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Date November 6 . 1989

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11 2555 University

 

 

 

This is to certify that the

dissertation entitled

A New Europe in the New WOrld:
Hierarchy, Continuity and Change in the
Spanish Sixteenth-Century Colonization of

Hispaniola and Florida

presented by

Russell Kent Skowronek

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

Ph.D.

degree in Anthropology

 

a jor professor

MS U i: an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution 0- 12771

 

PLACE IN RETURN BOX to retrieve this checkout from your record.
TO AVOID FINES return on or before date due.

  

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ll

A NEW EUROPE IN THE NEW WORLD:
HIERARCHY, CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN THE
SPANISH SIXTEENTH-CENTURY COLONIZATION OF

HISPANIOLA AND FLORIDA

BY

Russell Kent Skowronek

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Anthropology

1989

$045433

ABSTRACT

A NEW EUROPE IN THE NEW WORLD:
HIERARCHY,CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN THE
SPANISH SIXTEENTH-CENTURY COLONIZATION OF
HISPANIOLA AND FLORIDA

BY

Russell K. Skowronek

From 1492 through the first eight decades of the sixteenth
century, Spain explored, conquered and settled much of the
New World. Two of the colonies that were founded during
this period of expansion were Hispaniola and Spanish
Florida. These two colonial areas, similar in environment,
natural resources and aboriginal population, shared a
generalized or standardized Iberian culture. In spite of
these overt similarities, however, by 1580, Hispaniola and
Spanish Florida had come to play different roles in the
Spanish empire. This study explores how differing economic
roles affected the nature and form of the colonization
effort in Hispaniola and Spanish Florida. It is proposed
that Spanish settlements in the New World were not
invariably stamped out: instead they were shaped by a
combination of internal colonial constraints and external
systemic concerns which resulted in hierarchical, economic
relations within and between colonies in the empire. Using
archaeological data drawn from Old and New World sites and
documentary records, this study examines the nature of that

hierarchy, the processes of its creation, and its

Russell Kent Skowronek

manifestation in terms of settlement pattern and
composition. The study find that although the colonies
passed through similar diachronic stages of incorporation
into the empire, differences in economic focus affected
emigration, the colonist's ability to transform their
cultural and natural environment (beyond the veneer of a
generalized Iberian culture), and thus created a

hierarchical relationship with the homeland.

Copyright by
RUSSELL KENT SKOWRONEK
1989

For my family

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This thesis is the culmination of years of research and
much hard work. It has benefitted from the careful and
thought provoking comments of my committee, colleagues,
friends and family. I would like to take this opportunity
to thank many who helped make this possible.

Kenneth Lewis chaired my committee and guided me
through the "Frontier" to the product presented here. Ken's
clear thinking and precise observations were an invaluable
aid to me and will be a source of direction in the future.

Moreau Maxwell came out of retirement to read my thesis
and to share many insights on the "old days" of Illinois and
historical archaeology. I have benefitted from my contact
with him in countless ways.

Lawrence Robbins has been my mentor and source of
inspiration while at Michigan State. I will not forget his
considerate lessons.

Joseph Spielberg guided me through the tautology of
"hierarchy", and issues of problem formation while sharing a
jgig gg yivze for research, golf and music that I plan to
strive for.

Stanley South's contribution to my education is
manifest throughout this thesis. The friendship and

vi

professional relationship I have shared with Stan over the
past five years is one that I will always treasure. Our
discussions have been lively and always thought provoking.
I look forward to many more in the future.

Other faculty at Michigan State have had important
influences on my education that will not be forgotten.

These include Charles Cleland, William Lovis, Ann Millard,
Norm Sauer, Bernard Gallin and Helen Pollard. Thanks also
to Department Chair, Joseph Chartkoff, whose helpful
comments on my thesis and ideas for new plans will ensure a
future filled with challenges.

In addition to my committee and professors at MSU, I
wish to acknowledge the following learned professors who not
only readily extended thier friendship but their expertise
in their respective specialities.

Larry Conrad of Western Illinois University gave me my
introduction to archaeology at the Orendorf site. He has
been a tried and true friend through the years.

While I was at Florida State University, Kathleen
Deagan (now of the Florida State Museum) taught me the
nuances of historical archaeology and the intricacies of
Spanish colonial material culture. George Fischer
(NPS/SEAC ret.) showed me the value of maritime archaeology.
He and Nancy have been steadfast friends. Finally, there is
the late J. Leitch Wright, Professor of History. Dr. Wright
was an inspiration to me both while in the FSU History

program and in subsequent years. His fine scholarship,

vii

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or,

supportive words and generous kindness will never be
forgotten and will be a goal to emulate.

Friends and colleagues who have been instrumental in my
research and the maintenance of my sanity are many in
number. I wish to acknowledge from Tallahassee Charles Poe,
Barb Johnson, Herb Bump, Frank Gilson, and Bonnie McEwan. My
fellow pirate mates and golfing companions Richard "Old
Grog" Vernon and Rich Johnson were a powerful crew to
"Skowdog."

From Illinois Bob Swieringa and Janice and Darrell
Duensing have always been there when I needed them.

My oldest friend Charlie Ewen (B.A., M.A., Ph.D.,
C.S.A, B.G.P) of the Arkansas Archaeological Survey has been
a constant source of inspiration. I look forward to many
more decades of GREAT adventures with my pal.

While at MSU I have had the fortune and pleasure to
interact with many fine people. My room mate and golfing
buddy, Mark Esarey, saved me on the computer and has been a
steadfast friend. Phil Franz, Dean Anderson and Kim and
Steve McBride made me feel welcome when I first arrived in
East Lansing. Jim Robertson and I shared the pool and
departmental experiences that will never be forgotten. Mike
Hambacher and Bev Smith have been good companions.

There is a special place in my heart for Katie Egan,
Carol Goland (of UM) and Peg Holman. They have listened
countless times to my endless ramblings and have been

supportive through it all.

viii

Patty Whittier served perhaps the most significant role
in this rite of passage. She served as my friend, sounding
board and translator for my twisted prose. There is no
doubt in my mind that without her consultation and editting
this thesis would have been years more in the mill.

Support for this research was supplied from many
quarters. These sources include: Lester and Helen
Skowronek; Sigma Xi Grants-in-aid of Research; Herman Smith
and the Corpus Cristi Museum for housing: the Stan South
Fellowship for Wayward Graduate Students provided travel
money: C. Kurt Dewhurst, Director and the MSU Museum for
graciously supplying office and lab space, in addition to a
cordial relationship through the years; and the Michigan
State University Department of Anthropology for various
forms of support during my stay in East Lansing.

Finally, I want to thank my family. My ninety-five
year old grandmother (Mary Sroka Wyszpolski) has always had
faith in me. Mom and Dad, Helen and Lester Skowronek, have
been my biggest fans and have kept me going emotionally and
financially from the day I was born. My sister, Leslie J.
Skowronek, has been generous without exception in sharing
her time, home and love. Geoff, my brother, and his family
have always been kind. Walter and Dorothy Graham are the
best in-laws a man could have, their love and support has
been instrumental in the completion of this project. It's
great being part of their family.

Last, but certainly most important is Peg Graham.
Thank you for always being there and helping me. Without

ix

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you at my side this project would have been meaningless.
Now I look forward to crossing the next hill together.
The ideas and opinions presented in this dissertation

are the responsibility of the author.

RKS
East Lansing
November 1989

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Tables. ......... . .......................... .....xv

List of Figures..... ....... . ............... ............xvi

Chapter 1
Introduction

Problem............................................1
Variables Influencing the Problem..................3
Theoretical Orientation............................4
What Follows.......................................7
Significance...... ....... .... .......... ............8

Chapter 2
Approaches to the Past
Theoretical & Methodological Underpinnings

Introduction............................ ......... .10
Hierarchy and the World Economy...................11
Cosmopolitan Frontiers and Neo-Europes............12
Factors Influencing Colonial Expansion............16
Environment..................................16
Aboriginal Population........................17
Larger Systemic Concerns.....................18
Configurations of Cosmoplitan Colonization........19
A Hierarchy of Function...........................26
Methodology.......................................28
Introduction.................................28
The Data..........................................3O
Documentary..................................30
Archaeological...............................32
Propositions and Data.............................33
What Follows................. .......... ......37

Chapter 3
The Old World Heritage:
Old Spain in the 15th and 16th Centuries

IntrOduction O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 3 9
EnVironment O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 4 0
Population, Communication and Settlement ........ ..45

xi

Settlement Pattern and Function..............47
Communication..................... ........ ...48
Settlement Size..............................53
Central Place and Economic Focus..................56
The Spanish Town.............................61
Ethnicity, nationalism and Class..................70
The Material Counterparts of Hierarchy.. ....... ...74
Summary................................... ..... ...79

Chapter 4
Hispaniola

Introduction......................................80
Environment.......................................81
Native Population.................................87
The Spanish Colony...............................100
Phase I..........................................101
Prelude -- 1492-1493........................101
Phase II.........................................104
Barter and Plunder--1493-1502...............104
Phase III........................................108
Imperial Imposition to Plantation, 1502-20..108
Phase IV.........................................117
Plantation, Contraction and Stabilization...117
Summary..........................................123

Chapter 5
Spanish Florida

Introduction.................. ....... ............127
Environment................... ................. ..129
The Aboriginal Inhabitants. .............. ........136
The European Colony................ ..... .........151
Phase I..........................................152
Prelude, 1502-1562..........................152
Phase II.........................................157
Plunder and Imperial Competition, 1562-65...157
Phase III........................................159
Imperial Imposition and Expansion, 1565-76..159
Phase IV.........................................164
Contraction and Stabilization, 1577-87......164
Summary..........................................172

Chapter 6
Bridging the Gap: From the Documentary Ideal
to the Material Reality

Introduction.....................................175
The Documentary Record...........................175
Predictions from the Past........................178
The Propoostions ..........................179

No. 1..................................179

xii

No. 2..................................179

No. 3..................................180

No. 4..................................185

No. 5..................................187

No. 6.......................... ...... ..189

No. 7..................................190

No. 8..................................191

Bridging the Gap.................................194
The Archaeological Record........................195
Introduction................................195
Spain.......................................197
Shipwrecks..................................198
Hispaniola.......................................200
Santo Domingo...............................200
Puerto Real.......... ...... .................201
Spanish Florida..................................202
Santa Elena.................................202

St. Augustine...............................203
Summary..........................................204

Chapter 7
Extracting Meaning from Pattern: Comparing the Colonies

Introduction......................... ..... .......205
Archaeological Evidence.. ...... .. ......... .......206
Ceramics................... ....... ...............208
Testing the Hypotheses...........................210
Introduction................................210
Proposition 3- The creation of Neo-Europes..210
Discussion..................................214
Proposition S-The role of the aborigianl
population.............................215
Discussion..................................217
Proposition 8 -- The Colonization Gradient..219
Hispaniola..................................219
Discussion..................................224
Spanish Florida.............................225
Discussion..................................229
Systemic Hierarchy and the Colonization Gradient.230
Introduction................................230
The Systemic Gradient... ..... ...............230
Discussion............. ........ .............240

Chapter 8
Summary and Conclusions

IntrOductionOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO243
Modeling Sixteenth Century Spanish Colonization..244

NCO 1000 OOOOOOOO OOOO OOOO OOOOO O O O OO OO OOOOOOO O244
NOO 2000OOOOO OOO OOO O OOOOOO OOO O OOOO OO OO OO O O O O24s
NCO 3000 OOOO O OO O O OOO OOO O OO O OO O O OO O OO O O O O OOO O246

NOO 4000OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO247

No. 5000OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOO OOOOO248

xiii

No. 6000O OOOOOOOOO O OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOO

NOO 7000OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

No. 8000OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Reevaluating the Theoretical Base..............
De Omnibus Dubitandum--

Guidelines for Future Research ....... .....
Appendices
Appendix A
Bafios de la Reina Mora Ceramics ................
Appendix B
ILQLaOf1554 ceramiCSOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Appendix C
Convento de San Francisco Ceramics.............
Appendix D
Puerto Real, Building A, Ceramics ..... ... ..... .
Appendix E
Puerto Real, Area 35 Ceramics..... .............
Appendix F
Puerto Real, Locus 19 Ceramics ............... ..
Appendix G
Santa Elena Ceramics by Project ............ ....
Appendix H
St. Augustine Ceramics.... ........ .............

List Of ReferenceSOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

xiv

..249
..249
..250
..252

..254

..256

..258

..259

..260

..261

O .262

..263

..265

..266

a‘h.

Table
Table

Table

Table

1.
2O

LIST OF TABLES

Ceramic Frequency by Area......................212
Hispaniola Frequency of Ceramic Groups by
Settlement....................................;222
Spanish Florida Frequency of Ceramic Groups

by Settlement..................................228
Ceramic Frequency and Systemic Hierarchy.......232

Figure
Figure
Figure
Figure
Figure
Figure
Figure
Figure
Figure
Figure
Figure
Figure
Figure
Figure
Figure
Figure
Figure
Figure

Figure

Figure
Figure

Figure
Figure

Figure
Figure

Figure
Figure

Figure
Figure

Figure
Figure
Figure
Figure
Figure

1.
2.
3.

5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.

19.

20.
21.

22.
23.

24.
25.

26.
27.

28.

29.

30.
31.
32.
33.
34.

LIST OF FIGURES

The Spanish Empire in 1580.....................2
Stages in Settlement Pattern-~Prelude.........20
Stages in Settlement Pattern--Fixation........21
Idealized Sequence of Transport Development...22
Physical Geography of Iberia..................41
Iberian Kingdoms in the 15th Century..........46
The Road Network of Roman Iberia..............49
The Road Network of Iberia in 1546............50
Sixteenth Century Spanish Cities..............54
The Spanish European Empire in 1550...........58
Layout of Spanish Old and New World Cities....65
The Caribbean Basin...........................82
Hispaniola-- Landforms........................83
Aboriginal Populations in the Caribbean Basin.90
Aboriginal Provinces of Hispaniola............92
Arawak Cazicazgos as Perceived by the Spanish.94
Phase I -- Prelude, 1492.....................103
Phase II-Barter and Plunder/Commercial Outpost,
1493-1502....................................105
Phase III-- Imperial Imposition to Plantation,
1503-1520....................................110
Santo Domingo's Grid Plan in 1586............111
Route of the Spanish Convoy System A "Main
Street"......................................116
Spanish and Portuguese America in 1580.......118
Phase IV--Plantation, Contraction and
Stabilization, 1520-70.......................120
The Area of Spanish Florida..................128
Some Aboriginal Cultures and Towns in Spanish
Florida......................................139
Phase I -- Prelude, 1502-1562................154
Phase II -- Plunder and Imperial Competition,
1562-1565....................................158
Phase III -- Imperial Imposition and Expansion,
1565-1576....................................162
Phase IV—-Contraction and Stabilization,
1576-1587....................................165
The Town Plan of St. Augustine, 1586.........168
Ceramic Frequency by Area....................213
Ceramic Frequency by Settlement--Hispaniola..221
Ceramic Frequency by Settlement--Florida.....227
Ceramic Frequency and Systemic Hierarchy.....233

xvi

11-

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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

P o em

From 1492 through the first eight decades of the
sixteenth century, Spain explored, conquered and settled
most of the New World (Figure 1). Two of the colonies that
were founded during this eighty-year period of expansion
were Hispaniola and Spanish Florida. These two colonial
areas, similar in environment, natural resources and
aboriginal population, shared a generalized or standardized
Iberian culture (Foster 1960). These general cultural
traits are a distillation of the colonists' range of Old
World experiences through which they sought to create a
social and material facsimile of their Iberian homeland -- a
"Nee-Europe (Crosby 1986)."

In spite of these similarities, however, by 1580,
Hispaniola and Spanish Florida had come to play radically
different roles in the Spanish empire. This study seeks to
explore how differing economic roles affected the nature and
form of the colonization effort in Hispaniola and Spanish
Florida by measuring differences rather than similarities.
It is proposed that Spanish settlements in the New World

1

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3
were not identical across the empire; instead they were
shaped by a combination of internal colonial constraints and
external systemic concerns which resulted in a dynamic
hierarchical economic relationship within and between
colonies in the empire. This study examines the nature of
that hierarchy, the processes of its creation, and its
manifestation in terms of settlement pattern and
composition. The study finds that although the colonies
passed through similar diachronic stages of incorporation
into the empire, differences in economic focus affected
emigration, and the colonists' ability to transform their
cultural and natural environment beyond a standardized
veneer, and thus created a hierarchical relationship with

the homeland.

Variables Influencing the Problem

The sixteenth century in Europe marked the beginning of
the modern, European-centered, world economy. Based on the
creation of a world-wide division of labor and the formation
of bureaucratic state machineries in Europe, its focus was
on the bulk movement of exotic commodities from peripheral
production areas to the European core or motherland. In the
sixteenth century, mercantilism colored the nascent world
economic system in its demand to capture and monopolize
these peripheral production areas for the aggrandizement and
benefit of specific states (Wallerstein 1974:3-63; Wolf
1982:77-88). Colonies that supply commodities to the

motherland or that protect these enterprises are termed

 

 

4
cosmopolitan because of the greater frequency of their
outside commercial contact and their close political ties to
the motherland (Steffen 1980:xii-xiv). These ties are
close because their maintenance insures colonial produce
will flow to and thus, be beneficial to the mother country
alone.

Identifying the variables that influenced the
cosmopolitan colonial settlement of Hispaniola and Spanish
Florida requires an understanding not only of the natural
and cultural histories of these areas but also of Spain.
Spanish homeland adaptations to the Iberian environment, the
ability to identify and exploit natural resources, and
experiences with minorities in the Old World combine with
larger systemic concerns to color the nature and form of New
World colonization and settlement. Only by considering
these aspects of Spanish culture against the larger milieu
of the nascent European-centered world economy can Spanish

New World experiences be evaluated.

Theoretical Orientation

The effect of the physical expansion of the European-
centered world economy on Europe, its emigrants and the
indigenous populations encountered outside of Western Europe
have been the focus of anthropological, geographical,
historical and sociological investigation for nearly a
century (e.g., Lewis 1984; Steffen 1980; Turner 1893).
Collectively known as Frontier Studies, this research

initially focused exclusively on descriptions of European

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5
adaptations to specific colonial situations (e.g., Bolton
1964; Leyburn 1935). More recently, Frontier Studies have
attempted to be more explanatory and predictive in their
treatment of European adaptations and aboriginal
acculturation during the early modern era (e.g., Crosby
1986; Lewis 1984; Meinig 1986; Spicer 1962; Steffen 1980).

This study draws on many of the theoretical constructs
that pertain to cosmopolitan frontier colonization. In this
analysis of early modern colonial expansion, Steffen (1980:
xiii-xix) related the extractive economic activities of
ranching, mining and trading activities in North America to
cosmopolitan colonization because they supplied desired
commodities, such as hides, precious metals and furs, to the
motherland. Lewis (1984:264-268) identified exploitative
plantations, military frontiers and transportation frontiers
to the North American experience. These activities are
related in their direct and indirect functions of providing
and protecting, at the lowest cost, desired products to the
mercantile economy of the motherland.

In this study, these extractive (ranching, mining,
trading, exploitative plantations) and protective (military
and transportation) economic activities are also seen to
characterize fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Spanish
cosmopolitan colonization of the Americas. Henry Dobyns'
(1980:9-20) work on the Spanish New World frontier
recognized a variety of colonial settlement types which
characterize these economic activities. These include

multi-functional "colonial cities and mining-administrative

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6
cities" and unifunctional "inns, charcoal making camps,
ranches, presidios and gncomigndas."

Understanding how and why these and other settlement
types and economic activities vary within and between the
colonial areas of Hispaniola and Florida is the subject of
this study. To evaluate these differences and similarities
requires evidence that is representative of the target study
era. Archaeological and documentary information are
appropriate to the examination of this problem. By using
both these complementary and non-exclusive data sets a more
accurate and unbiased view of the areas may be discerned.
Because these cosmopolitan colonies were established for the
economic benefit of Spain, there is documentary evidence
about exported commodities, defense expenditures, and port
activities that can suggest the amount of contact and value
of a colonial area (Chaunu and Chaunu 1956; Hoffman 1980).
The documentary material does, however, contain certain
biases. The information it provides is, by and large,
limited to the world of law, trade and commerce. Where it
is concerned with the details of everyday life, that concern
is generally limited to the lives of the elite.

Archaeological evidence counteracts this bias by
equally considering the material remains of the entire
population. Historical and Maritime archaeology are useful
tools in this study because they consider equally the
strengths and limitations of both material and documentary
lines of evidence that relate to communication, subsistence,

technology and exchange. By integrating these complementary

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lines of evidence much bias is removed from the evidence and
a more accurate evaluation of the causes for differences in
economic trajectory and settlement can be made (Muckelroy

1978:4-10).

