Who's On First?

Pilgrims, John Smith, Ponce de Leon, the French, the Portuguese, the vikings; who discovered and who settled North America first? Lets start with our oldest city. 

Saint Augustine is an anomaly of American history, it is the oldest continuously inhabited city in what we now call the United States, but it was not the first place settled by Europeans nor was it continuously Spanish or English or American, there is much to unravel here. And what about the Fountain of Youth? We'll get to that too.

On or about the 2nd of April 1513 Ponce de Leon, while taking a break from being governor of Hispaniola, led a voyage to Florida and landed at or near the sight of current day St. Augustine, claimed it for Spain and left. However, saying he discovered it first is not true. 

 

This Portuguese map from 1502 shows a little bit of Florida in the upper left corner, they knew it existed at least eleven years before Ponce de Leon. This map was literally top secret to the Portuguese so no surprise it took Spain a while to get there. So why didn't the Portuguese settle Florida? At the time they probably thought it was just another small island considering what is on the 1502 map, but in this case they didn't return because the Treaty of Tordesillas, June 7th, 1494, where the Pope drew a line on the map and gave half the world to Spain and half to Portugal. Portugal's half included Brazil but not Florida, so there you have it! No one else abided the treaty but it explains why Spain went there first.

Ponce de Leon did land first but the French had a jump start on the Spanish in building Fort Carolina on the St. Johns River, near present day Jacksonville, in 1564. Then, on September 8, 1565 Pedro Menendez de Aviles landed at St. Augustine and began what would be a continuously inhabited settlement. And the French? Menendez and his men marched to Fort Carolina and killed the Protestant heretics, all save 50 women and children, who were sent to Havana. Most of the French men were sailing to attack St. Augustine at the same time, but were lost in a hurricane. The French did retaliate the Fort Caroline Massacre but did not reclaim the fort, they did it just for spite then concentrated on their northern exploration in the St. Laurence River.  
 

With the French out of the way the Spanish starting building St. Augustine including the fort seen above, this is present day Castillo de San Marcos which allowed the Spanish to withstand more than one siege. Despite this success, the city was handed over to the English in the Treaty of Paris in 1763 at the end of the French and Indian War. Most Spanish inhabitants fled to Cuba. Some of these displaced Spanish returned after the Paris Treaty of 1784 after the end of the American Revolutionary War, they call this the second Spanish Period. This period ended after Spain became weakened from the Napoleonic wars and the Adam-Onis Treaty of 1821 seeded Florida to the United States as a territory and finally in 1841 it became a state. Florida's a state and Bob's your uncle; got it?

What about the Fountain of Youth? I found it, see above. According to the docents at the Fountain of Youth Park, de Leon did meet with natives on his visit to St. Augustine and acquired water for his ship. They surmised that the very healthy appearance of the natives may have led the Europeans to believe the water was especially pure but that was extent of de Leon's interest in the water there. The Smithsonian Institute claims that the stories of de Leon searching for a magical fountain appeared at least 14 years after his death and was likely a due to a political spat between de Leon and Columbus's son, Diego. 

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. I didn't drink the water, they say it has a sulfur flavor, no thanks. Surprisingly, it could be the same spring the de Leon found in 1513, except it has been drilled deeper several times since then. Kind of like Washington's axe with two new heads and three new handles. 

Until next time dear readers,