RENÉ DE LAUDONNIÈRE
PLANTING A COLONY ON THE ST. JOHN'S RIVER
René de Laudonnière's Expedition to the St. John's.--Absurd Illusions of
the Frenchmen.--Their Bad Faith to the Indians, and its Fatal
Results.--The Thirst for Gold, and how it was rewarded.--Buccaneering.--A
Storm-cloud gathers in Spain.--Misery in the Fort on the St.
John's.--Relieved by Sir John Hawkins.--Arrival of Ribaut with Men and
Supplies.--Don Pedro Menendez captures Fort Caroline and massacres the
Garrison and Shipwrecked Crews.--Dominique de Gourgues takes Vengeance.
The failure at Port Royal did not discourage Admiral Coligny from sending
out another expedition, in the spring of 1564, under the command of Rene
de Laudonnière, who had been with Ribaut in 1562. It reached the mouth
of the St. John's on the 25th of June and was joyfully greeted by the
kindly Indians.
The lieutenant, Ottigny, strolling off into the woods with a few men, met
some Indians and was conducted to their village. There, he {78} gravely
tells us, he met a venerable chief who told him that he was two hundred
and fifty years old. But, after all, he might probably expect to live a
hundred years more, for he introduced another patriarch as his father.
This shrunken anatomy, blind, almost speechless, and more like "a dead
carkeis than a living body," he said, was likely to last thirty or forty
years longer.
Probably the Frenchman had heard of the fabled fountain of Bimini, which
lured Ponce de Leon to his ruin, and the river Jordan, which was said to
be somewhere in Florida and to possess the same virtue, and he fancied
that the gourd of cool water which had just been given him might come
from such a spring.[1]
{79}
This example shows how credulous these Frenchmen were, moving in a world
of fancy, the glamour of romantic dreams about the New World still fresh
upon them, visions of unmeasured treasures of silver and gold and gems
floating through their brains.
It would make a tedious tale to relate all their follies, surrounded as
they were by a bountiful nature and a kindly people, and yet soon reduced
to abject want. In the party there were brawling soldiers and piratical
sailors, with only a few quiet, decent artisans and shop-keepers, but
with a swarm of reckless young nobles, who had nothing to recommend them
but a long name, and who expected to prove themselves Pizarros in
fighting and treasure-getting. Unfortunately, the kind of man who is the
backbone of a colony, "the man with the hoe," was not there.
This motley crew soon finished a fort, which stood on the river, a little
above what is now called St. John's Bluff and was named Fort {80}
Caroline, in honor of Charles the Ninth. Then they began to look around,
keen for gold and adventure.
The Indians had shown themselves hostile when they saw the Frenchmen
building a fort, which was evidence that they had come to stay.
Laudonnière quieted the chief Satouriona by promising to aid him against
his enemies, a tribe up the river, called the Thimagoas. Next, misled by
a story of great riches up the river, he actually made an alliance with
Outina, the chief of the Thimagoas. Thus the French were engaged at the
same time to help both sides. But the craze for gold was now at
fever-heat, and they had little notion of keeping faith with mere
savages. Outina promised Vasseur, Laudonnière's lieutenant, that if he
would join him against Potanou, the chief of a third tribe, each of his
vassals would reward the French with a heap of gold and silver two feet
high. So, at least, Vasseur professed to understand him.
The upshot of the matter was that Satouriona was incensed against the
French for breaking faith with him. And to make the situation worse,
when he went, unaided, and attacked his enemies and brought back
prisoners, the French {81} commander, to curry favor with Outina,
compelled Satouriona to give up some of his captives and sent them home
to their chief.
All this was laying up trouble for the future. Not a sod had the
Frenchmen turned in the way of tilling the soil. The river flowing at
their feet teemed with fish. The woods about them were alive with game.
But they could neither fish nor hunt. Starving in a land of plenty, ere
long they would be dependent for food on these people who had met them so
kindly, and whom they had deliberately cheated and outraged.
Next we find Vasseur sailing up the river and sending some of his men
with Outina to attack Potanou, whose village lay off to the northwest.