W o ws

In the following seven chapters we explore how the
differing economic roles affected the nature and form of the
Spanish colonization effort in Hispaniola and Florida.

Chapter 2, "Approaches to the Past, Theoretical and
Methodological Underpinnings," develops the eight
propositions that are used to examine the thesis' problem.
Here, the kinds of documentary and archaeological data used
in the study are presented.

Next, Chapter 3, "The Old World Heritage:Old Spain in
the 15th and 16th Centuries," examines Spanish culture and
settlement on the Iberian peninsula. This information
provides the baseline against which the observed New World
phenomena are compared.

Chapters 4 and 5, "Hispaniola" and "Spanish Florida,"
examines the documentary record pertaining to the origin and
development of the two colonies. In each colonial area,
consideration is given to the environment and natural
resources and, the nature and culture of the aboriginal
inhabitants. The Spanish presence in both areas is
chronicled from discovery through settlement.

Chapter 6, "Bridging the Gap: From the Documentary

Ideal to the Material Reality," uses the information from

8
Chapters 3, 4, and 5 to examine the propositions presented
in Chapter 2. Although, most of the propositions are
explored through the documentary data, some of the
propositions, require examination in the material record.
For these propositions, hypotheses that are testable in the
archaeological record are derived. The archaeological sites
and artifacts used in this study are also discussed here.

In Chapter 7, "Extracting Meaning from Pattern:
Comparing the Colonies," archaeologically-derived data is
used to examine the propositions in both colonies'
settlements and between the colonies and Spain.

Last, Chapter 8 " Summary and Conclusions,"
discusses the findings of the thesis and presents some ideas

for future research.

Significance
The Columbian Quincentennial is less than three years
aWay. Archaeological research on the nature of Spanish
CRDlonial settlement has thus far been limited to site
‘SIDecific studies and general histories with little
‘ZCDnsideration for the systemic implications of colonialism
airIdsubsequent economic trajectory and development. By
cEomparing contemporary colonies within the same colonial
sYstem and controlling for the variables that influence
E3C=omomic focus, this study takes the first step toward a
ul"Aifying predictive model for Spanish cosmopolitan
CuDlonization and its varied manifestations throughout the

ehmdre. Such a model goes beyond the general hype of the

RV

I'D

9
Quincentennial by guiding future research on cultural
process and change. But, to reach that plateau, we must
understand the state of knowledge that affects our

approaches to the problem.

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CHAPTER 2

APPROACHES TO THE PAST
THEORETICAL & METHODOLOGICAL UNDERPINNINGS

Introduction
In 1960, George Foster coined the term "conquest
culture" to apply to the shared cultural traits
characteristic of those areas that had comprised the Spanish
colonial empire in the New World. These shared traits, were
in his view the "crystallization," distillation, or.
standardization of the colonists' range of Old World
experiences (Deagan 1983:66-67; Foster 1960:233). Based on
this view of modern Latin America, archaeologists developed
and successfully tested the hypothesis that, from its
.beginning, the Spanish colonial experience throughout the
bhew World was generally similar (Deagan 1983:221; Ewen 1987;
McEwan 1988) .

This study does not dispute the general trends
I=‘€=:cognized by these researchers but seeks to refine them.
Tl'le thesis presented here recognizes that while Spanish
$3Eittlements in the New World shared an overt generalized
ItDerian culture, their economic roles were quite different.
These colonies were shaped by a variable combination of

iJaternal colonial constraints and external concerns, which

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11
resulted in a dynamic hierarchical relationship within and
between colonies in the empire. This hierarchy reflects
functional differences between settlements and the
relationships between them as part of a larger system.

The goal of this study is to define the nature of that
relationship and, ultimately, its limits by measuring the
extent of these similarities within and between the distinct
colonial areas of Hispaniola and Florida in the sixteenth-
century Spanish empire. The differences that are revealed
reflect the hierarchy of economic relationships within

colonies and between colonies and the motherland.

Hierarchy and the World Economy
The complex societies of sixteenth-century Western
Europe were set apart from their predecessors by their
growing economic linkages beyond the political and cultural
boundaries of the region. This nascent "European-centered
world economy" was established first on the importation of
luxury items and later on bulk produce (Wallerstein 1974:15-
63). The basis of this "world economy" was the European
"core" states' economic capture and/or political control of
"peripheral" areas that produced these desired commodities.
In this system, the inherently unequal economic
lrelationships of producers and consumers that characterized
tfliese complex societies were forcefully extended, through
<=c>lonialism and imperialism, to include a growing periphery
<31? producers for the elite consumers of the core (Bartel

‘J~$38O:15-19: Wallerstein 1974:67-129,301-344; Wolf 1982:83-

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12
88,101-157). From the point of view of Europe, the colonies
existed primarily to produce commodities for European
consumers, to facilitate their transport, or to defend the
sources of the commodities (Steffen 1980:xii-xviii).

This economy was inherently hierarchical, with elite
consumers at one end, producers at the other and various
sorts of middlemen between. Thus, it is hypothesized that
not all colonies or colonial areas occupied the same level
in the hierarchy; that is, although all colonies might be
part of the "periphery," there was hierarchy within the
periphery. Here, the colonial hierarchy is defined in terms
of the value and amount of commodities exported from each
colonial area. Thus, those areas that exported large
volumes of valued commodities ranked highest in this
hierarchy of the system's periphery. In the case of Spain's
sixteenth-century colonial empire, this hierarchy should be
discernible in comparisons between the colonies of Florida
and Hispaniola because they played different economic roles

in the system.

Cosmopolitan Frontiers and Neo-Europes

Settlements in colonial areas may be characterized by
emphases on particular activities. Production activities
Such as ranching, lumbering, mining, plantations and fur
trading (Hardesty 1985:213-214; Steffen 1980:xiii-xv), were

the high-profile, lucrative aspects of the colonial
£2Interprise. These settlements were protected and supported

1:8)? the military, mission and transport activities (Lewis

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13
1984:264-268) that characterized various settlements. The
unequal economic relationship that characterized the core
societies were accentuated in their colonial extensions.
The "peripheral" colonies that produced goods for the
markets of "core" consumers or were central to transport
enjoyed a higher frequency of commercial contact with the
motherland than did those whose role was more "protective."
Thus, because the nascent World economy was based on
mercantilism, colonies that produced desired commodities for
the motherland attracted a constant stream of merchant
vessels. Colonies that produced no exportable goods did not
attract merchants and, as such their outside contact was
limited to infrequent sailings of supply ships.

A cosmopolitan colonial area's position in the economic
hierarchy of a colonial system was, closely related to its
function in the system. Here, this systemic function is
defined in terms of the production of desired commodities.
Thus, those colonies that produce a greater value of goods
than was expended on defense, transportation and
,proselytizing was more valued by the motherland and enjoyed
sareater contact and colonization. Those colonies, on the
(other hand, whose returns failed to outweigh expenditures

Eittracted fewer colonists and enjoyed less contact with the
Incither country. While the economic role of these colonies
€353 "protective" complemented that of more "productive"

5’1?€eas, their value to the motherland and, thus, their

i5)<>ssition in the colonial hierarchy of the system, was low.

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This study examines the Spanish sixteenth-century
colonies of Florida and Hispaniola to determine whether
these colonies produced revenues or profits in excess of the
icosts of supporting their associated governmental, religious
and military infra-structure. Colonies that do will be
considered "productive" and, therefore, of greater value to
the motherland.

Even with variable economic contact, the focus of both
"productive" and "protective" colonies was on the
motherland. This tethered the colonies closely to the
political and social demands of the motherland and created
what Steffen has called a "cosmopolitan frontier" (1980:xii-
xiii). Thus, even in these physically remote, peripheral
settings, the view of the inhabitants was "cosmopolitan" and
focused outward on the "core" or mother country. A hallmark
of this outward view was the creation of societal and
ecological "Neo-Europes" (Crosby 1986:146-149). By
importing animals, plants and material aspects of the Old
World, the colonists attempted to transform or standardize
'their new environment into a facsimile of their cosmopolitan
:ideal (Crosby 1986:172; Hardesty 1985:214). While this
1:ransformation was most successful in temperate areas, which

were climatically more similar to Europe, the transformation

C>13 the tropical environment was successful enough to attract
{£3<31:manent settlers (Crosby 1986:6,134,172-194). In Spanish
Aluerica this transformation is apparent in Foster's (1960)

cchcept of "Conquest Culture" in which he notes a regional

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homogeneity in settlement plan, architecture, foodways and
other cultural traits.

In European cosmopolitan colonization, the economic
position of any area plays an important role in the
settlers' ability to alter the new setting into an
acceptable replication of the motherland. This ability to
create Neo-Europes can be accomplished by physically
altering the environment of the area and/or by importing
material goods in a finished form directly from the Old
World. Thus, those areas that produce more desired goods
for the core, enjoy greater contact with the motherland.
They are able to attract a more demographically balanced
European population and are thus able to better replicate
"Europe" than are areas with less contact. Therefore, the
ability of a cosmopolitan colonial area to superficially
transform itself into a "Neo-Europe" can be seen as a
reflection of the success of the colony in the commercial
system of the founding state.

In Spanish Florida and Hispaniola the ability to create
a "Neo-Europe" or "Neo-Spain" was related to the amount of

(zommercial contact the colonies enjoyed with the mother

country. Here, it was expected that the higher valued
COlony would be better able to replicate the Old World.
lrllrthermore, given the focus of this study on the European
‘33<13erience, it should be possible to identify the Old World

aritecedents for these idealized "Neo-Europes."

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In the last two decades, studies of frontier expansion
have striven to be more explanatory and predictive by
exploring the processes involved in colonial formation
(e.g., Hardesty 1985; Lewis 1984; Meinig 1986; Taaffe et al.
1963). A hallmark of these studies is the recognition of
the European-centered world economy as the prime mover for
colonization (Wallerstein 1974). Yet, as has already been
proposed, the functions and hierarchical positions of
colonies varied. The type of colony that developed and the
colonial culture that evolved in these peripheral areas were
the result of not only economic contact with the motherland
(external systemic concerns) but also of internal colonial
constraints which included the initial contact and
subsequent European interactions with the environment and
the aboriginal occupants of the area (e.g., Bilsky 1980;

Meinig 1986:65-76; Taaffe et al. 1963:503-505).

Environment
The environment (including natural resources, climate
and landforms) was important in determining the
Iiistoric/economic development of colonial areas. It must be
Imemembered that the reason for cosmopolitan colonization was
‘tflfie production of non-competitive commodities for the
motherland and her segment of the European-centered world
€3<=<3nomy. Areas that bore proven sources of precious metals,
‘rlEiCi.stands of exotic desired timber, were rich in fur-

lbearing wild animals, or possessed climates conducive to the

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plantation planting of desired exotic tropical plants, such
as sugar cane, were powerful magnets for colonists (Gray
1976:124-133). Of course, the simple presence of some or
all of these resources was not sufficient. We must also
consider the technological capacity to exploit the resources
economically (e.g. Bilsky 1980:3,12; Blakewell 1987; Cipolla
1976).

In this study, the environmental potential of
Hispaniola and Spanish Florida is considered against the
technological capacity to exploit these resources. These
considerations and the Old World experiences of the
colonists help account for differences in the economic roles
of the colonial areas of Hispaniola and Spanish Florida and
underscore Spain's ability to transform the new, and
sometimes hostile, environment into a "standardized, Neo-

Europe" (Crosby 1986; Hardesty 1985:214).

Aboriginal Population

Since the Roman empire, colonists have dealt with
aboriginal populations in three main ways: eradication,
assimilation, or exclusion (Augelli 1962; Bartel 1980:15-18;
Bilsky 1980:3,12: Crosby 1972; Service 1955). This study
rather than focusing on changes in aboriginal culture
focuses on how the New World experience affected European
culture. Although others (e.g., Deagan 1983) have discussed
‘the creation of mestizo communities, the concern here is on
VHIat situations led to change and adaptation in European

CNllture and how these acculturative processes varied across

 

18
the economic hierarchy of empire. In the case of Spanish
Florida and Hispaniola, the degree of change wrought by the
local indigenous population will be related to the colony's

position in the colonial hierarchy.

Larger Systemic Concerns

In studying the growth of a system of overseas
colonies, many researchers consider either only a specific
colony (e.g., Deagan 1983) or the colonial experience in
general (e.g., Lang 1975; McAlister 1984). If, however,
cosmopolitan colonization is considered as an economic and
political extension of a state-level society, it is
necessary to understand the motherland and her colonies as a
whole, including European rivalries and cultural norms. The
case of Britain's colony of 1587 on North Carolina's Outer
Banks illustrates the importance of understanding the
relationship between a mother country and her periphery.
The Outer Banks colony was "lost" when the arrival of the
Great Armada of 1588 off the coast of England broke
"cosmopolitan" commercial contact with the colony (Foss
1974). Thus, what the mother country needed and what
happened at home or in "more" valued (i.e., productive)
colonies often dictated the fate of a colonial area. With
this issue in mind, a review of the cultural and economic
conditions that characterized fifteenth and sixteenth-
Century Spain is as necessary to the understanding of
<SOlonial Hispaniola and Florida as a detailed account of the

COlonies themselves .

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During the past twenty years, researchers have studied
the physical development stages of modern European
colonization of the Americas and Africa and proposed models
that are useful for comparisons. This study uses the work
of Meinig (1986) and Taaffe et al. (1963). Meinig's (1986)
model for the colonization of North America refers to a
presettlement or "Prelude" phase and a settlement or
"Fixation" phase (65-76). The Prelude phase (Figure 2) is
characterized by exploration, gathering, bartering and
plundering while the Fixation phase (Figure 3) involves the
establishment of permanent political and commercial enclaves
and the subsequent settlement of the colony's hinterlands
for the purpose of producing non-competitive goods for the
motherland. This study uses Meinig's model to examine the
historical characteristics of the incorporation of
Hispaniola and Florida as part of Spain's colonial periphery
and to outline the similarities and differences between the
two colonies from their discovery through the sixteenth
century. How were the development phases affected by the
aboriginal, environmental and systemic factors discussed
above?

The work of Taaffe et al. (1963) derives from research
on the nineteenth-century cosmopolitan colonies of Ghana and
Nigeria and is concerned with the geographical configuration
of settlement within a cosmopolitan colony.

This model (Figure 4) begins during Meinig's (1986)

'U?ixation" phase of the "Commercial Outpost." In stage "A"

20

 

PR ELU D E
AMERICA ATLANTIC EUROPE

occidental
momentary
contact with
small coastal

speculators
from small parts
in search of
information;

 

    

 

 

bands; new new perceptions.
perceptions.
casual mariners and
seasonal fisherman from
contact along provincial ports;
seaboard; extension of
little routine activities.
impact.
sporadic "’1“ 'I """ ‘ j f'}-"Z"‘ ",iiij speculative merchants
intermittent " ' ' H ' - and brigonds; testing
contact; of goods, costs, markets,
occasional little impact.
conflict,-
new
diseases; .
shallow
impact.
BARTER & PLUNDER
Figure 2.

Stages in Settlement Pattern -- “Prelude" (Meinig 1986:67)

(Reproduced by permission of Yale University Press)

 

 

 

 

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21

 

 

 

AMERICA

fixed point of
contact with
tributary area;
economic change,
social impact;

FIXATION

ATLANTIC

    

EUROPE

commercial company
from maior port;
assignment of agents,
commitment to overseas
investment, extension

spread of of markets.
diseases. T s
\
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formal territorial
claim; capital
town with
governor's house,
garrison, church;
sustained contact,
subordination,
culture change. 'r

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OUTPO ST

IMPERIAL

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

state and church
asserting Formal
claims from capital
city; assignment of
officials and agents
as colonial soiourners;
allocation of national
resources.

 
  
 
  
 
 

 

 

lM P 0 5 IT I O N

colonists ' ’ ' " 7' " : recruitment of colonists;
create exiles, bondsmen, refugees,
expanding landseekers, speculators;
settlement I — —' ties of kith and kin across
district; the ocean; provisioning
pressure on / industries; processing
native population; ‘— and marketing of
European domestic t. \ American! exports.
staples, specialized
exports. l / I

o— I

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PLANTATION “ I
Figure 3.

Stages in Settlement Pattern -- "Fixation" (Meinig 1986:68)

(Reproduced by permission of Yale University Press)

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IDEAL-TYPICAL SEQUENCE OF
TRANSPORT DEVELOPMENT

 

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Complete Interconnection

 

 

       

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C P GIOGII I‘V.|§Y. ma F Mm“ SW“

 

 

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Idealized Sequence of Transport Development

(Taaffe et al. 1963:504) (Reproduced by permission of
'The American Geographical Society)

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of Taaffe et al.'s model there are many ports competing for
the wealth of the interior. Those ports that enjoy easy
access to interior resources established lines of
communication around hostile environments (B). Along these
lines, new settlements are founded that can more efficiently
exploit the wealth of the hinterlands (C). Through time (D-
E) communication lines connect and new settlements are
founded. Certain interior settlements take on new functions
and relations with the other settlements of the hinterland.
These local service centers receive and distribute goods,
information, and innovation from the main port or entrepot
to other, less activity diverse settlements. Finally, (F)
the most efficient line of communication gains ascendancy as
the high priority main street, corridor, or trunk line over
which the bulk of the most valuable exports flow (Whebell
1969:3). The entrepot, or break-in-bulk point, associated
with these preeminent lines becomes the leading settlement
of the colony by supplying European innovations and goods to
the hinterlands and receiving the interior's produce for the
motherland.

Taaffe et al.'s model is used here to compare
Hispaniola and Florida because it considers the influence of
geographical and systemic factors on transport and
communication and how that ultimately affected the
development sequence associated with settlement. In this
study the Spanish colonies of Hispaniola and Florida are
‘thought to exhibit a similar sequence of inland transport

iind settlement development. The degree of this development

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24
will be related to the colony's position in the hierarchy of
empire and to the colony's economic role as "productive" or
"protective." Settlement pattern is dictated by access to
an economical means of communication and transportation to
the motherland. Thus, coastal settlements or entrepots
require safe harbors and proximity to sea lanes while
interior settlements stand near exploitable exotica on
convenient trails or navigable rivers. If settlement
pattern in cosmopolitan colonies was dictated by access to
an economical means of communication with the motherland, it
would be reasonable to expect that the "main street,
corridor" or "trunkline" would develop from the entrepot
into the hinterlands.

Just as the settlement pattern of a colony was dictated
by an economical means of internal transportation, so too
was communication within the larger colonial system. No
colony stood alone; each was linked by a combination of
terrestrial and waterborne lines of trade and communication
into a larger system (Muckelroy 1978:4-10). Water routes
are particularly important in evaluating the development of
any sixteenth-century colonial area. In the sixteenth
century, roads were at best abysmal affairs, constructed and
traveled with great difficulty around such hostile
environments as mountains, deserts, and swamps. Even in the
European core countries, the majority of commerce moved by
Water whenever possible (Braudel 1972:103, 282-283).

In the development of the larger colonial system, sea

ILanes developed like roads given the available technology.

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25
They avoided hostile environments, such as reefs and shoals,
and followed the prevailing winds and currents, the routes
of least resistance, to safe deep-water harbors or colonial
entrepots at the heads of interior lines of communication
(Taaffe et al. 1963:519-520). These sea lanes became ge
fagtg "main streets" of communication that afforded a safe
and economically viable means of transportation and helped
dictate which lands bordering these lanes would be
exploited.

Given that cosmopolitan colonies were established to
provide the motherland with goods and services, it is
reasonable to expect that "main streets" of communication
would develop that linked the colonies to the motherland.
If the settlement pattern associated with cosmopolitan
colonies is dictated by an economical means of
transportation with the motherland, it would be reasonable
to expect that the colony's entrepot that would be nearest
the "main street" of communication with the motherland,
would be the busiest port and, therefore, would have the
most contact with the core.

Since communication within the colonial system and,
ultimately, with the European core was crucial to the
existence of peripheral colonies, the Spanish colonies of
Hispaniola and Florida are expected to exhibit a similar
settlement pattern that is focused on a main entrepot or
port. This settlement will be sited to facilitate
communication with both the interior and the external "main

estreet." Other secondary settlements will be sited near

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26
desired commodities and be linked to the entrepot by a

convenient line of communication.

A ierarghy of Fungtign

Cosmopolitan colonization is seen in this study as the
economic and political incorporation of a peripheral area
into the hierarchy of a state-level society. Taaffe et
al.'s (1963) model for the cosmopolitan colonization of West
Africa outlines a sequence for the development of a
settlement hierarchy based on settlement function and access
to the motherland. Here settlement function is defined in
terms of economic, political and religious activities
performed therein. In this model, the more remote a
settlement, the fewer associated functions and the fewer
physical trappings of the core colonizer are present. The
entrepot is home to a wide variety of activities and enjoys
greater contact with the motherland. Intermediate
settlements, in turn, perform fewer activities and have
fewer physical reminders of outside contact.

