San Joseph de Escambe

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San Joseph de Escambe was an Apalachee mission community established in 1741 at the present-day community of Molino, Florida along the Escambia River north of Pensacola, lending its name both to the river and later to Escambia County, Florida. [1] Taking its name from an earlier Apalachee mission community named San Cosme y San Damián de Escambe located far to the east in Leon County, Florida, this later Escambe mission was inhabited by refugee Apalachee Indians, including chief Juan Marcos Isfani (also rendered as Juan Marcos Fant), who had previously settled near the mouth of the river in 1718, having gathered a group of Apalachee refugees who had lived among the Creek Indians since the 1704 English-Creek raids that destroyed the Apalachee Province. After twenty years along the northern Spanish frontier, the mission was burned in a Creek Indian raid on April 9, 1761, and its inhabitants resettled with the Yamasee Indian residents of San Antonio de Punta Rasa (also burned that spring) adjacent to modern Pensacola before relocating to Veracruz, Mexico along with the Spanish residents of Pensacola in 1763. The Apalachee and Yamasee were assisted in forming a new town north of Veracruz called San Carlos de Chachalacas along the river of the same name, and this town still exists today, though there is no documentation to demonstrate whether any of the Florida Indians who started the town still have any living descendants there.

Apalachee Native American people

The Apalachee are a Native American people who historically lived in the Florida Panhandle. They lived between the Aucilla River and Ochlockonee River, at the head of Apalachee Bay, an area known to Europeans as the Apalachee Province. They spoke a Muskogean language called Apalachee, which is now extinct.

Molino, Florida Census-designated place in Florida, United States

Molino is a census-designated place (CDP) in Escambia County, Florida, United States. The population was 1,277 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Pensacola–Ferry Pass–Brent Metropolitan Statistical Area.

Escambia County, Florida County in Florida, United States

Escambia County is the westernmost and oldest county in the U.S. state of Florida. As of the United States Census, the population is 315,534. Its county seat and largest city is Pensacola.

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The archaeological site of San Joseph de Escambe was located in 2009 by a University of West Florida archaeological field school, and has been the site of several subsequent field schools which have uncovered evidence for the material culture of the Apalachee residents of the site, the Spanish infantry and cavalary soldiers garrisoned there between 1750 and 1761, along with a series of Franciscan friars assigned there. [2] [3]

University of West Florida university

The University of West Florida is a public university in Pensacola, Florida. Established in 1963 as a member institution of the State University System of Florida, the University of West Florida is a comprehensive research university without faculties of law or medicine, a space-grant institution, and the third largest campus in the State University System, at 1,600 acres (6.5 km2). The main campus is a natural preserve that is bordered by two rivers and Escambia Bay. The university's mascot is an argonaut and its logo is the chambered nautilus.

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