Hichiqui Yrica: If Florida's Catholic missions had not been wiped out

[tlaloquito]

Introduction:​

The day 1 November 1700 saw the death of Charles II, the last ruling Habsburg king of the Spanish Empire, susbequently leading to a War of Succession that would carry on until the signing of the Treaties of Utrecht (1713) and Rastatt (1714). As a consequence of said war, the English, fighting on the side of the Austrians against the Bourbon family which had inherited the Spanish crown upon Charles' death, would carry the war to their colonies in North America, leading to the Queen Anne's War which began shortly after the war had begun in Europe.

At the forefront of this war was the French colonies of Mobile and New France, and the Spanish colony of La Florida, the latter of which had already seen tensions rising with the English who had set up a colony in what is now South Carolina in the 1670s, along with multiple failed attempts at dislodging the English from said colony. As a response to these attempts, the English, taking advantage of the fact that the Spanish had been unable to win over various powerful indigenous groups in the Southeast, such as the Apalachicolas (who would later come to form the Creeks) and the Yamasees (whose paramount chief was ironically a Catholic baptized as Francisco Jospogue in the Spanish mission of Santa Catalina), commenced small scale slaving raids on Spanish missions along the well established Camino Real, dragging on over the course of 30 years up to 1701, when the Queen Anne's War had flared tensions between both the English and the Spanish to a breaking point, resulting in the beginning of a bloody conflict between both sides that would last the rest of the decade, and permanently change the societal and political dynamic of the Southeastern Woodlands.

One question must be asked concerning this war, however:

Will the English succeed in dislodging the Spanish from Florida, or will the Spanish, in a turn of fate, successfully dislodge the English colonists and traders in South Carolina?

 

[tlaloquito]

Chapter I: El Triunfo de Don Patricio y los Indios​

Up until 1702, the missions of la Florida, headed by friars of the Franciscan Order, had somewhat flourished, despite consistent reports by various chiefs of the Apalachee ethnic group not only to the Governor of Florida, but directly to the King of Spain, of abuses committed towards them by various members of Spanish society within their territory, which pushed several dozen, if not hundreds of mission dwellers to relocate to Apalachicola towns further north which had become aligned with the English. However, on the 20th of May, 1702, the mission of Santa Fe de Toloca, being an ethnically Timucua settlement about halfway between the province of Apalachee to the city of San Agustin, was raided and destroyed by a group of English and Yamasee slave raiders, which had provoked a scare amongst not only the Spanish government, but amongst native chiefs across the colony.

Depiction of an English raid on a Florida mission in the early 1700s​

Don Patricio de Hinachuba, recognized by many contemporaries as being the most powerful cacique (chief) of the Apalachee people, wanting to avenge the destruction of Santa Fe de Toloca, while simultaneously fearing that the English may enact the same fate on his own people, would organize a group of fellow Apalachee chiefs and Spanish officials from across the province in order to petition the Governor in San Agustin so as to organize a war party consisting of both Apalachee warriors and Spanish militiamen stationed in the blockhouse of San Luis, eventually pressuring Governor Jose de Zúñiga into approving the organization of an expeditionary force of roughly 800 Apalachee warriors and some 50 Spanish militiamen. Led by Infantry Captain Francisco Romo de Uriza, sent by the Governor to Apalachee province for this specific purpose, the force would embark from San Luis to engage in a conflict against the English-allied Apalachicolas on the 7th of October of the same year, utilizing the element of surprise in order to catch them off guard in a camp that they held on the confluence of the Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers, successfully defeating an Apalachicola and English contingent in the area on the 18th of October.

With the success of the battle, and having outnumbered the force of the Apalachicolas and English by over 300 men, the war party led by Romo de Uriza would return to San Luis to a 3 day long fiesta honoring the patroness of the expedition, Our Lady of the Pillar, as a way of showing gratitude to Heaven for allowing the victory to occur in the first place, especially considering that the bulk of the force had been armed with longbows and hatchets, while their opponents were primarily armed with English supplied muskets.

Fearing that the English may attempt another assault in retribution to the defeat that had been caused to them by the Spanish, the Deputy Governor of Apalachee Province, Juan Ruíz de Mexía, would send a group of 7 Spaniards of his trust from San Luis to the French outpost at Mobile, whose governor, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, had previously proposed the supplying of muskets to the Spanish and Apalachee militias in the colony, which would allow for the subsequent purchase of 250 muskets and enough gunpowder and ammunition to last the region 5 years, and allow for the proper defense of Apalachee Province, which up to this point had not been able to actively supply itself with sufficient weaponry to be able to compete with the English to the north.

Map of the Spanish missions in Florida, circa 1674-75​

Following the celebration of said victory, Don Patricio de Hinachuba, being the chief of the town of San Lorenzo de Ivitachuco, in collaboration with the chiefs of the mission towns of San Luis de Talimali, San Pedro y San Pablo de Patale, and La Concepcion de Ayubale, would write yet another petition to the Spanish crown concerning the abuses that various Spanish settlers in the region had continued to enact towards the Indios (natives), such as the separation of wives from their men for the purpose of serving Spanish ranchers for whatever they wished, being forced to freely supply milk and fish to certain families for free, as well as the obligation for various Indio men to serve in forced labor troupes across the colony in San Agustin, where a stone fort was in the process of construction. As the last petition, drawn up in 1699, had gained a successful response from the Crown, which had encouraged the Apalachees' right to justice for these abuses, though Spain was in the midst of a succession crisis, this petition would also receive a positive response from the Crown, which, wanting to ensure that the Indio subjects in Florida were to stay loyal to Spain, would enact a Decree, known in Florida as the Expulsion Decree of 1703, which would reassure the autonomy and legal right of all mission towns in Apalachee Province as indian republics.

