Episode 1.1: Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, the Father of Florida

The phrase "conquistador" is often associated with men like Cortes and Pizarro...men who conquered the great civilizations south of the Rio Grande.  But what about the conquistadors who made a name for themselves in what became the United States?  In the first episode of "History: Beyond the Textbook," we explore the man who is credited with founding St. Augustine Florida, the oldest European city in the contiguous United States:  Pedro Menéndez de Avilés.

Key People
 Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, Spanish conquistador
 Jean Ribault, French colonial

Key Events
Founding of St. Augustine, Florida

The third season of History: Beyond the Textbook focuses on the stories of individuals who shaped "America's Crucial Years" of 1783-1790, and runs from October 8-December 24. Catch up on Season One, "America's Colonial Era," and Season Two, "America's Revolution," wherever you listen to your podcasts!

Feel free to contact us with feedback or questions by clicking the "Send Us a Text" link or email us at: hbttpodcast@gmail.com

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to History: Beyond the Textbook.  As this is our first episode together, I’ll first explain a little about myself and what I hope to accomplish.  I’m Alex Mattke, and I’ve been a high school history teacher for almost fifteen years.  As an educator, I strive to take complex historical concepts and make them accessible and easy to understand.  As a husband and a father, I further hope to ensure that those same concepts are preserved and passed along to subsequent generations.  The goal with this podcast is to spend each 12-episode season covering a specific era of American history through the eyes and experiences of the individuals who lived it.  Many of those individuals will sound familiar: you may remember them in the recesses of your brain from history classes gone by, but we may cover an aspect of their lives that you are unfamiliar with.  Some of the names may be completely new and provide a fresh perspective through which to understand events that are very well-known.  The name of this podcast reflects our goal: a history textbook is a good start to learn the basics, but we seek to go beyond said text to broaden our understanding of the people and their experiences to enable us to better understand and appreciate our own history.  And as an initial disclaimer, there are people and places that cover a vast array of languages and pronunciations, so I strive for accuracy, but all potential mispronunciations are unintentional and hopefully do not distract from the grandeur of the greater story,  So whether you are an expert constantly seeking new historical angles on well-worn tales, a novice in search of more information on our nation’s history, or a casual listener who enjoys a good story, I welcome you to History: Beyond the Textbook, and hope that you enjoy our journey through American history.

September, 1565.  Almost one month following the founding of the first permanent European settlement in the contiguous United States: St. Augustine, Florida.  The landmass straddled the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico and was so-named by Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León, who first spotted the peninsula during Easter Week. “Pascua Florida” is the Spanish phrase for “the feast of flowers,” but the resulting event would certainly not befit a festive, jovial celebration.  French Protestants, known as Huegenots, had settled in this new land with the hope of escaping the rampant religious violence that was plaguing Continental Europe; they simply wished to live in peace, raise their families, and practice their faith as they saw fit.  Little did they know that all that was about to change.  Spanish explorers, adventurers, and settlers sought to put an end to the settlement of those whom they viewed as “heretics,” and the events of the ensuing massacre would set the tone for subsequent bloody encounters in the Western Hemisphere.  At the center of it all was an experienced sailor, politician, and conquistador: Pedro Menéndez, often referred to as Pedro Menéndez de Avilés in acknowledgement of his place of birth.  Though not as well-known or as widely taught compared to other conquistadors such as Cortes, Pizarro, and de Soto, Menéndez is commonly credited with the founding of the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the contiguous United States.  Therefore, he serves as an appropriate figure with which to begin our examination of the people that drove the events that shaped our American story.  Pedro Menéndez de Avilés: Father of Florida.

