Notes on the Floridian Peninsula; its Literary History, Indian Tribes and Antiquities. Brinton Daniel Garrison
rel="nofollow" href="#n55" type="note">55 He was a native of the village of Auñon,56 embraced the Franciscan theology, and was one of the twelve priests dispatched to Florida by the Royal Council of the Indies in 1592. He arrived there two years afterwards, devoted himself to converting the natives for a series of years, and about 1610 removed to the city of Mexico. Here he remained till the close of his life, in 1638, (January 25, 0. S.,) occupied in writing, publishing, and revising a grammar of the Timuquana language, prevalent around and to the north of St. Augustine, and devotional books for the use of the missionaries. They are several in number, but all of the utmost scarcity. I cannot learn of a single copy in the libraries of the United States, and even in Europe; Adelung, with all his extensive resources for consulting philological works, was obliged to depend altogether on the extracts of Hervas, who, in turn, confesses that he never saw but one, and that a minor production of Pareja. This is the more to be regretted, as any one in the slightest degree acquainted with American philology must be aware of the absolute dearth of all linguistic knowledge concerning the tribes among whom he resided. His grammar, therefore, is second to none in importance, and no more deserving labor could be pointed out than that of rendering it available for the purposes of modern research by a new edition.
A Doctrina Cristiana and a treatise on the administration of the Sacraments are said to have been written in the Tinqua language of Florida by Fray Gregorio Morrilla, and published “the first at Madrid, 1631, and afterwards reprinted at Mexico, 1635, and the second at Mexico, 1635.”57 What nation this was, or where they resided is uncertain.
The manuscript dictionary and catechism of the Englishman Andrew Vito, “en Lengua de Mariland en la Florida,” mentioned in Barcia’s edition of Pinelo, and included by Ludewig among the works on the Timuquana tongue, evidently belonged to a language far to the north of this, probably to one spoken by a branch of the Lenni Lennapes.
Throughout the seventeenth century notices of the colony are very rare. Travellers the most persistent never visited it. One only, Francesco (François) Coreal, a native of Carthagena in South America, who spent his life in wandering from place to place in the New World, seems to have recollected its existence. He was at St. Augustine in 1669, and devotes the second chapter of his travels to the province.58 It derives its value more from the lack of other accounts than from its own intrinsic merit. His geographical notions are not very clear at best, and they are hopelessly confounded by the interpolations of his ignorant editor. The authenticity of his production has been questioned, and even his own existence disputed, but no reasonable doubts of either can be entertained after a careful examination of his work.
Various attempts were made by the Spanish to obtain a more certain knowledge of the shores and islands of the Gulf of Mexico during this period. A record of those that took place between 1685 and 169359 is mentioned by Barcia, but whether it was ever published or not, does not appear.
About this time the Franciscan Juan Ferro Macuardo occupied the post of inspector (Visitador General) of the church in Florida under the direction of the bishop of Cuba. Apparently he found reason to be displeased with the conduct of certain of the clergy there, and with the general morality of the missions, and subsequently, in his memorial to the king,60 handled without gloves these graceless members of the fraternity, telling truths unpleasant to a high degree. In consequence of these obnoxious passages, its sale was prohibited by the church on the ground that such revelations could result in no advantage.61 Whether this command was carried out or not,—and it is said to have been evaded—the work is rare in the extreme, not being so much as mentioned by the most comprehensive bibliographers. Its value is doubtless considerable, as fixing the extent of the Spanish settlements, at this, about the most flourishing period of the colony. The Respuesta which it provoked from the pen of Francisco de Ayeta, is equally scarce.
The next book that comes under our notice we owe to the misfortune of a shipwreck. On the “twenty-third of the seventh month,” 1696, a bark, bound from Jamaica to the flourishing colony of Philadelphia, was wrecked on the Floridian coast, near Santa Lucea, about 27° 8´, north latitude. The crew were treated cruelly by the natives and only saved their lives by pretending to be Spaniards. After various delays and much suffering they prevailed on their captors to conduct them to St. Augustine. Here Laureano de Torres, the governor, received them with much kindness, relieved their necessities, and furnished them with means to return home. Among the passengers was a certain Jonathan Dickinson a Quaker resident in Pennsylvania. On his arrival home, he published a narrative of his adventures,62 that attracted sufficient attention to be reprinted in the mother country and translated into German. It is in the form of a diary, introduced by a preface of ten pages filled with moral reflections on the beneficence of God and His ready help in time of peril. The style is cramped and uncouth, but the many facts it contains regarding the customs of the natives and the condition of the settlement give it value in the eyes of the historian and antiquarian. Among bibliopolists the first edition is highly prized as one of the earliest books from the Philadelphia press. The printer, Reinier Jansen, was “an apprentice or young man” of William Bradford, who, in 1688, published a little sheet almanac, the first printed matter in the province.63 After his return the author resided in Philadelphia till his death, in 1722, holding at one time the office of Chief Justice of Pennsylvania. He must not be confounded with his better known cotemporary of the same name, staunch Presbyterian, and first president of the College of New Jersey, of much renown in the annals of his time for his fervent sermons and addresses.
