Santa Catalina de Guale

Last updated

Santa Catalina de Guale (1602-1702) was a Spanish Franciscan mission and town in Spanish Florida. Part of Spain's effort to convert the Native Americans to Catholicism, Santa Catalina served as the provincial headquarters of the Guale mission province. It also served various non-religious functions, such as providing food and labor for the colonial capital of St. Augustine. The mission was located on St. Catherines Island from 1602 to 1680, then on Sapelo Island from 1680 to 1684, and finally on Amelia Island from 1684 to 1702.

Contents

History

The mission Santa Catalina de Guale was founded in 1602 on St. Catherines Island, one of the Sea Islands of the present-day U.S. state of Georgia. It was probably associated with a Guale village known today as the archaeological site "Wamassee Head", on St. Catherines Island.

During the 17th century the Guale people experienced a dramatic population loss, mainly due to epidemic diseases. This resulted in the consolidation of mission settlements. By 1675 the Guale mission village of San Diego de Satuache was incorporated with Santa Catalina de Guale. Likewise the mission villages of Santa Clara de Tupiqui and San Joseph de Sapala were merged.

After two major slave raiding attacks in 1680, the Santa Catalina de Guale mission was moved south to Sapelo Island. [1] The attacking force consisted of about 300 Westo Indians who had been armed, supplied, and encouraged to attack Spanish missions by English colonial authorities in South Carolina. Santa Catalina de Guale was the first to fall. Its defenses included a recently built stone fort, 6 Spanish soldiers, and about 40 Christian Indians. Other missions in the region quickly fell to the slave raiders.

Relocated to Sapelo Island, the four original mission villages of Tupiqui, Sapala, Satuache, and Santa Catalina were merged in one. Thus the old intervillage hierarchical political system of the Guale chiefdom was lost, although the chiefly lineages associated with each village were retained. As a result, the Santa Catalina de Guale population contained many titular leaders lacking actual roles as village headmen.

In 1683 the French pirate Michel de Grammont raided Spanish Florida settlements, including St. Augustine and the Mocama mission province, forcing further southward migrations. In 1684 the Santa Catalina de Guale mission was moved to Amelia Island in present-day Florida. The appearance of other pirates in 1684 prevented the nearby missions of Santo Domingo de Asao and San Buenaventura de Guadalquini from moving south. Both were burned. Their inhabitants fled to the mainland.

By 1685 the Guale peoples had either fled inland, joining unconverted groups such as the Yamasee, or had relocated to Amelia Island's three settlement of Santa Catalina de Guale, San Felipe, and Santa Clara de Tupiqui.

In 1702, during Queen Anne's War, the Carolina Governor James Moore launched an invasion of Spanish Florida. In the process the settlements on Amelia Island, including Santa Catalina de Guale, were destroyed. The surviving inhabitants who remained under the Spanish mission system moved to the vicinity of St. Augustine.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">San Juan del Puerto, Florida</span> Spanish mission in Florida

San Juan del Puerto was a Spanish Franciscan mission founded before 1587 on Fort George Island, near the mouth of the St. Johns River in what is now Jacksonville, Florida. It was founded to serve the Saturiwa, a Timucua tribe who lived around the mouth of the St. Johns. It was organized by separating them into nine smaller villages. It has an important place in the study of the Timucua, as the place where Francisco Pareja undertook his work on the Timucua language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sea Islands</span> Chain of barrier islands along the coast of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida

The Sea Islands are a chain of over a hundred tidal and barrier islands on the Atlantic Ocean coast of the Southeastern United States, between the mouths of the Santee and St. Johns rivers along South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. The largest is Johns Island, South Carolina. Sapelo Island is home to the Gullah people. All of the islands are acutely threatened by sea level rise due to climate change.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amelia Island</span> Island in the U.S. state of Florida

Amelia Island is a part of the Sea Islands chain that stretches along the East Coast of the United States from South Carolina to Florida; it is the southernmost of the Sea Islands, and the northernmost of the barrier islands on Florida's Atlantic coast. Lying in Nassau County, Florida, it is 13 miles (21 km) long and approximately 4 miles (6.4 km) wide at its widest point. The communities of Fernandina Beach, Amelia City, and American Beach are located on the island.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">St. Catherines Island</span> United States historic place

St. Catherines Island is a sea island on the coast of the U.S. state of Georgia, 42 miles (80 km) south of Savannah in Liberty County. The island, located between St. Catherine's Sound and Sapelo Sound, is ten miles (16 km) long and from one to three miles (5 km) wide. It covers approximately 22,265 acres, with about half of the acreage being salt marsh, while the remaining acreage is wooded. There are fine beaches on the northeast and south sides. The island is owned by the Saint Catherines Island Foundation and is not open to the public, apart from the beach below the mean high water line.

The Yamasees were a multiethnic confederation of Native Americans who lived in the coastal region of present-day northern coastal Georgia near the Savannah River and later in northeastern Florida. The Yamasees engaged in revolts and wars with other native groups and Europeans living in North America, specifically from Florida to North Carolina.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spanish Florida</span> Former Spanish possession in North America (1513–1763)

Spanish Florida was the first major European land-claim and attempted settlement-area in northern 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 based its claim to this vast area 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.