Act One: Existing Settlements in a Potential Spanish World

Since we are telling the story of American history, it makes sense to begin with the land that will become the United States of America and those who lived here untold generations prior to European contact.  Ascertaining the exact population of North America at this time is a tricky proposition, but we’ll just make the safe claim that the number was most likely in the millions.  Some of these tribes and nations shared common linguistic groups and cultural elements, but they were as different as the European nationalities with whom they would collide following Spanish arrival in the 1500’s.  The most densely populated areas were concentrated in Mesoamerica where the future site of Mexico City was called Tenochtitlan, the crown jewel of the Mexica who headed the Triple Alliance.  Complete with causeways, canals, floating gardens, and meticulously planned streets, the mighty city was anything beyond the imagination of the Spaniards who laid eyes on it in the 1500’s.  About 200,000 Mexica lived in Tenochtitlan, making it the largest city in the Western Hemisphere.  The closest equivalent city north of the Rio Grande was Cahokia, a settlement at the convergence of the Mississippi, Missouri, and Illinois Rivers, although the total population is estimated to have been one-tenth of Tenochtitlan.  It stands as the preeminent center of Missisippian culture, and while it had declined significantly by the time Europeans arrived, its mounds are the most visible archaeological evidence that they left behind. These Mississippian mounds dot the landscape of large portions of the American Midwest, and archaeology of Cahokia proves that North American was interconnected in ways previously unimagined.  Evidence of copper from the shores of Lake Superior, shells from the Atlantic coast, obsidian from the Rocky Mountains, mica from the Appalachian Mountains, and buffalo hides from the Great Plains have been found at Cahokia, and each of these regions housed people whose way of life richly add to the American story.

So this was the world in which the Spanish encountered when they first arrived.  Of course, Christopher Columbus made his first trans-Atlantic voyage in 1492 under the patronage of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of what of now Spain…after their forces had defeated the final Muslim stronghold of Granada and expelled the Muslims from Spain in early January of that year, completed the centuries-old Reconquista.  Columbus would make a total of four voyages, and although the age-old tale is that he died fervently believing that he had actually reached East Asia, royal advisors understood that this was not the case.  These were lands that were seemingly unmentioned in the ancient texts familiar to Europeans, and the people populating these lands were unknown to these same Europeans.  Initially, it was primarily Spanish conquistadors who followed in his wake: Hernán Cortés, initially the secretary of a Spanish governor of Cuba, earned fame by leading the conquest of the Mexica, while Inca of present-day South America fell at the hands Fransisco Pizarro and his ruthless brothers.  Friars of various Catholic orders such as Fransiscans and Dominicans often established a presence to spread the word of God, and indigenous life dramatically altered via disease, conquest, and conversion to the Catholic faith. 

Much attention was focused on the islands of the Caribbean, as well as Central and South America…but North America remained somewhat of a muted priority.  Many Americans can probably associate Juan Ponce de León with the peninsula we now call Florida because he was searching for the so-called “Fountain of Youth,” and although he claimed to find a sizeable amount of gold (leading to subsequent searches for the fabled “Cities of Gold,”) large-scale colonization didn’t occur for decades.  The food sources were viewed to be insufficient, the Columbus family still laid political claim to the area, and enslavement of the Native populace was forbidden.  You heard that correctly: so long as Fredinand and Isabella were in charge, the indigenous population in lands considered to be under Spanish control were not officially allowed to be enslaved because they were deemed subjects of the empire.  Now, there were loopholes that administrators and conquistadors  found to get around this, but this is important to understand because these same administrators began to look elsewhere for a coerced labor force.  Many accepted the presence of the Spaniards and lived side-by-side with them, but aside from Conquistador Hernando de Soto’s multi-year search for one of these cities of gold that began in Florida in the late 1530’s, the region remained somewhat of a frontier.  This is where our main character enters the narrative.

Act Two: Making Menéndez

Our first act was all about context: setting the stage to understand the actions of our main character.  So who was this individual that can be referred to as the “Father of Florida?”  Pedro Menéndez was born in the town of Avilés, on the northern coast of Spain, in the same year that Cortes first encountered the Mexica: 1519.  Early biographers of Menéndez have emphasized his lineage to the ancient nobles of the town, and some even attempted to link him to King Pelayo, a man who was among the architects of the Reconquista that began the process of expelling the Moors from the Iberian Peninsula.  The claim is that his ancestors guarded the king and even granted the town of Avilés to these same people.  The likelihood of this is low since there are no records to validate it as fact, but is is certainly worthy of inclusion not only to demonstrate the lengths to which biographers have gone to emphasize the grandeur of their subjects, but as a reminder that legends and myths often become blindly accepted as reality and sometimes do not hold up to more extensive scrutiny.  We do know that his family comprised minor nobility, but there were about twenty children in his family, so excessive monetary wealth was not something that was an occurrence in Menéndez’s upbringing.  His biographers also take great pains to mention that Menéndez seemingly came from nothing to accomplish magnificent things, so the “rags-to-riches” ideology of the American spirit goes back further than one might expect.  His father died when he was a child, and his mother allegedly sent him to live with a relative to oversee his upbringing, but he ran away: again, sources conflict in describing his early life.  We believe that he was betrothed to a ten-year old distant cousin in an effort to keep him in the country, but this commitment could not temper his infamously adventurous spirit: in the next 18 years, his primary biographer claimed that Pedro Menéndez would only spend 22 days back home.

