![[Pasted image 20250202090550.png]] *Image of Sir Francis Drake's raid on St. Augustine in 1586* The world native peoples had known before the coming of the Spanish was devastated by European diseases and further upset by Spanish colonial practices. The Spanish imposed the *[[Encomienda]]* system in the areas they controlled and expanded the Inca *[[Mita]]*. Under these systems, authorities sometimes assigned Indian workers to mine and plantation owners with the understanding that the recipients of these labor grants would defend the colony and teach the workers the tenets of Christianity. In reality, the encomienda system exploited native workers. After [[Bartolomé de Las Casas]] complained of Spanish cruelty to the king, it was eventually replaced by another colonial labor system, the *[[Repartimiento]]*, which allowed natives a little more freedom but continued to require Indian towns to supply a pool of labor for Spanish overlords. Spain claimed present-day Florida, viewing the region north of the Gulf of Mexico as a logical extension of their Caribbean empire, similar to Mexico itself. The winds and currents forced ships returning to Europe to sail between the Bahamas and the North American mainland, which created a vulerability to attack. Before Cortés ever marched from Veracruz to Tenochtitlán in 1519, Juan Ponce de León had claimed the area around today’s St. Augustine for the Spanish crown in 1513, naming the land *Pascua Florida* (Feast of Flowers) for the nearest holy day, Easter. Ponce de León was unable to establish a permanent settlement there, but by 1565, Spain needed an outpost to defend against French and English privateers who used Florida as a base from which to attack treasure-laden Spanish ships heading from Cuba to Spain. The threat to Spanish interests was heightened in 1562 when a group of French Protestants (Huguenots) established a small settlement they called [[Fort Caroline]], north of what is now St. Augustine. With the authorization of King Philip II, Spanish nobleman [[Pedro Menéndez]] led an attack on Fort Caroline, killing most of the colonists and destroying the fort. The contest over Florida illustrates how European rivalries spilled over into the Americas, especially the ongoing conflict between Catholics and Protestants. In 1565, the victorious Menéndez founded St. Augustine, which became the oldest permanent European settlement in North America. In the process, the Spanish displaced local [[Timucua]] Indians from their town of Seloy, which had stood on the site for centuries. Europeans typically built their cities on top of previous native settlements: other examples are Mexico City, Cusco, and Plymouth. The Timucua population had been devastated by diseases introduced by the Spanish, shrinking from around 200,000 before contact to fifty thousand by 1590. By 1700, only one thousand Timucua remained. Spanish Florida made an inviting target for Spain’s imperial rivals, especially the French and English, who wanted to gain access to the Caribbean. In 1586, the English privateer Sir [[Francis Drake]] nearly destroyed the town with a fleet of twenty ships and one hundred men (depicted in the image above). The Spanish built several wooden forts, all of which were burnt by raiding European rivals. Between 1672 and 1695, they constructed a stone fort, the [Castillo de San Marcos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castillo_de_San_Marcos), to better defend St. Augustine against challengers. ![[Pasted image 20250202090932.png]] --- Next: [[3.4 Nuevo Mexico]] Back: [[3.2 Castas]]