Regularities characterizing the decline in associated
function and availability of imports to colonial settlements
from the entrepot to the furthest hinterland settlement have
been observed in the modern settlement of Ecuador
(Casagrande et al. 1964). Settlement there was based not on
subsistence farming but on the production of plantation
crops such as sugar cane and the harvesting of timber for
the market economy (Casagrande et al. 1964:291,299).

Although much of the produce was being locally consumed, the

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ultimate goal of this colonization effort was to meet the
demands of the market. In the Ecuadorian case, Casagrande
et al. (1964:311-316) recognized a continuum, based on
settlement function, that extended from the entrepot for the
region to secondary "frontier towns," less complex nucleated
and semi-nucleated villages, and ultimately, to single-
activity, dispersed settlements. At this furthest end of
the continuum, female colonists were extremely rare and the
local Indian population became tenuously linked to the
market economy (ibid.:299-300). Coincidental with this
decrease in functional variety associated with the
hinterlands of the colony, they note that

As one moves away from the metropolitan area and toward

the frontier, and as the links with national

institutions become more tenuous, fluidity increases

and social and cultural attrition is more evident.

This phenomenon we call the colonization gradient

(ibig.:311).
These views of social and cultural attrition based on
distance from the entrepot and the motherland are somewhat
at odds with Foster's concept of shared general norms
throughout Latin America (1960) and with Crosby's (1986)
ideas about the creation of standardized "Neo-Europes." In
this study, the differences between settlements that are in
different colonial areas but occupy similar positions on
their respective colonies "gradients" will be useful in
determining each colony's position in the larger hierarchy
of the colonial system. Given the presence of this

hierarchy, it would be reasonable to expect that the ability

to create a "Neo-Europe" would be dictated by a settlement's

28
position in the colony's "gradient" and in the system's
economic hierarchy. The existence of the "colonization
gradient" hierarchy intra-colonially and on a larger
systemic scale (i.e., between productive and protective
colonies) would lead us to expect that some of the less
visible aspects of Old World material culture would be lost
in settlements that were more economically distant from the
motherland. In addition, the "colonization gradient" would
lead us to expect that the European population should be
increasingly skewed toward males as economic distance
increases from the motherland and entrepot. In areas with a
resident aboriginal population linked to the intrusive
economy, we would expect to see greater evidence for this
connection at the furthest reaches of the continuum.

In this study of Spanish sixteenth-century Hispaniola
and Florida a "colonization gradient" is expected in both
colonies, regardless of their economic development. The
economic focus will, however, reflect the position of the
colony in the larger colonial hierarchy in the ability of
each settlement in the "gradient" to produce its own version

of a "Neo-Europe."

ethodolo

Introduction

To define and describe the characteristics associated
with the creation of the Spanish sixteenth-century
cosmopolitan colonial empire requires a methodological

approach that can explore and explain the processes involved

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29
in the export and adaptation of Spanish culture to the New
World environment. Anthropology provides the holistic and
comparative framework for this project. It draws on and
can evaluate diachronically and synchronically a wide range
of available sources including the endeavors of historians,
ethnologists, ethnohistorians, archaeologists and historical
geographers.

The holistic approach that characterizes anthropology
provides not only the realities of the colonial world
through an examination of direct and indirect observations
of human behavior (e.g., archaeological and documentary
evidence) but also provides the framework for exploring the
idealized goals, views, and beliefs that the colonists held
about their own behavior in the colonial setting (e.g.,
contemporary accounts). It is this conjunction that allows
a balanced view of these processes to be delimited (Schuyler
1977).

To explore the processes associated with the Spanish
colonization of Hispaniola and Florida requires an
examination of the options presented by the New World as
well as the choices made. Where general history recounts
the choices made, anthropology can, through many lines of
evidence, reveal what options existed and explain why one
was chosen over another.

In this study, the Old World Spanish experience is
examined to provide a general cultural template or
background for colonization (Chapter 3). This review of the

cultural and physical environment of Iberia defines the

30
range of ideals subsumed in the creation of a "Neo-Europe."
The ideal aspects of house type, town plan and siting,
communication, and economic focuses and the views of what
constituted a Spaniard acted in concert and had to be
translated to the New World environment. To understand
what is changed we must understand what is lost.

The creation of cosmopolitan colonies in the New World
involved an extension and adaptation of Spanish culture. To
understand the choices made by the colonists in Hispaniola
and Florida necessitates an examination of the options
presented by the environment and the indigenous populations
in these areas. The development of these colonies reflects
not a simple cultural reaction to environmental factors
alone but also the influence of larger systemic economic and
political concerns. Presenting the sixteenth-century growth
of settlement, communication,and economic focus in these
areas in light of these options or influencing factors, will
more fully explain the choices the colonists made and reveal
how it affected the replication of Spanish culture through

economic focus.

e at
Documentary
This developmental view of the colonies and their place
in the economic hierarchy of Spain is revealed through
contemporary maps, ethnohistorical accounts, and
quantifiable documentary evidence (e.g., Deagan 1985a; Sauer

1966). Documentary evidence relating to the value of

31
exports, port activity, and expenditures for defense is
especially useful for determining the position of a
settlement in the colonization gradient of a colony and the
position of a colony in the economic hierarchy of empire.
Spanish sixteenth-century bureaucracy preserved evidence of
the value of exported produce and the amounts spent on
defense and collected as taxes as well as port reports and
customs data. Documents of this kind associated with
Spanish Hispaniola and Florida have been translated and
published (e.g., Chaunu and Chaunu 1956; Hamilton 1934;
Hoffman 1980). They are useful in determining whether a
colony is "productive" or "protective" and which settlement
in a colony acts as the "primate city" or entrepot for a
colony (Dobyns 1980).

Other forms of useful documentary evidence include
contemporary letters and bureaucratic reports. Although
such evidence is biased toward elite views of a settlement
or colony, it has enormous descriptive value for its picture
of the community and the concerns of the populace.
Translations of reports and letters (e.g., Boxer 1975;
Conner 1925: 1930; Lyon 1976; 1984; Ross 1925; Sauer 1966)
provide information on the demographic composition of the
colonies and the role of women. Additionally, these reports
and letters contain data on the construction and condition
of buildings and on diet including information on plant and
animal husbandry.

While documentary evidence can provide a revealing look

at New World options and colonial choices, it has several

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deficiencies: 1) there can be incomplete preservation: 2) a
bias toward the world of commerce and law; and 3) and elite
views of colonial life. To explore how the economic
realities that characterized these colonies affected the
creation of "Neo-Europes" and, thus, the daily lives of the
colonists requires an examination of more direct evidence of

human behavior-- archaeological data.

Archaeological

Archaeologically derived information provides
measurable units of comparison that are useful in
determining the colonization gradient and the economic
hierarchy of the empire. Every archaeological site contains
numerous classes and functional groups of artifacts that can
be categorized for pattern recognition within and between
communities (e.g., South 1977:95-96).

Archaeological research in the target areas of
Hispaniola, at the colonial settlements of Santo Domingo and
Puerto Real (Council 1975; Ewen 1987; Goggin 1968; McEwan
1983; Willis 1984), and in Spanish Florida, at Santa Elena
and St. Augustine (Deagan 1985b; South 1979, 1980, 1982,
1983, 1984, 1985), has shown these areas to be very rich in
artifacts. In addition, there is a rich body of documentary
data from both areas. For these reasons these sites form the
colonial data base for this study.

Validation of this New World comparison requires a non-
colonial Old World control situation. In this study, the

Bafios de la Reina Mora site in Seville has been used for the

 

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33
Old World baseline. Because it is the only Spanish
sixteenth-century site to have received any archaeological
attention (McEwan 1988), this information will be

supplemented with data from the 1554 flota (Arnold and

 

Weddle 1978; Skowronek 1987). Shipwreck-derived data has
been shown to be useful as floating extensions of Old World
commerce and society in comparative studies of this kind
(Muckelroy 1978; Skowronek 1984). This information, added
to that from Seville, forms the baseline from which we can
discern the hierarchical economic continuum and colonization
gradient from core to periphery as reflected in the ability

of the settlements and colonies to create a "Neo-Europe."

Propositions and Data

The eight propositions examined in this study
ultimately reflect on its central thesis, namely, that the
Spanish New World colonies were part of an hierarchical
system that was the Spanish sixteenth century empire and
that the creation, development, and perpetuation of this

hierarchy can be discovered through historical archaeology.

(1) The first proposition is that, if an economic colonial
hierarchy exists, then each colony will occupy a different
level in that hierarchy. A colony's position will be
reflected in the amount of contact it enjoys with the mother

country. Documentary evidence on port activity in the

(I)
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34
colonial areas of Hispaniola and Florida will show which
colony had the most external contact.
(2) Next consideration is given to the economic position of
each colonial area as "productive" or "protective." If a
colony's position in the economic hierarchy of the system is
based on its economic focus then these differences should be
discernible between every colony in the system. This
proposition suggests that a continuum of value exists
between colonies based on the monetary value of colonial
export commodities divided by expenditure for defense of the
colony by the motherland. Documentary evidence on defense
expenditures and export values will be delineated to
determine each colony's value on this continuum and its
status as "productive" or "protective."
(3) Third, if a colony's ability to create a Neo-Europe is
based on its position in the economic hierarchy of the
system then those with a greater value will be more
successful in this endeavor. A "perfect" Neo—Europe would
include the primary visible aspects of conquest culture, as
epitomized by town plan and building styles, in addition to
the presence of a demographically balanced Spanish
population. This population would attempt to create a Neo-
Europe by importing Spanish goods or by altering the
environment with Old World domesticated plants and animals.
Any compromises from this ideal reflect the colonial area's
access to these material markers of Old Spain. In this
study, documentary evidence relating to the demographic

cmmposition and town plan of each settlement is examined.

35
(4) To examine the influence of the environmental potential
of each colonial area on the economic development requires a
knowledge of the presence or absence of desired resources
relative to the technological capacity to exploit those
resources. Here the resources of Hispaniola and Florida are
examined and the Spanish ability to utilize them is reviewed
to determine the similarities and differences between the
colonial areas.
(5) The influence of the aboriginal population on the
lifeways of European colonists was related to the position
of the colony in the hierarchy of the Spanish empire. In
this study, it is expected that, in the less valued
colonies, the ability to replicate an ideal "Neo-Europe" was
lessened. To make up this shortfall the Spanish settlers
turned to the aboriginal populace for their succor in
' affairs of the heart and belly. In these areas, the
demographic inequality between Iberian males and females was
balanced with aboriginal women (Deagan 1980:28). This
difference will be reflected in the greater presence of
aboriginally—produced female associated artifacts (Deetz
1978:180). Furthermore, the lack of Iberian women meant
that there was a shortfall in the requisite culinary skills
to create culturally acceptable dishes from local food
resources. This shortfall will be reflected in greater
amounts of imported familiar foodstuffs in the hinterlands.
(6) Our sixth concern is the diachronic incorporation of a
colonial area into the colonial system. If the

incorporation of these areas can be classified into

 

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36
"Prelude" and "Fixation" stages, then these phases should be
discernible in both Hispaniola and Florida. In the
documentary record, we would then expect to find evidence of
the stages of exploration, plunder, and a period of rapid
imperial expansion followed by contraction and
stabilization.
(7) Equally important is the geographical placement of
settlement in the colonial area. If settlement is dictated
by ease of communication from the hinterlands of a colonial
area to the mainstreet of communication and to the
motherland, then the primary entrepot is expected to be
located adjacent to the mainstreet, and the siting of the
rest of the settlements should focus on easy access to this
port. The documentary record provides information on the
location of settlements, roads, and the main routes of
communication. Data on port activity reveals the primary
entrepot of the colonial area.
(8) The final proposition we seek to elucidate regards
internal colonial hierarchy. If there is a hierarchy of
function in the settlements of each colonial area, then this
hierarchy should be reflected as a colonization gradient
that runs from single activity hinterland settlements to
multi-activity entrepots. Many kinds of evidence are useful
to examine this issue. Census reports should reveal a
decline in the proportion of Iberian females at settlements
located further out on the gradient. Archaeologically we
expect to see fewer European materials at the far end of the

gradient relative to the entrepot.

37
What Follows

To address this study's central issue on the formation
and characteristics of the sixteenth-century Spanish New
World colonial hierarchy requires some knowledge of the
colonists' Iberian homeland from which their success at
creating a "Neo-Europe" can be measured. Chapter 3, "Old
Spain in the 15th and 16th Centuries", examines the
colonists' Iberian experience culturally, environmentally
and technologically. The nature of Spanish society,
communication and settlement that emerges creates a baseline
for later comparison to the New World colonies.

Chapter 4, "Hispaniola", describes the island's
environment and aboriginal population at the time of
contact. The Spanish conquest, settlement and incorporation
of the area into the empire is considered in light of the
economic opportunities presented by the natural resources
and location to the main street of communication to the
motherland.

Chapter 5 examines the environment, aboriginal
population and Spanish settlement of Spanish Florida.
Sighted less than a decade after Hispaniola and endowed with
a similar environment and socially—organized aboriginal
population to the earlier colony Spanish Florida played a
radically different role in the Spanish empire. Why it
differed and how this difference affected their ability to
Create "Neo-Europes" is considered here.

Chapter 6, "Bridging the Gap: From the Documentary

Ideal to the Material Reality" uses the documentary evidence

38
presented in Chapters three, four and five to address the
thesis' propositions. Where the documentary evidence is
insufficient or imprecise to answer these propositions
archaeologically testable hypotheses are presented. The
latter part of the chapter discusses in greater detail the
nature of the archaeological research conducted at each of
the considered sites and the material evidence available for
study.

Chapter 7, "Extracting Meaning from Pattern: Comparing
the Colonies", brings the archaeological and documentary
data together to specifically address three of the
propositions (3, 5, 8) presented in this chapter. For the
first time Spanish Old World and New World archaeological
evidence is specifically compared to define the dynamic
hierarchical relationship that connected these distinct
areas of the empire.

In the final chapter, "Summary, Conclusions and
Implications", the findings of the study are reviewed and

questions for future research are posed.

 

CHAPTER 3

THE OLD WORLD HERITAGE:
OLD SPAIN IN THE 15th AND 16th CENTURIES

Introduction

To understand the Spanish creation of New World "Neo-
Europes" and the formation of a colonial settlement
hierarchy requires an examination of the colonists' cultural
roots in Old Spain. The experiences and ideas about the
physical, social and cultural world that the Spanish
colonists brought with them were then shaped and modified by
the New World environment and its aboriginal population to
produce the colonial system. This larger system, of course,
included the motherland in addition to the colonies. The
cultural heritage borne by all the first generation colonial
founders was most profoundly influenced by their Old World
experiences. Although their lives and those of later
immigrant peninsulares were modified by their New World
activities, later creole (griollo), mesti o, zambo ([sig] a
mixture of black and native American), black and
europeanized aboriginal populations of the colonies would
continue to be influenced by the motherland via the world

economy. Thus, the creation of Neo-Europes were guided both

39

40
by Spain's economic, religious and political control and by

the legacy of these founding colonists (Foster 1960).

Environment

Spain occupies five-sixths of the 600,000 square
kilometers of the Iberian peninsula. Its northern coast (44
N) is at the same parallel of latitude as central Michigan
while the Straits of Gibraltar on its southern extreme (36
N) is on line with central North Carolina (Foster 1960:21-
23).

The lands that comprise both modern Spain and historic
Spain of 1492 are divisible into three main zones:
mountains; high plateaus called "mesetas"; and coastal
plains (Figure 5). The areas of low lying coastal plains
and associated river basin depressions are relatively small,
yet their fertility makes them important, high population
density centers for agriculture (Foster 1960:21; Way
1962:19). Rivers tend to be short, straight and shallow
and, as such, not commonly used for transportation. The
northeastern and northwestern coasts of Spain are heavily
dissected landscapes with many good ports. On the south and
east coasts are a mixture of low sand and marsh areas inter-
mixed with rocky and indented shores near coastal highlands.
Most ports in these areas (e.g., Seville/Cadiz on the
Guadalquivir) are associated with developed rivers or good
terrestrial means of access to the interior.

The mountain regions are noteworthy for their

:hregularly folded, rugged structure. In the north, the

 

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(after Fisher and Bowen-Jones 1958:17)

Physical Geography of Iberia

Figure 5.

 

42
glacier-covered 3,000+ meter Pyrennes and Cantabrian ranges
are comparable to the Alps (Fisher and Bowen-Jones 1958:19).
The Central Sierras and Iberian Mountains show less relief
(1,000-2,000 meters) but nonetheless form important internal
barriers within the peninsula (Way 1962:13). Lying in the
southeastern reaches of Spain are the Iberian Peninsula's
highest peaks (3,500 meters), the Betic Cordillera (Fisher
and Bowen-Jones 1958:27; Way 1962:9). All of Spain's
mountain regions are well endowed with both iron ore and
coal (Way 1962:156-159), but it is the Betic Cordillera in
Andalusia that bears deposits of gold, silver, lead, tin,
copper and mercury (Fisher and Bowen-Jones 1958:24,61).

The Meseta, comprised of two enormous tablelands or
upland basins separated by the 2700 meter crest of the
Central Sierra, includes approximately half of the country
(Way 1962:12). These plateaus slope from 830 meters in the
east to 660 meters in the west (Fisher and Bowen-Jones
1958:22-23). The fertile flatlands and softly rolling hills
that comprise the Meseta are the basis for the modern
popular conceptions of the Spanish landscape found in
Hollywood films such as "El Cid" and "Man of La Mancha,"
noted above (Way 1962:11-12).

Spain's climate, like her land forms, is marked by
diversity. These differences divide the country into a wet
north and west, with as much as 100-175 cm. of rain annually
and a more arid zone to the east and south, with as little
as 13 cm. of annual rainfall (Fisher and Bowen-Jones

1958:34). Despite the surrounding warm seas, the Iberian

43
peninsula has remarkably cold winters for its latitude.
Temperature variations are such that snow is a common
feature throughout the country. Madrid, positioned in the
Meseta, has had snowfalls as late as June and averages more
snowfall than England in any given year! A local saying
characterizes the climate of the central Meseta as " winter
for nine months, and hell for three" (Fisher and Bowen-Jones
1958:34). These climatic conditions are largely the result
of Spain's greatly variable topography combined with the
prevailing westerly wind currents blowing off the warm,
moist Atlantic (Crosby 1986:110; Foster 1960:23; Way
1962:44). The conditions are reversed in the southern and
eastern reaches of the peninsula. Influenced by proximity
to the hot, dry sirocco winds of the Sahara, there is
Mediterranean Spain, home to the Costa del Sol (Fisher and
Bowen-Jones 1958:40-41:Way 1962:44,262).

Geographical and climatic diversity combine to
produce a rich natural vegetation cover in Spain. Here we
must distinguish, of course, between modern conditions and
those that prevailed in the sixteenth century. Today less
than 10% of Spain is forested and this is largely limited to
the highland areas (Fisher and Bowen-Jones 1958:48). In the
sixteenth century, the majority of Spain was wooded (Way
1962:75,78). In the southern part of the Iberian Peninsula
were thick forests. These stands were so heavy that they

were exploited for a millennium and a half by Romans, Moors
arui Spaniards. The timber was cut for export and for the

construction of ships (Lewis 1980:79,80; Way 1962:78).

44
Likewise, the now barren Meseta was described as a wooded
and forested region into the fifteenth century (Way
1962:12). The disappearance of woodland cover was the
result of human activities, including uncontrolled cutting,
burning for pasturage, and over-grazing by sheep and goats.
This change, it is important to note, was underway in the
sixteenth century when forest products and woolens were at a
premium in the markets of Europe (Fernandez 1972a:68;
Fernandez 1972b:84; Fisher and Bowen-Jones 1958:48: Vives
1972a:38,43; Vives 1972b:262).

Spain's varied climate and rainfall has been conducive
to the cultivation of a wide variety of flora common to both
temperate and sub-tropical regions. Along the warm, well-
watered, fertile margins of the Mediterranean Sea and
Straits of Gibraltar flourished such exotica as oranges,
lemons, pomegranates, bananas, figs, rice, date palms and
sugar cane (Fisher and Bowen-Jones 1958:50-51; Foster
1960:24). The dry, thin, well-drained soils that
characterize the Meseta and upland margins were especially
well suited to viticulture and olive production (Fisher and
Bowen-Jones 1958:51-52 ; Ways 1962:124,127). This same
area, also produced cereal crops such as wheat, oats, and
jbarley. Rye was the common grain grown in the cooler,
‘wctter northwest corner of the country. In the sixteenth
century, a New World grain-- corn-- was successfully
introduced in the surrounding coastal strip (Way 1962:120—
123). Vegetable crops, including chick-peas, alfalfa,

clcnrer, vetch, lupin, lentils, beans, peas, onions,

 

45
asparagus, carrots, spinach and artichokes were grown
throughout the peninsula (Fisher and Bowen-Jones 1958:51-
53).

