By Bob Davidsson
For nearly 300 years the Jupiter Inlet was a region of constant concern to the royal governors in St. Augustine and the Empire of Spain.
The inlet and its Loxahatchee River estuary was a hideout and source of firewood and water supplies used by passing privateers and pirates, invaders and colonial rivals in 1565, 1627-28 and during Queen Anne's War from 1702-13.
Spanish governors devised several plans to fortify the inlet and thus deny its use by their colonial enemies. They all failed. This article documents those efforts with the reports and pleas for help forwarded by Florida officials to Spain's Council of the Indies.*
The location of the Jupiter Inlet made it a popular but dangerous port-of-call for passing sailing vessels making the long journey back to Europe. The powerful Gulf Stream current, used by mariners for centuries, made its nearest approach to the Florida coastline by this outlet to the sea.
Along the south shore of the inlet was the ancient shell mound and Jeaga Indian village of Hobe. The midden served as a navigation marker to passing ships, leading them to the estuary and its natural resources to supply their vessels.
During his voyage of discovery to Florida in 1513, Juan Ponce de Leon anchored his small fleet of three ships outside of the Jupiter Inlet. His flagship, the "Santa Maria de Consolacion," and the caravel "Santiago" waited at the inlet for the delayed arrival of their brigantine, the "Cristobal," which had been swept north by the Gulf Stream. Antonio de Herrera, the 16th century Spanish court historian, wrote what happened next.
"He went out from there to the river where they gathered water and firewood, waiting for the 'bergantine' (Cristobal)," he scribed. "Sixty Indians went there to hinder him. One of them was taken for a pilot so he might learn their language. He gave to this river the name 'La Cruz' (the cross) and he left by it a cross of stone with an inscription on it and they left oft taking on water because it was brackish."
The "Cristobal" rejoined Ponce de Leon's fleet on May 8. The three ships sailed a short distance to the south, to the easternmost point of the island of Palm Beach, where the explorer accurately described the island and nearby Gulf Stream as the "Cabo de Corrientes" (the cape of currents).
During the 16th century, Palm Beach was an unbroken barrier island extending nearly 40 miles from the Jupiter Inlet south to the Boca Raton Inlet.
The historian Herrera reported, "They came upon and anchored behind a cape, close to a village named Aboioa. All this coast , from Pinta de Arrafices until this Cabo de Corrientes runs north-south to the southeast, and the water is clear with a depth of six fathoms."
It was a search for water and firewood that drew the ill-fated fleet of French Admiral Jean Ribault to the Jupiter Inlet during the summer of 1565. While restocking his supplies, he rescued a shipwrecked Basque seaman named Vizcaino (the Biscayan) who was a captive and eventually adopted into the Ais tribe. For the next two years Vizcaino would serve as an interpreter of coastal dialects for first the French and then the Spanish in Florida.
Ribault was making the long voyage from France to relieve the French colony at Fort Caroline on the St. John's River. As fate would have it, his arrival coincided with that of the new Spanish proprietary governor of Florida, Pedro Menendez de Aviles. Ribault's fleet was shattered by a tropical storm as he sailed south to destroy the hastily-built Spanish settlement of St. Augustine.
The events that followed would lead to Spain's most determined effort to establish a settlement near the Jupiter Inlet.
Rise and Fall of Fort Santa Lucia de Padua: 1565-66
In the late autumn of 1565, a small brigantine entered the Jupiter Inlet. Aboard the vessel was Juan Velez de Medrano, captain-general of Spain's army in Florida. He also was recently assigned the post of lieutenant governor of the "Province of Ais" by Menendez when the Spanish governor sailed to Cuba for supplies and more soldiers.
Velez was one of the officers leading the attack on the French outpost of Fort Caroline. But now, two months later, his army was starving and in mutiny at the "Port of Ais," 30 miles north of Jupiter Inlet along the Indian River.
In a whirlwind two-month campaign, Menendez founded the town of St. Augustine and destroyed the rival French colony at Fort Caroline. He murdered his rival Jean Ribault and two groups of shipwrecked survivors at Matanzas Inlet, then marched his army south and captured a third party of 70 French castaways at their makeshift fort on Cape Canaveral.
