobaga was the name of a chiefdom, its chief, and its principal town during the 16th century. The chiefdom was centered around the northern end of Old Tampa Bay, the arm of Tampa Bay that extends between the present-day city of Tampa and northern Pinellas County. The exact location of the principal town is believed to be the archeological Safety Harbor site, which gives its name to the Safety Harbor culture, of which the Tocobaga are the most well-known group.
Spanish Florida was the first major European land claim and attempted settlement in North America during the European Age of Discovery. La Florida formed part of the Captaincy General of Cuba, the Viceroyalty of New Spain, and the Spanish Empire during Spanish colonization of the Americas. While its boundaries were never clearly or formally defined, the territory was initially much larger than the present-day state of Florida, extending over much of what is now the southeastern United States, including all of present-day Florida plus portions of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, and the Florida Parishes of Louisiana. Spain's claim to this vast area was based on several wide-ranging expeditions mounted during the 16th century. A number of missions, settlements, and small forts existed in the 16th and to a lesser extent in the 17th century; they were eventually abandoned due to pressure from the expanding English and French colonial settlements, the collapse of the native populations, and the general difficulty in becoming agriculturally or economically self-sufficient. By the 18th century, Spain's control over La Florida did not extend much beyond a handful of forts near St. Augustine, St. Marks, and Pensacola, all within the boundaries of present-day Florida.
Mission San Luis de Apalachee was a Spanish Franciscan mission built in 1656 in the Florida Panhandle, two miles west of the present-day Florida Capitol Building in Tallahassee, Florida. It was located in the descendent settlement of Anhaica capital of Apalachee Province. The mission was part of Spain's effort to colonize the Florida Peninsula and to convert the Timucuan and Apalachee Indians to Christianity. The mission lasted until 1704 when it was evacuated and destroyed to prevent its use by an approaching militia of Creek Indians and South Carolinians.
The Apalachee massacre was a series of raids by English colonists from the Province of Carolina and their Indian allies against a largely peaceful population of Apalachee Indians in northern Spanish Florida that took place in 1704, during Queen Anne's War. Against limited Spanish and Indian resistance, a network of missions was destroyed; most of the population either was killed or captured, fled to larger Spanish and French outposts, or voluntarily joined the English.
Beginning in the second half of the 16th century, the Kingdom of Spain established a number of missions throughout La Florida in order to convert the Native Americans to Christianity, to facilitate control of the area, and to prevent its colonization by other countries, in particular, England and France. Spanish Florida originally included much of what is now the Southeastern United States, although Spain never exercised long-term effective control over more than the northern part of what is now the State of Florida from present-day St. Augustine to the area around Tallahassee, southeastern Georgia, and some coastal settlements, such as Pensacola, Florida. A few short-lived missions were established in other locations, including Mission Santa Elena in present-day South Carolina, around the Florida peninsula, and in the interior of Georgia and Alabama.
The Chisca were a tribe of Native Americans living in present-day eastern Tennessee and southwestern Virginia in the 16th century, and in present-day Alabama, Georgia, and Florida in the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries, by which time they were known as Yuchi. The Hernando de Soto expedition heard of, and may have had brief contact with, the Chisca in 1540. The Juan Pardo expeditions of 1566 and 1568 encountered the Chisca, and engaged in battles with them. By early in the 17th century, Chisca people were present in several parts of Spanish Florida, engaged at various times and places in alternately friendly or hostile relations with the Spanish and the peoples of the Spanish mission system. After the capture of a fortified Chisca town by the Spanish and Apalachee in 1677, some Chisca took refuge in northern Tennessee, where they were absorbed into the Shawnee, and in Muscogee towns in Alabama. Around the turn of the 18th century some Chisca, by then generally called Yuchi, joined the Apalachicola Province towns that resettled around Ochisi Creek in central Georgia, thus becoming part of the "Lower Towns of the Muscogee Confederacy". A few Chiscas remained in western Florida into the middle of the 18th century.
The Spanish missions in Georgia comprised a series of religious outposts established by Spanish Catholics in order to spread the Christian doctrine among the Guale and various Timucua peoples in southeastern Georgia.
Apalachicola was the name of a Native American tribal town, and of a group of towns associated with it, which the Spanish called Apalachicola Province, located along the lower part of the Chattahoochee River in present-day Alabama and Georgia. It is believed that before the 17th century, the residents of all the Apalachicola towns spoke the Hitchiti language, although other towns whose people spoke the Muscogee language relocated among the Apalachicolas along the Chattahoochee River in the middle- to later- 17th century. All of the Apalachicola towns moved to central Georgia at the end of the 17th century, where the English called them "Ochese Creek Indians". They moved back to the Chattahoochee River after 1715, with the English then calling them "Lower Creeks", while the Spanish called them "Ochese".