This examination of the Iberian Peninsula's topography,
climate, mineral and floral resources and potential for
domesticated crop production in the sixteenth century is
important for evaluating its emigrants' reactions to the New
World environment. These reactions were affected by Old
World expectations. The Old World environmental experience
represents one part of the Spanish cultural template, an
idealized expression of which was reflected in the "Neo-

Europes" of America.

Population, Communication and Settlement

In the last quarter of the fifteenth century there were
over seven million people on the Iberian peninsula in the
Kingdoms of Portugal, Castile, Aragon, Navarre and Granada
(Figure 6 -- Lynch 1984:3r Vives 1972a:249). It is
estimated that, by the end of the sixteenth century, these
numbers increased to nearly nine million under the single
crown of Imperial Spain (Braudel 1972:402-408; Braudel
1973:1-65; Lynch 1984:109-110).

The fifteenth and sixteenth century inhabitants of the
five kingdoms that would become Imperial Spain were more
similar than dissimilar (Gerhard 1981:56). They were all
part of a hierarchy conscious, stratified society. This

social stratification was exhibited in ostentatious elite

46

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housing and sartorial luxury and was codified in the
sumptuary rules of the era (Braudel 1972:709-718;
Defourneaux 1966:85; Gerhard 1981:48). Those individuals
with ascribed status were increasingly joined by those who
achieved it in the marketplace, A sixteenth-century observer
reported that half the people called themselves by the
honorific title of nobleman (hidalgo) and "anyone who could
afford the price could dress and live like a noble lady or
gentleman (Tannenbaum 1965:129)."

This comment was, of course, an exaggeration for
effect, in fact ninety-five percent of the sixteenth-
century population owned less than five per cent of the
land. The majority of the property (95-97%) was held by the
elites one per-cent of the population with the remainder
held by the expanding middle class (Lynch 1984:12-13; Vives
1972a:250-253). Understanding this inequity in distribution
requires knowledge of how the Spaniards arranged themselves

in and made a living from their environment.

Settlement Pattern and Function

The unions of the lands of the Iberian Peninsula in
1492, under the crowns of Aragon and Castile, were the
product of centuries of conquest and intermarriage.

From the beginning of the eighth century to the end of
the fifteenth century all or part of the Iberian peninsula
was under the control of the Moors. Over nearly eight
hundred years a slow crusade, known locally as the

RSQQDQBISLQ, was undertaken to drive these followers of

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48
Islam from the peninsula. The culmination of the
Reconguista came only in 1492 when Isabella of Aragon and
her spouse Ferdinand of Castile (known as Los Reyes
Catolicos- the Catholic Monarchs) succeeded in capturing
the last vestige of Moorish rule in Iberia, the kingdom of
Granada (Crow:150-151).

Obviously the Reconguista did not occur overnight.
Rather it was the result of gradual southern expansion by
the Christian kingdoms of the north (Crow 1985:81). These
reconquests were by natural areas formed by the variable
topography and climatic conditions that characterize the
environment of Iberia. The very environmental reasons that
made each of these natural political units also isolated its

populations.

Communication

The rugged countryside and primordial forests of Spain
made inter-regional communication by land nearly impossible
(Braudel 1972:282-284; Braudel 1973:309; Lynch 1984:143-
144). At the turn of the sixteenth century, it could take
four weeks to travel overland from Barcelona in the
northeastern corner of the country to Seville in the
southwestern coast (Braudel 1972:366). A trip of this kind
would probably have been over roads originally established
by the Romans a millennium and a half previously (Figures 7
and 8 -- Braudel 1972:282; Way 1962:80). What non-Roman
roads there were would better be termed paths or ruts.

These were wide enough for porters and caravans of mules,

49

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The Road Network of Iberia in 1546

(Braudel 1972:279) (Reproduced by permission of Harper &

Row, Publishers,

Inc.

from, The Mediterranean.)

 

51
horses and, occasionally ox carts to struggle over (Lynch
1984:143-144). Overland means of communication only began
to improve under Philip II's drive to consolidate the
Spanish Empire in the second half of the sixteenth century.
Then, messages could travel between Burgos and Brussels in a
week (Lynch 1984:145). As Stilgoe (1982:21-22) points out,
a concern for good roads developed in conjunction with
political unity and long-distance, overland commerce -- two
things which had been lacking in Europe since the fall of
Rome.

Given the difficulties of early modern overland travel,
it should be obvious why the majority of commerce and
communication in Europe followed sea and river routes
(Braudel 1972:103,276-282; Lynch 1981:143). The lack of
long stretches of navigable rivers in Spain focused water-
borne transport on the numerous good ports that surround its
dissected shoreline. Just as with roads, sea lanes became
fixed and unchanging. Winds, shoals, reefs and channels
formed hostile environments around which sea lanes were
formulated and courses navigated. Perhaps the best example
of the creation of a sea lane was that established between
Spain and the West Indies. This route remained unchanged
for over four centuries (Braudel 1973:312).

The constraints on transportation, of course,
influenced the settlement pattern associated with the
constituent kingdoms of the sixteenth century Iberian
peninsula. Settlement pattern and location was based on

three factors. First, the towns were positioned to serve

52
the surrounding hinterlands. Second, they were most often
near and controlled some localized resource. Third they
needed to be linked to the larger system. Transportation
routes were the most influential variable in town location
because most urban settlements grew at break-in-bulk points
and, thus, include ports, fords, and passes (Johnson
1972:82-83). These factors were central in the location of
Spanish towns in the fifteenth century, before the conquest
of the New World (Foster 1960:34-36).

Urbanism was not a new phenomenon to Europe. Fifteen
hundred years earlier, Imperial Roman trade linked Europe,
Asia and Africa. The commerce carried out over the Roman
roads and sea lanes focused population and created urban
enclaves to which and through which passed trade. Collapse
of the western half of the empire broke these external lines
of communication. Without these routes, the need for
population concentrations lessened, and they declined in
importance on the European landscape (Johnson 1972:9-10).

Although cities lost much of their population and
importance, they were not forgotten as centers of
innovation, opportunity and learning (Cipolla 1976:139-
145). In the fifteenth century, the urban "cityscape" once
again became a magnet that attracted people from the
hinterlands. Here man-made form and order, not natural
vegetation, ruled space. During the Renaissance wilderness
connoted disorder and fear beyond the control of God's human
representatives (Stilgoe 1982:7,10,24). In the fifteenth

and sixteenth centuries, Spain like the rest of the

Ie“‘

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53

Mediterranean, could best be described as urban (Braudel
1972:278; Foster 1960:34-35; Ortiz 1971:130). Whether small
population concentrations, as characterized the northern
kingdoms, or large, as in the south, Spanish towns stood out
as self-contained enclaves against the wilderness of the
rural landscape. Cities functioned as commercial centers,
as Segovia and Burgos did in the wool trade (Ortiz 1971:136-
138); as administrative centers, such as the capital Madrid
(Ortiz 1971:131,134-135); or as primate cities such as

Seville where both functions were realized (Ortiz 1971:135).

Settlement Size

In the mid-sixteenth century, the primate city in each
kingdom was the largest. For example, in Andalusia, the
commercial port and administrative center was Seville
(Figure 9). Located where favorable winds and currents came
together to make the trip over the sealane to and from the
New World relatively easy, this port had an advantage over
other port cities of the Iberian peninsula during this age
of wind powered vessels (Cipolla 1976:111; Crosby 1986:105-
131; Elliott 1963:179). Its population of nearly 100,000
(some think as high as 180,000; see Defourneaux 1966:82:
Elliott 1963:183-184) was the largest on the peninsula. It
outstripped the surrounding secondary cities of Granada
(50,000) and Cordoba and Malaga (40,000) and dwarfed the
towns of Jerez and Jaen (15,000-30,000). Other such leading
primate cities included Barcelona in Catalufiia (35,000-

50,000): Valencia in the kingdom of the same name (50,000-

54

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55
80,000); Burgos in Burgos (60,000; Braudel 1972:405; Ortiz
1971:134-135; Vives 1972b :251). At this same time, the
administrative capital of Madrid had less than 15,000
people, while the commercial ports of Aviles in Asturias and
Alicante in Valencia had 30,000 and 5,000 respectively
(Braudel 1972:405; Ortiz 1971:135).

In Spain urban growth relates to the growth of trade
(Fernandez 1972b:86), and this commercial expansion is
directly linked to the developing stability of the state
(Wallerstein 1974:50). Spain's greatest cities were ports
that were both administrative and commercial centers with
foci of control extending over both inland and overseas
routes of trade. The secondary and smaller settlements
functioned in a greatly reduced capacity as points for
internal commerce or administration. Thus, it is clear that
towns were central to trade, and the function of urbanism
was the control of space via the routes of communication
(Braudel 1972:293,312). In conjunction with consolidation
of the state through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,
population grew (Braudel 1972:326,402-407) and so too did
the economy and the volume of Spain's overseas trade. By
1570 Spain was home to over 250,000 tons of shipping
(Braudel 1972:446; Cipolla 1976:232). Representing this
commerce were the 3100 ships that cleared for New World
ports between 1568 and 1587 (Chaunu and Chaunu 1957 v.
6,n.7:47). Seville alone, as the largest city and port,
could claim between 50,000 and 80,000 tons of shipping in

the last half of the century (Chaunu and Chaunu 1957, vol.

 

rt\

Cw

56
7:65) and could aptly be considered Spain's economic capital
and the "Mirror of the Indies of Castile" (Defourneaux

1966:74,92).

Central Place and Economic Focus

Given these observations, the relationship of
settlement pattern to function on the Spanish Iberian
landscape begins to come into focus. The dual monarchy of
Log RevesgCatolicas was equal in name only. Castile led
Aragon in population, commercial output (including cloth,
iron, and glass) and the development of state sponsored
mercantilism (Braudel 1972:449; Fernandez 1972b:84; Vives
1972b:264, 270-271). Trade extended in two main directions.
From the meseta surrounding Madrid and Burgos came wool,
cloth and hides, and the highlands and gigs of northwestern
Spain were rich in iron and wood and related maritime
industries. These were shipped via ports such as Corufia,
Bilbao, Santander, Laredo, San Sebastian to Rochelle,
Marseilles, Nantes, Rouen, Bruges, Antwerp, London and the
Hanseatic ports (Braudel 1972:220,221,607,637,1095; Croft
1983; Curtin 1984:2; Davis 1973:64; Hurst 1977; Fernandez
1972b:86-89; Lynch 1981:144-145; Ortiz 1971:138; Vives
1972a:265-266). The other main axis was south through
Cordova to the port of Seville. To that port went products
for trade to Italy and to the Moors in Granada and later,
North Africa (Fernandez 1972a:68; Ortiz 1971:138; Vives
1972b:47). Many of commercial relations were further

reenforced through the dynastic ties of Charles I to the

 

 

57
house of Habsburg. By the middle of the sixteenth century
Spain controlled, in addition to vast areas of the New
World, the Low Countries, Burgundy, Franche-Comte, parts of
Germany, and half of Italy including Naples, Sicily, Milan,
Genoa and Venice (Figure 10; Elliott 1963:165; Tannenbaum
1965:133).

In the latter half of the century, the Empire would
feel some contraction in Europe due to the split of the
House of Habsburg at the abdication of Charles I and the war
with the Netherlands. Still, the additions of the
Philippines and the crown of Portugal and its far flung
holdings made Philip II the most powerful man, and Spain, in
the sixteenth century, the most powerful European nation on
which the sun never set (Haring 1947:313; Ortiz 1971:83:
Tannenbaum 1965:99,133- Figure 1).

Thus, it is essential to keep in mind that the power
and influence of sixteenth century Spain and the kingdoms or
holdings within its sphere of influence and tutelage were
far greater than the area encompassed by modern Spain.
Although commercial capitalism and mercantilism were in
their infancy, raw materials, finished goods and people were
moving within the empire and between the nascent nation
states of EurOpe (Davis 1973:51,64; Gerhard 1981:64-65,89;
Lister and Lister 1982:13,69-71; Lynch 1984:148-155).
Antwerp was the economic capitol of Western Europe until
1585 (Lynch 1984:143). From it and the rest of the Low
Countries, Spain derived over two fifths of its revenue

(Davis 1973:65; Tannenbaum 1965:134). To this and other

 

 

58

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 10.
The Spanish European Empire in 1550

(after Elliot 1953:145)

 

 

59
Habsburg Old World ports of call, including Seville, sailed
Hanseatic vessels as well as ships from England, Italy and
France (Haring 1947:295). This trade was to continue with
Holland and England and other such "heretic" nations even
during the religious and dynastic schisms of the last third
of the century. War then, as now, was not total: indirect
trade continued to take place between supposedly warring
entities (Lynch 1984:145,154; Tanguy 1956).

Aragon was excluded from New World trade for the
opening and closing thirty years of the century when
commerce was reserved to the monopoly city of Seville and
its port San Lucar (Elliott 1963:179; Haring 1947:303; Vives
1972b:273). The intervening forty years opened the
Aragonian and Castilian ports of Corufia, Bayona, Aviles,
Laredo, Bilbao, San Sebastian, Barcelona and Malaga to
direct trade with the Indies; these ports were already part
of the extensive intra-continental trade previously
discussed (Tanguy 1956).

Against this historical and geographical background,
the hierarchy in Spanish sixteenth century settlement
pattern and function is apparent. The largest population
concentrations were commercial and administrative centers ~-
primate cities whose focus was both internal and external.
Concentration at these ports developed in response to the
economics involved in break-in-bulk locations in trade
dictated by the environment and, secondarily, to tradition.
A good example of this was the replacement of Seville by

Cadiz in 1685. It was then that the cost to lighter produce

 

60
from larger ocean-going vessels of the seventeenth century
over the shoaling waters of the Guadalquivir River at San
Lucar and then to Seville surpassed the value of the
investment in immovable properties in the city (Braudel
1973:388). Other secondary, tertiary, and smaller
settlements may have had administrative and commercial
functions, but they were limited in scope and only serviced
the local area. Ultimately, we see that these settlements
were economically interdependent. Following Christaller's
central place theory, each settlement focused on supplying
local produce to the next greater level of complexity, and
in return, the primate entrepot sent exotic goods and
services (Johnson 1972:87,93,101). Thus, in exchange for
such Spanish produce as iron, hides, wine, figs, raisins,
wool, wheat, pottery, salt, glass, olive oil, and honey, the
Spanish hidalgo received: ceramics, fine cloths, tapestries
and paintings from Flanders and the Rhine valley; pottery,
gold, silks, glass and luxuries from Italy; pottery and wine
from France; and pewter from England (Fernandez 1972a: 58-
68; Fernandez 1972b: 84-89; Lister and Lister 1982; Olds
1976, Willis 1976). From the New World came gold, silver,
copper, hides, cattle by-products, fish, whale oil, cotton,
tobacco, medicines, cacao, sugar, pottery, and new
cultigens; from the Orient via the Philippines, came silks
and porcelains (Crosby 1972:1972:170; Haring 1947:293;
McAlister 1984:364-366; Tuck 1985:42; Wolf 1982:140). As
this material roll-call should begin to show, the nascent

European-centered world economy with its focus on

 

 

 

61
international trade was functioning well. In sixteenth
century Spain, this nascent commercialism was reflected in
the growth of cities and their pattern and function in the

hierarchy of the economic system.

The Spanish Town

Urbanism was an ubiquitous aspect of Spain and the
Mediterranean world in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries. We noted how the population and function of
Spanish settlements varied relative to their proximity to
natural resources or break-in-bulk points, resulting in a
hierarchy of functionally differentiated settlements. The
function of each community can be considered to have been
more or less administrative or commercial based on the
variety, nature and amount of activities (occupations)
performed. Since the sizes of Spanish communities vary
enormously, we need to understand how internal differences
can be utilized to accurately differentiate them and place
them in the hierarchy.

The Renaissance Spaniards defined a city as the urban
area plus the surrounding rural hinterlands, a concept that
dates to the Roman occupation (Crouch et al. 1982:27).
This concept helps explain the strong Spanish cultural
identification with urbanism (Foster 1960:34-35). Each
settlement was officially titled ciudad (city) or
villagpueblo (town). The former title was conferred upon
the capitals of kingdoms and other large settlements with

substantial tax bases that were granted a vote in the

 

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62
national Cortes (parliament). The more common entity, the
pueblo or yillp, was akin to our word "incorporated"
community which ensured municipal autonomy within each
kingdom (Ortiz 1971:131). Under this system, all villages
were required to be chartered. For, without official
governmental sanction all title to property was considered
null and void and was subject to seizure by the state
(Braudel 1972:707).

The urban nature of Renaissance Spain meant that all
classes and occupations lived in proximity to one another.
Land-owning hidalgos, peasants and a small growing class of
merchants (ruanos) combined to make the towns dynamic
centers of internal trade and long distance commerce.

To understand the internal function of the town, we
must remember that this was an era of transition between the
modern urban service and industrial cities of today and the
model of the preindustrial city proposed by Sjoberg (1955).
The preindustrial city was characterized by specialized
function, small, stable population, rigid segregation of
social groups, non-specialized land use, absence of
industrialism, isolation and families as a predominant
social institution.

In the fifteenth century, Spanish towns had a rural
flavor, but markets, shops and trade fairs were a common
part of all communities. The town lived off the
agricultural produce of the rural countryside controlled by
its municipal council or cabildo (Ortiz 1971:131-132; Vives

1972be42). Inter~ and intra-regional movement of both

 

 

63
finished and bulk goods created a small urban middle class
(Vives 1972a:250). The productivity of the Castilian lands
was such that it was the only kingdom in Europe that was
self-sufficient and an exporter of foodstuffs (Fernandez
1972b:84). This success in the European marketplace led to
a growing demand for consumer goods in Spain.

The primary producers of the field and sea included
sheep and cattle herders, farmers, fishermen and miners.
Additionally there were full-time craftsmen of materials of
glass, ceramic, leather, metal, cloth and all varieties of
specialty items. Craftsmen and merchants tended to be
segregated by specialty on a single street. Originally,
this clustering was related to guild membership, but later
the practice was codified, as a kind of early zoning, to
ensure the general health and welfare of the community
(Crouch et al. 1982:15; Foster 1960:37; Lister and Lister
1984).

Thus, the fifteenth and sixteenth century Spanish town
fits certain aspects of Sjoberg's parameters for the
preindustrial city. These include the rigid segregation of
social groups and the emphasis on the family as the
predominant social institution. Even so, there were nascent
aspects of modern industrial urbanism in such things as:
non-specialized function; expanding population; specialized
land-use; and a lessening of isolation via trade and
incipient industrialism that resulted in the emergence of a

small middle class.

 

 

64

The ubiquitous gridiron town plan feature of the
Spanish colonial system has received much attention (e.g.,
Crouch et al. 1982; Foster 1960; Lockhart and Schwartz 1983;
Deagan 1982). This plan gridded the town around a main
central square or plaza mayor (Figure 11). The plaza was
the hub of the municipality. Fronting on the plaza were the
buildings representing the principal sources of power: the
church; the state; and commerce. These included the church,
municipal and other governmental buildings, and shops
(Crouch et al. 1982:14-15; Lockhart and Schwartz 1983:66-67;
Ortiz 1971:133). The residences of the elite surrounded the
plaza also and were, in turn, surrounded by the homes and
businesses of the commoners and folk of lesser status
(DeFourneaux 1966:95-96). Thus, the grid plan layout of
the towns reflects the hierarchical nature of the society
(Stilgoe 1982:35,42).

The origin of the grid plan layout of fifteenth and
sixteenth century Spanish and Spanish colonial cities can be
traced to Renaissance ideas about of town planning (Braudel
1973:384). These ideas, based on balanced Roman geometric
plans for cities and military encampments, are the hallmark
of Spanish and other Western European towns founded after
the thirteenth century (Crouch et al. 1982:xv-xvii; Foster
1960:39-42). Cities founded before that time in Europe and
adjacent contemporary areas of Africa were a maze of little
streets and alleys crowded within a surrounding city wall
(Braudel 1973:382-384; Ortiz 1971:133). It has been stated

that there are few pure Renaissance cities in the Old World

 

 

(3|.l3

 

 

 

BllE\AI

 

 

 

Figure 11.
Layout of Spanish Old and New World Cities

(after Crouch et al. 1982:60; Lockhart and Schwartz 1983:67)

66
because the majority of urban areas predate these
developments (Crouch et al. 1982:xv). Such cities are,
however, more common in southern Spain since these cities
were founded in the wake of the Reconguista. Thus, we
should not be surprised that sixteen of the twenty largest
cities of modern Latin America, all dedicated by 1580, are
classic Renaissance cities (Crouch et al. 1982:xv, 27).

An essential aspect of the ideas about towns and their
appearance that Spanish colonists brought to the New World
is ideas about house structure. This is important for
understanding what aspects of Old World material culture
were transferred to the New World "Neo-Europes."