Instead of returning to the poorly provisioned settlement of St. Augustine, Menendez continued his march south with 300 soldiers to "Jece," the main village of the Ais Indians. He forwarded his plan of action to King Phillip II on October 15, 1565.
The Spanish Adelantado (governor) wrote," I shall place there (at Ais and Tekesta) 150 Spaniards, for they are needed to keep watch over the Indians, who are very warlike, until the Spaniards have gained their goodwill."
Menendez failed to gain the goodwill of the native tribes of South Florida. After the governor sailed to Cuba, the Ais cut off the garrison of 250 Spaniards and 50 French prisoners of war at the Port of Ais, (located near Fort Pierce), from their distant base at St. Augustine.
About 100 members of the starving garrison, led by a foot soldier named Escobar, deserted the outpost in a forlorn hope of signaling a passing ship. They were trapped on the north shore of the St. Lucie Inlet.
Velez sailed to the Jupiter Inlet to find a better location to provision his army among less hostile natives. He selected an undisclosed site a few miles north of the Jeaga village of Hobe in the Jupiter Narrows. Unknown to Velez, the Jeaga were allies of the larger Ais tribe to the north.
Several years later in 1574, Pedro Menendez-Marques, the nephew of the Spanish governor, would observe, "There are captives in the power of the cacique called Ays (Ais), who is father-in-law of said Jega (Jeaga)."
Velez sailed back to the Port of Ais, and with the opportune assistance of a relief ship under the command of Captain Diego de Amaya, transported the garrison and surviving mutineers to the Jupiter Inlet. Contemporary Spanish historian Bartolome Barrientos detailed the fate of the Spanish garrison at the Santa Lucia outpost.
"During the next eight days the Spaniards built a fort in which they set up their defense" Barrientos wrote. As their answer to this, the Indians attacked 1,000 strong, discharging their arrows without cessation, they fought for four hours, during which 6,000 arrows fell in the fort."
During an 1574 inquiry, Juan de Soto, a soldier in the Santa Lucia garrison, testified, "As to the Xega (Jeaga), he knows that these Indians have slain many Spaniards in the district they call Santa Lucia, where a company was garrisoned, and they killed in such numbers that those alive were forced to leave and abandoned the fort because the Indians were persecuting and killing them every day."
In similar testimony, Diego Lopez, an artilleryman at Santa Lucia, reported of the estimated 236 men defending Santa Lucia no more than 60 or 70 survived. When the caravel "Ascencion" arrived at the Jupiter Inlet with supplies for the garrison in March 1566, it sparked a second mutiny by the desperate soldiers. Gonzalo Solis de Meras, the brother-in-law of Menendez, reported on the event.
"Because Juan Velez wished to prevent this, they tried to kill but wounded him, and (Gabriel) Ayala, his ensign, who was likewise preventing them making off with the caravel; and they all embarked upon her and were on their way to Havana."
Menendez intercepted the "Ascencion" and the Santa Lucia garrison near the Florida Keys, and continued his voyage to St. Augustine. The fort of Santa Lucia was deserted, and its exact location remains a mystery in the year 2020.
The Rescue Mission to Santa Lucia: 1622
In September 1622, the annual treasure fleet (the Flota) from Havana was overdue. St. Augustine was the last friendly Spanish port before making the dangerous journey across the north Atlantic. A concerned Governor Juan de Salinas (1618-24) received reports from Indians of ship debris washing up along the southeast coast of Florida.
Unknown to Governor Salinas, the fleet was scattered by a hurricane north of Cuba, with the galleons "Atocha" and "Rosario" sinking on a reef south of the Florida Keys after being battered by wind and waves. In response to this disaster, Salinas sent two reconnaissance patrols to southeast Florida in search of shipwrecked survivors from the overdue treasure fleet.
In a 1623 report to the Council of the Indies, Governor Salinas wrote, "About the month of September (1622) some remains of ships were found on the coast that indicated shipwreck and loss of same. And soon thereafter I had word from the Indians of the coast of Jega (Jupiter Inlet) and Santa Lucia that many others have come to grief on this coast."
"This caused me notable concern," the governor reported, "and grief because of its being time for the Galleons and fleet (Flota) to be coming through that channel. I sent the sergeant-major, Gabira, to the point with 40 soldiers so that he might search along these (coasts) and collect whatever he might find on them."
