The Timucuan missions of Spanish Florida and the rebellion of 1656

In 1656, the mission frontier of Spanish Florida erupted into rebellion when Lucas Menendez, principal chief of the Timucua, ordered the murder of all secular Spaniards in the province. Half a century of missionization was abruptly shattered, and seven lay dead as a fortified Timucuan palisade was hurriedly constructed. New documentary evidence, combined with recent archaeological data, provides details of the process by which Timucua was gradually drawn into the colonial system centered in St. Augustine, and reveals the transformations and stresses which ultimately led to the rebellion. An overview of the region in the late precolumbian period provides a backdrop for early contacts between Spaniard and Indian during the sixteenth century. In the early seventeenth century, entire aboriginal societies were integrated into the developing colonial system by Franciscan missionaries, resulting in the incorporation of three regional provinces to form the Timucua mission province. Although an overview of this colonial system reveals only limited structural linkages between Indian and Spanish societies, the colonial labor system, including the yearly repartimiento labor draft, burden-bearing, and the Indian militia, introduced stresses which contributed to the gradual erosion of chiefly power. The unanticipated consequences of missionization—frontier raiding, flight from the labor draft, epidemics, and inter-provincial migration—resulted in major demographic transformations, further exascerbating an already devastating situation. Lucas Menendez ruled an increasingly disfunctional society, and when the chiefs themselves were ordered to carry burdens during a massive activation of the Indian militia, rebellion ensued. In the aftermath of the capture, trial, and execution or imprisonment of virtually the entire aboriginal leadership of Timucua, a massive program of population relocation transformed Timucua from a dispersed indigenous society into a chain of populated way-stations along the Spanish royal road. The Timucuan Rebellion ultimately represented the culmination of a jurisdictional struggle between aboriginal chiefs and the Spanish mililtary, and its failure only accelerated the integration of Timucua into the colonial system of Spanish Florida