Catchy title, eh?
I am deep, deep deep into research for a presentation this weekend. I’ll share more of the random fruit from that next week, but a hint:
When we think about European Catholic missions in the western hemisphere, we think mostly about Sout and Central America, California, and then the Jesuits in Canada and the northeast.
But there was also a “Camino Real” in Florida and south Georgia, with, for a time, dozens of missions from St. Augustine to (now) Tallahassee and up the coast to Parris Island.
It’s a fascinating history, but hard to retrieve because of the absence of physical evidence – stick and wattle structures don’t last as well as adobe and stucco, Florida humidity takes its toll – and because there really was no legacy outside of St. Augustine aside from place names.
(When the English took Florida, almost all of the Catholics left, natives and Spanish both.)
But here’s something:
Looking at the work of the Franciscans in Spanish Florida in the 16th-very early 18th century, we encounter the pioneering linguistic work of Fr. Francisco Pereja, who ministered among the natives, mostly in the coastal regions – Fort George Island north of Jacksonville – really just across from the Mayport Naval yards, as well as Cumberland Island.
Ministering among the Timucuan people, he was of course convinced of the necessity of learning their language. He learned it so well, he wrote four catechisms, a grammar and one confession aid. He wrote them, they were published in Mexico City and then presumably brought back to La Florida. By all accounts, the Timucuan learned to read and write quickly.
It’s fascinating. These are the oldest extant Native American texts north of Mexico, dating from the early 17th century.
A translation of the confession handbook is here. It offers a close look at various practices of the Timucuan – since they are considered superstitious and sinful.
Have you taken more tribute or other things from your vassals, more than you used to take or carry? Have you taken the daily wages of those that work for you? Have you occupied your vassals in some work and asked them to miss Mass? Have you made someone work without permission of the priest on a fiesta day? Without prayers by the sorcerer have you said that no one should open or go up to the storehouse? The new maize or other new fruits, have you said that it will not be eaten until the sorcerer tastes it first?
Have you arranged that someone be married according to the Indian ways without first giving notice to the parish priests? Have you consented that your slaves sleep together? Have you some [black female] slave or servant as your mistress? Have you consented that in your village someone bringing herbs pray words to the Devil with them?
Have you made some sorcerer look for something lost by the arts of the Devil?
After having eaten bear, have you said that you be given a drink from another shell, and that otherwise you will become sick?
What happened to these communities? Wiped out and driven out – in part by (as per usual) by disease, but also, in the case of these coastal areas, by the British coming down from the Carolinas, determined to rid the area of the Spanish and their native allies.
Charlotte was Both 