When Sergeant-Major Gabira failed to find any shipwrecks, Governor Salinas decided to lead an expedition in person to the territory of the Ais and Jeaga Indians at Santa Lucia.
"It appeared to be appropriate that I should make this investigation," the concerned governor wrote. "I did so. I reached as far as Santa Lucia, which is the farthest I was able to go, hunting all over them without finding anything of importance or anything else other than broken chests of rotting tobacco and three shallops (canoes)."
The narrative of Governor Salinas emphasized the ongoing concern in St. Augustine of shipwrecks along the Florida coastline, and the need for an outpost in the Santa Lucia region to recover cargos and assist survivors. Just five years later, the arrival of squadrons of Dutch privateers along the Treasure Coast's estuaries would heighten this anxiety.
The "80 Years' War" Comes to Jupiter Inlet: 1627-28
In the year 1627, the United Provinces of the Netherlands and the Spanish Hapsburg empire were engaged in the 59th year of the Dutch War of Independence, a conflict known as the "80 Years' War" (1568-1648).
The Dutch West Indies Company, created in 1621, expanded the war to Florida and the Caribbean by licensing privateers to prey on Spanish shipping. Through of use of captured charts, its merchant-directors were well aware of routes used by Spanish silver fleets from Mexico, known as the "Flota," and convoys carrying gold from South America, the "Galleones".
Fearful of Dutch raids along the unguarded southeast coast of Florida, Governor Luis de Rojas y Borja (1624-29) wisely recommended a fortified outpost at Jupiter Inlet in his Feb. 13, 1627 "Letter from the Governor of Florida to His Majesty.".
"I should warn and advise your Majesty to build a fort at the bar (Jupiter Inlet)," the worried governor wrote, " at a place they call Jega (Jeaga), it being a place where vessels all come to cast anchor when they want to take on water, wood and wait for merchant ships they wish to capture."
"A fort at this place would act as a sentinel and guard against their landing and helping themselves," Governor Rojas warned. "It would be well to have it in case of vessels being wrecked upon the coast, as many are, to be able to rescue and save the crews and passengers, who so often perish."
The governor's sage advice was ignored by the king and his court, with disastrous consequences for the Kingdom of Spain.
In the spring of 1627, Spanish Captain-General Tomas Larraspuru sighted a fleet of 13 Dutch warships in the Florida Straits while escorting a convoy of ships to Havana. The Dutch privateers, under the command of Piet Heyn (1577-1629), remained in Cuban waters until July, capturing prizes and charting the coastline for future raids. Larraspuru reported 55 vessels were boarded by Dutch "pirates" in 1627.
On their return voyage to Holland, the 13 Dutch ships anchored offshore of the Indian River Inlet and occupied the nearby Ais village of Jece as a temporary base. A courier ship from St. Augustine observed the Dutch squadron at anchor and reported its presence. Governor Rojas mustered a force of 150 Spaniards and 300 Indians and marched to the Treasure Coast.
In his 1628 report, Governor Rojas wrote, "And they (the Indians) have come to give me the news that there were enemy on the coast. And on two occasions, when they landed to obtain water, they abandoned their places and withdrew into the woods and others came to give the report and ask for help."
The Dutch had already departed on their voyage home when Governor Rojas and his small army arrived at the Ais village.
The profitable 1627 expedition financed the sailing of four separate squadrons by the Dutch West Indies Company the following year, led by Captains Pieter Adriaanszoon Ita, Witt de With, Joost Benckert and the return of Piet Heyn. Their targets were the Spanish treasure fleets.
Captain Ita arrived first off the coast of Cuba. His squadron captured the Spanish galleon "Remedios" after a spirited fight. They tried to sail the badly damaged galleon back to Holland, but were forced to scuttle the "Remedios" northeast of Jupiter Island after removing its treasure.
Piet Heyn gathered 31 Dutch warships near Hispaniola on July 27, 1628 and sailed for the Florida Straits. He surprised the Cadiz-bound Spanish silver fleet at anchor in the Bay of Matanzas, Cuba, on Sept. 9.