Stereotypical notions about "typical" tile-roofed,
white-washed houses and spinning windmills require some
modification regarding applicability, both historically and
geographically. Braudel (1973:193-204) generalized about
housing in the early modern period by categorizing stone and
brick as "rich building materials," and wood, earth and
fabric as "poor." Defourneaux's work on life in Spain's
"Golden Age"(1966:96,102,103) would lead to a similar
conclusion. Indeed, this held true for Seville in
Andalusia, for example, where stone was considered a luxury,
but not all New World colonists were from Andalusia.
Indeed, in the first half of the sixteenth century, the
southern Spanish kingdoms of Andalusia and Extremadura
contributed the most settlers (Foster 1960:29-32), but this
changed in the second half of the century when these

provinces were eclipsed by Galicia, Navarre, Asturias and

67
northern Cataluna as sources of immigration. Therefore, we
must examine the geographical variety in sixteenth-century
Spanish housing.

In the colder, wetter provinces of Spain (Galicia,
Navarre, Asturias, northern Cataluna and Leon) homes tended
to be set back from passing thoroughfares. These structures
were of rough stone construction around a wooded frame and
were rectangular or square in plan with pitched roofs of
slate or thatch. The houses of the poor were dark and
cramped due to low ceiling height and a general lack of
windows (Baroja 1981, vol. 2:108-110, 128-135, 161). The
well-to-do of the region lived in multi-storied buildings,
with balconies and windows. These, too, were generally
built of rough hewn stone although government and religious
edifices and the houses of the ultra-wealthy were of dressed
blocks (Baroja 1981, vol. 2:109).

Buildings in southern, torrid Spain (Andalusia,
Extremadura, Murcia, southern Catalufia, southern New
Castile) followed the Arab or Roman style in plan and
placement on the street edge (Baroja 1981, vol.2:188;
Defourneaux 1966:148). Homes for the very rich and
government and religious structures were constructed of
stone with tile roofs (Baroja 1981, vol.2:238, Defourneaux
1966:96,103). The commoners lived in white-washed adobe
houses with tamped earth floors and roofs of wood and thatch
(Baroja 1981, vol.2:251,324,330; Defourneaux 1966:96,102).
Homes abutted directly on the street and were built around

central patios, sometimes with pens or corrals at the back

act
as

Pop”
Cle;

I Ly}

 

 

68
of the property for animals (Baroja 1981, vol.2:248,
297,331). Kitchens tended to be separated from living
quarters, necessitating the use of braziers (anafes and
prasegps) in colder months (Baroja 1981, vol. 2:329;

Defourneaux 1966:149). Central Spain (Old Castile, northern

 

New Castile, Leon, Aragon, Catalufiia), largely the mesta,
was transitional between northern and southern architectural
styles. Similar to the northern structures in floor plan,
the buildings were variably constructed of stone, adobe or a
wood and withe baywork covered with clay (i.e., wattle and
daub-- Baroja 1981, vol.2:185, 204,211,324,325). The houses
of those of lesser means tended to be roofed with thatch
while the houses of the elite were roofed with tile (Baroja
l98l,vol.2:353,357,376,379).

We have noted that every town in Spain was chartered
into existence for the protection of its inhabitants and for
tax purposes. That meant that every town had certain basic
activities associated with government and religion as well
as some commercial activity. Ninety-five per cent of the
population of Spain were peasants; the remainder were
clerics, craftsmen, professionals, aristocrats and merchants
(Lynch 1981:12-13).

At the turn of the sixteenth century, Spain was self-
sufficient, the last Western European kingdom to be so
endowed (Fernandez 1972b:84). In the north, iron ore
deposits and wood resources were turned into ships and
nautical fittings (Lynch 1981:125,144,164; Vives 1972a:264).

Manned by Basques, Asturians, and Galicians, these vessels

 

69
were engaged in both fishing and trade throughout Europe and
later in the Americas (Fernandez 1972a:58-61,68; 1972b:84-
89; Tuck 1985; Vives 1972b:43,47).

From central Spain came wool. Considered by many to be
the central cause for Spain's lack of internal economic
development and overall weakness (e.g., Elliott 1963:185-
196; Lynch 1981:16-18; Vives 1972b), it was considered a
luxury item in Europe. Wool could be exchanged for gold,
silk, finished cloth, and foodstuffs (Fernandez 1972az68;
1972b:88-89; Vives 1972:43). Yet, for all of its value,
wool had its long term costs in the massive deforestation of
the meseta. The maintenance of tens of thousands of sheep
required grassland whose growth was encouraged at the
expense of forest and farm (Vives 1972a:262; 1972b:38).

Central and southern Spain was also home in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, to industries focused on
the production of luxury items of textile, leather, silk,
iron, ceramic and glass (Braudel 1973:213; Elliott 1963:185;
Frothingham 1963; Lister and Lister 1982:45-69). The
production centers for these goods included Seville,
Segovia, Toledo, Cuenca, Cordoba. The proximity to raw
materials, such as iron, lead and tin deposits and the
living produce of the meseta, endowed these break-in-bulk
points with these nascent industries. The importance of
‘these materials as export items is documented not only in
«documents but also in the archaeological record. Ceramic
and glass produced in these centers have been found

tflrroughout the New World (e.g. Goggin 1968; Lister and

70
Lister 1982:45-69; Skowronek 1987; South et al. 1988; Willis
1976), in Africa (Redman 1986: 176,191-199) and in Europe

(Croft 1983; Hurst 1977).

Ethnicity. Nationalism and Class

Fifteenth and sixteenth century Spain was home to a
multiplicity of ethnic groups cross-cut by the affiliations
of religion and social class. Given the focus of this study
on the ability of the Spanish colonies to create a familiar
"Neo-Europe" in the New World, we must understand how these
potential colonists saw themselves yi§;p;yi§ others in the
motherland. Thus our main focus is the Spanish Christian as
compared to the: Spanish Jew, Spanish Moslem, foreign
Christian and slave.

In the fifteenth century Latin Christianity, permeated
and influenced thought, language, trade and government from
Poland to Greenland and from the Baltic to the Mediterranean
(Gerhard 1981:55-56).

Christian Spaniards of the Iberian peninsula were part
of this larger European panorama marked by social
stratification and a militant enthusiasm for Roman
Catholicism (Braudel 1972:709-718; Crow 1985:78-113;
Defourneaux 1966:106,224; Lynch 1981:12-30). Spain differed
from most of western Europe (Austria and Poland excepted) in
its lengthy war against Islam. While her neighbors
participated to greater or lesser degrees in the various
crusades to free the Holyland, the Spaniards were involved

in a "reconquest" (gecpngpista) of the Iberian peninsula,

 

71
almost constantly for 800 years. The reward for this
politico-religious fervor came in 1492 with the reduction of
Moorish Granada, the expulsion of the Jews and the discovery
of the New World (Lynch 1981:29). At this point, the
Spaniards thought their millennium had arrived under the
banner of their patron saint, James of Compostela
(Defourneaux 1966:114).

Before 1492 Spain had large Jewish and Moslem
minorities (estimated at 200,000 and 1 million respectively)
(Lynch 1981:15; Vives 1972a:248-250). The Jewish population
comprised the majority of the nascent middle class. Because
they lacked religious constraints regarding usury and the
lending and collecting of money, they were useful to the
crown as tax collectors and financiers for the Recongpispa.
Christian commoner and elite alike disliked them both for
their power over the purse and for their religious beliefs
(Vives 1972b:50-51). As the war against the Moorish kingdom
of Granada wound down in the late fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, resentment against the Jewish minority grew with
the extension of the Inquisition. Pogroms and mass
conversions eventually culminated in the expulsion of three-
quarters of the Jewish population in 1492 (Braudel 1972:820;
Lynch 1981:20-21,29; Vives 1972b:32,33).

Moslem minorities were mostly peasant farmers with some
representation in the middle and upper classes, especially
in Granada (Braudel 1972:780-802). After the dispersal of
the Jews, the Inquisition turned its attention to the

followers of Islam. In their hands were rich irrigated

 

72
valleys in the Ebro basin and fields in Andalusia (Braudel
1972:75, 82-84). In 1502, ten years after the fall of
Granada, they, like the Jews before them, were given the
option to leave or convert to Catholicism (Lynch 1981:30).
Thus, at the end of the fifteenth century the vast majority
of the Iberian peninsula's inhabitants were professed Roman
Catholics (Defourneaux 1966:106; Vives 1972a:248-249).
Officially, after 1502, the only non- Catholic Christian
resident people in Spain were slaves (Defourneaux 1966:84).

The converts to Catholicism, be they Jewish pppyeppps
or former adherents of Islam, the mo iscos, were to remain
the prime suspects for the Inquisition until the Reformation
brought in a new and internal heretic -- the Protestant.

The Inquisition was established to cleanse the church of
internal heresy and apostasy. Thus, the profession of
another faith, be it Judaism, Islam or Native American
animism, was not the focus of the Inquisition's prosecution.
It was, rather, the converts, the conversos, mo iscos, and
later the American Indians, who drew the full attention of
the inquisitors (Elliott 1963:104-108; Lynch 1981:20-27;
Ortiz 1971:166-172).

It has been estimated that there were some 150,000
foreigners living in Spain in the sixteenth century(Ortiz
1971:147). Expatriates from Italy, the Low Countries,
Germany, France, Greece, the Hanseatic countries and England
comprised ten per cent of Seville's population (Defourneaux

1966:82; Lister and Lister 1982:13; Ortiz 1971:147).

 

 

 

 

73

These people were usually merchants or craftsmen
associated with trade and, as such, lived in Spain's major
commercial cities. The craftsmen were encouraged to
immigrate by the Spanish Crown, which offered tax exemptions
to artisans relocating in Spain (Lister and Lister 1982:13).
Merchants whose positions were often politically tenuous at
best, especially during the many European conflicts of the
age, often sought naturalization. This was obtained after
ten years of residence if they were married to Spaniards and
owned property (Ortiz 1971:147). Foreigners, whether they
were liked or disliked, were important in bringing goods and
services to Spain, and in addition provided ideas,
financing, and immigrants for the later colonization of the
New World (Elliott 1963:179).

Slavery was a part of Roman Spain and the West that had
not disappeared by the end of the fifteenth century. It had
gained new vigor after the era of the Black Death in the
fourteenth century when the nascent middle class created a
demand for cheap labor. In the fifteenth century, slavery
was associated with both economic exploitation and a
pandering to the demands for luxury by the pouveau ricpe.
Spanish slavery, unlike its American counterpart, was
commonly associated with the latter (Defourneaux 1966:83-
84).

In Spain, slaves were both black and white and always
non-Christian. The former were African, purchased from

Portuguese slavers, while the latter were war captives from

 

74
the lands of Ottoman Turkey in North Africa or the eastern
Mediterranean (Ortiz 1971:163).
These slaves lived with their owners and helped validate
their social position. Harsher was the lot of the king's
slaves who were put to work on public projects in the royal
mines or aboard galleys. Only in very rare instances are
there accounts of slaves working in the fields of Spain

(Defourneaux 1966:83-84; Ortiz 1971:164-165).

The Mgteriai Counterparts pf Hierarchy

For the early modern Spaniard, the staff of life was
wheat bread, olive oil and wine (Braudel 1972:236; Crosby
1972:67). Agriculture was Spain's main industry. As we
noted previously, Spain produced a wide variety of crops in
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. These included
wheat, barley, oats and rye in addition to a wide variety of
garden and subtropical vegetables. Spaniards kept pigs,
chickens, cattle, goats and sheep, and caught fish from off
the coasts of Europe, Africa and North America (Crosby 1986;
Fernandez 1972a:59; Reitz and Scarry 1985:34-35; Tuck 1985).

In the fifteenth and first half of the sixteenth
century, following the ravages of the fourteenth century's
Black Death, survivors of all classes ate well on a diet
which included large portions of meat. This trend ended in
the later sixteenth century when population outstripped
production and, coupled with inflation, sent food prices
spiraling upward (Braudel 1972:516,525; 1973:127-132;

Hamilton 1934:319-357). After this, fresh meat in Spain was

 

75
considered a luxury item reserved for the upper class or the
sick. The poor subsisted on bread and garden produce,
including onions and olives, and such sources of protein as
salt beef, fish and cheese (Braudel 1973:132,142,145-152;
Defourneaux 1966:103,152; McEwan 1988:60-61).

Cooking was traditionally a female task in Spain,
performed by women for their own household or by female
slaves. While the elite might consume sumptuous and varied
repasts of roast meat and other fresh foods, meals for the
vast majority of the population were typically liquid-based
stews. These were prepared in red lead-glazed earthenware
cazuelas (flat-bottomed cooking dishes) and jarros (flat-
based, globular bodied, constricted necked cooking dish)
over a brazier or gpgie (Defourneaux 1966:152; McEwan
1988:63, 209-212). Velazquez' early seventeenth century
(1618) painting entitled "Old Woman Frying Eggs," depicts a

women cooking in a cazuela over an anafe (see South et al.

 

1988:214).

Reports of rations issued to sailors and soldiers of
Philip II's armed forces give us some idea of the
composition of the normal diet for this segment of the
population. By the closing third of the sixteenth century,
caloric intake was between 2800 and 4100 per man per day. Of
this, 66% to 70% of the diet was composed of cereals and the
remainder was fairly evenly divided between meat and fish,
milk products, oil and drink (Braudel 1973:88; Hamilton
1929:431-441). Although we can not be certain how

reflective this information is of the norm of the

 

76
population, it does provide some guideline for examining the
diets of contemporary Spaniards, whatever their locale, and
can serve as an independent material means of evaluating
status within the system.

Finally, the importance of these foods to Spanish
culture is well seen in their New World colonies. There,
success was measured by how well the colonists could
europeanize the New World by replicating the Old, in this
case via Spanish bread, wine and oil--all items produced
from Old World cultigens (Crosby 1972:67). These and other
Old World foodstuffs were heavily imported until the 15403
when olives, grapes and wheat, among other Old World crops,
were being produced in sufficient quantities in Peru and
Mexico to meet the demands of all the colonists (Crosby
1972:79). Indeed "...the Spanish colonist could almost
always obtain wheat bread, unless he were very poor or an
inhabitant of the hot lowlands -- and even the latter could
have his wheat if he had the price to import it (Crosby
1972:71)." Even today, upper class Mexicans feel that corn
is food for Indians and wheat is reserved for them (Crosby
1972:107). How successful the colonial Spaniards were in
creating their "Neo-Europes" with familiar food prepared in
familiar ways is considered in the following chapters.

The hierarchies that epitomized the Spanish social
system, were reflected not only in homes and clothing but
could also be seen in many of the utensils associated with
daily life. Unfortunately, contemporary chroniclers rarely

discuss the actual composition of these items in enough

—._. A .--._A__.-A._....-_ . .. -... .. .

 

77
detail which allow comparison (Braudel 1973:197-198;
Defourneaux 1966). Thus, in these situations, researchers
have turned to the archaeological record.

Until recently, the excavation of early modern sites in
Spain was unknown. We are now fortunate to have the first
report of the Bafios site, the location of a convent of San
Augustinian nuns in sixteenth-century Seville (McEwan
1988). Unfortunately, we currently lack terrestrial sites
associated with other parts of the population. Shipwreck
remains associated with the 1554 flippg can provide some of
this missing information both directly, in the hierarchies
associated with shipboard life (Muckelroy 1978:240-242), and
indirectly, from the presence and absence of certain types
of artifactual remains found on the luxury-bearing ships of
the iippp (Skowronek 1987:103-104).

Much of the work conducted on these sites has focused
on those remains associated with foodways and, specifically,
on status-marking ceramics. The foremost ceramic in the
study of Hispanic material culture is the tin-glazed
earthenware commonly known as majolica. This material has
been accurately identified in its many types as a luxury
item and, thus, it can serve as an accurate status indicator
(Deagan 1983:231-241; 1985b:23-28; Fairbanks 1973:165;
Skowronek 1984). When majolicas of any functional
classification are grouped with other status-marking table
and utilitarian wares ( e.g., porcelain, stoneware, Orange
Micaceous) they can be compared to other non-status marking

storage and utilitarian earthenwares and can, from their

 

78
variety, number and quality, give us some idea about the
lifeways of the people who used them.

For instance, over 46% of the ceramics recovered from
the Bafios site were majolicas and other status/ethnic-
marking wares, 53% were utilitarian and less than 1% were
storage wares (Appendix A). In the 1554 ilppp assemblage,
these groupings were 5%, 1% and 93% respectively (see
Appendix B). These differences reflect not only the
differing functions of each site and the availability of
fresh food but also the demography and social status of
their respective populations. Thus, while the hierarchical
nature of the crews of the 1554 fippa represented a
microcosm of sixteenth century Spanish culture, from captain
to cabin boy, the lack of women and the specialized function
of the vessel as a bulk carrier of produce places it at a
materially lower status. Bafios, as part of the multi-
functional community of Seville, had access to a greater
variety of elite markers. Its population, although also
demographically skewed, was hierarchically arranged. The
overall high status of the sisters in the community,
combined with their access to status-markings foods and
material goods, is reflected in their ceramic assemblage.
From an evaluation of these material aspects of the lifeways
of these distinct communities, we can begin to see not only
the role of the individual site in the hierarchy of the
settlement, but develop an independent scale for evaluating

the site's position in the hierarchy of the system.

 

79
Spmmapy

This chapter outlined the formation of the settlement
pattern associated with early modern Spain in the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries. The hierarchical nature associated
with settlement was examined against the Peninsula's
environment and its economic and political history.
Hierarchies were part of the cultural template for the
creation of "Neo-Europes" that the Spaniards would carry to
the New World. These were influences that would color their
choice of town sites, the function of settlements, and their
relationships with the aboriginal populations and with each
other.

From this homeland, some 100,000 to 200,000 people
seeking a better life emigrated to the New World in the
sixteenth century. The Spanish colonists who came to the
New World came from a society already experienced in urban
life and steeped in social and economic hierarchy. Spain
was also a nation that, after 800 years of politico-
religious warfare, was finally politically unified and
religiously homogeneous. It was, thus, ill-disposed to
tolerance of political or religious difference. These
emigrants carried a Spanish cultural template that contained
idealized images of what the New World could and should be
(Braudel 1972:404,417,740; Lynch 1984:110). .How these
desires and expectations were or were not realized is the

subject of the following chapters.

 

CHAPTER 4

HISPANIOLA

Introduction

The discovery and establishment of the Spanish
colony of Hispaniola is a story of wind and its shaping of
the hostile ocean environment into natural "main street" sea
lanes of communication between Spain and the New World
(Taaffe et al. 1963:504,519). And, the same winds that
sent ships of conquest and commerce down to the Canary
Islands (a fifteenth century conquest) propelled Columbus to
the shores of Hispaniola in December of 1492. The route he
pioneered to the New World was formalized over the next
three hundred and fifty years until the close of the age of
sail (Morison 1942:277-278).

Spain's geographical position places it on the
interface of the northern hemisphere's two main wind
systems, the Prevailing Westerlies and the Northeast Trades
(Augelli 1965:41-43; Crosby 1986:104-131). These wind
currents were crucial in propelling Spanish ships to and
from the New World. Its relationship to these winds placed
the Spanish city and port of Seville at the prime break-in-

bulk location to control the country's overseas trade with

80

 

81
the New World. The control of this trade led to the city's

meteoric growth in the sixteenth century.

Environment

Hispaniola lies in the tropics (17 N to 20 N and 68 W
to 74 W) between the Caribbean Sea and Atlantic Ocean
(Figure 12). The island occupies 11,580 square kilometers
and is approximately the size of Scotland or Vermont and New
Hampshire combined (Augelli 1965:250; Bell 1981:1).

Hispaniola is a land of rugged mountains, deep valleys
and broad plains. Over half of the island consists of
steep-sided highlands that rise as high as 3,000 meters so
that the relief patterns of Hispaniola are the most complex
in the West Indies (Augelli 1965:250-251; Bell 1981:1; West
and Augelli 1976:157). The three mountain ranges (Figure
13) run generally in a northwesterly to southeasterly
direction. These ranges separate broad, fertile lowland
valleys.

In the north, between the Cordillera Central and the
Cordillera Septentrional (Sierra de Montecristi), lie the
historically rich farmlands of Cibao and La Vega Real (Royal
Plain). These valleys are watered by the Yaque de Norte and
Yuna Rivers respectively and have been centers for
population concentrations and agricultural production both
prehistorically and historically. Southwest of the
Cordillera Central is a complex of alternating ranges and
lowlands. Some of the lowlands lie below sea level and are

covered by salt lakes. Two main rivers, the Artibonite in

 

82

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84
the west and the Yaque del Sur west of Ocoa Bay in the San
Juan Valley, are the centers for agricultural production in
these regions. Lastly, in the southeastern corner of
Hispaniola on the shores of the Caribbean and the Mona
Passage, separating the island from Puerto Rico, is the
largest stretch of coastal plain. Watered by the Ozama
River, this region is presently home to plantations and
pasture land (Augelli 1965:250-251; Bell 1981:2-3; West and
Augelli 1976:157-159).

