French Settlement of the Southeast

Sources

Florida. Warfare between Spain and France had spilled over into South America and the Caribbean, and both nations turned their attentions to the Southeast because it lay parallel to the route Spanish galleons followed on their return to Spain. French leaders knew of the legend of Chicora, and they zeroed in on the southern low country as the site for their next attempt to build a colony. In 1562 the Protestant leader Jean Ribault departed the port of Le Havre with two ships, a crew of experienced sailors, veteran soldiers, and a few noblemen. When they sighted Florida, they saw a land that had not been visited by Europeans for almost twenty years. Turning north, Ribault landed his party near present-day Jacksonville, where the region’s Mississippian population welcomed the newcomers. In return Ribault presented their chief with a blue robe decorated with the French fleur-de-lis. Seeing the gold jewelry worn by the Indians, which they had scavenged from shipwrecks, and mistaking tent caterpillars for silkworms, the French believed they had at last found the rich land of Chicora. Ribault spent the next several weeks coasting northward, trading with local people, and mapping the various bays and rivers. Charged with only exploring the region, he and his men nonetheless decided to build a settlement that they called Charlesfort at present-day Port Royal, South Carolina. When Ribault embarked for France, he left thirty men to guard the Huguenot paradise. The settlers, however, did not know how to feed themselves, and they soon became enmeshed in a relationship with a nearby chiefdom whereby they received food in exchange for goods such as beads, mirrors, cloth, and metal. But it was not enough. Famine begat internal strife, and the colonists were soon squabbling. By 1564 the men had had enough, and they decided to build a boat and sail back to France. The journey was hard; food ran low; and they cannibalized a crew member to survive, but just when the coast of France came into sight an English ship drew alongside the leaky vessel, and the captain seized the prisoners in the name of Queen Elizabeth I.

Voyage of Laudonnière. When Ribault returned to France, he found the Catholics and Huguenots once again at war, so he went to England to solicit support for Charlesfort. Queen Elizabeth I was sympathetic to the Protestant cause, but she decided to jail the Frenchman. Meanwhile, in France, René Goulaine de Laudonnière assumed charge of the Huguenot effort to found colonies, and in 1564 he and his crew set out for Florida. He sailed with three ships and a group of Huguenot gentlemen, common laborers, artisans, a few women, and a few free Africans. Laudonnière’s group landed near the site of Charlesfort, and a group of four hundred Indians came out to meet them. The train of conversation, one Frenchman wrote, centered on making an alliance:

“They sat down together and made signs expressing to Mr. de Laudonnière how happy they were that we had come . . . and that he should go to war with them against their enemies. . . .” The local Chief Saturnia, however, grew suspicious of the French, held negotiations with Laudonnière, and true to Native American diplomacy, persuaded the Frenchman to make the Fort Caroline settlement a tributary to his chiefdom and to provide it with military support should the need arise. Saturnia did not wait long to call on his new allies for their support in a war against a neighboring chiefdom, but Laudonnière dragged his feet and reneged on the deal he had made. Estranged from their native allies, unable to find any treasure, and lacking adequate food, the colonists grew dissatisfied. Three mutinies dissipated the colony’s resources and gave notice to the Spanish that the French were settled in their own backyard. Ribault, after his release from England, returned to the colony with several soldiers and an order to relieve Laudonnière, but he was unable to restore order to the colony. Shortly after his arrival the sails of a Spanish force led by Pedro Menéndez de Avilés appeared on the horizon. In late 1565 his troops exterminated the Huguenots, destroyed Fort Caroline, and continued their efforts to colonize Florida.

Sources

Charles E. Bennett, Laudonnière and Fort Caroline: History and Documents by Charles E. Bennett (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1964);

David B. Quinn, comp. and ed., New American World: A Documentary History of North America to 1612, Volume 2: Major Spanish Searches in Eastern North America: Franco-Spanish Clash in Florida (New York: Arno, 1979).