Pedro Menéndez de Avilés
Pedro Menéndez de Avilés (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈpeðɾo meˈnendeθ ðe aβiˈles]; Asturian: Pedro (Menéndez) d'Avilés; 15 February 1519 – 17 September 1574) was a Spanish admiral, explorer and conquistador from Avilés, in Asturias, Spain. He is notable for planning the first regular trans-oceanic convoys, which became known as the Spanish treasure fleet, and for founding St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565. This was the first successful European settlement in La Florida and the most significant city in the region for nearly three centuries.
St. Augustine is the oldest continuously inhabited, European-established settlement in the continental United States. Menéndez de Avilés was the first governor of La Florida (1565–74).[1] By his contract, or asiento, with Philip II, Menéndez was appointed adelantado and was responsible for implementing royal policies to build fortifications for the defense of conquered territories in La Florida and to establish Castilian governmental institutions in desirable areas.[2]
Early years[edit]
Pedro Menéndez de Avilés was born to an old noble family in the kingdom of Asturias. He was one of the younger sons of Juan Alonso Sánchez de Avilés, who had served the Catholic Monarchs in the war of War of Granada, and María Alonso y Menéndez Arango.[3] His parents had twenty children, and Pedro was still a child when his father died.
After Doña Maria remarried, Pedro was sent to live with a relative who promised to oversee his education. Pedro and his guardian did not get along, and he ran away from home. He was found six months later in Valladolid and taken back to his foster home. Eventually Menéndez entered the military and went off to fight in one of the wars with France. He served at sea in a small armada against the French corsairs who harassed the maritime commerce of Spain.
Later years[edit]
Menéndez traveled to southwest Florida, looking for his son. There he made contact with the Calusa tribe, an advanced maritime people, at what is now known as Charlotte harbor. He negotiated an initial peace with their leader, Carlos, which was solidified by Menéndez's marriage to Carlos's sister, who took the baptismal name Doña Antonia. The peace was uneasy, and Menéndez's use of his new wife as a hostage in negotiations with her people, as well as his negotiating with the Calusas' enemies, the Tocobagas, helped cause the decline of relations to all out war, which continued intermittently into the next century. Menéndez was unsuccessful in locating his son Juan.
Establishing a Spanish garrison of 200 men further up the coast, he sailed to what is today the Georgia coast making contact with the local Indians of St. Catherines Island[36] before returning to Florida, where he expanded Spanish power throughout southeastern Florida. His position as governor now secure, Menéndez explored the area and built additional fortifications. In 1567, he marched south and encountered the Ais (Jece) as he reached the Indian River near present-day Vero Beach. He returned to Spain in 1567[33] and was appointed governor of Cuba, in October of that year.[34]
In December 1571, Menéndez was sailing from Florida to Havana with two frigates when, as he tells it, "I was wrecked at Cape Canaveral because of a storm which came upon me, and the other boat was lost fifteen leagues further on in the Bahama Channel, in a river they call the Ais, because the cacique (chief) is so called. I, by a miracle reached the fort of St. Augustine with seventeen persons I was taking with me. Three times the Indians gave the order to attack me, and the way I escaped them was by ingenuity and arousing fear in them, telling them that behind me many Spaniards were coming who would slay them if they found them."[37] The Ais, like the Tequesta and Calusa tribes, proved hostile to Spanish settlement as war continued on and off until 1670.[38]
Menéndez later made contact with the less hostile Tequesta at their capital in El Portal (in what is now Miami) and was able to negotiate for three chieftains to accompany him to Cuba as translators to the Arawak. Although Menéndez left behind Jesuit missionaries Brother Francisco de Villareal and Padre Rogel in an attempt to convert the Tequesta to Roman Catholicism, the tribe were indifferent to their teachings. The Jesuits returned to St. Augustine after a year.
Menéndez voyaged to La Florida for the last time in 1571, with 650 settlers for Santa Elena, as well as his wife and family.[13][39] In August 1572, Menéndez led a ship with thirty soldiers and sailors to take revenge for the killing of the Jesuits of the Ajacán Mission in present-day Virginia.[40] At the end of his life, he was appointed as governor of Cuba shortly after his arrival. Menéndez died of typhus[41] at Santander, Spain, on 17 September 1574.