Although Hispaniola lies in the tropics, all of the
island is not equally lush. Rainfall over most of the
island is over 100 centimeters per year, with much less
falling in the Enriquillo-Cul-de-sac Depression southwest of
the Cordillera Central. Thus, the natural vegetation varies
from tropical rain forest to virtual desert. In general,
there is more rain in the northeast or windward quarter.
This decreases to the southwest, especially on the leeward
side of the mountain ranges, to the extent that irrigation
is necessary for farming adjacent to the Yaque del Sur and
the Artibonite Rivers (West and Augelli 1976:40-41, 159).

The marked variation in moisture patterns and
verticality gave the vegetation of Hispaniola a mosaic-like
quality. In the northeastern quarter and on the Guacayarima
peninsula, where rainfall is greatest, were tropical rain,
deciduous and semi-deciduous forests. These forests were

heavily lumbered by the Spanish in the sixteenth century for
dYeWOOdS, including the prized brasilium or brazilwood,

Pines and pine resins and gums for naval stores and

 

85
medicinal plants such as cafiafistula (Cassia fistula) and
wild cinnamon (Sauer 1966:92,93,98,99; West and Augelli
1976:45-48).

The highland regions of the island are characterized by
distinctive wet and dry seasons. Because of altitude
differences, these areas are home to temperate forms of
vegetation. In these highland forests are deciduous and
evergreen broadleaf and coniferous trees such as North

American pines (Pinus sp.) and oaks (Quercus sp.). This wet

 

and dry climate also characterizes the Caribbean Coastal
Plain east of Santo Domingo. Here, open tropical savanna is
found. In these areas of tall grass cover with scattered
deciduous and evergreen broadleaf trees, shrubs, palms and
pines were established the first sugar cane plantations in
the New World (Sauer 1966:209-212; West and Augelli
1976:45,48-50).

Finally, in the Enriquillo-Cul-de-sac Depression, low
rainfall and humidity have combined to create semi-arid
steppe conditions characterized by short grass cover with
scattered shrubs and cacti (West and Augelli 1976:45,53,54).
The similarity of this area to Spain's peseta in vegetation
and climate was not lost on the sixteenth century Spanish
who utilized this area for horse and cattle pasturage (Sauer
1966:153,156-157).

In the modern era, the island of Hispaniola is known

for’ the production of nickel, iron, bauxite, salt and copper
(Augelli 1965:252-253; West and Augelli 1976:97). In the

fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the mineral that lured

86

the Spanish to occupy Hispaniola was gold. On December 12,
1492, Columbus formally claimed Hispaniola for Spain. At
that time he saw for the first time, and captured, one of
the natives, described as a "very young and beautiful woman"
clad only in a gpid nose-plug (Morison 1942:283). It is
difficult to ascertain a half a millennium later which
aspect of the woman's dishabille concerned the Spanish
sailors' sensibilities more that day, but let it be noted
that the following day was to witness the first European
prospecting trip on the island (Morison 1942:284). From
these humble beginnings began the first gold rush in the New
World. Placer deposits of gold would be found along the
Haina and Ozama Rivers in the eastern half of the island,
and the source lodes were discovered later in the interior
(Floyd 1973:32,44,66; Sauer 1966:61,77-79,153-155). When
Columbus reported to the crown in 1494, "There is more gold
here than iron in the Biscay," the reverberations were felt
throughout the Iberian Peninsula and Europe (Floyd 1973:24).

Copper was another mineral exploited by the Spanish
from deposits near the town of Puerto Real (near modern Cap
Haitien) on the island's north shore (Floyd 1973:63).
Copper not only had intrinsic value but also was an
essential component for the bronze that was crucial in the
casting of artillery for the defense of the empire (Hoffman
1980:59-62).

The third major mineral to be exploited by the Spanish
was salt. Mined from the Enriquillo-Cul-de-sac Depression

and shipped through their port of Azua, salt was not only a

87
table seasoning but also an important preservative for hides
and meats (Floyd 1973:11). As we saw in Chapter 3, salted
beef and fish were important in the diets of peasants as
well as soldiers and sailors.

In summary, the climate of tropical Hispaniola is
varied, depending on elevation and relative windward or
leeward position vis-a-vis the Northeast Trade winds. This
climatic variety and accompanying topographic
differentiation created lush forests, open savannas and dry
scrubland. These differing environmental zones, coupled
with natural mineral and plant resources, created a tempting

setting for Spanish economic expansion in valued exotica.

Native Population

Columbus had headed west to reach Asia in order to
circumvent the Ottoman Turks in the Mediterranean and the
Portuguese footholds along the African and Asian littoral.
Following the well-known wind systems of the age, he set a
course that would have taken him to the Spice Islands (East
Indies) had not the rich islands and mainlands of the New
World intervened (Crosby 1986; Morison 1942; Parry 1963).

In this New World Columbus, and those who followed,
found peoples at what could be characterized as an advanced
neolithic level of technology but with varied forms of
social organization -- from bands to states (Service 1955).
Subsistence in this hemisphere ranged from hunting,
gathering and fishing to intensive horticulture supplemented

with hunting and gathering, and limited pastoralism.

88

New and Old World contacts resulted in drastic and
sometimes deadly changes in the populations of both
hemispheres. Crosby (1972) called these modifications the
Columbian Exchange. Plants, animals and especially diseases
from the Old World and the Canary Islands took hold among
the heretofore isolated New World populace and inalterably
changed them from their previous pristine state (Haring
1918:124-125). While New World crops would lead to an
eventual population explosion in the Old World, inhabitants
of the New World were decimated by disease (Dobyns 1983)
just as the inhabitants of the Canary Islands had been
during and after the Spanish conquest (Crosby 1986).

Because of these changes, the complexion of the New World
changed in all but the most densely populated Pre-Columbian
states and remote regions so that we now find populations
whose roots are mixed (e.g., mestizo and zambo) or are
predominantly European or African in origin (Augelli 1962;
Service 1955:412; West and Augelli 1976:12-15).

The members of the complex stratified society that once
inhabited Hispaniola and the islands of the Greater Antilles
are known to modern researchers as the Island Arawaks. This
name is based on linguistic similarities between these
island dwellers and inhabitants of the South American
mainland; it was never used as the name for any specific
group (Rouse in Olsen 1974:xiii-xvi). To the Spanish, these
people were known as T inos, a term derived from the
natives' own term for the nobles of their society -- the

nitaipos or pitaynos (Floyd 1973:12; Moya Pons 1976:14, 27;

89
Sauer 1966:45). Other inhabitants of the Caribbean basin,
who had some contact with the Arawaks, were the peoples of
the Lesser Antilles and Bahamas -- the Caribs and Lucayos
respectively (Figure 14).

Population estimates for the Arawaks of Hispaniola, at
the time of contact, range from as high as 8 million to a
low of 100,000 (Bell 1981:9; Deagan 1985a:283; Floyd
1973:12-13; Sauer 1966). While most researchers feel the
lower estimate is more accurate; in 1514 a census enumerated
only some 22,726 (Sauer 1966:200-204). Five years later
another census recorded less than 5,000 (Moya Pons 1976:68).
By 1540, less than a lifetime after the first landfall of
Columbus, the Tainos were extinct as a distinctive
population on the island (Bell 1981:9-10; Las Casas 1974:45-
53).

The ranked social organization of the Tainos or Arawaks
of Hispaniola was that of a chiefdom (Deagan 1985a:283;
Sauer 1966:6) with a matrilineal, exogamous, clan structure.
The position of cacigpes or chiefs was inherited within a
given lineage of the pitaino class and was open to women as
well as men (Bell 1981:7; Moya Pons 1976:22). "Queen"
Higuanama of Higuey (a.k.a. Anacaona of Xaragua), for
example, became chief after the death of her brother
Behechio (Las Casas 1974:49-50). Marriage was monogamous,
except among the cacigpes, where polygamy was practiced to
ensure alliances within districts and provinces (Moya Pons

1976:21-22).

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Hispaniola, known as Qpipgpeiia ("a thing than which
there is nothing greater") to its inhabitants, was organized
into five general confederacies called pgpipapgps, under a
paramount chiefs (Moya Pons 1976:26; Sauer 196645-50).

These chiefs lent their lineage names to their respective
confederacies just as the family or clan names of the local
and district chiefs identified the areas under their
control. Confusion over the hierarchy and the myriad of
names associated with each area led many of the Spanish and
later researchers to sometimes mistakenly attribute greater
status to a local cacigpe than to one who represented a
district or cazicazgo (e.g., Las Casas 1974:45-50; Moya Pons
1976:26). Figure 15 shows the five cazicazgos of Hispaniola
-- Caizcimu, Huhabo, Cayabo, Bainoa and Guacayarima -- as
they were recorded by the Spanish at the beginning of the
sixteenth century. These were subdivided into ten, two,
twelve, twenty-four, and eleven districts respectively
(Sauer 1966:47).

Taino subsistence was based on a mixture of hunting,
gathering, fishing and horticulture (Deagan 1985a:283; Moya
Pons 1976:15-16). Terrestrial meat protein was limited on
this mammal-poor island to iguanas, birds, the rodent Hutia,
and the occasional consumption of domestic dogs (Sauer
1966:58-59). The sea provided fish, shellfish, crustaceans,
turtles and their eggs, manatees and other sea mammals and
sea birds. These were taken from blinds, with weirs, or
from canoes with the aid of nets, harpoons, and hook and

line (Bell 1981:9; Sauer 1966:58).

92

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93

Root horticulture provided the majority of food for the
Arawak. The primary crop was manioc, followed by sweet
potatoes and yucca. Less important food crops included
arrowroot, peanuts, corn, beans and squash. Other
cultivated plants included tobacco, cotton and the bottle
gourd or calabash (Bell 1981:9; Moya Pons 1976:15-18; Sauer
1966:53-56; West and Augelli 1976:60). These plants were
cultivated in cleared, raised fields called conucos, using
a slash and burn technology. Common tools were digging
sticks, axes and hoes of stone and shell and a wooden
forerunner of the machete (Bell 1981:9; Sauer 1966:51—53).
Irrigation was practiced in the dry southwestern region of
Hispaniola. Maintained by the gaborias or commoners of the
cazicazgos, the conucos were able to support a dense
population near Xaragua as well as in the Vega Real or
Magua, in the basin of Maguana, on the north coastal plain
of Marien, and on the rich limestone lands of Hispaniola's
southeast near Higuey, as the various cazicazgos were known
to the Spanish (Figure 16 -Floyd 1973:14; Sauer 1966:52-53).

Among the Arawak there was a sexual division of labor.
Men were involved with fishing, warfare and fieldwork.
Women, whether naboria or n'taino, collected food and fuel,
worked in the fields, made pottery and cooked (Deagan
1985a:285: Ewen 1987:76, 206-208). The material by-products
associated with these activities is important in this study
because their recovery on European archaeological sites can

help us determine the behavior performed therein.

94

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Descriptions of contact-era Arawak villages are limited
but give us some idea of their plan and constituent parts as
a reflection of Arawak social organization.

Houses for the naborias were circular in plan and cone-
or bell-shaped in profile. Wooden posts served as the main
structural members for the houses. These were covered with
an unplastered or daubed wattle of cane, thatch or palm.
Given Hispaniola's mild climate, the houses were used only
for sleeping and, as such, were sparsely furnished with
hammocks and some personal belongings.

These houses were large enough to shelter an extended
family and were loosely grouped by clan, making true streets
nonexistent. These clan neighborhoods were grouped around a
central plaza which doubled as a ball court and on which
faced the house of the cacigue. The houses of cacigues were
constructed of the same materials as those of the commoners
but were rectangular. These structures were the largest
buildings in a village and were sometimes raised on mounds
(Deagan 1987a:674-675; Moya Pons 1976:19-20: Sauer 1966:62-
64). Recent archaeological excavations at the alleged site
of Columbus's first landfall at the village of Guacanagari,
district of Marien, cazicazgo of Bainoa, reveal a settlement
that is over 300 meters in circumference with a central
plaza and platform mound (Deagan l987a:674-75).

The lack of extensive archaeological research, combined
with the impermanent nature of the materials used in the
construction of these villages, makes an exact description

of settlement pattern nearly impossible. Even though the

96
exact locations of the majority of contact-era Arawak
villages are unknown, we can make some generalizations about
the settlement pattern from documentary sources.

Some researchers have reasoned that Arawak villages
were located away from the coast as protection from the
raids of their fierce Carib neighbors to the south (Morison
1942:293-294). Although there is truth in the observation
of the Caribs' prowess as seafarers and raiders, these
occasional forays cannot be cited as the reason for Arawak
settlement inland from the coast (Deagan 1985a:283; Severin
1970:11). The explanation may instead be in the nature of
Arawak horticulture.

Unlike the Caribs, who were hunters and gatherers, the
Arawaks based their economy on root horticulture with
supplemental fruits of the field and sea. Root crops, which
reproduce vegetatively, require certain environmental
settings to ensure the survival of the plants from which
cuttings can be made for the following year's crop. Lands
immediately adjacent to the coast are known the world over
for the general poor quality of the soils. In the Caribbean
basin the danger to planted crops along coast is further
compounded by the annual hurricane season and drought in
marginal areas (Sauer 1966:68; Severin 1970:10-11). The
more sedentary Arawak villages, surrounded by their precious
and labor intensive conucos, were sited away from the coast
because their economic focus was on food production rather
than food procurement (Floyd 1973:15,21,28,61: Morison

1942:427).

97

Columbus met the gagiggg Guacanagari on his first
landfall on the north coast of Hispaniola. This low-
ranking chief was carried on a litter from his initial
meeting with Columbus on the coast "to his residence which
lay some miles inland" (Morison 1942:290). Guacanagari's
contemporary, the great cacigue of the gazigazgg of Bainoa,
Behechio, lived at Xaragua (Jaragua) inland from the coast
(Las Casas 1974:49; Sauer 1966:51,153). From these examples
alone, it should be clear that the Arawak settlement pattern
had an inward-looking, terrestrial focus rather than looking
to the coast and the horizon beyond as did their chief
antagonists the Caribs and the Spanish. Thus, it should
come as no surprise that the largest Arawak population
concentrations occurred near the best farm lands located in
the well watered north, the southeast lowlands, and the
irrigated southwestern periphery.

On December 18, 1492, Columbus wrote to Los Reyes
Catolicos about his meeting with the cacigge Guancanagari
and his people. A passage from this letter would color the
subsequent European colonization of the New World.

Your Highness may believe...that this island and all

the others are as much yours as Castile, that here is

wanting nothing save a settlement, and to command them
to do what you will. For I with these people aboard,
who are not many, could overrun all these islands
without opposition; for already I have seen but three
of these mariners go ashore where there was a multitude
of these Indians, and all fled without their seeking to
do them ill. They bear no arms, and are all
unprotected and so very cowardly that a thousand would
not face three; so they are fit to be ordered about and
made to work, to sow and do aught else that may be
needed, and you may build towns and teach them to go

clothed and to adopt our customs (Columbus in Morison
1942:290).

98

The later massacre of the survivors of the §anta_flgria
at the town of Navidad would prove the Igiggs not to be the
passive folk Columbus claimed. Caonabo of Maguana,
paramount chief of the province of Cayabo, would not suffer
the arrogance of the castaway Spaniards. His power would
not be broken except by force of arms at the battle of Santa
Cerro in 1495 (Bell 1981:11; Floyd 1973:21). The other
provinces would similarly be reduced by force of arms,
sometimes combined with treachery. By 1504, with the
capture of Higuey, the Spanish had wrested control of the
island from its aboriginal masters, the cacigues, but with
far less ease than Columbus had predicted (Floyd 1973:61-62;
Las Casas 1974:45-52; Sauer 1966:149).

Under the Spanish, the surviving Arawak commoners would
pass through three stages of domination. As the island was
being reduced from separate indigenous provinces, those who
were already under Spanish control were forced to provide
regular, involuntary tribute. Since tribute was a part of
precontact chiefdom society, this was not especially onerous
as first conceived.

The tribute system would give way when, in addition to
demanding gold, dyewood and food, the Spanish demanded the
people. In 1496, the Spanish treated the natives as benign
subjects of the crown to be manipulated at will and without
any consideration for their rights. Under this policy,
known as re artimiento, the aboriginal population was
allotted to the Spanish colonists or crown to do with as

they saw fit, be it enslavement or the wholesale movement of

99
men to work the mines (Bell 1981:13: Floyd 1973:28, 29,33,
35,64; Sauer l966:96,99,150).

In 1504 :gpartimiento gave way to the gnggmignga system
(a grant of land and service from the crown). Under this
system, the Arawaks were still assigned to certain Spanish
individuals, usually for labor in the mines or fields, but
as subjects of the crown, they were given rights as well
which included proper care, work limitations and proper
wages (Sauer 1966:150). In theory under this system, any
encomendero (a grantee) who failed to treat the king's
subjects properly could lose their encomignda. In fact
however, such requirements were rarely enforced (Bell
1981:13).

The rapid wholesale collapse of the Arawak culture can
be attributed to a variety of factors, including disease and
the inherent internal weaknesses associated with its
organization, a weakness in which disaffected peripheral
constituent chiefdoms refused to unite to actively support
the whole or simply refused to act against the invader. In
Hispaniola, the Spanish found peripheral chiefs who would
support their cause, thus aiding the collapse of the society
from within.

In summary, the Arawak were a sedentary, horticultural
people living inland on the richest lands of Hispaniola.
Nobles and commoners, known respectively as nitainos and
naborias, lived under the control of the cagigues or chiefs.

Each village was part of an hierarchy within a district

100
which in turn was part of a larger province or confederacy
called a gazigazgg.

Because of their reliance on root horticulture the
Arawak sited their villages near the more fertile inland
areas of the island. Social organization was reflected in
the size and importance of these towns within each district
and cazicazgo. The hierarchical nature of this organization
meant that the disruption of any part of the whole had
ramifications both above and below through the ties of
reciprocity and redistribution.

The rapid collapse of this society, in just over a
decade from the date of contact and its extinction after
half a century were as astounding to contemporary observers
such as Las Casas as to modern researchers. In fact,
however, the nature of the social organization held the
seeds of its own destruction. On the periphery, the limits
of redistribution-based reciprocity can stretch too far for
kin-based fealty to play a major role in the support of the
larger political divisions. In Hispaniola, these limits had
been reached to the point that peripheral segments were
willing to support the Spanish against the cagigues. This,
combined with warfare, the Spanish introduction of lethal
diseases, the disruption of the subsistence system, and

overwork brought the Arawaks' demise.

The Spanish Colony

The late fifteenth and early sixteenth century Spanish

occupation of Hispaniola went through four distinctive

101
phases of physical, economic and political expansion that
are roughly comparable to those discussed by Meinig (1986)
and Taaffe et al. (1963). (See Chapter 2). Although no
tightly—dated lines of demarcation can exactly separate
these phases, the sixteenth century make-up of the oldest
Spanish colony was in place by 1520, less than thirty years
after Columbus's first landfall.

The European settlement of Hispaniola in the fifteenth

and sixteenth centuries best fits our definition of a
colonial extractive cosmopolitan frontier where the
exploitation of local resources is the primary function.
Its rapid evolution and transformation from initial
exploration to cosmopolitan plantation colony is best seen
against the larger expansion of the empire into the New
World and the colony's response when faced with a huge
investment in physical plant and falling returns from its

initial trajectory of investment and growth.

Phase I
Prelude -- 1492-1493

Before he returned to Spain, Columbus explored
Hispaniola's north shore in December of 1492 and January of
1493. These investigations revealed some of the island's
natural resources, including anchorages for removing items
perceived as Asian spices and medicines and the
unmistakable presence of copper and gold (Morison

1942:282,293,288,311).

102

This first voyage was to be one of discovery and
nothing more until the loss of the Santa Maria on Christmas
day 1492 made the return of the entire crew an
impossibility. The vessel was lost on a reef on a shallow
bay west of the good harbor near the present location of Cap
Haitien, Haiti. From the remains of the Santa Maria,
Columbus constructed the settlement-fortress named Navidad
(Figure 17). Its willing inhabitants were the crew of the
lost vessel, who envisioned it as their means to a quick
fortune before the gold rush that was certain to follow
Columbus' return to Spain. These men were to continue the
bartering started by the fleet, find the source of the
region's gold and continue the good relations that Columbus
had enjoyed with the local Arawak cacique Guacanagari
(Deagan 1987a:672-675).

Columbus left Navidad on January 3, 1493, and headed
west. In landing at the Cibao-Vega region surrounding the
Rio Yaque del Norte, Columbus found the principal source of
gold he sought in Hispaniola as well as the island's richest
lands and one of its centers of aboriginal population
(Morison 1942:309). Another week brought the Admiral into
Samana Bay on Hispaniola's east coast and from there back to

Spain.