The Flota's commander, Captain-General Juan de Benevides, fled to the mainland, and his fleet surrendered after token resistance. The 17 ships captured in Matanzas Bay yielded a silver haul valued at 11.9 million guilders. The victory marked the only time an entire Spanish treasure fleet was captured.
Piet Heyn's combined Dutch fleet assembled one last time off Florida's Treasure Coast for refitting then set sail for Holland on Sept. 30. To the relief of Spanish officials in St. Augustine, the Dutch fleets never returned to Florida. However, the loss of the silver Flota forced Spain to declare bankruptcy for the remainder of 1628.
Shipwrecks and Captive Indian Divers: 1650-1700
During the Spanish colonial period, as it is today, the Jupiter Inlet, known as the "Rio Jobe" in the 17th century, was often a danger to mariners due to strong tides and currents, as well as shifting sand bars.
On April 2, 2013, the Town of Jupiter Historical Resources Board dedicated an historical marker entitled "Jupiter Inlet Shipwrecks" at Jupiter Beach Park as a memorial to vessels lost near the inlet during the 17th and 18th centuries.
Two of the sailing vessels memorialized after sinking near the inlet were the avisos "San Miguel de Archangel" (1652) and the "San Francisco y San Antonio" (1657). Avisos, also called "presidio boats," were courier ships used to carry important correspondence or special cargos. They were small, well-armed, and could out sail larger pursuing warships.
Supplies and artifacts salvaged from shipwrecks near the Jupiter Inlet were distributed along the Jeaga's two primary trade routes in Palm Beach County. The first extended south to villages along the Rio Jeaga (Lake Worth) to the northernmost towns of the Tekesta nation on the Rio Secor (Spanish River) and Hillsboro River located near the Boca Raton Inlet.
The second native trade route followed the Loxahatchee River to its headwaters, then passed through the Loxahatchee and Hungryland sloughs to the Guacata (Santaluces) and Maymi tribes of Lake Okeechobee.
By the late 17th century, English pirates and privateers often patrolled the Treasure Coast in search of shipwrecks to salvage, and to kidnap native Americans from the coastal tribes to use as divers on the sunken vessels. Florida Governor Diego de Quiroga y Losada (1687-91) was aware of these illegal activities and forwared his recommendation to the Council of the Indies.
"It is necessary to increase a lookout of five men 10 leagues from here at Mosquito Inlet to the south of this port," the governor wrote, "where the enemy enters with his vessels and landed men in the year 1683, and where he goes to kidnap Indians for divers."
Expressing a similar concern, British Governor Thomas Lynch of Jamaica wrote a letter of complaint to Captain-General Robert Clarke, governor of New Providence (the Bahamas) about lawless behavior along the southeast coast of Florida.
His letter stated, "It is known that your islands are peopled by men who are intent rather on pillaging Spanish wrecks than planting, that they carry on their work by Indians kipnapped or entrapped on the coast of Florida, and that all the violence you complain of arises only from disputes about these wrecks from what the English and the French have driven the Spaniards contrary to natural right."
The English governor concludes, "The sea ought to be free, and the wrecks are the Spaniards."
The British barkentine "Reformation" was shipwrecked on Jupiter Island in 1696 while on a voyage from Jamaica to Philadelphia. Quaker merchant Jonathan Dickinson, who chartered the vessel, and his fellow passengers and crew were held captive by the Jeaga and Ais Indians for nearly two months.
While a captive, Dickinson observed in his journal; "There was a man of this town who some years past had been taken off by some of our English ships for a diver on a wreck to the eastward of Cuba, where he was for some time, but the vessel putting into Cuba for water, this Indian swam ashore and got to Havana, thence to St. Augustine and to his native village."
After the year 1702 the issue of kidnapping Indians to salvage shipwrecks became a mute point. The Jeaga and other coastal tribes were decimated during an international war not of their making.
The Demise of the Jeaga Indians at Jupiter Inlet: 1702-13
The European "War of Spanish Succession" came to Spanish Florida as part of its colonial counterpart - "Queen Anne's War". It opened in 1702 with a failed attempt by the governor of South Carolina to capture the "Castillo de San Marcos" fortress in St. Augustine. The same year the British and their Indian allies began targeting Florida's native tribes.