Menéndez initially made a name for himself as a sailor at around the same time that de Soto was completing his empty search for that precious city of gold.  He began his formal career fighting French privateers along the duel coast of Spain and France, earning enough to purchase a boat and become a privateer himself.  Accounts indicate that Menéndez served in this role for most of the 1540’s, earning the admiration and subsequent commissions of the Spanish royal family.  After following orders to kill the pirate Juan Alfonso Portugués, as well as his son, Menéndez traversed the Atlantic Ocean in 1550 to prevent English and French privateers from operating in the region.  At sea, he was an extremely successful admiral, and highly effective in combat.  He was so highly regarded that, when the future King Philip II was to cross the English Channel to wed Mary Tudor in the mid-1550’s, Menéndez was chosen as one of the captains who was to accompany the then-prince.  This means that by his mid-30’s, the crown already held him in such high esteem that the life of their crown prince was placed in the capable hands of Menéndez.

His road to the founding of Florida would be filled with a few more unexpected stops and unintended accomplishments.  Upon his return to Seville in 1555 from the West Indies, he and his brother Álvaro were jailed by members of the Casa de Contractación, or House of Trade, on charges that they had, to quote, “abused the duties of his office and transferred his obligations and attributes to his brother and lieutenant, while he traveled to New Spain to take care of private affairs.”  Translation: he was accused of smuggling for personal gain, and one of the main pieces of evidence was that he had allowed a young merchant with a shady past to illegally transfer goods under his command (so, smuggling).  The House of Trade, located in the same Seville where Columbus launched his first voyage, was part of a rivalry with Cádiz, which is where this young smuggler was from.  Cádiz had served as the only entry port for goods from the West Indies from 1493-1503, at which point it was transferred to Seville, who enjoyed this monopoly for decades.  The rivalry between the two cities certainly played a hand in the arrest of Menéndez, but the charges definitely had merit.  At any rate, Menéndez and his brother were acquitted, most likely because he was in the good graces of the now King Philip II.  Following a few more years of successful service for which he received land and a knighthood, he was ready to begin the adventure for which Americans most likely associate him.

Act Three: The Violent Actions of the Adelantado 

This act is all about the main event: how is it that Pedro Menéndez came to be associated with what is now Florida, and how did he entrench a Spanish presence on the peninsula?  Following the death of Juan Ponce de León, a small handful of Spanish expeditions into the Floridian peninsula resulted in disaster.  This includes what was, for the time, the mammoth undertaking led by Hernando de Soto in which over 600 men and 200 horses sought gold and glory in the American Southeast.  Three years later, following the death of their leader, the expedition had made it through Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, in addition to Florida, but over half of them never made the voyage back to Mexico, having died as part of the expedition.  The mid 1500’s are when things got kicked into gear…1565, to be exact.  It was in March of this year that our main character signed an asiento, or contract, with King Philip II. This asiento named Menéndez “Adelantado” of Florida, which is a position that gave him the exclusive rights to fund his conquest of the region.  He brought over 2,600 people with him comprising different aspects of society: colonists to establish a permanent settlement, priests to attend to the spiritual needs of said colonists and indigenous peoples, and soldiers to engage enemies in combat.  On August 28 of that same year, Menéndez’s expedition sighted the area where they would make landfall,  on the St. Johns River, and since Catholics on that day celebrated the feast of St. Augustine, he named his settlement after that same man (although the saint and the city are pronounced differently).  The first permanent European settlement in what would become the contiguous United States was officially established eleven days later,on September 8.

