MISSIONS
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MISSIONS
the establisliment of the Catholic colony of Maryland,
some attention was given to the neiglibouring Indians
of Virginia (see below). In 1577 several Francis-
cans under charge of Father Alonso de Reynoso ar-
rived at St. Augustine and began work among the
Tunucua Indians near the city, of whom a number
were soon regular attendants at the parish church.
Fifteen years later four Franciscan priests and two
lay brothers were at work in the towns of the Timucua
and ' Yamasee from St . Augustine northwards into
Georgia. In 1 593 twelve more were sent out in charge
of Father Juan de SUva, including the noted Father
Francisco Pareja, to whom we are indebted for our
most complete account of the Timucua people and
language and for several devotional works, the first
books printed in any Indian language of the United
States.
In 1597 a chief of the Yamasee organized a con- spiracy which seems to have included also a part of the Timucua tribe about St. Augustine. Five mis- sions, stretching from St. .\ugustine to Ossabaw island in Georgia, were attacked and five of the six mis- sionaries murdered. Father De Avila (or Ddvila), although badly wounded, being re.scued. The ad- vance of the Indians was finally cliecked by some Spanish troops, after all the Yamasee missions had been destroyed . The missions among the more peace- ful Timucua about the lower Saint John's River, Florida, continued to flourish, being in 1602 four in number, besides temporary stations, with 1200 Chris- tian Indians. Other Franciscans arriving, the Yama- see missions were re-established in 1605, the Potano tribe on the Suwanee river almost entirely Christian- ized two years later, and a beginning made among the lower Creek bands. In 1633 missionaries were sent to the powerful Apalachee of western Florida in re- sponse to repeated requests from that tribe. In 1655 there were 35 Franciscan missions in Florida and Georgia with a Christian Indian population of 26,000 souls. This was the zenith of their prosperity. Two years later the Apalachee, in consequence of the un- just exactions of the governor, became involved in a war with the Spaniards, which compelletl the abandon- ment of the eight flourishing missions in that territory. The fathei-s embarked for Havana, but were all drowned on the passage. In 1674, through the efforts of Bishop Calderon, the Apalachee mission was re- stored, and several new foundations established. In 1684 the Diocesan Synod of Havana promulgated regu- lations for the government and protection of the mis- sion Indians. In the same year the Governor of Flor- ida, alanned at the growing strength of the English colony of Carolina, undertook to remove the Indians of the northern missions to more southern settlements with the result that the Yamasee again revolted and, being supplied with guns by the English, attacked and destroyed the mission on Saint Catherine island, Georgia, and carried off a troop of Christian Indians prisoners to sell as slaves in Carolina. In 1696 an at- tempt to establish missions about Cape Caiiaveral re- sulted in the kUling of a religious and six companions. A like attempt in the next year among the fierce Calusa south of Tampa Bay also proved abortive.
For years the English slave-traders of Carolina had made a basiness of arming certain tribes with guns and sending them out to make raitls upon other tribes to procure slaves for Carolina and the Barbadoes . The Spanish Government, on the contrary, refused guns even to the Christian Indians. The War of the Span- ish Succession gave an opportunity for an attack upon the Florida missions. In May, 1702, the heathen Lower Creeks, armed and instigated by Governor Moore of Carolina, attacked Santa F^, occupied by the Timucua, and burnt the church. In October of the same year a comliined English and Indian land expe- dition, co-operating with a naval force, attacked the mission towns north of St. Augustine, burned three X.— 25
of them with their churches, made prisoner the mis-
sionaries, and then, proceeding farther southward,
burned the town of St. Augustine with the Franciscan
church and convent and one of the finest libraries then
in .\merica. The fortress held out until relieved by a
Spanish fleet. In January, 1704, Moore, at the head
of about fifty C'arolina men and a thousand or more
well-armed Creek, Catawba, and other savages, rav-
aged the Apalachee country, destroyed ten of the
eleven missions towns, slaughtered himdreds of the
people, including a nmnber of warriors who made a
stand under the Sjjanish lieutenant Mexia, and carried
off nearly 1400 Cliristian Indians to be sold as slaves
in Carolina or distributed for torture or adoption
among the savages. The missions, with their churches,
gardens, and orange groves, were utterly demolished,
the vestments and sacred vessels destroyed or carried
off, and numbers of the neophytes burned at the stake.
Four of the mission fathers were also killed (two
being tortured and burned at the stake), and their
bodies hacked to pieces by deliberate permission of
Moore himself, who gave up Lieutenant Mexia and
four Spanish soldiers to the same fate.
This was practically the end of the Florida missions, although for more than twenty years thereafter efforts were made, with some temporary success, to gather together again the remnants of the Apalachee, Timu- cua, and other Christian tribes, and in 1726 there were still counted more than 1000 Christian Indians. With the establishment of the English Georgia colony and the ensuing war of 1 740 the attempt was abandoned and the mission territory reverted to its original wild condition. In 1753 only 136 Indians remained in four mission stations close to St. Augustine. In 1743 the Jesuit Fathers Jose Maria Monaco and Jose Xavier de Alana began a mission near Cape Florida among the utterly savage Ais and Jobe with such success that a community of Christian Indians was built up, which continued until the Seminole War (1817-18).
II. M.\RYL.\ND. — The English Catholic colony of Maryland, founded in 1634, was sensed in its first years by the Jesuits, who made the Indians their special care. Under the superior. Father Andrew White, and his companions, several missions were established among the Piscataway (Conoy) and Patuxent of lower Mary- land, west of Chesapeake Bay, and considerable atten- tion was also given to the Potomac tribe in Virginia. The principal mission was begim in 1639 at Kittama- quindi, or Piscataway, near the mouth of the creek of that name. Other stations were Mattapony on the Patuxent, Anacostan (.4nacostia) adjoining the pres- ent Washington, and Potopaco (Port, Tobacco), where nearly all the natives were baptized. In 1642, dur- ing an extended visit among the Potomac, on the Virginia side. Father White baptized the chief and principal men, with a number of others. The work was much hampered by the inroads of the hostile Susquehanna from the head of the bay, and was brought to a sudden and premature close in 1645 by the Puritans and other malcontents, who, taking ad- vantage of the Civil War in England, repaid the gen- erosity which had given them asylum in Maryland by seizing the Government, phmdering the churches and missions and the houses of the principal Catholics, and sending Fathers White and Copley to England to be tried for their lives, while Father Martwell, the new superior, and two other missionaries escaped to Vir- ginia. Later efforts to revive the mission had only temporary success owing to the hostility of the Protestant Government and the rapid wasting of the native tribes. Before 1700 the remnant of the Piscat- away removed bodily from Maryland and sought ref- uge in the north with the Delawares and Iroquois, among whom they have long since become entirely ex- tinct. To Father White's anonymous "Relatio iti- neris ad Marylandiani" (translation published in 1833 and again ki 1874) we are indebted for the best account
