Dr. Judy Bense, president emerita of the University of West Florida and emerita professor of anthropology and archaeology, spoke with WUWF's Sandra Averhart to discuss her latest book, "Early Spanish Florida: Unearthing the History of America's Oldest Colony." This is her second public book among her several academic publications. Her first public book was "Unearthing Pensacola," which was published in 2007.
Sandra Averhart: Dr. Bentz, we're here to talk about your new book, Early Spanish Florida. This is your sixth book overall. Give us an overview of this book.
Dr. Judy Bense: This book is really a detailed overview written for the general public on the first 250 years of Florida as a colony of Spain and the story of it.
Averhart: And this is really, as you say, for the public. Talk about how it is different from the academic books that you have.
Bense: Academic writing is very defensive, and it needs to be. It has to survive criticism; it has to be reviewed. What you say academically just basically has to be proven and defended. Books for the public are the exact opposite. Books for the public are based on all of your research of yourself and others. But it is, you're trusted as an author to have it right. And the readers have that trust when they read it. And so they kind of believe what you say. That's a big responsibility, but that's really the difference.
Averhart: And we should say that this book is rich with photographs.
Bense: It is very rich in color photographs. The Florida Humanities, in partnership with the University Press of Florida, combines to produce a National Geographic-style type of publication. There's a color picture almost on every page, and there are 161, as a matter of fact. But the point of it is, is that I think it's important for the readers and the general public to see what they're reading about. Archaeologists have a trained mind's eye. We can read tables and charts, and that's what we look at most. But what we need to, for the general public, is just to show them what it looks like, both today and also renderings of what it used to look like back in the day that we're talking about.
RELATED: Learn more about Florida history by visiting the Unearthing Florida page
Averhart: This is early Spanish Florida. Give us the time frame.
Bense: First of all, it's Spanish. So it starts with Ponce de Leon when he, quote, unquote, discovered Florida around Cape Canaveral, 1513. And it ends 250 years later in 1763, when it was traded to the British via a treaty for ending the Seven Years' War, and the Spanish were forced out, and the British came in.
Averhart: And so with these dates, you say, beginning in 1513, Florida is America's oldest colony.
Bense: Oh, yes, by a long stretch. It's the country's oldest colony. 1513 is a long time before 1607 and Jamestown, and even later with Plymouth Rock. I like to say that when Jamestown was founded, St. Augustine was on its third generation and needed urban renewal, and that is the truth. People across the country are really not that aware of that. And I make that point several ways in the book, because people need to know that Florida really is the oldest American colony. It was just Spanish, not British.
Averhart: Tell us more about Early Spanish Florida. There's a lot to their efforts to first come here and claim it and then to try to hold it. Talk about the ground that you cover in this book.
Bense: Spain tried several ways to keep a presence in Spanish Florida. At first, Florida extended all the way through South Carolina, west to the Mississippi, and south to the Gulf. And it was a huge area. It was really defined by Hernando de Soto's attempt, his exploration and expedition through the Southeast. But claiming it and keeping it are two different things. The way it worked in the days of colonization is you could claim it, but if you couldn't have a successful settlement, if you didn't have one, it was up for grabs. So, it was very important for Spain to have a settlement and to be able to protect its claim to Florida. And so the first thing they did was they tried to conquer the Native Americans. And that's what they sent armies through. Narvaez had an army in 1528. De Soto came through with a bigger army in 1539, and they were on the rampage, killing and maiming and taking prisoners and all of the things they were doing in Europe. That didn't work. Both explorers died. The military campaigns were a failure. They were driven out by the Native Americans, and the king was being realized. And everyone did really, in Spain at the time, in control, (know) that, the American Indians were too fierce, that they would die trying to defend their culture and their territory, as opposed to giving it up and becoming subjects of Spain. So they changed their strategy, said, all right, we're not going to do that anymore. We're not going to send armies. We're going to send settlers, and we're going to have carpenters and shipbuilders and blacksmiths and their families, and we're going to treat the Native Americans like people. We are not going to have to treat them kindly and only get things from them when they're willing to give them or to sell them to the Spanish.
Averhart: Enter Tristan de Luna.
Bense: Enter Tristan de Luna. 1559. It was the first settlement attempt as a colony with a group of civilians from this time, New Spain, and with a military to protect them, to form a town here in Pensacola and to protect it. Then they were to form two other towns the same way, in Northwest Georgia and in South Carolina. And that 1559 hurricane was just terrible. It sunk the ships, it ruined their food. You know the story. Two years later, it was abandoned as a bad attempt. And then the king said, 'I've had enough.' Just leave Florida alone. We'll just deal with ourselves. We'll find another way to protect our convoys of treasure going along the Atlantic coast of Florida, riding the Gulf Stream. And so they said, all right. So the French, of course, got wind of that, like right now. And they sent Jean Ribaut. He went to, near Jacksonville, the mouth of the St. John's River, and planted a monument in granite. And then he went up to South Carolina and built a fort. And then they went back to France for reinforcements. Well, Spain would hear none of that. And so they sent Menendez over to kick the French out, which he did, and to put forts all around the peninsula of Florida, all the way up to South Carolina. They founded Santa Elena, which was the first capital of Florida, but it was in what is now South Carolina. And then he had to make a road from there to Mexico. And, none of that worked. Everything failed eventually. And so they kept St. Augustine. And the king decided just to support it. It's not going to pay for itself. It's not going to make us any money. They can't even feed themselves, so we'll just support it. And they did. And that's why St. Augustine is America's oldest city or town, because they had to have it. It supported the treasure fleets. It gave them protection when they were going up the Atlantic coast with all that bullion, and it rescued shipwrecked sailors. It did all kinds of things, but it was support for the gold fleets, the flotillas.