Several days the war-party marched through a pine-barren region. When it
reached its destination the Frenchmen saw, instead of a splendid city of
the "kings of the Appalachian mountains," rich in gold, just such an
Indian town, surrounded by rough fields of corn and pumpkins, as the
misguided Spaniards under Soto had often come upon. The poor barbarians
defended their homes bravely. But the Frenchmen's guns routed them.
Sack and slaughter followed, with the burning of the town. Then the
victors {82} marched away, with such glory as they had got, but of course
without a grain of gold.
At Fort Caroline a spirit of sullenness was growing. Disappointment had
followed all their reckless, wicked attempts to get treasure. The
Indians of the neighborhood, grown unfriendly, had ceased to bring in
food for barter. The garrison was put on half-rations. Men who had come
to Florida expecting to find themselves in a land of plenty and to reap a
golden harvest, would scarcely content themselves with the monotonous
routine of life in a little fort by a hot river, with nothing to do and
almost nothing to eat. It was easy to throw all the blame on Laudonnière.
[Illustration: Fort Caroline]
"Why does he not lead us out to explore the country and find its
treasures? He is keeping us from making our fortunes," the gentlemen
adventurers cried.
Here again we are reminded of the Spaniards under Narvaez and Soto, who
struggled through the swamps and interminable pine-barrens of Florida,
cheered on by the delusive assurance that when they came to the country
of Appalachee they would find gold in abundance. (See "Pioneer Spaniards
in North America.")
{83}
Another class of malcontents took matters into their own hands. They
were ex-pirates, and they determined to fly the "jolly Roger" once more.
They stole two pinnaces, slipped away to sea, and were soon cruising
among the West Indies. Hunger drove them into Havana. They gave
themselves up and made their peace with the Spanish authorities by
telling of their countrymen at Fort Caroline.
Now, Spain claimed the whole of North America, under the Pope's grant.
Moreover, Philip of Spain had but lately commissioned as Governor of
Florida one Pedro Menendez de Aviles, a ruthless bigot who would crush a
Protestant with as much satisfaction as a venomous serpent. Imagine the
effect upon his gloomy mind of the news that reached him in Spain, by the
way of Havana, of a band of Frenchmen, and, worst of all, heretics
settled in Florida, his Florida!
Meanwhile the men at Fort Caroline, all unconscious of the black storm
brewing in Spain, continued their grumbling. They had not heard of the
fate of the party who had sailed away, and now nearly all were bent on
buccaneering. One day a number of them mutinied, overpowered the {84}
guard, seized Laudonnière, put him in irons, carried him on board a
vessel lying in the river, and compelled him, under threat of death, to
sign a commission for them to cruise along the Spanish Main. Shortly
afterward they sailed away in two small vessels that had been built at
Fort Caroline.
After their departure, the orderly element that remained behind restored
Laudonnière to his command, and things went on smoothly for three or four
months. Then, one day, a Spanish brigantine was seen hovering off the
mouth of the river. It was ascertained that she was manned by the
mutineers, now anxious to return to the fort. Laudonnière sent down a
trusty officer in a small vessel that he had built, with thirty soldiers
hidden in the hold. The buccaneers let her come alongside without
suspicion and began to parley. Suddenly the soldiers came on deck,
boarded, and overpowered them, before they could seize their arms. In
fact, they were mostly drunk. After a short career of successful piracy,
they had suddenly found themselves attacked by three armed vessels. The
most were killed or taken, but twenty-six escaped. The pilot, who had
been carried away against his will, cunningly steered {85} the brigantine
to the Florida coast; and, having no provisions, they were compelled to
seek succor from their old comrades. Still they had wine in abundance,
and so they appeared off the mouth of the river drunk, and, as we have
seen, were easily taken. A court-martial condemned the ringleader and
three others to be shot, which was duly done. The rest were pardoned.
In the meantime the men in the fort had been inquiring diligently in
various directions. There was still much talk of mysterious kingdoms,
rich in gold. Once more they were duped into fighting his battles by the
wily Outina, who promised to lead them to the mines of Appalachee. They
defeated his enemies, and there was abundant slaughter, with plenty of
scalps for Outina's braves, but, of course, no gold.
The expected supplies from France did not come. The second summer was
upon them, with its exhausting heat. The direst want pinched them.
