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CHAPTER XV

THE ANGLO-SPANISH BORDER

THE time had come when the Spanish settlements of Florida were to have a trial of strength with the British of Carolina. Hostility there had always been, for we have found repeated instances of it; but this was at the foundation of the British settlements, and now they had grown as strong as St. Augustine and were able to take care of themselves even without assistance from England. There was no longer the question of wiping out an isolated French fort as in Ribault's time, or even of cutting off a sickly Virginia post. The English had become well established, and Spanish maps which had the names of Santa Maria Bay for the Chesapeake and Chicora for the adjacent country had to recognize the existence of the province of "Vyrgynea and line the watercourses with English instead of Spanish names. Even Santa Helena was no longer the centre of active civilization. It was still the principal place in what Spain called the province of Orysta, but the Spaniards retired as Carolina extended in this direction, and when Lord Cardross established his Stuarttown there is little record of Spanish inhabitants.

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Neither Spain nor England held the commanding position which they had once occupied, but they were the leading powers in America, and in 1670 found it necessary to make a treaty as to their possessions there. The phraseology was not so definite as the Spanish interpretation. The

seventh article recognized possessions as they then existed, each power agreeing not to claim further and not to trade with the ports of the other. To the Spaniards this meant the latitude of thirty-three degrees as the line between the opposing colonizations. The charter boundary of Carolina had once been the line of twenty-nine, although it was even more nominal than the Spanish claim to the north. The Carolinians had never sought to make it effective, and practically considered the boundary as St. John's River, at about thirty-one degrees. The Spaniards, however, were more insistent on their claim and ever ready to resent encroachments below the line of thirty-three. So that the question of uti possidetis in 1670 was bound to give trouble. Thus when Lord Cardross established his Scots at Port Royal, an expedition from St. Augustine in 1686 exterminated them with a completeness recalling the time of Menendez. The Carolinians had to content themselves with a lame apology from St. Augustine, because the Catholic leaning of James II. made him loath to risk a breach with Spain. The privilege of furnishing the Spanish colonies with slaves under the asiento had not yet come to England, and it was not until the Peace of Utrecht that she even obtained the right to send one ship annually; but there was large profit in this traffic in human beings, and it influenced diplomacy even after the accession of William of Orange.

It is not quite clear to what extent Guale and Orysta were actually occupied at the end of the seventeenth century. Certainly there was little beyond a few settlements on the coast or on the islands and an occasional mission among the Indians of the interior. At the same time, it is entirely wrong to think of the Spanish claim as nominal and based only on the work of early explorers like De Ayllon. Maps and accounts existed of De Soto's journey, and Pardo's exploration had been somewhat also in the line of settlement far into the interior. Mines were still worked in the mountains of what are now Georgia and Carolina, and intercourse held with the natives from the Apalaches on the Gulf to

the Cherokees and neighboring nations at the head of the Atlantic rivers. The time had passed, if indeed it ever existed to the extent often stated, when the Spaniards made of the Indians beasts of burden. More civilizing influences had been at work, and the self-sacrificing priests of the different orders had never wholly ceased their labors. Their missions were more extensive than those of the French to the west, and added to presidio and ciudad a third form of settlement. At the same time, the very adoption of a parallel of latitude as a boundary showed how little was really known of America and how little was made of it in Europe. Such a parallel cut the Gulf rivers off from their sources, and this was even more striking in the case of those emptying into the Atlantic. The real boundary of Atlantic settlements should be to the northwest, where the mountains separated the headwaters of their streams from those flowing toward the Ohio and Mississippi.

The province or district of Guale had a later history than Orysta. The principal Spanish settlement was on the island of San Simon, and this was, so to speak, the capital of the province, and the northernmost was the island of Sapala, or Sapelo, whose inhabitants retired with those of Santa Helena to San Simon. We are told that Santa Cruz, near the southern boundary of Guale, remained occupied by Spaniards and Timuqua Indians until the beginning of the eighteenth century, and that the same was true of Santa Maria and San Pedro, thus indicating the claim and occupancy of both mainland and island off the coast up to that time.

During the latter part of the seventeenth century we recall that the English and Spanish courts drew closer together, both on account of the religious proclivities of the Stuarts and because of French assaults upon the Low Countries, in which both Spain and England had interests. All this was changed by the War of the Spanish Succession, which began upon the death of the Spanish Charles II. and his devise of Spain to Philip V. Almost all the rest of Europe

armed to keep the grandson of Louis XIV. off the peninsular throne, and the brilliant contest was to last until the Peace of Utrecht in 1713. The aim of this Grand Alliance was to partition the outlying portions of the Spanish empire, and Spain and France fought vigorously against dismemberment. It behooved Carolina to look to her southern frontier.

Even before the declaration of war in Europe the Carolinians and the Spaniards of Florida were in open conflict. The Spaniards moved first and led nine hundred Apalaches to the invasion of Carolina; the English, however, had the address to set on the Creeks as the enemy passed through their country, and the invaders were crushed at Flint River.

War was inevitable anyhow, but it would seem as if this Indian expedition determined the Carolinians to act promptly. Governor Moore induced the Assembly to vote £2,000, and six hundred militia, and a number of Indians were to constitute an invading force. They rendezvoused at Port Royal in September, 1702, and thence embarked in ten vessels. Some under Colonel Daniel proceeded by land and by way of St. John's River took St. Augustine from the rear, which they sacked without opposition because the inhabitants had retired to the fort of San Marcos. As agreed, Governor Moore's fleet entered the harbor, and the Carolinians laid siege to the castle. The cannon of the attacking force were of too small calibre, and Moore had to send to Jamaica for mortars and bombs, at first by some inefficient vessel and afterward by Colonel Daniel himself; but two small Spanish vessels came before the English brought their guns, and Moore incontinently raised the siege. He burned the town, and indeed vessels of his own fleet, and retired by land to Charlestown with slaves and church plate and a debt of £6,000. When Daniel returned from Jamaica with cannon all was over, and he with difficulty escaped capture by the Spaniards.

Sir Nathaniel Johnson was appointed governor instead of Moore, whose failure had made him unpopular, but the

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