Averhart: And is it the treasures? The protection of the treasures. Is that one of the reasons why the Spanish were so persistent? Because there are so many hurdles — the weather, the British, the French, you know, attacks, the Indians, the natives. There was so much that contributed to their failures, but they kept coming back. They kept trying.
Bense: No.1, the gold. Getting the gold to Spain. Unbelievable wealth. It was mind-boggling what they were able to bring to Spain. Treasure chests full of diamonds and rubies and emeralds and gold. Bars of gold by the thousands. It was unbelievable. And yes, it was No.1. The historians call this part of North America, the Spanish borderlands, from California to Florida. To protect that golden core of silver and gold in Mexico, just north of Mexico City. That was the No. 1 priority. And so the Gulf of Mexico was theirs. They called it the Spanish Sea, and they protected it.
Averhart: So we talked about kind of an overview of what they were trying. There's a transformation period. Talk about that.
Bense: Well, since colonization didn't work, the third strategy they tried was missionization using the Catholic Church, which is an outreach kind of religion. They believe in missionization and the conversion of people who are not Catholics. And they had an interesting political strategy, which I think people will be enlightened by and interested in. They would bring a chief in, of an agricultural big village, and they would shower him with gifts and things that he liked. Status symbols, red clothes, headdresses, trade goods. And if he would agree to have a priest go to his town, and if he would agree to build a church and a friary, then he, the chief, would be supported every year with all of these wonderful things. And the chief's followers did what he said. He was the boss. So these mission villages really became agricultural plantations. They supported St. Augustine by the ton of food and other goods that they needed. And, there was just a lifeline from the missions to St. Augustine. But there was a downside when you concentrate the Indians like that with Europeans. They got sick. They're diseases that we survive, measles, mumps, all of those things, killed the Indians, and it spread like wildfire through their concentrated populations. But they actually did become ... they were converts, they became Catholics, and then they became the colonizers. The Indians did as Spanish peasants. So that was their third strategy. But it decimated the Indian population. One area at a time.
Averhart: Wow. And so eventually St. Augustine was kind of by itself.
Bense: Well, during missionization, the British and the French saw what was going on, and they began to take parts of the southeastern United States that were once part of Spanish Florida. The British came down the coast from Virginia plantations, with plantation agriculture and chattel slavery. And the French came in from down the Mississippi, and they took the western half of the southeastern United States, and they pushed the Spanish down to St. Augustine.
Averhart: And that was the situation for how many years? Like a few decades before 1698?
Bense: That's right. What happened during the 1600s is that the Spanish were attacked by both, in particular the British, but also the French. They wanted the Spanish out of there. They wanted all of the southeast. They wanted the ports; they wanted access. And so they began attacking the Spanish missions. They began attacking St. Augustine. And so they went on the defense. They fortified some of their missions, and they built that huge, stone Castillo Castle in St. Augustine. And that's not enough. They were worried about the French coming across the coast from New Orleans. And so that's when West Florida was fortified. It wasn't really colonized. It was kind of a military campaign here. And then they built a series of four presidios, which is Spanish forts, in 1698. And they did. They were attacked night and day, just about by the French and the British, but they held on. And so in 1763, the fort downtown, what is now Pensacola today, Fort San Miguel, and all of the houses and everything was turned over to the British, and they left at the point of a gun.
Averhart: Well, before we continue, let's talk about some of the sites that we've covered on Unearthing Florida. The different local sites by name, the presidios, beginning in 1698.
Bense: The first presidio was Santa Maria de Galve. And we located it and studied it. It's just, it was a wonderful time capsule. It's over on the Naval Air Station
Averhart: And it's Fort San Carlos de Austria Corps.
Bense: That's right. And the fort was named San Carlos de Austria. Right. Then the French came over, attacked him, burned it down, kicked him out. And the Spanish retreated to an outpost they had on St. Joseph's Bay. So they built their first presidio there on an island. It really is a spit. It's not really an island. It's a narrow spit that closes the mouth, or almost closes the mouth of St. Joe Bay. And they were there for about three years. Well, there was another treaty, and Spain was on the winning side, and they got Pensacola back. So they came back to Pensacola, but they were in the same position, on the tip of an island at the pass, which is where Santa Rosa Island Presidio was. It's near what we know as Fort Pickens today. And it worked. They were not attacked by land. They were raided sometimes, but no real attacks like they had at Santa Maria. Well, Mother Nature was really unkind to them. They had eight hurricane-level storms in 30 years. And they finally gave up in 1757. They moved to what is now downtown, built the fort called San Miguel, and held it. And so, it was kind of odd fort down there. But at any rate, it's an interesting story about how it happened, why it looks like it did, and the fact that the Indians came back and had missions, mission villages around in the area.
Averhart: Dr. Bense, why should people read this book?
Bense: Well, one of the reasons I began to investigate early Spanish Florida because nobody knew much about it. You know, we knew about St. Augustine, but there must be more to it than that. How did the missions fit in? How did West Florida fit into that puzzle? And so I got interested in it because of that. And I think the general public also doesn't know much about it. Well, I know a lot about it right now, and I thought it would be a good thing to do to educate the public through this book on really the story behind the story of the first 250 years of Florida. It is not what everybody thinks it is. I was surprised, I've been surprised many times on how things worked, what Spain's strategy was, how they succeeded for a while, how it all failed, how they tried again. But it's kind of an interesting story, and it's one that people really don't know. And I think there will be some surprises in it for the public. And it's so well illustrated, it kind of screams what I'm talking about and shows it in living color.
You can purchase the book online and in bookstores. Dr. Bense will be on a book tour with stops across the state.
