youtube/watch?v=jxGWnwL6KQM The mission of Santa Fé de Toloca was established around 1610 or 1612, as Franciscan missionaries prepared to expand into territory north and west of the Santa Fe River. The mission probably was founded by the Franciscan Father Martín Prieto, who had established the nearby San Francisco de Potano mission. Like other Spanish missions in Florida, Santa Fé de Toloca would have been established in or near an existing Timucua village, belonging either to the Potano or the Northern Utina tribe. A village site next to the mission archeological site may have been Cholupaha, visited by the de Soto Expedition in 1539. As with other Timucua villages that became part of the Spanish mission system in Florida, the Indians of Santa Fé were greatly affected by epidemics, including bubonic plague in 1613-1617, yellow fever in 1649, smallpox in 1653 and measles in 1659. The Timucua Indians, which may have numbered 200,000 before their first contact with Europeans, were reduced from a population of 20,000 to 25,000 late in the 16th century to about 2,000 to 2,500 by the middle of the 17th century. After a rebellion by the Western Timucua in 1656, the Spanish hanged a number of the Indian leaders, including the village chief of Santa Fé. The original mission site was abandoned sometime around the middle of the 17th century, probably after the Timucuan rebellion, and the mission was moved to a new, currently unknown, location. St. Augustine was dependent on food and other agricultural products from the missions, and on labor crews brought from the missions to the city. Timucua Province had originally stretched from the Atlantic coast westward to the border with Apalachee Province at the Aucilla River, and from what is now Marion County and the north end of Lake George on the St. Johns River northward into southern Georgia as far as the Altamaha River. As the Indian population closer to St. Augustine declined, the Spanish became increasingly dependent on corn and other agricultural supplies from Apalachee. Products from Apalachee reached St. Augustine by three different routes. One was completely overland, with Indians carrying everything on their backs, passing through Santa Fé. Products could also be taken to St. Marks on the Gulf of Mexico coast south of Apalchee, then carried by boat to Cofa at the mouth of the Suwanee River, thence up the Suwanee and Santa Fe Rivers to where the Santa Fe rose from its underground portion (at present-day River Rise Preserve State Park, near the Santa Fé mission), and then overland the rest of the way to St. Augustine. Finally, products could be carried by boat from St. Marks around the Florida peninsula to St. Augustine, bypassing all of the camino real, including the Santa Fé mission. After the Timucua rebellion of 1656, a number of missions were closed, and others were relocated closer to the camino real connecting St. Augustine to Apalachee Province. The remaining Timucua Indians were gathered into the relocated missions, which became waystations along the camino real. Gabriel Diaz Vara Calderón, Bishop of Cuba, who visited the Florida missions in 1674-75, described Santa Fe de Toloca as the principal Timucuan mission. More epidemics struck the relocated village in 1675 and 1686. Indians from other tribes were resettled in the village during the second half of the century. The village and mission were abandoned after English soldiers from the Province of Carolina and their Indian allies burned the village and the mission church on May 20, 1702, despite the defense offered by a small Spanish garrison and the local Indian militia.
Posted on: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 16:19:40 +0000