Having been recognized as indian republics under the guise of Spanish law, and as these institutions had criminalized the permanent settlement of Spaniards within their jurisdictions, the Apalachee chiefs, as a way to honor the law and as the Crown had actively sided with the Indios in this dispute, would begin programs of expulsion of all Spanish civilians from their mission towns, only allowing them to visit to hear mass on Sundays, during feast days, or during market days, all crucial times for the regional economy, which would suddenly see well over 1500 Spaniards and their Mestizo offspring expelled from their principal homes in the mission towns and into the surrounding ranches which were already primarily Spanish owned.

The mission town of San Luis de Talimali, being the official administrative capital of Apalachee province ever since the founding of the first mission in the region in 1633, would be the only town exempt from the Expulsion Decree, and with this, would see a sudden spike in Spanish resettlement. However, with the town unable to immediately accomodate all of these Spaniards, the Deputy Governor of the province would issue a land grant of 300 acres approximately 6 leagues to the south of the town, approximately half way between San Luis and the port of San Marcos, which was the principal port of call for all ships trading in the region. With the economic importance of this specific region to Apalachee Province, and with opportunities arising surrounding the trade of cattle and products associated with cattle from the ranches north of the port of San Marcos to Havana and San Agustin by sea, over 800 Spaniards who had initially sought refuge in San Luis after the Expulsion Decree would resettle in this new land grant, being given the name Santiago de Apalache, and given its own church along with its own Franciscan friar, to serve not only the Spaniards, but various Apalachee and Chacato indios who would inevitably settle down in the new town alongside them, mainly as muleteers and canoers for the port of San Marcos.

With the bulk of the Spanish population of Apalachee Province having moved to the new town of Santiago, one of the primary lines of defense for the military in the region in the case of a British or Apalachicola invasion would be suddenly uprooted, which would ultimately result in the Deputy Governor allocating a budget of 1,000 reales de ocho for the construction of adobe churches in all of the largest mission towns in the province, along with small palisades surrounding them, and small bell towers connected directly to all of the churches, all to be constructed by the Apalachees and Chacatos living in and around them, and overseen by Spanish militiamen from San Luis. Though considering the amount of time that it would take to coordinate and construct all of these, and considering the increasing demand for Apalachee forced labor in San Agustin via the repartimiento, most of these projects would be left idle, though the 2 of the largest towns, Ayubale and Ivitachuco, would successfully complete their belltowers and palisades by Christmas of 1703, steadily increasing their chances of a successful defense against a hypothetical Apalachicola/British invasion.

 

[Sarufiyyun]

Interesting premise.....I can't comment on it but I like it.

 

[piratedude]

Expulsion Decree of 1703, which would reassure the autonomy and legal right of all mission towns in Apalachee Province as indian republics.

The link is not especially helpful when its only in Spanish. Had to ask an expert i know about this.

The concept of the Repúblicas de Indios arises out of the efforts of the Spanish Crown in the first half of the 16th century to mitigate the disastrous effect colonisation was having on Indigenous people in the Americas. Lobbied by clergy and concerned about a loss of valuable labourers in the face of the infamous population collapse of Indigenous Americas following European contact, the Spanish Crown passed a series of laws, decrees, and instructions to regulate the way in which colonisers were exploiting Indigenous people. These laws faced a lot of pushback from the colonists - in Peru, the introduction of the so-called New Laws sparked a rebellion and outright civil war, in which the Spanish viceroy was murdered by the colonists. In many other places, the laws were later watered down, repealed, or never fully implemented. One concept that, however, did take a certain degree of effect, especially because it could be appropriated by the colonisers for their own use, is that of the two separate Republics. One of the ideas developed to safeguard Indigenous Americans and their rights under Spanish rule was to institutionalise the American colonies as two separate republics occupying the same physical space, one the República de Españoles and one the República de Indios. Although living side by side, these republics were to be like two different realms beneath the Spanish Crown, modelled after the long-standing composite nature of the Spanish monarchy, not being truly one kingdom, but a collection of kingdoms under a single monarch. As separate republics, the Spanish and Indigenous people were to have different rights and laws, with a certain amount of the legal and organisational traditions of Indigenous peoples preserved. Members of the two republics also weren't to mingle. While laws against intermarriage itself were infrequent and inconsistent, other forms of spatial separation were to be observed. Indigenous people were not meant to live in Spanish-founded cities (though they nonetheless usually did, as they were needed to provide labour there) or at the least have their separate city borough there. And Spanish (and by extension, Black Hispanic) people were very much not meant to live in Indigenous villages. We have a lot of lawsuits preserved in which Indigenous people tried (and quite often succeeded) to evict outsiders from their lands. And while the number of lawsuits attests to how often these rules were broken, it also shows that such infractions were, in fact, policed. The idea behind the physical separation was to give the Spanish less opportunity to abuse Indigenous people and most importantly to interfere with their religious instruction. However, as stated above, the colonist also appropriated this concept for their own ends. The physical separation reinforced racial hierarchies that were the foundation of settler power.

 

[Talus I of Dixie]

INDIGENOUS MISSIONS TIMELINE LET'S GO!!!!!!!