Demise of the Indigenous Population and the Mission Period
At the time of European contact, an estimated 350,000 Indigenous people lived in Florida. By the 1750s, probably fewer than 1,000 remained. Some may have joined Creek groups from Georgia and Alabama, which had begun moving into Florida in the early 1700s. Others perished from the diseases, warfare, and forced labor introduced by the Europeans.
Creek Village in Florida
Francis Comte de Castelnau, “Vues et souvenirs de l'Amerique du Nord,” published in 1842.
Courtesy of the State Archives of Florida
Decline
The Europeans unknowingly introduced diseases that took the lives of thousands of Florida’s Native people. The demands for Indigenous labor under the Spanish system of repartimiento also took its toll. This system required that Indigenous laborers grow corn for the colonists and work on public projects in St. Augustine. Some Native Floridians left the area to avoid Spanish rule. Raids by British colonists from the north and their Indigenous allies hastened the end of Florida’s Indigenous population.
Epidemics
Smallpox, measles, and other diseases had a devastating impact on the Native Floridian population. At the beginning of the 1600s, the Timucuan population may have consisted of more than 20,000 people. The Franciscans estimated that about half of the Christian converts died between 1613 and 1617. Major epidemics also swept Florida in the 1650s. By the 1680s, about 1,000 Timucuans survived. Guale had even fewer inhabitants. The survivors grouped together into smaller settlements.
Raiders
At the height of the mission era in the mid-1600s, about forty missions served 20,000 to 30,000 Native people. Most were Apalachee. Only about 5,000 to 8,000 Indigenous people remained in Apalachee province before the destruction of its missions in 1704.
Beginning in the 1680s, English raiders from Carolina, with their Yamasee allies, attacked missions in the Guale and Timucua provinces. They captured many Indigenous Floridians to sell into slavery in Carolina and the Caribbean. Some Indigenous communities sought refuge in missions around St. Augustine.
War in Europe sparked more raids in Florida. In 1702, the War of Spanish Succession, known also as Queen Anne’s War, pitted France and Spain against Britain. Governor James Moore of Carolina tried and failed to capture St. Augustine. Two years later, he and his Creek allies targeted Apalachee. The Indigenous people who lived in the missions were killed, enslaved, or fled west. By the end of 1704, the province was nearly empty. Raiders next targeted the Native communities of south Florida.
In 1715, the Yamasee, aided by escaped African slaves, rebelled against the English. Their rebellion failed, and they too moved near St. Augustine.
Artist’s rendering of the burning of San Luis in 1704 by inhabitants before they fled the raids.
Courtesy of Mission San Luis, Florida Division of Historical Resources
The Last Years
The final years of La Florida were marked by poverty. The mission system lay in ruins, and the Indigenous labor that once grew food for the colonists was gone. In the early 1760s, St. Augustine’s population numbered approximately 3,000 residents. Spanish goods seldom reached St. Augustine, and residents had to rely on goods from their British rivals. In 1761, Spain joined France against Britain in the French and Indian War. During the war, Britain captured Cuba. Under the 1763 Treaty of Paris, which ended the conflict, Britain returned Cuba to Spain in exchange for Florida.
The Spaniards evacuated the colony in 1764, taking most of the remaining Christian Native people in Florida. When the Spaniards departed St. Augustine, between eighty and ninety Indigenous refugees and all of the Black inhabitants of Fort Mosé went with them to Cuba. The remaining Indigenous people of south Florida also left for Cuba. Most of Pensacola’s 800 residents, including about 100 Yamasee and Apalachee, left for Havana, Cuba, and Veracruz, Mexico. Some Apalachee went to French Mobile. The British soon arrived in Florida, with a new vision for the colony.
Thomas Jefferys Map of St. Augustine, 1769
Courtesy of the State Archives of Florida
Back Home Next
