Florida Historical Quarterly
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COVER Marion County’s Silver Springs, a spot sacred to local Indians which had awed white visitors since the 1820s, became a popular tourist attraction during the 1870s. Even before the Civil War important visitors like Lady Amelia Murray, lady-in-waiting to Queen Victoria, and Dr. Daniel G. Brinton, phy- sician and distinguished anthropological scholar, visited and wrote about the springs. Glass bottom rowboats, like the one pictured, early added to the appeal of the springs and their unspoiled surroundings. The rowboats are the forerunn- ners of the modern glass bottom boats for which Silver Springs is famous. This photograph, taken around 1902, is reproduced from Richard J. Bowe’s Pic- torial History of Florida. THE FLORIDA HISTORICAL SOCIETY Volume LVI, Number 4 April 1978 COPYRIGHT 1978 by the Florida Historical Society, Tampa, Florida. Second class postage paid at Tampa and DeLeon Springs, Florida. Printed by E. O. Painter Printing Co., DeLeon Springs, Florida. THE FLORIDA HISTORICAL QUARTERLY Samuel Proctor, Editor Stephen Kerber, Editorial Assistant Donna Thomas, Editorial Assistant EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Herbert J. Doherty, Jr. University of Florida Michael V. Gannon University of Florida John K. Mahon University of Florida Jerrell H. Shofner Florida Technological University Charlton W. Tebeau University of Miami (Emeritus) J. Leitch Wright, Jr. Florida State University Correspondence concerning contributions, books for review, and all editorial matters should be addressed to the Editor, Florida Historical Quarterly, Box 14045, University Station, Gainesville, Florida 32604. The Quarterly is interested in articles and documents pertaining to the history of Florida. Sources, style, footnote form, original- ity of material and interpretation, clarity of thought, and interest of readers are considered. All copy, including footnotes, should be double-spaced. Footnotes are to be numbered consecutively in the text and assembled at the end of the article. Particular attention should be given to following the footnote style of the Quarterly. The author should submit an original and retain a carbon for security. The Florida Historical Society and the Editor of the Florida Historical Quarterly accept no responsibility for statements made or opinions held by authors. Table of Contents THE MENENDEZ MARQUEZ CATTLE BARONY AT LA CHUA AND THE DETERMINANTS OF ECONOMIC EXPANSION IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY FLORIDA Amy Bushnell 407 COLORED TOWN: MIAMI’S BLACK COMMUNITY, 1896-1930 Paul S. George 432 TORMENT OF PESTILENCE: YELLOW FEVER EPIDEMICS IN P ENSACOLA George F. Pearce 448 SEMINOLE FOLKTALES Hedwig Tetens Evans 473 NOTES AND DOCUMENTS: A NEW GUIDE TO SOURCES OF SPANISH FLORIDA HISTORY Bruce S. Chappell, Michael Getzler-Eaton, and D. Lorne McWatters 495 FLORIDA MANUSCRIPT ACQUISITIONS AND ACCESSIONS 498 BOOK REVIEWS ............................................................................. 503 BOOK NOTES .................................................................................. 533 HISTORY NEWS ............................................................................. 541 DIRECTORS’ MEETING, DECEMBER 10, 1977 ...................... 546 iii BOOK REVIEWS TORIES, DONS, AND REBELS: THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION IN BRITISH WEST FLOR- IDA, by J. Barton Starr reviewed by Aubrey C. Land ZORA NEALE HURSTON: A LITERARY BIOGRAPHY, by Robert E. Hemenway reviewed by Kevin M. McCarthy THE LIVING DOCK AT PANACEA, by Jack Rudloe reviewed by Wyatt Blassingame FEARLESS AND FREE: THE SEMINOLE INDIAN WAR, 1835-1842, by George Walton reviewed by Frank Laumer AFRICANS AND SEMINOLES: FROM REMOVAL TO EMANCIPATION, by Daniel F. Littlefield, Jr. reviewed by James W. Covington RELIGION IN THE OLD SOUTH, by Donald G. Mathews reviewed by Walter B. Posey ADAMS AND JEFFERSON: A REVOLUTIONARY DIALOGUE, by Merrill D. Peterson reviewed by Robert Dawidoff TOWARD A PATRIARCHAL REPUBLIC: THE SECESSION OF GEORGIA, by Michael P. Johnson reviewed by James Rabun RANK AND FILE: CIVIL WAR ESSAYS IN HONOR OF BELL IRVIN WILEY, edited by James I. Robertson, Jr., and Richard H. McMurry reviewed by James C. Bonner MILITARY NECESSITY AND CIVIL RIGHTS POLICY: BLACK CITIZENSHIP AND THE CONSTITUTION, 1861-1868, by Mary Frances Berry reviewed by La Wanda Cox A RIGHT TO THE LAND: ESSAYS ON THE FREEDMEN’S COMMUNITY, by Edward Magdol reviewed by Jerrell H. Shofner PLACE OVER TIME: THE CONTINUITY OF SOUTHERN DISTINCTIVENESS, by Carl N. Degler reviewed by John Hebron Moore THE CITY IN SOUTHERN HISTORY: THE GROWTH OF URBAN CIVILIZATION IN THE SOUTH, edited by Blaine A. Brownell and David R. Goldfield reviewed by Durward Long SOUTH CAROLINA: A BICENTENNIAL HISTORY, by Louis B. Wright reviewed by Walter B. Edgar