The Chatot were a Native American tribe who lived in the upper Apalachicola River and Chipola River basins in what is now Florida. They spoke a Muskogean language, which may have been the same as that of several other peoples in western Florida, including the Amacano, Chine, Pacara, and Pensacola. Patricia Galloway, author of Choctaw Genesis, 1500–1700, posited that the Chatot were connected with the Choctaw. The Chatot were involved in a war with the Apalachee and Amacano people in 1639.
The indigenous peoples of Florida lived in what is now known as Florida for more than 12,000 years before the time of first contact with Europeans. However, the indigenous Floridians living east of the Apalachicola River had largely died out by the early 18th century. Some Apalachees migrated to Louisiana, where their descendants now live; some were taken to Cuba and Mexico by the Spanish in the 18th century, and a few may have been absorbed into the Seminole and Miccosukee tribes.
Mocoso was the name of a 16th-century chiefdom located on the east side of Tampa Bay, Florida near the mouth of the Alafia River, of its chief town and of its chief. Mocoso was also the name of a 17th-century village in the province of Acuera, a branch of the Timucua. The people of both villages are believed to have been speakers of the Timucua language.
Luis Benedit y Horruytiner was a Spanish colonial administrator who held office as governor of Spanish Florida, and viceroy of Sardinia. He was the uncle of Pedro Benedit Horruytiner, who succeeded him as governor of La Florida.
The Battle of Flint River, also called the Spanish-Indian Battle (1702), was a failed attack by Spanish and Apalachee Indian forces against Creek Indians in October 1702 in what is now the state of Georgia. The battle was a major element in ongoing frontier hostilities between English colonists from the Province of Carolina and Spanish Florida, and it was a prelude to more organized military actions of Queen Anne's War.
The Pensacola were a Native American people who lived in the western part of what is now the Florida Panhandle and eastern Alabama for centuries before first contact with Europeans until early in the 18th century. They spoke a Muskogean language. They are the source of the name of Pensacola Bay and the city of Pensacola. They lived in the area until the mid-18th century, but were thereafter assimilated into other groups.
The Chato were an indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands, that formerly lived on the coast in Mississippi and Alabama and around Mobile Bay. They were related to the Choctaws and Chickasaws. One source indicates that "The Chato were part of the Apalachee Indian tribe, as were the Escambe." However, the more general opinion is that the Chato tribe was of unknown ethnic affinity, although they were allied with the Choctaw.
Damián de Vega Castro y Pardo was the governor of the Spanish province of La Florida from November 26, 1638 to April 10, 1645.
Sabacola was a Native American tribal town in what is now the Southeastern United States of America during the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries. Usually regarded as belonging to Apalachicola Province, Sabacola had poorly understood connections to the Apalachee people. Although usually described as speaking the Hitchiti language, at least one source stated that the Sabacola spoke another, unidentified language. The town moved to several locations along the Chattahoochee River, sometimes with more than one town including Sabacola in its name at the same time. The town of Sabacola moved to the Ocmulgee River area of central Georgia for about 25 years, before returning to the Chattahoochee River. Sabacola was the only Apalachicola town to have a mission established by the Spanish. The Apalachicola towns, including Sabacola, evolved into the Lower Towns of the Muscogee Confederacy.
Apalachicola was a tribal town in the Apalachicola Province in the 17th century, located on the lower part of the Chattahoochee River in what is now Alabama and Georgia. The residents of the town spoke the Hitchiti language. The town of Apalachicola moved to the Savannah River in the early 1690s, when the other towns in Apalachicola Province moved to central Georgia, primarily to sites along the Ocmulgee River. In 1715, Apalachicola moved back to the Chattahoochee River along with the towns that had been on the Ocmulgee River, with the English then calling them "Lower Creeks", while the Spanish called them "Ochese". The town of Apalachicola continued as part of the Lower Towns through the 18th century.
The Amacanos were a native American people who lived in the vicinity of Apalachee Province in Spanish Florida during the 17th century. They are believed to have been related to, and spoken the same language as, the Chacato, Chine, Pacara and Pensacola peoples. The Amacano were served, together with other peoples, by a series of Spanish missions during the last quarter of the 17th century.