bureiau -of ~me'ric - Extras Springer

Swanton, John R.
1946 The Indians of the Southeastern United States. Bureau of
American Ethnology Bulletin 137, Smithsonian Institution, U.S.
Government Printing Office, Washington.
34 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY expeditions following theirs not as yet, thoroughly authenticated, begins,
then, with the voyage of John Cabot in the year 1497. Cabot followed the
coast south the next year, some think as far as Florida, but this is
improbable, and if he did so he left no records of the Indians of that
region. The alleged expedition of Vespucci in the same year, during which
he is supposed to have traced the entire shore of the Gulf of Mexico and
the Atlantic as far north as Virginia, is probably apochryphal. In the
discussions by various writers this has been connected with a "mysterious"
Portuguese expedition which has left exasperatingly inconclusive traces of
itself in certain documents. The most important of these is a map prepared
by some unknown cartographer in Lisbon, but bearing the name of Alberto
Cantino, who was an envoy of the Duke of Ferrara at the Portuguese court
and sent this map to his master from Rome about November 19, 1502. Attempts
have been made to identify the land resembling Florida with Cuba or
Yucatan, and Harrisse and Lowery both concurred in the opinion that it must
be the Peninsula of Florida. The late Rudolf Schuller informed the writer
that he believed the results of the expedition had been concealed because
the lands visited belonged to that half of the world granted by Pope
Alexander VI to Spain in his famous decision of 1493. This data, Schuher
thought, was obtained surreptitiously by Cantino or his employee. However,
Nunn seems to have disposed of the whole question as a series of
cartographers' errors, and in any case the supposed discovery yields us no
ethnological information. (See Harrisse, 1892, pp. 77-109; Lowery, 1901,
pp. 125-130; Fiske, 1901, vol. 2, pp. 70-83; Nunn, 1924, pp. 91-141.)
In 1513 Ponce de Leon made what may be described as the official
discovery of Florida, but the significance of the extant narratives of his
expedition is in dispute. Although some commentators have held that the
natives with whom he dealt were the Apalachee, this is improbable, for the
Apalachee were mainly an inland tribe, and if De Leon was in their
neighborhood at all, as some maps indicate, it is probable that he merely
followed the coast without meeting the inhabitants and that his principal
dealings were with the Calusa, a view championed by Lowery (1901, pp. 142,
446) and more recently, by Davis (1935, p. 41). It seems likely, indeed,
that the south Florida Indians were the only ones he met. This view is
supported by the statement that the arrows used by these Indians were
pointed with bones. The Apalachee Indians may well have used bone points
also, but the greater part of their arrows were probably tipped with flint
or made of cane. Furthermore, it is said that Ponce and his companions
traded a little with the Indians for gold and skins. Now, there are few
reports of the use of gold among the Indians
35 INDIANS OF THE SOUTHEASTEIRN UNITED STATES north of Mexico and the greater part of these come from Florida,
particularly from the Calusa Indians living on the southwest coast. Most of
their gold, however, is traceable to treasure fleets wrecked on their way
from Central America and Mexico to Spain. In 1513 Mexico, had not been
invaded, but Enciso and Balboa landed in :the Gulf of Darien in 1510 and
almost immediately began to collect objects of gold from the natives of
that region, so that it was soon known as Castilla del Oro. Presence in
southern Florida of, gold from Panama has been proved by the discovery
within recent years of gold beads with ornamentation of Central American
patterns. On the other hand, very little gold has been found in the
archeological sites of the eastern United States north of Florida. Ponce de
Leon's voyages have been given careful study by T. Frederick Davis, and he
comes to practically the same conclusion as that here expressed.
At any rate the hostile reception accorded Ponce by the Indians
indicates pretty certainly that they had had previous dealings with white
men, and one must admit that the facts of history abundantly justify their
reaction. Besides, since there was among the Indians they met one who
understood Spanish, they can not have been far from the West Indies, and
this may also mean that Ponce was not the first Spaniard to reach Florida,
though it is inferred by Herrera that the native had come from those
islands. A south Florida town is mentioned called Abaioa (Davis, 1935, pp.
18, 20).