Ragged, squalid, and emaciated, they dragged themselves about the fort,
digging roots or gathering any plant that might stay the gnawings of
hunger. They had made enemies of their neighbors, Satouriona and his
people; and Outina, for whom they had done so much, sent them only {86} a
meagre supply of corn, with a demand for more help in fighting his
enemies. They accepted the offer and were again cheated by the cunning
savage.
Laudonnière draws a pathetic picture of their misery. In the quaint old
English translation of Richard Hakluyt it reads thus: "The effects of
this hideous famine appeared incontinently among us, for our bones
eftsoones beganne to cleave so neere unto the skinne, that the most part
of the souldiers had their skinnes pierced thorow with them in many
partes of their bodies."
The thoughts of the famished men in Fort Caroline turned homeward with
eager longing. They had still remaining one vessel and the Spanish
brigantine brought by the mutineers. But they must have another. They
began with furious haste to build one, everybody lending a hand. Then
came a disastrous check. When things were well under way, the two
carpenters, roaming away from the fort in search of food, were helping
themselves to some ears of green corn in a field, when Indians fell upon
them and killed them.
In this desperate pass Laudonnière took a high-handed step. He sent a
party up the river, seized {87} Outina, and brought him a prisoner to the
fort. This had the desired effect. His people pleaded for his release.
The Frenchmen agreed to give him up for a large supply of corn and sent a
well-armed party to his village, with the captive chief. The Indians
brought in the corn, and the Frenchmen released Outina, according to
agreement. But when the former started from the village, each with a bag
of corn on his shoulder, to march to their boats, which were at a landing
two or three miles away, they were savagely attacked from both sides of
the road. They were compelled to drop the corn and fight for their
lives. Wherever there was opportunity for an ambuscade, arrows showered
upon them from the woods. They kept up the running fight bravely,
returning a steady fire, but probably made little impression on their
hidden foes swarming under cover. By the time they reached the boats
they had two men killed and twenty-two wounded, and but two bags of corn.
It is evident that the social life of these Indians was organized on the
community-system, just as we have seen it to be among the Iroquois, of
the North. They could supply the Frenchmen with corn in considerable
quantities, taking it out of a {88} stock kept for the whole community.
Unlike the Iroquois, however, they lived by families, in individual
houses.
The distress at Fort Caroline was now extreme, owing to famine within and
war without. In this dark hour, one day, four sails appeared, steering
toward the mouth of the river. Was this the long-expected relief from
France? Or were these Spanish vessels? Presently "the meteor flag of
England" floated out on the breeze, and soon a boat brought a friendly
message from the commander, the famous Sir John Hawkins. Being a
strenuous Puritan, he was a warm sympathizer with the Protestants of
France. Returning from selling a cargo of Guinea negroes to the
Spaniards of Hispaniola--not at all a discreditable transaction in those
days--he had run short of water and had put into the River of May, to
obtain a supply.
Touched by the pitiful condition of the Frenchmen, he opened his
ship-stores, gave them wine and biscuit, and sold them other supplies
very cheaply, taking cannon in payment. Then, smiling grimly at the two
pitiful little craft in which they purposed sailing for France, he
offered them all a free passage home. Laudonnière would not {89} accept
a proposal so humiliating, but was very glad to buy a small vessel from
Hawkins on credit.
Just when all was in readiness to sail for home came news of an
approaching squadron. It was an anxious hour. Were these friends or
foes? If foes, the garrison was lost, for the fort was defenceless.
Then the river was seen full of armed barges coming up. Imagine the wild
joy of the garrison, when the sentry's challenge was answered in French!
It was Ribaut. He had come at last, with seven ships, bringing not only
soldiers and artisans, but whole families of settlers.
One might imagine that Fort Caroline's dark days had passed. But it was
not so. Ribaut had been there just a week when his vessels, lying
outside the bar, were attacked, about dusk, by a huge Spanish galleon.
The officers were on shore, and the crews cut the cables and put to sea,
followed by the Spaniard firing, but not able to overhaul them. Ribaut,
on shore, heard the guns and knew what they meant. The Spaniards had
come! Before he left France he had been secretly notified of their
intentions.
