Ponce de León Claims Florida for Spain

Ponce de León Claims Florida for Spain

Although the peninsula of Florida was sighted by earlier navigators (it was shown on the 1502 Cantino map of the New World), its first known European visitor was the Spanish adventurer and explorer Juan Ponce de León. On April 8, 1513, scarcely more than 20 years after Christopher Columbus's discovery of America, Ponce de León claimed Florida for Spain.

Juan Ponce de León was born in San Servos, Leín, Spain, about 1460. After fighting against the Moors of Granada, he accompanied Columbus on the latter's second voyage to America in 1493. From 1502 to 1504 he assisted in the conquest of Higuey, the eastern region of Hispaniola, and was appointed adelantado or governor of that province. On August 12, 1508, he found an excellent port on the island of San Juan Bautista, later to be renamed Puerto Rico, which had been discovered by Columbus in November 1493. Ponce de León explored the island in 1508, and became its temporary governor the following year. He and his companions established a colony at Caparra near what is now San Juan. Having apparently amassed a fortune in gold, land, and slaves, the explorer was ready for new adventures.

Ponce de León lived in an age in which adventurers were drawn to the Gulf of Mexico region in the hope of finding a passage to the Pacific or in quest of mythical riches and wonders. One prevalent myth was that related by the inhabitants of the Caribbean area about the Fountain of Youth, a spring whose health-restoring waters granted the mental and physical powers of youth to the aged. Peter Martyr, Ponce de León's contemporary and author of The Decades of the New World or West India, addressed to Pope Leo X, wrote one of the few contemporary literary accounts of it:

Among the islands on the North side of Hispaniola there is one about 325 leagues distant, as they say which have searched the same, in which there is a continual spring of running water, of such marvelous virtue, that the water thereof being drunk, perhaps with some diet, maketh older men young again. And I here must make protestation to your holiness not to think this to be said lightly or rashly, for they have so spread this rumor for a truth throughout all the court, that not only all the people, but also many of them whom wisdom or fortune hath divided from the common sort, think it to be true. But if you should ask my opinion herein, I will answer that I will not attribute so great power to nature, but God hath no less reserved this prerogative to himself.…

Ponce de León, having lived for some time in the West Indies, undoubtedly knew of this myth, although it is not known what his opinion of it may have been. In any event, the fabled spring did not figure prominently among the inducements that attracted him toward new adventure. A patent authorizing him to search for and conquer the unknown Bimini Islands north of Cuba, the supposed location of this spring, was granted by the Spanish king Ferdinand V on February 23, 1512. This patent dealt with more prosaic matters: the crown's share in any gold deposits and the subjugation of the natives as slaves in the mines. Although many scholars have now completely dismissed the tale about a fabulous fountain as motivation for Ponce de León's voyage, it is nevertheless possible that the Spanish adventurer (then aged 53) was not averse to including this quest among other tantalizing goals.

In any case, he sailed from Puerto Rico with three vessels on March 3, 1513, on a northwestern course. After landing briefly at San Salvador in the Bahamas, he threaded his way through uncharted islands. On March 27 he probably sighted one of the Abaco Islands (the most northerly of the Bahamas) and soon afterwards an extensive unknown coastline. Having no grounds for suspecting that the landmass was anything more than just another island, Ponce de León followed the coast northward. He probably sailed from near Palm Beach, Florida, to a spot somewhere between what are now St. Augustine and the mouth of the St. Johns River. There, near the 30th parallel, his expedition landed early in April and remained for a short time. On April 8, 1513, in the name of the Spanish king, Ponce de León took possession of the “island,” which he named La Florida. The great Spanish historian Antonio de Herrera (1559–1625), who is thought to have had access to Ponce de León's original notes or logbook (now lost), wrote an account of the voyage. According to this, the area was named La Florida “because it had a very pretty view of many cool woodlands, and it was level and uniform: and because, moreover, they discovered it in the time of the Feast of Flowers (the season of Easter).”

Ponce de León continued northward briefly, but then reversed his course and returned southward along the Atlantic east coast of Florida, went around the Florida peninsula through the Florida Keys, and advanced up the west coast of Florida in the Gulf of Mexico. The native inhabitants of La Florida, then consisting of four tribes—the Calusa, Tegesta, Timucua, and Apalachee—resisted conquest. Further, there was no sign of gold, or of the rejuvenating waters of the Fountain of Youth.

After seven weeks of sailing, Ponce de León still had not circumnavigated the “island.” Disillusioned, he turned back on May 23, 1513, and arrived in Puerto Rico, empty-handed, on September 21. In tracing much of the coastline of Florida, however, he had contributed a noteworthy geographical service.

After helping to quell a revolt that had flared up in Puerto Rico during his absence, Ponce de León returned to Spain in 1514. He seems to have given a highly favorable account of his exploits, since, on September 27, he obtained a royal grant to colonize “the island of Bimini and the island of Florida,” of which he was appointed civil and military governor.

Other adventures, such as an expedition against the Caribs who inhabited the Lesser Antilles, as well as lack of finances, prevented Ponce de León from immediately embarking for Florida. Only in 1521 did he decide to take possession of the area under the authority of his patent. Gathering together two vessels and 200 men:

as a good colonist, he took mares and heifers and swine and sheep and goats, and all kinds of domestic animals useful in the service of mankind: and also for the cultivation and tillage of the field he was supplied with all [kinds of] seed, as if the business of colonization consisted of nothing more than to arrive, and cultivate the land and pasture his livestock.

Sailing from Puerto Rico on February 20, 1521, Ponce de León and his companions probably landed near Charlotte Harbor on the west coast of Florida. Native American resistance and the outbreak of disease demoralized the Spaniards and hindered the growth of their colony, which persisted for five months. After its leader himself was severely wounded in a skirmish, the entire Spanish expedition abandoned the venture and sailed for Havana, Cuba. Juan Ponce de León died soon afterwards, in June 1521.

Expeditions by subsequent Spanish explorers, especially Pánfilo de Narváez and Hernando de Soto, established the fact that Florida was not an island and bolstered Spain's claim to an immense area covering much of the present southeastern United States. Alarmed at the encroachments of French adventurers in the early 1560s, King Philip II of Spain commissioned Pedro Menéndez de Avilés to drive out the French and firmly implant Spanish colonies in Florida. The founding of St. Augustine, the oldest city in the United States, in 1565, was therefore the first permanent result of the claim that Juan Ponce de León had made more than a half century before.