As for the actual reason for his expedition and establishment of St. Augustine, the French certainly had a primary role in that design.  The same year that St. Augustine was founded, word reached the Spanish that a party of Frenchmen led by Jean Ribault had also reached the St. John’s River and intended to create a settlement of their own.  As mentioned in the introduction, the news was especially distressing given that these French settlers were Huegenots, or French Protestants who followed what.  The primary account of Menéndez’s two years in Florida following the founding of St. Augustine, chronicled by his brother-in-law Gonzalo Solís de Merás and recently translated by Professor David Arbesú of the University of South Florida, devotes considerable time to addressing the Adelantado’s response to this perceived threat.  This also wasn’t the first time that Ribault ventured to North America: he first arrived near modern-day Jacksonville in 1562, and after claiming the land for France, traveled north where he established a settlement on modern-day Parris Island.  It was mainly deserted after he left for France, and a Spanish force destroyed the Parris Island settlement later that same year, but it was distressing enough that a rival nationality, much less religion, had set up shop near St. Augustine.  A critical component of Menéndez’s asiento was to spread the Catholic faith, so eliminating interlopers seeking to evangelize potential converts to the Luthern faith was considered a top priority for the Adelantado.  

Merás writes that the initial voyage to Florida, in which St. Augustine was established, took two months due to inclement weather, and this voyage included a one-week stopover in Puerto Rico.  Once the fort was established, Menéndez set to work arming his men and exploring where the French encampment might be located.  Ribault had already been made aware of the arrival of the Spanish and had intended to engage in a preemptive strike, and Menéndez even spotted Ribault’s four ships off the Florida coast.Remember that Menéndez is often considered to be a conquistador, so conquest and combat were a mainstay of his life.  Although some of the captains of his expedition advised that he pull anchor and sail for Santo Domingo to gather reinforcements, the Adelantado judged that the French would not have been able to mobilize their forces quickly enough to pull off a surprise attack.  Therefore, he sought to attack immediately while simultaneously sending word to the aforementioned forces in Santo Domingo, which included infantry and cavalry.  All agreed with the plan, so Menéndez sailed past the ships and, after a brief exchange of artillery fire, both sides called a truce to exchange, shall we call them, “pleasantries.”  The French acknowledged that they were Lutherans sailing under Jean Ribault, while Menéndez replied that he had come “to hang and behead all the Lutherans I may find on this land and sea,” and that King Philip II had ordered him to do so.  Really, not so pleasant, and as it was nighttime, both forces went their separate ways.

A few days later, a great storm wrecked the French fleet, thus preventing them from continuing their assault and providing the Spanish with an opportunity.  Gonzalo refers to this incident as a “miracle,” and there are several “miracles” that occur throughout Menéndez’s time in Florida.  As religion factored heavily into the actions of both sides, and earns considerable mention within Gonzalo’s chronicle, it stands to reason that the sudden change of weather would be attributed to divine intervention.  Menéndez not only led his forces in the capture of France’s Fort Caroline, but intelligence courtesy of friendly Native allies revealed the position of the shipwrecked French forces.  In the initial encounter, the Spanish were successful in their ambush, and Gonzalo claims that Menéndez came across 208 French soldiers, eight of whom claimed that they were Catholic, so they were placed in a boat back to St. Augustine to make confession.  The rest, in groups of ten, were executed.  After his own return to St. Augustine, he learned of Ribault’s position, again from Native allies, and the Adelantado set out once again to confront the French settlers at what is now Matanzas Inlet.  Much like the first massacre, Gonzalo writes of negotiations between the two sides, this time between Menéndez and Ribault himself.  The two exchanged formalities, and Menéndezconsistently reiterated that all Catholics would be spared, but his orders were to kill all Lutherans.  After an evening of tension, Ribault and his followers were rounded up, their hands tied behind their backs like their compatriots at Fort Caroline, and he spared a total of 16 individuals.  The rest were, in the words of Gonzalo, “put to the knife.”  The first permanent European settlement in the contiguous United States was born amid religious rivalries, brutal executions, and the single-minded determination of Pedro Menéndez de Avilés.