Guale was a historic Native American chiefdom of Mississippian culture peoples located along the coast of present-day Georgia and the Sea Islands. Spanish Florida established its Roman Catholic missionary system in the chiefdom in the late 16th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mocama</span> Indigenous people of Florida and Georgia, US

The Mocama were a Native American people who lived in the coastal areas of what are now northern Florida and southeastern Georgia. A Timucua group, they spoke the dialect known as Mocama, the best-attested dialect of the Timucua language. Their heartland extended from about the Altamaha River in Georgia to south of the mouth of the St. John's River, covering the Sea Islands and the inland waterways, Intracoastal. and much of present-day Jacksonville. At the time of contact with Europeans, there were two major chiefdoms among the Mocama, the Saturiwa and the Tacatacuru, each of which evidently had authority over multiple villages. The Saturiwa controlled chiefdoms stretching to modern day St. Augustine, but the native peoples of these chiefdoms have been identified by Pareja as speaking Agua Salada, which may have been a distinct dialect.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Missions in Spanish Florida</span> Catholic religious outposts

Beginning in the second half of the 16th century, the Kingdom of Spain established a number of missions throughout Spanish Florida in order to convert the Native Americans to Roman Catholicism, to facilitate control of the area, and to obstruct regional colonization by other Protestants, particularly, those from 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spanish missions in Georgia</span> Catholic religious outposts in Georgia

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 what is now southeastern Georgia.

Henry Woodward, was a Barbados-born merchant and colonist who was one of the first white settlers in the Carolinas. He established relationships with many Native American Tribes in the American southeast. He initiated trade, primarily in deerskins and slaves, with many Indian towns and tribes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Siege of St. Augustine (1702)</span> Part of Queen Annes War

The siege of St. Augustine occurred in Queen Anne's War during November and December 1702. It was conducted by English colonists from the Province of Carolina and their Indian allies, under the command of governor of Carolina James Moore, against the Spanish colonial fortress of Castillo de San Marcos at St. Augustine, in Spanish Florida.

Tacatacuru was a Timucua chiefdom located on Cumberland Island in what is now the U.S. state of Georgia in the 16th and 17th centuries. It was one of two chiefdoms of the Timucua subgroup known as the Mocama, who spoke the Mocama dialect of Timucuan and lived in the coastal areas of southeastern Georgia and northern Florida.

Manuel de Cendoya was a Spanish soldier who served as governor of Spanish Florida from mid-1671 to mid-1673. His administration is remembered primarily for initiating construction of the Castillo de San Marcos, a masonry fortress whose building had first been ordered by Cendoya's predecessor, Governor Francisco de la Guerra y de la Vega, after the destructive raid of the English privateer Robert Searle in 1668. Work proceeded in 1671, although the first stone was not laid until 1672.

Juan Márquez Cabrera was a Spanish soldier who served as governor of Honduras and then of Spanish Florida, until he was dismissed for abuses in office against the native peoples and Spanish citizens of Florida. He, as did the three previous governors, spent much time supervising construction of the Castillo de San Marcos and other fortifications in the presidio of St. Augustine as well as defending Florida against incursions from the British to the north.

Pedro de Ibarra was a Spanish general who served as a Royal Governor of Spanish Florida.

San Buenaventura de Guadalquini or San Buenaventura de Boadalquivi was a Spanish mission located on St. Simon's Island, Georgia, United States from between 1597 and 1609 until 1684, when pirates burned the mission and its town. The mission moved to the north side of the St. Johns River near its mouth, in present day Duval County, Florida under the name of Santa Cruz de Guadalquini or Santa Cruz y San Buenaventura de Guadalquini for a few years before merging with the mission San Juan del Puerto.

Juanillo was a chief of the Native American Tolomato people in the Guale chiefdom, in what is now the US state of Georgia. In September 1597, Juanillo led the so-called Gualean Revolt, or Juanillo's Revolt, against the cultural oppression of the indigenous population in Florida by the Spanish authorities and the Franciscan missionaries. This was the first and longest-lasting Guale rebellion in La Florida, and ended with the execution of Juanillo by a group of Native American allies of the Spanish, led by Chief Asao.

Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de Tolomato was a Spanish Catholic mission founded in 1595 in what is now the state of Georgia, located north of the lands of the southernmost Native American Guale chiefdom, Asao-Talaxe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ocute</span> Native American paramount chiefdom

Ocute, later known as Altamaha or La Tama and sometimes known conventionally as the Oconee province, was a Native American paramount chiefdom in the Piedmont region of the U.S. state of Georgia in the 16th and 17th centuries. Centered in the Oconee River valley, the main chiefdom of Ocute held sway over the nearby chiefdoms of Altamaha, Cofaqui, and possibly others.

References

  1. Hurst Thomas, David (1993). Historic Indian Period Archaeology of the Georgia Coastal Zone (PDF). University of Georgia Laboratory of Archaeology.