Don Andrés de Pes—Santa Maria de Galva—Don Andres d’ Arriola—The
Resuscitation of Pensacola—Its Consequences.
In 1693, Don Andrés de Pes entered the Bay, but how long he remained, or
why he came, whether for examination of its advantages, from curiosity,
or necessity, to disturb its solitude and oblivion of one hundred and
thirty-three years, history does not say. But as a memorial of his
visit, he supplemented the name de Luna had given it with de Galva, in
honor of the Viceroy of Mexico; and thus, it comes into colonial history
with the long title of Santa Maria de Galva.
In 1696, three years after de Pes’ visit, Don Andrés d’ Arriola, with
three hundred soldiers and settlers, took formal possession of the
harbor and the surrounding country, which, to make effectual and
permanent, he built a “square fort with bastions” at what is now called
Barrancas, which he named San Carlos. As the beginning, or rather
reconstruction of a town named Pensacola, he erected some houses
adjacent to the fort. And there, too, was built a church, historically
the first ever erected on the shores of Pensacola Bay, but presumptively
the second; for it is hardly credible that the large settlement of de
Luna, embracing so many ecclesiastics, should have failed to observe the
universal custom of the Spaniards to build a church wherever they
planted a colony. Irresistible, therefore, is the inference that the
first notes of a church-bell heard within the limits of the United
States were those which rolled over the waters of Pensacola Bay and the
white hills of Santa Rosa from 1559 to 1562.
Having demonstrated that the settlement of de Luna was the original
Pensacola, that of Arriola was apparently the second, though actually
but a resuscitation of the colony of 1559; for the name, the people,
though not the same generation, and the place being one, mere lapse of
time should not be permitted to destroy the unity which may be so justly
attributed to the two settlements.
The inhabitants of the town having been largely recruited by malefactors
banished from Mexico, must be notched low in the scale of morals. But,
perhaps, in some instances at least, actions were then adjudged crimes
deserving banishment which might be deemed virtues in a more enlightened
age, and under free institutions; for under the despotic colonial
governments of Spanish America in that age to criticize the vices, or
censure the lawless edicts of a satrap, was a heinous offence, for which
transportation was but a mild punishment.
Originally, Spain’s dominion was asserted over the entire circle of the
shores of the Gulf of Mexico, as well as over all the islands which they
girdled. But upon the voyage of La Salle from the upper waters of the
Mississippi to the sea, France asserted a claim, under the name of
Louisiana, to the entire valley of the river from its spring-heads to
the Gulf, making to the extent of the southern limit of her claim, from
east to west, a huge gap in Spain’s North American empire.
But where were the eastern boundary of Louisiana, and the western limit
of Florida to be fixed? Had the French expedition under Iberville
reached Florida before Arriola’s, Pensacola would have been included in
Louisiana, and afterwards in the State of Alabama. But Arriola’s
settlement was first, in point of time; and it is to him must be
attributed the establishment of the Perdido as the boundary line between
the French and Spanish colonies, and the consequent exclusion of
Pensacola from the limits of the great State of Alabama, her political
influence, her fostering care, and, comparatively, from the vitalizing
influence of her vast mineral and agricultural resources.
The interest of history consists not in the mere knowledge or
contemplation of events as isolated facts, but in studying their
interrelations, and following their threads of connection through all
the meshes of cause and effect. It is, therefore, an interesting
reflection that the settlement of Arriola may not have been the
absolute, though it was the apparent, cause of the consequences above
pointed out. Behind it, in the shadow of a century and a third, may
perchance be discerned the ultimate and final cause of those
consequences in the settlement of de Luna. He planted the first colony,
and because he so did, Arriola settled his on that spot upon which the
lost chart and tradition probably coincided in fixing the Pensacola of
1559.
How illustrative of the truth that as one human life can have but one
beginning, so it is with that aggregate of human lives which we call a
people. “In the almighty hands of eternal God, a people’s history is
interrupted and recommenced—never.”[2]
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Footnote 2:
The last sentence of Guizot’s History of France.
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