In his March 25, 1702 report to the Spanish War Council, Governor Jose de Zuniga y Zerda (1699-1706) outlined measures needed for the defense of the embattled colony of Florida, including defensive proposals for the Indians of southeast coast.
Governor Zuniga recommended, "The sixth chapter sets forth the benefits which would accrue to the service of God and the king from the construction of a blockhouse in the village of Ais, which lies on the coast of the Bahamas Channel, and the assignment there of a garrison, officers, a corporal, and two Franciscan friars to teach the Christian doctrine to the heathen Indians."
"This project would make it possible for the soldiers to report quickly on disasters to ships of the Indies along the coast, and guard those which were in distress, while at the same time Christianity would be extended under sufficient safeguard," his report concluded.
The Spanish War Council issued its response on Jan. 3, 1703. Governor Zuniga was directed to "attempt the conversion of the Ais Indians to the Christian faith." As to his request for a fortified blockhouse, the council replied "the king was to determine what was most suitable."
No further action was taken by the Kingdom of Spain to protect the native tribes of southeast Florida from British raiders and their Creek and Yemassee Indian allies.
The architect of the British and Indian raids in southeast Florida was Capt. Thomas Nairne, the Indian Agent of South Carolina, who led the first raid. Historian Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, the author of "Florida: The Long Frontier," wrote a descriptive summary of the impact of these slave raids.
"A Captain Thomas Nairne, with his warlike Yemassee Indians, took slaves from the Ais and Jeaga and as far south as Biscayne Bay, where they captured the last Tequestas, and southwest, almost the last Calusas," she wrote.
"Many died of hunger as the gangs (Indian slaves) were driven north. Some escaped to the Everglades or down to the Keys. An epidemic of measles killed hundreds in what would become Key West."
By July 1708, Captain Nairne observed, "Your lordship (the Earl of Sunderland) may perceive by the map that the garrison of St. Augustine is now reduced to bare walls, their cattle and Indian tribes all consumed either by us in our invasion of that place or by our Indian subjects."
In his Jan. 14, 1708 "Letter to His Majesty," Governor Francisco de Corcoles y Martinez (1706-16) reported on the dire impacts of the war in South Florida.
"Nothing of all this has sufficed to prevent the enemy from his constant killings and hostilities," the governor wrote, "which since the siege (of St. Augustine) they are doing, departing from the Indian villages bordering on the Carolinas, being aided by the English with guns, ammunition, cutlasses and pistols, and even being accompanied by some English who urge, incite and encourage them to these assaults, until they have desolated the entire mainland and the coast to the south and of Carlos (the Calusa)."
In a 1708 publication called "A Memorial to Charles Spenser, Earl of Sunderland," Captain Nairne boasted, "It is certain we have firm possession by means of our Indians, from Charles Town to Mobile Bay, excepting only the garrison of St. Augustine and the islands of Cape Florida (the Florida Keys)."
Under pressure from Yemassee and Creek raiders, the remnant Jeaga tribe deserted the Jupiter Inlet and fled south to the Florida Keys. The last "Cacique of Jove" (Jeaga) requested Cuban sanctuary in 1711.
Captain Luis Perdomo arrived in the Florida Keys with two ships. He found 2,000 desperate native American refugees waiting for transport. A total of 270 Jeaga, Tequesta and other South Florida natives were shipped to Cuba. The Jeaga cacique and 200 of the Florida Indians died within a few years from diseases and hardship.
There was no further need for Spain to build an outpost at the Jupiter Inlet. It was a deserted wilderness by the end of Queen Anne's War.
Spain awarded a 12,000-acre land grant in 1815 to Eusebio Maria Gomez, a St. Augustine clerk and city defender during the "Patriot War of 1812," for his services to the Spanish crown. It included land "on a river and island known by the name of Jupiter and Saint Lucia," according to the legal description.. The land granted to Gomez was not settled until after the end of the Spanish colonial period.
The Jupiter Inlet began a new chapter in its history when it became part of the United States in 1821. It is a long history with roots in its Spanish colonial and native American past.
(c.) Davidsson. 2020.
*NOTE: This article also is posted on the Town of Jupiter's Historical Timeline web page. Additional articles are archived below and in Older Posts.
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