LOUISIANA: A BICENTENNIAL HISTORY, by Joe Gray Taylor reviewed by Dudley S. Johnson GEORGIA: A BICENTENNIAL HISTORY, by Harold H. Martin reviewed by Mills Lane ALABAMA: A BICENTENNIAL HISTORY, by Virginia Van der Veer Hamilton reviewed by Charles G. Summersell THE MENENDEZ MARQUEZ CATTLE BARONY AT LA CHUA AND THE DETERMINANTS OF ECONOMIC EXPANSION IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY FLORIDA by AMY BUSHNELL* PANISH FLORIDA has the historical reputation of a bleak and unfriendly place, unproductive, impoverished, and unhealthy, where governors and soldiers, friars and passive Indian converts were unable to defend their own borders, much less make the land self-sustaining. The doleful letters from officials of the colony about the lateness or inadequacy of the garrison’s situado have made an impact on researchers, if they did not on the Crown. 1 In recent years, however, examples of economic activity have been examined that belie this picture of total dependency. There were times during the seventeenth century when Spanish Florida approached self-sufficiency and was even exporting some of its products. 2 These periods of economic activity were closely related to pacification of the provinces and demographic contraction. When Ms. Bushnell is a doctoral candidate in colonial Latin American history at the University of Florida, Gainesville. She presented an earlier version of this paper at the Florida Historical Society Annual Meeting, May 7, 1977, in St. Augustine, Florida. Her research has been supported in part by the Meta Glass and Margaret Maltby Fellowship from the American Association of University Women. The Florida situado was an annual royal subvention which in the seventeenth century was a charge upon the Viceroyalty of New Spain. In 1660 it was raised from 48,000 pesos to 67,000, and it was approxi- mately 81,000 pesos in 1700. See William R. Gillaspie, “Juan de Ayala y Escobar, Procurador and Entrepreneur: A Case Study of the Provision- ing of Florida, 1683-1716” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Florida, 1961), 13-14; and John Jay TePaske, The Governorship of Spanish Flor- ida, 1700-1763 (Durham, North Carolina, 1964), 77-79. Bryan George Boniface, “A Historical Geography of Spanish Florida, circa 1700” (M.A. thesis, University of Georgia, 1971), 113-220; Robert Allen Matter, “The Spanish Missions of Florida: The Friars Versus the Governors in the ‘Golden Age,’ 1606-1690” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Washington, 1972), 140-58. An important stimulus to their work, and to the author’s, has been Charles W. Arnade, “Cattle Raising in Spanish Florida, 1513-1763,” Agricultural History, XXXV (July 1961), 116-24 (re- printed in 1965 as St. Augustine Historical Society Publication 21). 408 FLORIDA HISTORICAL QUARTERLY conditions were relatively peaceful, the Florida-born Spanish- the creoles-would leave St. Augustine to move out into the provinces of Timucua (north-central Florida) and Apalache (the Tallahassee region), taking advantage of Indian settlements for labor and abandoned fields for land. As native population fell due to epidemic disease, the Spanish obtained the rights to more and more of the land for grazing purposes. They raised livestock, partly to supply the garrison, but mostly for the ranch products to ship from ports on the Gulf of Mexico. When these ranches in the provinces ceased to operate, it was not due so much to creole apathy as to pirates, falling prices, and Indian wars. The most important of the seventeenth-century cattle ranches was the hacienda de la chua (“ranch of the sinkhole”) in north- central Florida, owned and operated by the Menendez Marquez family, who were related to Pedro Menendez de Aviles himself. The earliest possible date for their ranch is 1646, eighty-one years after the founding of St. Augustine; the first reference to its ex- ports is in 1675, and to its name, 1682. If large-scale ranching could take this long to get started the reasons must be significant. It was the Spanish Crown’s policy to populate the Indies and make them productive, and Florida was no exception. Spain made repeated attempts to establish a settlement there. Each succes- sive adelantado contracted to found towns, bring in settlers, and distribute the land without dispossessing the Indians. Each family was to be given tools, seeds and cuttings, and livestock, including cattle, horses, sheep, and hogs. First, however, the land had to be conquered. That conquest began when Pedro Menendez founded St. Augustine in 1565 and Santa Elena (on present Parris Island) a year later. Although the great anti-corsairing captain from Asturias at one time or another had a garrisoned fort and a Jesuit located on every deep harbor from the Chesapeake south to the Keys and along the Gulf to Tampa Bay, the Spanish presence re- mained precarious.3 At the time of Menendez’s death in