Ponce de Leon and the Discovery of Florida. Sandra Wallus Sammons

      Pineapple Press, Inc.

      Sarasota, Florida

      For Robert Edmund Sammons, David Robert Sammons, and Calvin Robert Sammons—three generations in a family that makes my own

       life a wonderful adventure

      Copyright © 2013 by Sandra Wallus Sammons

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

      Inquiries should be addressed to:

      Pineapple Press, Inc.

      P.O. Box 3889

      Sarasota, Florida 34230

      www.pineapplepress.com

      ISBN 978-1-56164-592-3 (hardback)

      ISBN 978-1-56164-593-0 (paperback)

      ISBN 978-1-56164-615-9 (e-book)

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

       Sammons, Sandra Wallus.

       Juan Ponce de Leon and the discovery of Florida / Sandra Wallus Sammons.

       p. cm.

       Includes bibliographical references and index.

       ISBN 978-1-56164-592-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-56164-593-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)

       1. Ponce de León, Juan, 1460?-1521--Juvenile literature. 2. Explorers--America--Biography--Juvenile literature. 3. Explorers--Spain--Biography--Juvenile literature. 4. Florida--Discovery and exploration--Spanish--Juvenile literature. I. Title.

       E125.P7S28 2013

       975.9’01092--dc23

       [B]

       2012041609

      First Edition

      10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      Design by Shé Hicks

      Printed in the United States of America

      “I have only told the half of what I saw.”– Marco Polo

Foreword

      The first permanent colony by Europeans on Florida soil was at St. Augustine in 1565, but much led up to that settlement. More than fifty years before, another explorer from Spain set foot on a beautiful Florida beach and gave it the name “La Florida,” Land of the Flowers.

      That explorer was Juan Ponce de Leon, a name well known in the Caribbean islands of the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, as well as in Florida.

      While writing this biography, I took a plane trip south from Virginia to Florida, and from the air, the eastern coastline of our Sunshine State is very clear. You can see all the rivers and inlets. Christopher Columbus and Juan Ponce de Leon did not have the ability to see the world from that point of view. Columbus and Ponce didn’t even know this land was here!

      In the 1400s, most people just knew about their own little section of the world. For years people even thought the world was flat. If you sailed too far, they said, you would fall off the edge. By the end of the 1400s, however, most educated people knew that the earth was round. They just did not know the exact shape of the ball, or how large or small it was.

      The European countries just 500 years ago did not look the same as they do today, either. In this biography, we call Ponce’s country “Spain,” but it was, at that time, two small kingdoms that had united, with a king of Aragon and a queen of Castile. Later, more kingdoms would come together to create the Spain we know now. There was trade with other countries, but trade routes, by land or sea, were very dangerous.

      There were no books as we know them today until the printing press was invented sometime around 1450. Then many people in Spain read about Marco Polo’s fantastic trip to China in 1271 with his father and uncle. Many people started dreaming of traveling to far-off, exotic lands.

      Dreaming changed to reality after 1492. Soon after the first look at land in what we now call the Americas, explorers would travel around the entire globe.

      Let us look at Juan Ponce de Leon’s world.

      Chapter 1

Young Juan Ponce de Leon

      Juan Ponce de Leon lived over 500 years ago, in what we now call the fifteenth century. He was probably born in 1474. We have to guess at some things about his life, because few records are available from that time.

      We do know that he was born in what we now call Spain, in the province of Valladolid. His parents were probably influential people in Spanish society, and Juan was educated by a relative, Don Pedro Nunez de Guzman. Guzman was known for his skill at teaching young men the art of warfare. When he was older, Juan joined the many other young men who were defending their country.

      Spain in those days was struggling with people who had invaded their land many years before. The Moors ruled the country and spread their own Muslim religion. The Spaniards wanted to rule themselves and to practice their own Catholic religion. For many years, young Spanish men became soldiers, fighting to defeat the Moors and send them out of their land.

      Juan Ponce de Leon had been trained well and became a good soldier. The Moors were determined fighters, but finally, when Ponce was almost twenty years old, the war was over. In 1492 in the province of Granada, the Moors finally stopped fighting, and hundreds of years of warfare came to an end. Spain was once again free to have its own religion and its own government.

      With no wars to fight, many young, brave Spanish soldiers were out of work. The Spanish government needed gold to fill up its treasury. It was time to look for new places to sell items made by Spaniards. Trade would bring in money and create jobs for the people.

      Since