103

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104

Phase II
Barter and Plunder -- the Commercial Outpost 1493-1502

In November of 1493, Columbus returned to Hispaniola
and began the second phase of the island's settlement
history. During this phase, explorations of the island
continued and revealed the richest mining regions for gold,
copper and salt as well as stands of dyewoods and aboriginal
population concentrations as sources for workers in these
enterprises. When Columbus's second fleet of seventeen
ships and 1500 men anchored off Navidad, they found the fort
abandoned. The local cacigue Guacanagari reported that the
Spanish sailors had angered the local paramount chief
Caonabo who, in turn, had destroyed the settlement and its
inhabitants. With no reason to remain at Navidad, Columbus
sailed westward to the Cibao-Vega region where he had
earlier found gold sources and fertile lands for
exploitation. There, in January of 1494 on a shallow bay,
he founded Isabela (Floyd 1973:22; Figure 18).

Named for Spain's queen, Isabela served as the capital
and main entrepot for the colony until the turn of the
century. The settlement was laid out on the Bajabonico
River adjacent to an Arawak village. A town of some two
hundred wood and thatch houses was constructed around a
central plaza where stood Columbus's stone home, warehouses
and, no doubt, the first church in the New World (Floyd
1973:17,22).

Sustenance for the town was accomplished with imported

foods, experimental plantings of Old World crops, such as

 

105

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106
wheat, chickpeas, melons, onions, radishes, salad greens,
grape vines, sugar cane and orchards, in addition to the
foods supplied by the local aboriginal population (Crosby
1972:67; Floyd 1973:23). Columbus also brought animals to
feed and power the community. These included dogs, horses,
pigs, cattle, chickens, sheep and goats. With the lack of
predators in Hispaniola, all of the animals reproduced at
previously unknown rates. Only the sheep were said not to
prosper in the tropics. The lack of a New World
sheepherding/wool industry has been attributed to a climate
said to be unfavorable to sheep. Yet, the reproduction
rates were as high as those for other animals (Crosby
1972:74-96: Sauer 1966:156). The answer is more likely
economic than biological. We noted in Chapter 3 the extent
of the meseta, a major wool-producing area, in Spain in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The presence of cotton in
the New World tropics, plus the power of mercantilism in
which the protection of homeland industries was central,
made the keeping of sheep in the New World an unprofitable
venture. This was to remain true until the growth of
population and empire on the American mainland outstripped
Old World production and made sheepherding in North and
South America profitable.

Because this early Spanish population was entirely
male, they looked to the local population for spouses and
concubines (Deagan 1985a:289,304-305 Floyd 1973:23,59).
These unions resulted not only in the production of a

mestizo population but also in kinship ties between the

107
populations. In a kin-ordered mode of production, such as
had existed in prehistoric Hispaniola, liaisons between
Spaniards and Arawaks served to legitimize the reformulated
hierarchical social order under Spanish control.

While the expansion and role of Old World plants and
animals is central to our understanding of conquest culture
and the Europeanization of the New World through the
colonization gradient, these aspects were largely
unconscious but expected sidecars to the cause celebre for
expansion -- gold. Based on the Portuguese factoria system,
the initial Spanish penetration into Hispaniola was a
corporate venture, sponsored by the crown and its
supporters, wherein the settlers were wage earners in the
employ of the investors (Floyd 1973:17-18).

From the town of Isabela, a series of fortified
factorias led into the interior of the island. Constructed
at one day's march intervals, nine blockhouses were built
across the eastern interior of Hispaniola. These factorias
were built adjacent to existing Arawak villages so as to be
able to barter with them for both gold and food (Floyd
1973:24,28-30,34). Later in the decade, as bartering gave
way to the tributary and gepartimiento systems, these
settlements came to be centers for mining and internal
slaving (Floyd 1973:28,56).

One of the last settlements founded was Nueva Isabela
on the Ozama River on Hispaniola's southern coast. While a
major gold strike brought the Spaniards to the area, it was

the good harbor, fertile lands, large Indian population, an

108
estuary rich in fish, shellfish and fowl, and the wind and
sea that favored ships moving across the Caribbean that
encouraged them to stay (Floyd 1973:34,44; Sauer 1966:92).
By 1500 the entrepot and capital of Isabela was abandoned
after hurricanes wracked its open harbor; its functions
were moved to Nueva Isabela, which was then renamed Santo
Domingo (Bell 1981:12; Floyd 1973:44).

After less than a decade, the gold supply of the
eastern half of the island had begun to dwindle. The island
that a boastful Columbus said had "more gold than iron in
Biscay" was being written off by the Spanish as good only
for provisions in light of the ongoing discoveries in the
New World (Floyd 1973:48). In reality, a second rush was
about to unfold which would place the entire island under
Spanish domination. This expansion would be built on the
discovery of copper, salt and dyewoods in Haiti ("a rough
wild region" in Arawak) and of major exploitable population
concentrations in Xaragua, Jacmel and other locales (Floyd

1973:61-63; Sauer 1966:45,92,99).

Phase III

Imperial Imposition to Plantation, 1502-1520

The third phase of Spanish expansion in Hispaniola
marks the collapse of any aboriginal autonomy on the island
and the transitional period between the primary focus on
gold extraction and the later focus on sugar production.
Many of the factorias established during the second phase

were abandoned at this time for the new mining centers and

109
settlements in both eastern Hispaniola and Haiti (compare
Figures 18 and 19).

The fifteen settlements that mark this phase were, in
essence, an official statement of imperial control. Ovando,
the crown's representative, was instructed to inspect
existing settlements and to establish others on the island
according to the quality of the land, place and people
"because it is our pleasure that the Christians living in
said island or who may live there in the future shall not
live dispersed and that none shall live outside of the
places to be founded..." (Sauer 1966:151). These were
officially incorporated villas with coats of arms and city
governments (see Chapter 3: Sauer 1966:151). Evidence from
contemporary drawings (e.g., Figure 20; Santo Domingo;
Hoffman 1980:156); extant cities (e.g., Santo Domingo,
Puerto Plata, Santiago de los Caballeros, and Azua); and
archaeological evidence (e.g., Puerto Real and Concepcion de
la Vega; Deagan 1987b:6-7: Hamilton 1981:30; Willis
1984:348) suggests that the majority of these settlements
were laid out following the Spanish grid plan. Most houses
were in the architectural pattern of southern Spain, where
the structures were built immediately adjacent to the
street. According to an 1514 census, these villas were
inhabited by 664 Spanish men with 102 Spanish and 51 native
wives. These few representatives of Spain controlled,
through the encomienda system, 22,326 Arawaks (Sauer

1966:199-201).

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112

In addition to these formal similarities, each villa

 

stood adjacent to or in the vicinity of aboriginal
population concentrations which could be exploited for food
and labor under the newly instituted encomienda system.
Perhaps the most crucial observation to be made about these
new towns is their location on the coast near adequate
harbors. At this time overland trails were limited to those
founded during Phase II between Santo Domingo and Puerto
Plata and new ones from Santo Domingo to Azua and San Juan
and from Puerto Real inland to Lares de Guahaba. This lack
of roads is understandable, given Hispaniola's rugged
terrain. In a country that was still operating on 1500-
year-old roads, Spain saw that profits were to be made in
coastal trading and communications, investments in external
cosmopolitan control with a focus on the needs of the
motherland.

The following briefly summarizes these new towns, their
primary functions, and their populations in 1514 during this
phase (compiled from Floyd 1973:63,66 and Sauer 1966:153-
154, 199 unless otherwise noted):

1) Santa Maria de Verapaz - Established on the coast

near the Arawak town of Xaragua, this 1;; a was a rich

food and dyewood producer. There were 48 Spanish men
with six Spanish and six native wives.

2) Salyatierra de la Sabana - This port town was

founded on a swampy plain that was hospitable to
livestock, agriculture and the exploitation of various
seafoods. The productivity of this town made it a
popular port for supply vessels and for the mines.
Twenty Spanish men with two native wives comprised the
population of this town.

 

113
3) ViIla Nueva ge zagaimo - Built near the Arawak town

of Jacmel, Yaquimo was the principle port for the
export of brazil and other dyewoods (Sauer 1966:92).
Yaquimo was home to 32 Spanish men, two Spanish women
and one native wife.

4) Aaua de Compostella - Port for San Juan de Maguana,
this rich agricultural area was also important in the
mining of salt, the universal preservative, from the
adjacent Enriquillo-Cul-de-Sac Depression. By the end
of this Phase, Azua would be part of the developing
sugar cane district (Sauer 1966:209—211). Twenty four
Spanish men and four women lived in this vilIa.

5) §an Juan de la Maguana - Built near the paramount
cagigae Caonabo's village, this fertile region fed the

mines with its produce. Overseeing this production
were 41 Spanish men, one Spanish woman and two native
wives.

6) Lares de Guahaba - Named for Ovando as the
Comendador de Lares and for the adjacent Arawak village
of Guahaba, this inland town was the scene of a copper
strike as well as a major aboriginal population
concentration. At this pueblo were two Spanish women,
one native wife and 22 Spanish men.

7) Puerto Real - Port for Lares with some copper
mining, this town near the ruins of Navidad was central
in both the internal and external slave trade. Puerto
Real was home to 38 Spanish men with three Spanish and
two native wives.

8) §anta Cruz de Haniguayana - Another agrarian town
founded to supply food and labor to the mines.

9) Salvaon de Higuey - This agrarian port town, like
its neighbor Santa Cruz, supplied food and labor to the
mines until its aboriginal population ceased to exist
and its Spanish population had moved to Puerto Rico.
This settlement had 16 Spanish and five native wives
for the 41 male residents.

10) Puerto Plata - The main port for Hispaniola's north
coast, Puerto Plata replaced Isabela and served to
funnel supplies of food and labor to the mines. In
this small settlement were twenty Spanish men and three
Spanish and four native wives.

11) Santiago aa Igs Caballeros - One of the original
factorias of Phase II, this inland mining town was also

rich in agricultural and livestock production due to
its location in the rich Cibao-Vega region.

114

12) Concepcion de la Vega - Another old factoria
settlement in the fertile Vega district, this gold

mining town was also a mint. The gold was a magnet for
population. Here 68 Spanish men lived with their seven
Spanish and seven native wives.

13) Bonao - The last of the factorias, Bonao was rich
in livestock and other comestibles. This valuable land
attracted 42 Spanish men with four Spanish and four
native wives.

14) Buenaventura - A new villa on the main inland
trail, Buenaventura was built on the Haina River and
was home to a mint as well as mines. Like the mining
town of Concepcion de la Vega, Buenaventura boasted a
"large" population of 62 Spanish men with nine Spanish
and seven native wives.

15) Santo Domingo - Reestablished by Ovando on the west
bank of the Ozama River after being destroyed by a
hurricane, Santo Domingo was the primate city serving
as the capital and leading port town on Hispaniola.

Its preeminence was reflected in its population size.
As early as 1514 it was home to the largest
concentration of Spaniards on the island. Here there
were 28 Spanish and five native wives for the 164
Spanish male residents. The town's importance is
attributable to several factors including: a large
harbor for local and overseas trade; terminal point for
the main overland trail to the gold fields; fertile
soils; and a rich estuary environment. Through time
Santo Domingo would be home to a ship-building
industry, the center for sugar production, the highest
courts for the island, a mint and royal treasury, a
cathedral, the seat of the royal Audiencia or supreme
court, a convent, a brothel and an university (Boxer
1975:51; Moya Pons 1976:67).

These fifteen towns can be divided into inland and port
towns. For the former, other than San Juan which was
established to control an Arawak town, the five inland towns
were copper and gold mining towns. Harbor towns can be
divided into those on the terminus of inland trails and
solitary ports. Given the nature of all of these towns as
suppliers of food and labor for the mines, only Puerto Real,
Puerto Plata and Santo Domingo are distinguishable due to

their position as terminals for inland trails to the mines.

115
These can further be divided into the more important gold
and less important copper fields, leaving Puerto Plata and
Santo Domingo. The question of why Isabela's physical plant
was abandoned and its functions transferred to Puerto Plata
and Santo Domingo is important here. The main reason lay
not in internal qualities but in their positions vis-a-vis
the rest of the New World and the prevailing trade winds.
Santo Domingo lay closer to the" main street" of the trade
that was developing between Seville and the Spanish New
World mainland colonies (Figure 21). As such, Puerto Plata
and the rest of Hispaniola's north shore settlements were
relegated to a secondary status as out of the way ports and,
therefore, too expensive to maintain for regular overseas
communication.

The housing styles in these new Phase III towns tell us
something about the social hierarchy. At this time, stone
construction was rare except in Santo Domingo. Wherever
masonry structures were built they were signs of power —-
the power of the crown, the church, and the wealthy (Floyd
1973:73,85,221; Sauer 1966:200). Archaeologists have found
that the majority of housing during this expansion phase was
of wood and thatch. While laid out on the planned, gridded
lots, these structures were circular in plan and, therefore,
more akin to the dwellings of the local Arawaks than the
rectangular structures of Old Spain discussed in Chapter 3
(Willis 1984:247). While it may be argued that the settlers
were merely responding to Spanish town planning ordinances

that stated that, following gridding, "one should make their

116

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117

huts of easily available local materials, so that they may
have shelter...", the form of these structures perhaps tell
a more poignant story of Spanish planning and direction
being carried out by native workers (Crouch et al. 1982:16).
This early circular housing was to give way to the
rectilinear housing of Old Spain by the end of this phase

(Ortega 1982; Willis 1984).

PM
lilantation, Contraction and Stabilization, 1520-1570

At the beginning of Phase IV in 1520, the Spanish New
thrld empire had grown far beyond the confines of Hispaniola
tc> include the islands of Puerto Rico, Cuba, Jamaica and
paarts of modern Venezuela, Panama and Mexico. By the end of
this Phase, Spain's presence would be felt from Labrador to
Tierra del Fuego -- an expansion that had repercussions on
Hispaniola (Figure 22; Lockhart and Schwartz 1983:84) .

Territorial expansion encouraged emigration not only by
Old World Spaniards but by many residents of Hispaniola. As
the gold resources in Hispaniola began to dry up and new
StriJoes were made in the new territories, many citizens of
Hispaniola's villas joined in the rush (Floyd 1973:223-232;
Moya Pons 1976:72,75,77).

EPhe Spanish were not alone in this exodus from the
151afni. Already we have seen the precipitous drop in the
Arawajg population of Hispaniola and discussed their demise

3¥i§:§::y;§ the impact of disease and servitude, but another

118

 

  

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Spanish and Portuguese America in 1580

 

 

119
factor was simple migration to Cuba and other surrounding
islands (Floyd 1973:125). The end result of this
population drop was the abandonment of many of the inIaa
that had been established in the island's third Phase when
their sole purpose -- food and labor for the mines -- was no
longer needed (Figure 23).

If Hispaniola's first three phases can be
characterized as a rush for precious metals, the fourth and
by far longest phase is best seen as a period of
stabilization. As a part of a far flung mercantile empire,
Hispaniola in Phase IV became a provider of exotic plant
products to the cosmopolitan market. These products, such
as sugar, cotton, dyewoods, indigo, cafiafistula, ginger and
other medicinal plants and spices, were joined by the less
exotic but no less important trade in naval stores, tortoise
shell, beef and beef by—products such as hides and tallow.
Exports of these commodities between 1565 and 1587 yielded
an average of value of 247,016.2 gold ducats per year. Of
this amount a seven per cent averia or tax (17,291.12
ducats) was levied by the crown to help pay for the defense
of the island and colonial shipping (Chaunu and Chaunu
v.6,l956:992,998,1000,1002,1008,1017,1026, 1028,1031; V.7,
1956:142-143; Haring 1918: 59-95, 327-328; Hoffman 1980:255;
Moya Pons 1976:67,78; Sauer 1966:208-209). As a point of
reference, in Spain the average real wage per year was 108
maravedis at a time when 375 maravedis equalled a ducat

(Hamilton 1934:278: Hoffman 1980:254-255). In a relative

120

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121
sense, in 1540 a dozen eggs cost 16 papayaaia in Castile and
Leon (Hamilton 1934:173,326).

The value of the island's produce is further
underscored when shipping activity is considered. Between
1565 and 1587, 3100 ships cleared Spain for the New World
and of this number 458 or 14.8% called at ports in
Hispaniola (Chaunu and Chaunu 1956). Ninety-one per cent
(416) of these stopped at the capital, Santo Domingo. Next
in number were Puerta Plata, at the other end of the "gold
trail" with sixteen vessels and Yaguana with fifteen. Only
eleven other ships (2%) were documented for the other ports
(e.g., Puerto Real, 3) of the island (Chaunu and Chaunu
1957,v. 6, n.6:497-520). Although it is certain that other
undocumented vessels called at the island during this time,
the primacy of Santo Domingo as entrepot and capital was
evidently unchallenged.

Hispaniola's success as a colony rested on the
productivity of its natives, and their numbers were dropping
(Sauer 1966:201-203). To fill the labor vacuum for labor
intensive mining and plantation industries, slaves were
imported from Spain and Africa or, like the Lucayans from
the Bahamas, were captured in the New World (Moya Pons
1976:80; Sauer 1966:159, 206-207). This new economy, based
on the exploitation of tropical plants, was the birth of the
.New World plantation system. By 1546 the 5,000 Spanish
inhabitants of Hispaniola were outnumbered by 12,000 black
slaves (Moya Pons 1976:80). This shift to the plantation

economy permanently altered the face of Hispaniola. The

122
island was deforested to create plantation fields and to
provide fuel for the fires of the sugar mills. This,
combined with the introduction of Old World animals, plants
and peoples transformed Hispaniola into a tropical neo-
Europe (Sauer 1966:210). Those viIlas that remained took
on a greater degree of permanence with the construction of
rectangular, stone structures for public and private,
religious and secular use (Council 1975; Deagan 1987b:6—7:
Ewen 1987; Floyd 1973: 221; Goggin 1968; Willis 1984).

Santo Domingo, as the capital, took on a very
cosmopolitan air with the growth of the plantation economy.
In addition to the Spaniards, mestizos, creoles, blacks,
mulattos and zambos, there were Germans, Genoese and
Portuguese, representing other parts of the empire, living
in the city and the surrounding hinterlands. So successful
were these venturers that, while their slaves were fed the
New World domesticate cassava, they themselves lived in
splendor and dined on imported Old World food and drink
(Moya Pons 1976:77-78; Sauer 1966:157). This preference for
European food reached out from Santo Domingo to Hispaniola's
north coast to the cowtown and slaving center of Puerto Real
(Ewen 1987; McEwan 1983; Willis 1984).

Iberian women, although few in number, played
a prominent role in the Spanish empire. Enough Spanish
women emigrated to maintain some of the less visible aspects
(e.g., foodways) of Iberian culture in their creation of a
Neo-Europe (Boxer 1975:35,39,99). The first Spaniards in

Hispaniola did not find Amerindian women attractive yet, as

123
discussed above, marriages were encouraged as a means of
legitimizing political control in the colony (Boxer 1975:52;
Deagan 1985a:304-5). After the volatile boom-era ended in
the 15203, however, no respectable Spaniard wanted to marry
an Indian nor a Mestiza. To validate his position in
colonial society a successful Spaniard aspired to have an
Iberian wife "as the legitimate female head of their
household (Boxer 1975:38,85)." During this period of
stabilization, the growing presence of Spanish women and the
formation of Iberian families coincided with the shift from
a focus on extractive mining industry to a focus on the
production of Old World plantation domesticates. This led
to a change in the nature of Spanish commerce from
foodstuffs to finished goods, including ceramics (Lynch
1984:169; McAlister 1984:117,371).

Thus, between 1492 and 1570, Hispaniola experienced
four distinctive phases from contact to the cosmopolitan
plantation colony that epitomized its existence for the
majority of the sixteenth century. The colony expanded and
contracted to a mature stability in a period of thirty years

in response to the expansion of the larger Spanish empire.

Summary

Hispaniola was an island rich in natural and human
resources before 1492. Spanish capture of the island
resulted in drastic changes to these assets. Spanish
settlement pattern was initially dictated by both of these

resources. Where even marginal ports coincided with access

124
to minerals and/or aboriginal population concentrations,
viIIas were founded. As the expanding Spanish empire moved
past Hispaniola to the mainland, the island's settlement
focus shifted from the north coast to the south and centered
on Santo Domingo. The crucial factor was Santo Domingo's
location adjacent to the main street of communication into
the New World from Spain.