The next morning Don Pedro Menendez in his great galleon ran back to the
mouth of the {90} St. John's. But seeing the Frenchmen drawn up under
arms on the beach and Ribaut's smaller vessels inside the bar, all ready
for battle, he turned away and sailed southward to an inlet which he
called San Augustin. There he found three ships of his unloading troops,
guns, and stores. He landed, took formal possession of his vast
domain--for the Florida of which he had been appointed Governor was
understood by the Spaniards to extend from Mexico to the North Pole--and
began to fortify the place. Thus, in September, 1565, was founded St.
Augustine, the oldest town of the United States.
One of the French captains, relying on the speed of his ship, had
followed Menendez down the coast. He saw what was going on at St.
Augustine and hastened back to report to Ribaut that the Spaniards were
there in force and were throwing up fortifications. A brilliant idea
came to the French commander. His dispersed ships had returned to their
anchorage. Why not take them, with all his men and all of Laudonnière's
that were fit for service, sail at once, and strike the Spaniards before
they could complete their defences, instead of waiting for them to
collect their full force and come and attack him, cooped {91} up on the
St. John's? Such bold moves make the fame of commanders when they
succeed, and when they fail are called criminal folly.
Unhappily, Ribaut neglected to consider the weather. It was the middle
of September, a season subject to terrific gales. Making all speed, he
sailed away with every available man, leaving Laudonnière, sick himself,
to hold dismantled Fort Caroline with disabled soldiers, cooks and
servants, women and children.
The French ships arrived safely off St. Augustine, just before the dawn,
and narrowly missed taking Menendez himself, who was on board a solitary
Spanish vessel which lay outside the bar. Just in the nick of time she
escaped within the harbor.
Before entering, the Frenchmen prudently reconnoitred the strange port.
Meanwhile the breeze freshened into a gale, and the gale rose to a
hurricane. The Frenchmen could no longer think of attacking, but only of
saving themselves from immediate wreck. Down the coast they worked their
way in a driving mist, struggling frantically to get out to sea, in the
teeth of the hurricane remorselessly pushing them toward the deadly reefs.
While his enemies were thus fighting for their {92} lives, Menendez
executed a counter-stroke to that of the French captain. Through the
raging gale, while every living thing cowered before driving sheets of
rain, this man of blood and iron marched away with five hundred picked
men. A French deserter from Fort Caroline and an Indian acted as guides,
and twenty axemen cleared the way through the dense under-growth.
What a march! Three days they tramped through a low, flooded country,
hacking their way through tangled thickets, wading waist-deep through mud
and water, for food and drink having only wet biscuit and rain-water,
with a sup of wine; for lodging only the oozy ground, with not so much as
a rag of canvas over their heads to shelter them from the torrents of
rain.
When they reached Fort Caroline their ammunition was wet and their guns
useless. They were half-famished and drenched to the skin. Still they
were willing to follow their leader in a rush on the fort, relying on
cold steel.
The night of September 19th the inmates of Fort Caroline listened to the
dismal moaning and creaking of the tall pines, the roar of the blast, and
the fitful torrents of rain beating on the cabin-roofs.
{93}
In the gray dawn of the 20th a trumpeter who chanced to be astir, saw a
swarm of men rushing toward the ramparts. He sounded the alarm; but it
was too late. With Spain's battle-cry, "Santiago! Santiago!" (St.
James, her patron saint) the assailants swept over the ramparts and
poured through a breach.
They made quick work. The shriek of a helpless mother or the scream of a
frightened infant was quickly hushed in death. When, however, the first
fury of butchery had spent itself, Menendez ordered that such persons
should be spared, and fifty were actually saved alive. Every male above
the age of fifteen was, from first to last, killed on the spot.
Laudonnière had leaped from his sick-bed and, in his night-shirt, rallied
a few men for resistance. But they were quickly killed or dispersed, and
he escaped to the woods, where a few half-naked fugitives were gathered.
Some of these determined to go back and appeal to the humanity of the
Spaniards. The mercy of wolves to lambs! Seeing these poor wretches
butchered, the others felt that their only hope was in making their way
to the mouth of the river, where lay two or three light craft which
Ribaut had left. {94} Wading through mire and water, their naked limbs
cut by the sedge and their feet by roots, they met two or three small
boats sent to look out for fugitives, and were taken aboard half dead.
After two or three days of vain waiting for the reappearance of the armed
ships, the little flotilla sailed for France, carrying Laudonnière and
the other fugitives, some of whom died on the voyage from wounds and
exposure.