The growing importance of the English colonies on the north, and the aggressive and irritable character of their settlers, gave rise at an early period of their existence to bitter feelings between them and their more southern neighbors, manifested by a series of attacks and reprisals on both sides, kept alive almost continually till the cession to England in 1763. So much did the Carolinians think themselves aggrieved, that as early as 1702, Colonel Moore, then governor of the province, made an impotent and ill-advised attempt to destroy St. Augustine; for which valorous undertaking his associates thought he deserved the fools-cap, rather than the laurel crown. An account of his Successes,64 or more properly Misfortunes, published in England the same year; is of great rarity and has never come under my notice. Of his subsequent expedition, undertaken in the winter of 1703-4, for the purpose of wiping away the stigma incurred by his dastardly retreat, so-called, from St. Augustine, we have a partial account in a letter from his own pen to Sir Nathaniel Johnson, his successor in the gubernatorial post. It was published the next May in the Boston News, and has been reprinted by Carroll in his Historical Collections. The precise military force in Florida at this time may be learned from the instructions given to Don Josef de Zuñiga, Governor-General in 1703, preserved by Barcia.
Some years afterwards Captain T. Nairns, an Englishman, accompanied a band of Yemassees on a slave hunting expedition to the peninsula. He kept a journal and took draughts on the road, both of which were in the possession of Herman Moll,65 but they were probably never published, nor does this distinguished geographer mention them in any of his writings on his favorite science.
Governor Oglethorpe renewed these hostile demonstrations with vigor. His policy, exciting as it did much odium from one party and some discussion in the mother country, gave occasion to the publication of several pamphlets. Those that more particularly refer to his expedition against the Spanish, are three in number,66 and, together with his own letters to his patrons, the Duke of Newcastle and Earl of Oxford,67 and those of Captain McIntosh, leader of the Highlanders, and for some time a captive in Spain, which are still preserved in manuscript in the Library of the Georgia Historical Society,68 furnish abundant information on the English side of the question; while the correspondence of Manuel de Montiano, Captain-General of Florida, extending over the years 1737-40, a part of
Ludewig says Toledo; Torquemada calls him “Natural de Castro-Urdiales,” but Nicolas Antonio says expressly, “Franciscus de Pareja, Auñonensis (Toletanæ dioecesis Auñon oppidum est).” Bibliotheca Hispana Nova, Tom. I., p. 456. Besides this writer, see for particulars of the life of Pareja, Torquemada, Monarquia Indiana, Lib. XIX., cap. xx, p. 350, and Barcia, Ensayo Cronologico, pp. 167, 195, 203.
Ludewig, Literature of American Aboriginal Languages, p. 242.
Voiages aux Indes Occidentales; traduits de l’Espagnol; Amsterdam, 1722. Dutch trans. the same year. Another edition under the title, Recueil de Voyages dans l’Amerique Meridionale, Paris, 1738, which Brunet does not notice.
Relacion de los Viages que los Españoles han hecho a las Costas del Seno Mexicano y la Florida desde el año de 1685 hasta el de 1693, con una nueva Descripcion de sus Costas.
Memorial en Derecho al Rei sobre la Visita à la Florida y otras Cosas, folio, Madrid, 1690.
“Solo sirven de dar Escandalo al Vulgar en los Excesos impatados à unos y otros Individuos,” Barcia, Ensayo Chronologico, p. 300.
God’s Protecting Providence Man’s Surest Help and Defence, In the times of the greatest difficulty and most Imminent danger, Evidenced in the Remarkable Deliverance of divers Persons from the devouring Waves of the Sea, amongst which they suffered Shipwrack, And also from the more cruelly devouring jawes of the inhumane Cannibals of Florida. Faithfully related by one of the Persons concerned therein. Philadelphia, 1699, 1701, and a
Thomas, History of Printing in America, vol. II. p. 25.
The Successes of the English in America, by the March of Colonel Moore, Governor of South Carolina, and his taking the Spanish Town of St. Augustine near the Gulph of Florida. And by our English Fleete sayling up the River Darian, and marching to the Gold Mines of Santa Cruz de Cana, near Santa Maria. London, 1702; reprinted in an account of the South Sea Trade, London, 1711.
See the note on his New Map of the North Parts of America, London, 1720, headed “Explanation of an Expedition in Florida Neck by Thirty Three Iamasee Indians, Accompany’d by Capt. T. Nairn.”
A voyage to Georgia, begun in the year 1735, by Francis Moore; London, 1741; reprinted in the Collection of the Georgia Historical Society, Vol. I.
An Impartial Account of the Expedition against St. Augustine under the command of General Oglethorpe; 8vo., London, 1742. (
Journal of an Expedition to the Gates of St. Augustine in Florida, conducted by General Oglethorpe. By G. L. Campbell; 8vo., London, 1744. (
They are in the Rev. George White’s Historical Collections of Georgia, pp. 462, sqq., and in Harris’s Memorials of Oglethorpe.
An extract may be found in Fairbank’s History and Antiquities of St. Augustine.