whose waters would restore to old men their youth or at least had wonderful curative powers. Soon after Easter Day he came in sight of the coast of Florida, probably near the mouth of the St Johns river. From the name of the day in the calendar, Pascua Florida, or from the fact that many flowers were found on the coast, the country was named Florida. De León seems to have explored the coast, to some degree, on both sides of the peninsula, and to have turned homeward fully convinced that he had discovered an immense island. He returned to Spain in 1514, and obtained from the king a grant to colonize “the island of Bimini and the island of Florida,” of which he was appointed adelantado, and in 1521 he made another expedition, this one for colonization as well as for discovery. He seems to have touched at the island of Tortugas, so named on account of the large number of turtles found there, and to have landed at several places, but many of his men succumbed to disease and he himself was wounded in an Indian attack, dying soon afterward in Cuba. Meanwhile, in 1516, another Spaniard, Diego Miruelo, seems to have sailed for some distance along the west coast of the peninsula. The next important exploration of Florida was that of Panfilo de Narvaez. In 1527 he sailed from Cuba with about 600 men (soon reduced to less than 400), landed (early in 1528) probably at the present site of Pensacola, and for six months remained in the country, he and his men suffering terribly from exposure, hunger and fierce Indian attacks. In September, his ships being lost and his force greatly reduced in number, he hastily constructed a crazy fleet, re-embarked probably at Apalachee Bay, and lost his life in a storm probably near Pensacola Bay. Only four of his men, including Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, succeeded after eight years of Indian captivity and of long and weary wanderings, in finding their way to Spanish settlements in Mexico. Florida was also partially explored by Ferdinando de Soto (q.v.) in 1539–1540. In the summer of 1559 another attempt at colonization was made by Tristan de Luna, who sailed from Vera Cruz, landed at Pensacola Bay, and explored a part of Florida and (possibly) Southern Alabama. Somewhere in that region he desired to make a permanent settlement, but he was abandoned by most of his followers and gave up his attempt in 1561.
In the following year, Jean Ribaut (1520–1565), with a band of French Huguenots, landed first near St Augustine and then at the mouth of the St Johns river, which he called the river of May, and on behalf of France claimed the country, which he described as “the fairest, fruitfullest and pleasantest of all the world”; but he made his settlement on an island near what is now Beaufort, South Carolina. In 1564 René de Laudonnière (? -c. 1586), with another party of Huguenots, established Fort Caroline at the mouth of the St Johns, but the colony did not prosper, and in 1565 Laudonnière was about to return to France when (on the 28th of August) he was reinforced by Ribaut and about 300 men from France. On the same day that Ribaut landed, a Spanish expedition arrived in the bay of St Augustine. It was commanded by Pedro Menéndez de Avilés (1523–1574), one of whose aims was to destroy the Huguenot settlement. This he did, putting to death almost the entire garrison at Fort Caroline “not as Frenchmen, but as Lutherans,” on the 20th of September 1565. The ships of Ribaut were soon afterwards wrecked near Matanzas Inlet; he and most of his followers surrendered to Menéndez and were executed. Menéndez then turned his attention to the founding of a settlement which he named St Augustine (q.v.); he also explored the Atlantic coast from Cape Florida to St Helena, and established forts at San Mateo (Fort Caroline), Avista, Guale and St Helena. In 1567 he returned to Spain in the interest of his colony.
The news of the destruction of Fort Caroline, and the execution of Ribaut and his followers, was received with indifference at the French court; but Dominique de Gourgues (c. 1530–1593), a friend of Ribaut but probably a Catholic, organized an expedition of vengeance, not informing his men of his destination until his three ships were near the Florida coast. With the co-operation of the Indians under their chief Saturiba he captured Fort San Mateo in the spring of 1568, and on the spot where the garrison of Fort Caroline had been executed, he hanged his Spanish prisoners, inscribing on a tablet of pine the words, “I do this not as unto Spaniards but as to traitors, robbers and murderers.” Feeling unable to attack St Augustine, de Gourgues returned to France.
The Spanish settlements experienced many vicissitudes. The Indians were hostile and the missionary efforts among them failed. In 1586 St Augustine was almost destroyed by Sir Francis Drake and it also suffered severely by an attack of Captain John Davis in 1665. Not until the last decade of the 17th century did the Spanish authorities attempt to extend the settlements beyond the east coast. Then, jealous of the French explorations along the Gulf of Mexico, they turned their attention to the west coast, and in 1696 founded Pensacola. When the English colonies of the Carolinas and Georgia were founded, there was constant friction with Florida. The Spanish were accused of inciting the Indians to make depredations on the English settlements and of interfering with English commerce and the Spanish were in constant fear of the encroachments of the British. In 1702, when Great Britain and Spain were contending in Europe, on opposite sides, in the war of the Spanish Succession, a force from South Carolina captured St Augustine and laid siege to the fort, but being unable to reduce it for lack of necessary artillery, burned the town and withdrew at the approach of Spanish reinforcements. In 1706 a Spanish and French expedition against Charleston, South Carolina, failed, and the Carolinians retaliated by invading middle Florida in 1708 and again in 1722. In 1740 General James Edward Oglethorpe, governor of Georgia, supported by a naval force, made an unsuccessful attack upon St Augustine; two years later a Spanish expedition against Savannah by way of St Simon’s Island failed, and in 1745 Oglethorpe again appeared before the walls of St Augustine, but the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 prevented further hostilities. Pensacola, the other centre of Spanish settlement, though captured and occupied (1719–1723) by the French from Louisiana, had a more peaceful history.
By the treaty of Paris in 1763 Florida was ceded to England in return for Havana. The provinces of East Florida and West Florida were now formed, the boundaries of West Florida being 31° N. lat. (when civil government was organized in 1767, the N. line was made 32° 28′), the Chattahoochee, and the Apalachicola rivers, the Gulf of Mexico, Mississippi Sound, Lakes Borgne, Pontchartrain and Maurepas, and the Mississippi river. A period of prosperity now set in. Civil in place of military government was instituted; immigration began; and Andrew Turnbull, an Englishman, brought over a band of about 1500 Minorcans (1769), whom he engaged in the cultivation of indigo at New Smyrna. Roads were laid out, some of which yet remain; and in the last three years of English occupation the government spent $580,000 on the two provinces. Consequently, the people of Florida were for the most part loyal to Great Britain during the War of American Independence. In 1776, the Minorcans of New Smyrna refused to work longer on the indigo plantations; and many of them removed to St Augustine, where they were protected by the authorities. Several plans were made to invade South Carolina and Georgia, but none matured until 1778, when an expedition was organized which co-operated with British forces from New York in the siege of Savannah, Georgia. In the following year, Spain having declared war against Great Britain, Don Bernardo de Galvez (1756–1794), the Spanish governor at New Orleans, seized most of the English forts in West Florida, and in 1781 captured Pensacola.
By the treaty of Paris (1783) Florida reverted to Spain, and, no religious liberty being promised, many of the English inhabitants left East and West Florida. A dispute with the United States concerning the northern boundary was settled by the treaty of 1795, the line 31° N. lat. being established.
The westward expansion of the United States made necessary American ports on the Gulf of Mexico; consequently the acquisition of West Florida as well as of New Orleans was one of the