The Spaniards had Fort Caroline, with one hundred and forty-two dead
heretics heaped about it and a splendid booty in armor, clothing, and
provisions--all the supplies lately brought by Ribaut from France.
Everybody has read how Menendez hanged his few prisoners on trees, with
the legend over them, "I do this not as to Frenchmen, but to Lutherans."
Meanwhile Ribaut and his ships had been blown down the coast, vainly
struggling to keep away from the reefs, and were finally wrecked, one
after another, at various distances to the south of St. Augustine.
Let us pass quickly over the remainder of this sickening story. One day,
after Menendez had returned to St. Augustine, Indians came in,
breathless, {95} with tidings that the crew of a wrecked vessel,
struggling northward, had reached an arm of the sea (Matanzas Inlet),
which they had no means of crossing. Immediately Menendez started out
with about sixty men in boats and met them.
The starving Frenchmen, deceived by his apparent humanity in setting
breakfast before them, surrendered, and, having been ferried over the
inlet in small batches, were led back into the sand-hills and butchered.
About two weeks later word was brought to Menendez of a second and larger
party of Frenchmen who had reached the same fatal spot. Ribaut himself
was among them. Not knowing of the horrible fate of his countrymen, he
tried to make terms with the Spaniards. While he was parleying with
Menendez, two hundred of his followers marched away, declaring that they
would rather take chances with the Indians than with these white men whom
they distrusted.
Ribaut, having surrendered with the remaining hundred and fifty, was led
away behind the sandhills and his hands were tied. Then he knew that he
had been duped, and calmly faced his doom. "We are of earth," he said,
"and to earth must return! Twenty years more or less matter little."
{96}
As before, the deluded Frenchmen were brought over in tens, led away,
tied, and, at a given signal, butchered.
Some twenty days later, Menendez received tidings of a third band of
Frenchmen, far to the southward, near Cape Canaveral. This was the party
that had refused to surrender with Ribaut. When he reached the place, he
saw that they had reared a kind of stockade and were trying to build a
vessel out of the timbers of their wrecked ship. He sent a messenger to
summon them to surrender, pledging his honor for their safety. Part
preferred to take the chance of being eaten by Indians, they said, and
they actually fled to the native villages. The rest took Menendez at his
word and surrendered, and they had no reason to regret it. He took them
to St. Augustine and treated them well. Some of them rewarded the pious
efforts of the priests by turning Catholics. The rest were no doubt sent
to the galleys.
Everybody is familiar with the story of the vengeance taken by Dominique
de Gourgues, a Gascon gentleman. Seeing the French court too supine to
insist upon redress, he sold his estate, with the proceeds equipped and
manned three small vessels, sailed to the coast of Florida and, {97} with
the assistance of several hundred Indians, who hated the cruel Spaniards,
captured Fort Caroline, slaughtered the garrison, hanged the prisoners,
and put up over the scene of two butcheries the legend, "Not as to
Spaniards, but as to traitors, robbers, and murderers."
Thus closed the last bloody act in the tragedy of French colonization in
Carolina and Florida. A long period--one hundred and thirty-four
years--was to pass before the French flag would again fly within the
territory now embraced in the Southern States.
[1] In "Pioneer Spaniards in North America," p. 79, it has been mentioned
that when Ponce de Leon fancied that he heard among the Indians of Porto
Rico a story of a fountain having the property of giving immortality,
this was because he had in his mind a legend that had long been current
in Europe. Sir John Maundeville went so far as to say that he had
visited these famous waters in Asia and had bathed in them. The legend
was, however, much older than Maundeville's time. In the "Romance of
Alexander the Great," which was very popular hundreds of years ago, it is
related that Alexander's cook, on one of his marches, took a salt fish to
a spring to wash it before cooking it. No sooner was the fish put into
the water than it swam away. The cook secured a bottle of the magic
water, but concealed his knowledge. Later he divulged his secret to
Alexander's daughter, who thereupon married him. Alexander, when he
learned the facts, was furious. He changed his daughter into a sea-nymph
and his cook into a sea-monster. Being immortal, undoubtedly they are
still disporting themselves in the Indian Ocean. For this story the
writer is indebted to Professor George F. Moore, D.D., of the Harvard
Divinity School.
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