Act Four: Menéndez after fighting the French

This is the act where we attempt to go beyond what the so-called “traditional” narrative about our main character.  So, what else can we glean of the legacy of Pedro Menéndez, aside from his massacre of the Huguenots and his so-called “conquest of Florida?”  What else did the man contribute besides the so-called “textbook” account of his claim of Florida for Spain?   Well, King Philip reacted positively to Menéndez’s actions, and after Menéndez returned to Spain following his initial Florida expedition, he was offered the governorship of the island of Cuba.  During his four-year stint, Menéndez was accused of smuggling goods, similar to the accusations that plagued him prior to his time in Florida, mistreating the citizens of the island, and neglecting the finances of Florida, which was still his responsibility.  Menéndez was removed from this position, yet still had the favor of Philip II, who wanted him to organize ships with the intention of sailing to FLanders to help control the more rebellious territories of the empire.  But before he could set sail, disease struck his crew , as well as the Adelantado, who died of typhus in 1574 at the age of 55.     

Part of Menéndez’s legacy in the Western Hemisphere also involves a 1570 expedition of Jesuit missionaries to the Chesapeake Bay, and helps explain Spain’s reluctance to colonize the region.  Accompanying the Jesuits was Don Luis de Velasco, an individual who was native to the region, had twice traveled to Spain, and was even baptized during his time in Mexico City.  This mission was established by Menéndez during his time as Cuba’s governor, and even though he wanted to provide soldiers to protect the priests at this northern outpost, the Jesuits declined given that their guide was more or less returning home and was familiar with the region.  This incident will be examined at greater length in our next episode, so we will simply say that Velasco betrayed his Jesuit companions and upon escaping his hosts, led a force that slaughtered the missionaries.  Menéndez visited the mission two years later to investigate what had happened, and as he was unable to capture the alleged traitor who instigated the violence, he responded by killing twenty indigenous fighters in combat, and hanging fourteen more from the horizontal beam that lay on the ships’s mast, called the yardarm.  With the Chesapeake mission counted as an embarrassing failure, the Spanish never again ventured that far north, sticking to their more fortified positions in South America, Mesoamerica, the Caribbean, and for the time, Florida. 

Towards the end of his manuscript of Menéndez’s time in Florida, Gonzalo devotes a chapter to a “Description of the Land of Florida, Its Good Qualities, and Its Climate.”  Gonzalo immediately references not only the good coastline and numerous islands and keys that boast excellent harbors, but references that some of the Natives were hostile towards the Spanish because they lived where the French had established a presence three years prior to the founding of St. Augustine.  Understanding that good relations were vital to ensure the safety and prosperity of his enterprise, Menéndez explained that the Frenchmen were what he considered to be “false Christians,” and provided the Natives with gifts to attempt to gain their trust.  This incident, similar to many we have seen, didn’t have a happy ending, as Gonzalo stated that about 120 Spanish soldiers were killed in total by this particular tribe after it was discovered that the Adelantado did not have the abundance of supplies that he had first claimed.  However, we know that “friendly” Natives provided Menéndez with information on the whereabouts of their French enemies, so not all interactions were negative.  The exploits of Pedro Menéndez de Avilés helps us establish three crucial themes in colonial American history that we will explore during this season: how Native Americans viewed and initially interacted with European settlers, the role that the Christian faith played in the lives of these settlers, and the violence that occurred as these settlements sought to grow and evolve, sometimes between Natives and Europeans, sometimes between the settlers themselves.

Thank you so much for listening to our first episode!  If you want to learn more about Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, start with the book that I have referenced multiple times throughout this episode: Pedro Menéndez de Avilés and the Conquest of Florida: A New Manuscript, originally written by the Adelantado’s brother-in-law Gonzalo Solís de Merás and translated by David Arbesú.  After that, see what your local library has to offer…in addition to presenting the experiences of the drivers of American history, we want to encourage everyone to discover the different perspectives that are available via your library card, so read on, and be sure to join us for our next episode of History: Beyond the Textbook as we venture north to Chesapeake Bay to view the famous Jamestown settlement through the lens of Opechancanough, the alleged “Prince” of Jamestown.  I’m Alex Mattke, and thanks again for listening