Juan!

In 1987, Gene delivered the following information about a little know character known as Gonzalo Gayon...who, in fact was, Pedro Menéndez's chief pilot (piloto mayor) who had an extensive knowledge of these waters of this region of La Florida for more than twenty years prior to 1565. He was regularly sent to reconnoiter the lands and waters...and establish contact with local casiques (Timucuan chiefs) in order to secure the release of any shipwecked Europeans who were being held captive. His expeditions led to the revelation c/o French shipwreck victims of the invaluable knowledge of the "inland passage" to San Augustin via what we know today as the Intracoastal Waterway. The "lovely Marilyn" aka "Carmen Miranda Veranda" has reproduced Dr.Lyons notes for all of you to share and utilize to enhance your interpretation of local historical events which are critical to our founding period, in this case Ganzalo Gayon's  adventures 1566!

Thanks to you of the South Volusia Historical Society for our kind invitation, which was tendered by Mrs. Leila Wilsey.  We have known the Cardwells for a number of years, since we have regularly met at the annual meetings of the Florida Historical Society.  My wife and I truly appreciate your hospitality tonight.  So, on behalf of the St. Augustine Historical Society, one of the host groups for the State meeting this year, let me extend to you our most cordial invitation to visit our city next month.
 
 

As we do in St. Augustine, you live here surrounded by reminders of history;  buried along much of the central part of New Smyrna Beach must be the remains of Turnbull’s plantation and the houses of the Minorcan, Greek and Italian people he brought to Florida.  We share a lively interest in that part of your history,  since the people we call “Minorcans” are still one of the most important segments of the community of St. Augustine.  Your Sugar Mill ruins also reflect a period of rapid economic development in colonial Florida.  But tonight, I am going to ask you to turn your minds back to an earlier century -- the Sixteenth.  I am going to ask you to recreate in imagination a critical time of international rivalry and conflict, a time of exploration that reached into your area.  I am going to ask you to look at South Volusia, and peninsula Florida through the eyes of that continental schemer and dreamer, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés.

Florida’s conqueror and first Adelantado (the present Adelantado lives in Madrid, as the title survives; last year we microfilmed his papers which are now available in Florida), Pedro Menéndez, came not only to defeat and expel the French invaders under Ribault and Laudonniere.  He came primarily to settle, explore and exploit eastern North America, for Florida extended from Newfoundland around the Keys to Apalachicola.  But, after his victories at Fort Caroline and Matanzas, Menéndez began a series of explorations, guided by captured Frenchmen and freed Spaniards who knew the Indian languages.  His first concern, being a seaman oriented to the use of oceans, straits and rivers, was to analyze the geography of his new lands.  He confronted a vast wilderness, but also had to deal with rebellious soldiers, hostile Indians, and an uncertain network of supply of the colony.

In late 1565, Menéndez had reconnoitered the East Coast when he took soldiers south along the beaches, passing east of where we sit tonight and pressing onward to the Cape.  He attacked and woped out a makeshift fort built by the French survivors of Ribault’s shipwrecks.  He took many prisoners but, by that time, some Frenchmen had escaped inland and were living among the Indians.  A document from the notaries’ archives of Madrid describes how Menéndez left a garrison at Ays and then sailed in a small boat for Havana.  From there, in the spring, he took a fleet to Florida’s southwest coast.  At that place, which we believe to have been Mound Key in Estero Bay, he met and concluded a treaty of alliance with Carlos, powerful ruler of the Caloosa and many associated Indian groups.

Then, in late August of 1566, the Adelantado followed up earlier French explorations and went exploring up the St. Johns, which he first called the “River of San Pelayo”.  He sailed past present-day Palatka, finally traversing almost fifty leagues, according to his reckoning.  At last the Spaniards arrived at the limits of the territory of a chief, or cacique, named Mayaca.  The river there was narrowed, but still deep enough for his boats, but the Indians had blocked the channel with heavy logs.  There was a clear sense of hostility, for Menéndez was caught in a net of Indian alliances.  In the Florida peninsula, Saturiba, the Timucuan cacique, opposed the Spaniards and warred with upriver Chief Ocina, it was evident that Mayaca tended to draw close to Saturiba, while Carlos opposed them both. Menéndez had therefore to exploit the system, but he had to accept that certain Indian caciques would be his friends and others would remain his enemies, unless he could subdue them by gifts, guile, or war.

When he returned to his vantage point in St. Augustine, the Adelantado could sketch out his concept of the Florida peninsula and plan its development.  In a letter sent to King Philip II in October, 1566, Menéndez said that we had great notice of a lake, twenty leagues on (from Mayaca), which is more that 30 leagues in circumference. Menéndez showed that he understood the water drainage of Florida by stating further that as the water that falls from the mountains gathers there, and it is flat land, it “makes a sea.”  He added his belief that one could reach the lake by the St. Johns, and that other rivers flowed out of it to Biscayne Bay and to the land of Carlos on the Gulf.

This interested the Florida Adelantado, for he was engaged in the Mexico trade and planned a bright economic future for his colony.  His scheme was to bring vessels directly from Spain to the mouth of the St. Johns River, off-load their cargoes to small fregatas and traverse the water system through the lake we now call Okeechobee to the Gulf of Mexico, where he would anchor the port of exit with a garrison.  Major ships could then shuttle from Vera Cruz to Carlos, avoiding the hazardous passage around the Florida Keys.  But more inland exploration was needed to verify the route.