In 1516 Diego Miruelo is said to have obtained gold from the Florida
Indians during a trading expedition along the Gulf. In 1517 Francisco
Hernandez de Cordova, on his way back to Santo Domingo from Yucatan,
entered a harbor in Florida that had been visited by Ponce de Leon probably
Charlotte Harbor, as Lowery surmises. At any rate, while digging for water,
the Spaniards were set upon in the same vigorous manner as in the case of
De Leon, and there was a hard struggle before they reached their boats
(Lowery, 1901, p. 149). In 1519 Alonzo Alvarez de Pineda, acting under
orders from Francisco de Garay, Governor of Jamaica, visited the coast of
the Gulf of Mexico, which he traced from the tip of the peninsula of
Florida to Panuco, where he turned back, and presently he entered the mouth
of a great river with a large town at its mouth and on both banks, within a
space of 6 leagues, 40 villages. This river has generally been identified
with the Mississippi, but Walter Scaife (1892, suppl.) suggested that it
was Mobile Bay and River, the outlines of which are well preserved on
Spanish charts from this time forward, and Hamilton (1910, p. 10) has
proved it quite conclusively. It is evident from Pineda's map that he also
discovered ,the mouth of the Mississippi at this time, but later
cartographers confounded inlet and river, and made the former the outlet of
the
59 INDIANS OF THE SOUTHEASTEIRN UNITED STATES departure, the boats were attacked by numbers of war canoes under the chief
of Quigualtam, in whom it is 'easy to recognize the chief of the great
Natchez tribe. An attempt to beat these pursuers off by Juan de Guzman and
a body of Spaniards in small canoes resulted disastrously, all of the
attacking party but two or three being drowned. The Indians of Quigualtam
and their allies followed them until July 8, and from that time until they
were almost at the Gulf they traveled in peace. Half a league above the
Gulf they stopped for 2 days to rest, and there they were attacked by
Indians of a different tribe having spears and atlatls. On the 18th they
got under way for Mexico. They seem to have stopped the first night at the
Timbalier Islands, again at a point near Galveston Harbor, and at Aransas
Pass or Corpus Christi Pass. On September 10, 1543, the survivors, 311 in
number according to Elvas, reached Panuco, where they were received with
rejoicings and sent on in details to Mexico City. Part then returned to
Spain, while others went to Peru, and a few remained in Mexico. Two or
three, indeed, returned with the Luna Expedition of 1559-60 to the
territory they had traversed with so much labor. THE POST-DE SOTO PERIOD
(See map 11) Involuntary communication was kept up between the Spaniards and the
Indians of southern Florida, particularly the Calusa, through the numbers
of vessels cast away upon the Florida coast. It would be interesting to
know just when these disasters began because we should then be in a better
position to determine the sources of the gold for which that part of
Florida came to be noted. There .were wrecks upon the coast in 1545, 1553,
and 1554, and Narvaez in 1528 found evidences of one yet earlier, and even
the discoverer of Florida is said to have found gold there. Most of those
Spaniards w{lo escaped the sea were killed by the natives, but a few
survived, and the narrative of one of these, Hernando de Escalante
Fontaneda, who claims to have been castaway in 1551 and to have lived many
years in captivity, is a chief source of information regarding -the Calusa
Indians and almost our .only means of knowing anything of their language
(Fontaneda, 1866).
In 1558 Philip II determined to plant 2 colonies in these northern
territories, one at Santa Elena and the other at an undetermined spot, and
the execution of these projects was entrusted to Don Luis de Velasco, the
Viceroy of Mexico. The- same year Velasco sent 3 vessels under Guido de
Bazares to reconnoiter the country and pick out a suitable harbor. He
explored part of the coast of Texas :and a section of shore east of the
mouth of the Mississippi, finding what
90 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY on St. Johns River heard that it was from this province that gold was
to be obtained. We also get quite a description of it, albeit second hand
from Fontaneda from information gleaned while he was held
captive by the Calusa between 1551 and 1566, and incidentally we may add
that he effectually disposes of the story of Apalachee gold. The Apalachee
are said to have asked for missionaries as early as 1601 and Father Prieto
visited them the following year, being received with great enthusiasm. The
need of missionaries is repeated frequently in documents dating from 1608
to 1633,