Before Pedro Menéndez departed for a mission in the West Indies for his King in October, 1566, he asked his chief pilot, Gonzalo Gayon, to penetrate into Mayaca from the East Coast.  Like many of Menendez’ most trusted associates, Gayon was an Asturian, from the little town of Pola de Lena, and was the most skilled pilot in the colony.

His derrotero of 1566, found in the University of Florida’s P. K. Yonge Library in its Stetson Collection, brings that period to life and brings it directly into your area, for that is where he began his exploration.  “Provanza hecha a pedimento de Gonzalo de Gayon,” from AGI Santo Domingo 11 (Stetson Collection, under date of 1564).

Gayon’s most immediate task was to barter with the Indians for captive Frenchmen believed to be in Mayaca’s power.  With a shallop, a sargeant, an interpreter and a squad of soldiers, he appeared off the Mosquitos Inlet (Ponce de Leon) in early October, 1566.

Entering the inlet, and we can imagine cautiously, Gayon sighted a group of natives on the north side and anchored at the Indian town there.  Its chief was a vassal of Mayaca, whom the Spaniards found in an evil humor with his Indians in arms.  To pacify him, Gayon gave the cacique woolen and linen cloth, knives and beads, and asked in return an Indian to guide them to Mayaca.  But the Indians said that there was no passage-way there, and proposed instead to take them to another town on the south side, on the same river, about 1/4 league from the inlet.  There, they told him, was a captive Frenchman.

When the Frenchman returned, it was a man named by the Spaniards ‘Juan’.  (probably the man they called “Juan Bivete, interpreter of the land of Mayaca”- see Winius paper, p. 20 and AG CD 941, 12th-14th document).

‘Juan’ took them to a third nearby town where there were two Frenchmen and a Spaniard prisoner.  They found that the Spaniard had drowned, but returned to the Inlet after giving the usual gifts of cloth and beads, plus a hoe.  The Indians told them that two French infantry captains and two seamen were captive in another village two leagues further on; the Spaniards traded for three Frenchmen.

Now ready to return to St. Augustine, Gonzalo Gayon saw that the inlet had turned rough; his heavily loaded shallop would never have made it through the waves.  A Frenchman named Buenaventura (probably Bonaventure) noted that he had once gone upriver more than ten leagues and that there was a good depth, for canoes came and went from Saturiba regularly, and he understood that there was clear passage all that way.

When it became clear to the Indians that the Spaniards intended to go northward by the inland waters, they grew hostile, touched their arms three times, and began to cry out against those who were in the boat.  But Gonzalo Gayon soothed them with words, and went on his way.  Within ten leagues they passed four Indian towns; since it was night he held no conversation with any of them.

Without doubt, one of the places they passed was Nocoroco, the town described by John Griffin and Hale Smith in their 1949 Historical Quarterly article (“Nocoroco---a Timucua village of 1605 now in Tomoka State Park,” Florida Historical Quarterly 27, No. 4 (April, 1949), pp.340-361.

That gives us another point of reference for Mayaca’s location, for the Derrotero of Alvaro Mexia of 1605 states that Mayaca and its surrounding towns are on the San Maeo River, three days “travel from Nocoroco on a poor road.”  (AGI Santa Domingo 224, Stetson Collection).

At daybreak the next day they sighted Indians along the shore who offered them water but Gayon didn’t wish to approach them.  But the Indians followed until the shallop came to a weir built completely across the stream from bank to bank, effectively stopping their advance.

Through the interpreter, Gayon asked the Indians if the stream went out to the River of Matanzas and they said yes.  In trade for goods they gave him to sea bass and opened the weir so that the shallop could pass.  But they continued to follow, and when the little boat grounded on a bar, Gonzalo Gayon called on a number of his soldiers to get out and lighten it, all help shove off.  They chose instead to go by land from that point, and were soon out of sight.  When the shadowing Indians noted this, they came closer, preparing to board the little craft, and told GG, that he was trapped, there was no way out.  Things began to look bad to the pilot at this point and he sent several of the remaining soldiers after the rest to come back to the rescue.  The Indians started after them with bows and arrows drawn, but they made it safely back to the shallop.  Then night fell.  At dawn they made their way safely to the Matanzas Inlet, and thence to St. Augustine.
 

Close:  This is indeed an exciting time in the history game.  An upcoming National Geographic article will feature what it terms “The Spanish Coast”.  Now several sites along that coast are under excavation from South Carolina to St. Augustine.

Archaeologist Stanley South has found the forts and town of Santa Elena, once Florida’s capital, on Parris Island.  On St. Catherine’s Island below Savannah, David Hurst Thomas of the American Museum of Natural History has excavated the mission of Santa Catalina, where almost five hundred Christian Indians lay buried beneath the parish church.

Another mission of the same name has just been uncovered on Amelia Island near Jacksonville and, at St. Augustine Preservation Board archaeologists have found sixteenth-century burials under the Old Wax Museum building just south of the Plaza.

Of course, the State Museum team which has found Fort Mose, north of St. Augustine, has caused the most recent sensation.

Resources for the study of history in our State have never been more voluminous or available, and continue to improve.  As this active Society indicates, interest in Florida history is greater than ever, and we have a real stake in acquiring, preserving and making accessible the primary Spanish documents which tell much of the hidden past.

See New Florida Atlas -- John Griffin; for topos of New Smyrna area to tie to the Gayon derrotero.

(note: spellings of individuals and place names are written as per Dr. Lyons)