Spanish colonists transformed Hispaniola into a
tropical Neo-Europe. This colony was populated with Old
World people, animals and crops. It functioned as a
producing cosmopolitan plantation colony based on the
extraction of exotic produce for a mercantilist mother
country and her trading partners. In the creation of this
Neo-Europe, most of the overt symbols of Spain were
imported. These included Roman Catholicism, mercantilism
and centralized power under a direct representative of the
crown. These aspects of Iberian culture were physically
manifested in the official incorporation of villas and in
the construction of religious, governmental, and high status
residences on the towns' central plazas. These central
edifices were constructed of masonry, while surrounding
structures were built of wood. Renaissance ideals for city
planning were also imported. The gridiron plan, used in the
Becongpista fortress towns of southern Spain, were here used
to focus colonial attention on the continued primacy of the
municipality and on the three central pillars of Spanish
society -- the church, the crown and business (Foster

1960:34-49).

125

Architectural styles, like city plan, were commonly of
southern Iberian extraction. This preference for styles
from the torrid region of Spain may reflect a concession to
the climate of Hispaniola, may result from the Andalusian
origins of the majority of colonists during this era, or may
be a by-product of the ubiquitous gridiron city plan for the
Christian colonization of southern Iberia (Foster 1960:31).

The direct effect of the environment on the Spanish
colonists was extremely limited. Hispaniola's lack of
familiar plants and animals was dealt with by the
importation of familiar Old World domesticates. These
familiar plant and animal foods, both locally-produced and
imported, formed the core of the Spanish diet. New World
cultigens continued to be grown, in much reduced quantities,
only to meet the needs of the aboriginal, and later the
black slave populations.

Similarly, the long-term impact of the aboriginal
population was extremely limited. Although, it is true that
the earliest conquistadors married Arawak "princesses,"
lived in local-style round houses on their gridded streets
and continued to grow some New World cultigens, the
aboriginal population was, on the whole, incorporated into
the lower aspects of the Spanish social hierarchy as near
slaves.

After the boom era, a white, preferably Iberian-born,
wife served as an overt status marker for the successful
Spaniard. Mestizas and mulattas (the offspring of the

initial conquest) served as second choices above the

126
remaining Arawaks and the recently arrived blacks (Boxer
1975:38,52,85). It was through the presence of Spanish
women that the final and most important aspect of the
preindustrial city the family --was reconstituted (Boxer
1975: Sjoberg 1955).

By the 15205, the Spanish colonists had radically
altered the natural and cultural environment of Hispaniola
into a Neo-Europe. The important institutions of the
church, the state and the market were represented in newly
founded settlements whose focus and function were to supply
desired produce to Spain. In Hispaniola the alien
Precolumbian natural and cultural environment was
transformed and ordered into a familiar, generalized Spanish
cultural template. These generalizations included: the
formal planning and organization of municipalities: the
introduction of Old World domesticates: and the
incorporation of the aboriginal population into the social
hierarchy. Housing and sustenance were based on Old World
antecedents. To this was added the growing presence and
role of female colonists as essential to the representation
of Iberian cultural ideals of family in Hispaniola. Each
settlement bore these general traits to a greater or lesser
degree, depending on its respective demographic composition
and connections to the external world, which were based on

its role in the colonial system.

CHAPTER 5

SPANISH FLORIDA

Introduction

As we noted in Chapter One, Spanish Florida was
significantly larger than the present State of Florida
(Sauer 1971:35). Running from about 37 N to 25 N latitude,
Spanish Florida included parts of the coastal regions of the
present states of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North
Carolina and Virginia in addition to a nebulous area of the
interior of the southeastern United States through which
sixteenth-century Spanish explorers, traders and
conquistadors blindly stumbled in quest of elusive specie
and booty (Figure 24).

"Florida" first appeared on maps in 1502 and was named
some eleven years later by Ponce de Leon when he landed
north of modern St. Augustine during Easter week and found
the land to be "verdant and adorned with flowers" (pascua
flariaa) (Sauer 1966:189-190; 1971:25-28: Schlesinger and
Stabler 1986:130). His name and claim endured, such that
the Spanish considered most of the North American mainland
east of Mexico and north of the Antilles as Florida and

their private domain.

127

1253

  

Chesapeake Bay
Bahia de Santa Maria

 

>
Prevailing Westerlies >
>

St. Helena gonad

Gulf Stream

Jacksonville

Anguscine Inlet

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St.

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Figure 24.
The Area of Spanish Florida

129
If Hispaniola's story was one of wind, Spanish
Florida's is one of wind and water currents. The
coincidence of the Prevailing Westerlies with the warm
northward-flowing Gulf Stream waters made the Straits of
Florida and the Spanish Florida Atlantic seaboard the

natural "main street" return route to the Old World.

Environment

The information in this section combines descriptions
from contemporary sixteenth-century observers with those
from later geographers. Such "hindsight" information as is
provided from later sources is useful in determining not
only the technological limitations of the age (in this case
mineral prospecting) but also the direct role of politics
and economics in determining the settlement trajectory of a
colonial area.

The area encompassed by Spanish Florida is in the
region known physiographically as the Coastal Plain
Province. Extending inland 160 to 300 kilometers to the
fall line (the present limits for the presence of brackish
water), this province runs the entire length of the Atlantic
seaboard and Gulf coast, from Massachusetts to Texas.
Unlike the Iberian peninsula and Hispaniola, the Coastal
Plain Province has little relief. With minor exceptions,
altitudes are below 150 meters and the majority are below 30
meters (Fenneman 1938:l; Hunt 1967:137-139).

The Coastal Plain Province is a continuation of the

continental shelf and, therefore, has varied in size over

130
the past 70 million years with fluctuations in sea level
(Hunt 1967:163). Because of these changes and the very
gradual slope of the plain onto the submerged continental
shelf, rivers tend to be shallow and run perpendicular to
the coast from the fall line. The submergence and emergence
of the coastal zone since the Pleistocene has resulted in
the recent deposits of unweathered and, consequently, weakly
developed soils of peat, muck and sand. This coastal zone
was the location of all of the sixteenth-century European
settlements.

The coastal sands grade inland to the older, red clay
soils that characterize most of the coastal plain in the
modern South. Although this area was famous for its
seventeenth-century plantations of tobacco and indigo and
later nineteenth-century fields of cotton, the soils are
thin and not very productive for intensive long-term
agriculture without massive applications of fertilizers
(Fenneman 1938:29-30; Hunt 1967:155).

The area of Florida south of modern Tallahassee differs
from the rest of the Coastal Plain Province in the nature of
its soils. Peninsular Florida is generally lower and has
even less relief than the northern reaches of Spanish
Florida. Underlain by thick deposits of shale and
limestone, this unweathered and little developed area of
thin soils is characterized by muck, peat and sand. Because
of this setting and soils, drainage and fertilization is
necessary for intensive long-term agriculture (Fenneman

1938:46-67; Hunt 1967:146-147: Miller and Parkins 1928:276).

131

Finally, the low relief of the coastal plain means that
most of Spanish Florida south of modern Jacksonville,
Florida, lacks good, protected deep-water harbors. Most of
the Atlantic and Gulf coast is sand and mud-reefed in the
form of barrier islands. The shifting nature of these
islands, combined with the shallow slow-moving, sediment-
laden waters of the province's rivers, creates swampy salt
marshes or shoaling lagoons at the interface between the
emerged and submerged portions of the continental shelf
(Fenneman 1938:1-6). It was this lack of suitable,
protected, deep-water ports in peninsular Florida that would
eventually lead the Spanish away from the beaches of the
peninsula to the broad and safe sounds to the north -- those
associated with the modern cities of Jacksonville and St.
Augustine, Florida, and Beaufort, South Carolina (Sauer
1971:192, 213-214).

Spanish Florida was not well-endowed with the mineral
resources that sixteenth-century Spaniards desired. Today's
highly valued deposits of natural gas, oil and phosphates
join iron ore, sandstones, mica, ceramic clays and some
copper and gold (Hunt 1967:157-160; Miller and Parkins
1928:319-321).

Of all of these mineral resources, the Spanish were
most interested in the copper and gold. The sources of
copper, other than that owned by the Indians themselves,
would remain elusive to the Spanish. Although the
drawings, engravings and reports by the Frenchmen De Bry,

LeMoyne and Laudonniere report the presence of bullion

132
(Alexander 1976:58: Lorant 1946:117: Sauer 1971:206), gold
appears to have been almost totally unknown to the
aboriginal inhabitants of Spanish Florida. Today
researchers feel that Spanish shipwrecks was the source of
this metal to the Calusa of peninsular Florida (Lewis
1978:22: Swanton l946:35,59,494).

Although Quattlebaum (1956:115) states that De Soto
found gold, copper and silver, in addition to caches of
freshwater pearls, at the aboriginal town of Cofitachiqui in
modern South Carolina, and Lewis (1978:21) suggests that
"inferior" quality gold found among the Calusa in
southwestern Florida came from the Appalachian Mountains,
neither the conquistador nor his men found bullion there nor
in the rumored "gold regions of Chisca in the mountains to
the north" (Lowery 1959:230-232; Sauer 1971:206).

It is interesting to note, however, that significant
gold deposits did exist within the boundaries of Spanish
Florida. Deposits found in the 1820s at Dahlonega, Georgia,
in North Carolina, and at the Haile gold mine in South
Carolina led to the removal of the Cherokee from the region
(Cotterill 1954:238: Neely 1979:156-157: Swanton 1946:113).
It would appear that, while the level of Spanish mining
technology was advanced in the sixteenth century, their lack
of geological knowledge meant that the gold deposits went
undiscovered. .Certainly, if the aboriginal inhabitants of
the region had known of metal sources, the Spanish would
have capitalized on them. Thus, the Spanish "prospecting"

trips were for booty and information regarding the location

133
of tried deposits. True prospecting, in the modern sense of
the term, would not begin until the birth of modern geology
in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Blakewell
1987:203-220).

The climate of Spanish Florida varies from warm
temperate in present Virginia and North Carolina to humid,
sub-tropical in South Carolina, Georgia and north Florida
and tropical in southern peninsular Florida. This means
that the growing season ranges from 180 days in the north to
well over 300 days in the south. Similarly, rainfall varies
from over 100 cm per year in Virginia to over 150 cm in
southern Florida. Long, bitterly cold winters are the
exception in an area where annual snowfalls vary from 25 cm
or less in the north to less than an 2.5 cm in north Florida
(Hunt 1967:150-151; Kovacik and Winberry 1987:31-40: Miller
and Parkins 1928:18-30; Shelford 1963:56: Swanton 1946:1-
10).

We have stated that it was the coincidence of the
Prevailing Westerly winds with the northward flowing Gulf
Stream that was crucial in influencing the settlement of
Spanish Florida. There were, indeed, other wind and sea
currents, such as the Northeast Trades and the Caribbean
Current, but the physiographic configuration of continental
North America and the shallows surrounding the Bahama
Islands created a unique natural funnel for the Gulf Stream
known today as the Straits of Florida. Recognized as early
as 1502 by Spanish pilots, the 80 F temperatures of the Gulf

Stream waters speed northward at seventy miles per day,

134
hugging the continental shelf and on through the bottleneck
formed by the Straits (Sauer 1971:29, 190). These warm
waters are important in ameliorating the climate in Spanish
Florida from the colder continental winds brought by the
Prevailing Westerlies (Kovacik and Winberry 1987:35-39).
The warming effects of the Gulf Stream are lessened from
modern Georgia northward. This is due to the width of the
continental shelf, which keeps the current some fifty miles
off shore, and the lack of a restricting "strait" which
leads to mixing and the southward flood of the cold Labrador
current. In essence, it was just at the present Florida-
Georgia border that the Gulf Stream met the Prevailing
Westerlies and the shortest, quickest course to the Old
World from the New could be plotted for the sailing ships of
the sixteenth century.

The entire coastal region of Spanish Florida is
encompassed within the Austroriparian Biotic Province. In
the drier red clay soils of the uplands are grasses and
forests of pines and hardwoods, such as oaks, hickories, and
chestnuts. Along the Atlantic littoral and in low-lying
parts of peninsular Florida is the magnolia and maritime
forest. Included in this area, on higher, drier hammocks,
are magnolias, cypress, live oak, palm, palmetto and yaupon
trees. Lower areas of salt and brackish-water marsh are
covered with grasses, rushes, sedges and a variety of
evergreen shrubs and vines (Dice 1943:18-21: Kovacik and

Winberry 1987:45-47; Shelford 1963:56-88).

135

Unlike Hispaniola, Spanish Florida was well-endowed
with a wide variety of edible marine and terrestrial fauna.
Salt, fresh and brackish waters in and surrounding Spanish
Florida were teeming with fish, shellfish and crustaceans.
Additionally, the warm waters of peninsular Florida were
home to the seacow or manatee. These areas are especially
rich in seafoods because the warm, shallow estuaries are
prime hatcheries for many species (Hunt 1967:163-165).

Reptiles, such as the alligator, extended as far north
as the Outer Banks of North Carolina and were joined by a
wide variety of snakes, including rattlers, cottonmouths and
copperheads. Crocodiles and coral snakes join these species
in southern peninsular Florida. Wild turkey, passenger
pigeon, migratory ducks and geese, grouse and the Carolina
parakeet, in addition to numerous raptors and forest, shore
and marsh birds, filled the sky.

The same oak and hickory nuts that attracted the turkey
lured deer, squirrels, raccoons, opossums, rabbits and,
occasionally, elk to the area. These were joined by smaller
rodents and carnivores including the panther, fox, wolf,
black bear and bobcat (Dice 1943:18-21; Sauer 1971:284-286;
Shelford 1963:56-88). It should be noted that although the
American bison or buffalo was known in the Southeast during
the seventeenth century, in the sixteenth century it was
limited in range to the area west of the Mississippi and,
thus, played no role in the period being examined. (Sauer

1971:140,142).

136

From these descriptions, we can draw some immediate
comparisons with Hispaniola. Like Hispaniola, most of
Spanish Florida enjoyed a warm, humid, semi-tropical to
tropical climate that was conducive to the planting of
exotic plantation crops such as cotton, tobacco, indigo,
rice and sugar cane (Lewis 1984:37-41). Spanish Florida was
richer than Hispaniola in the variety of wildlife but was
relatively impoverished in the perception of sixteenth-
century Spaniards in such resources, as gold and copper,
that could bring immediate profits. The heavy forests that
blanketed Spanish Florida were important in the later
development of a naval stores industry but bore no exotic
dyewoods nor recognizable medicinal plants from which the
Spanish could turn a quick profit (Harman 1969). The
Spanish also recognized that, relative to the Vega of
Hispaniola, this "green desert" of Spanish Florida had thin
soils that would be quickly exhausted by the intensive
agricultural practices associated with plantations.
Nevertheless, what Spanish Florida lacked in protected deep-
water harbors, bullion, dyewoods, and fertile lands it made
up for in its geographical location on the interface between
the Gulf Stream and prevailing Westerly winds --the "main

street" back to the Old World from the New.

The Aboriginal Inhabitants
The prehistoric and historic aboriginal inhabitants
of what would become the southeastern United States have

been the focus of scholarly research for more than a

137
century. During this time, our knowledge of the region's
prehistory and post-seventeenth century history have been
continually improved but the crucial protohistoric fifteenth
and historic sixteenth centuries have been somewhat
neglected. This information bias was created by English-
speaking historians whose studies focused on the
aggrandizement of the British period and whose research
locales included state archives and the Public Records
Office in London (e.g., Cotterill 1954). Until recently,
the archaeological community, because of its long-standing
aversion to the investigation of historic and protohistoric
cultures, did little to fill the gap. This situation
changed dramatically during the past thirty years as
archaeologists, ethnohistorians and historians began to
reconstruct the important sixteenth-century era of Spanish
contact and culture change among the aboriginal inhabitants
(e.g., Deagan 1985a; Milanich and Proctor 1978; Smith 1956)

Over three score years of Spanish contact passed before
the first successful English and French North American
colonies were established. These sixty years of Spanish
contact changed precontact aboriginal culture in ways that
were unobserved by later colonial rivals.

This section focuses on the sixteenth century
aboriginal inhabitants of Spanish Florida at the time of
contact. The large spatial extent of Spanish Florida and
the nature of this thesis, however, make a detailed account
of all of the aboriginal peoples neither possible nor

warranted. The discussion of the Spanish Florida

138
aboriginals presented here is, therefore generalized and
focused on population, social organization, economy, and
settlement plan, function and pattern as influencing factors
in the development of the Spanish colony.

The aboriginal inhabitants of Spanish Florida were,
like their Arawak neighbors to the south, members of complex
stratified societies commonly known as chiefdoms. In the
sixteenth century, there were at least thirty historically
identifiable aboriginal societies from Cape Henry at the
mouth of Chesapeake Bay to the tip of peninsular Florida
(Figure 25) (Milanich and Proctor 1978; South 1972: Swanton
1946:34-35).

These peoples spoke a multitude of tongues from the
Muskhogean, Siouan, Iroquoian and Algonquian language stocks
(Swanton 1946:10-11). Because of this great linguistic
diversity, there was no single local aboriginal term used by
the Spanish to identify these peoples. Rather, they were
referred to collectively by the Spanish term Indios or
specifically by the name of the local paramount chief (e.g.,
Paraousti Satouriona --the Saturioua, Saturiba or Saturiwa)
(Deagan 1978:90: Lorant 1946:57: Thevet in Schlesinger and
Stabler 1986:128,144-147). In other situations the local
aboriginal term for the area (e.g., Chicora for modern South
Carolina) (Quattlebaum 1956:12: Swanton 1946:66), or a
descriptive Spanish term for the area inhabited by the
specific aboriginal group (e.g., Agua Dulce or Sweet Water

People) were used (Deagan 1978:108-111).

139

 

   
   
 

Powhatan

- Chiaha

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Apalachee

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Figure 25.

Some Aboriginal Cultures and Towns in Spanish Florida

140

Population estimates proposed for sixteenth-century
Spanish Florida are as variable as those for fifteenth-
century Hispaniola. In 1946 Swanton estimated a population
of some 171,000 in the entire southeast with some 30,000 or
less occupying the area we call Spanish Florida (ll-14).
Milanich and Fairbanks (l980:227,230,232,235,238,244) have
calculated a population of 103,000 at contact for the area
of modern Florida alone, while Dobyns (1983:205,292) has
recently proposed a population of between 722,000 and
807,000 in 1515 for the same area.

The massive discrepancies in calculated population
densities may be the result of faulty and incomplete
demographic information or, as Dobyns (1983) proposed, may
stem from large-scale European disease-related depopulations
of densely inhabited sedentary aboriginal populations in the
years before permanent European occupation. If Dobyns is
correct, by 1560 there were some 150,000 aboriginal
inhabitants living in Florida (1983:181,292). This number
matches well with that of Milanich and Fairbanks (1980) for
these post-contact peoples and may be as accurate as any for
this era, given the impact of disease and the lack of any
Spanish sixteenth century censuses. In light of English
accounts of the population vacuum in these areas in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the devastating role
of epidemic disease cannot be underestimated (see Bartram
1980: the Atkin Report in Jacobs 1967; Lawsom 1967; Smith

1987; and James Adair in Williams 1930).

141

The lack of effective control of the region meant that
enumeration by the earliest Europeans was based more on
impression than accuracy. At any rate, it is certainly
correct to say that, at contact and later at the date of
effective settlement in the 15605, the aboriginal population
of Spanish Florida was never as dense as that of Hispaniola.

We have noted that the aboriginal inhabitants of
Spanish Florida were members of complex stratified
societies. Their social organization was similar to that of
the Arawaks described in Chapter Four (Lewis 1978:35). Here
again we see a hierarchy comprised of paramount chiefs,
chiefs, headmen, commoners and slaves (Bullen 1978:56:
Deagan 1978:107; Larson 1978:125-127; South 1972:5-6:
Swanton 1946:641-665). A system of ranked matrilineal clans
determined each individual's position in this hierarchy,
from chief or cacigne down.

The ranking that characterized these societies was
apparent in the form of sumptuary restrictions on tattoos,
pendants, pearls, elaborate feathered headdresses and
cloaks. Other symbols of the elite included the ceremonial
use of litters or sedan chairs, retainers bearing fans,
mound burial and human sacrifice (LeMoyne in Lorant
1946:63,71,99,103,109,113,115; Milanich and Fairbanks
1980:248: Quattlebaum 1956:116: Sauer 1971:205: Swanton
1946:598).

Marriage was monogamous except for the cacignes, who
practiced polygamy. The cacigues always married the sisters

of other chiefs; these marriages cemented economic and

142
political relationships of reciprocity, redistribution and
alliances (Bullen 1978:56: Larson 1978:126; LeMoyne in
Lorant 1946:109: Lewis 1978:32; Quattlebaum 1956:112). This
practice is seen in the 1566 marriage of Pedro Menendez to
the sister of Calos, the paramount chief of the Calusa, to
seal the pair's peace treaty (Lyon 1976:149).

As in Hispaniola, the hierarchical social organization
in Spanish Florida reflected in the formation of polities.
For example, there were five political divisions among the
Eastern Timucua that coincided with the local spoken
dialects. These polities were associations of towns headed
by a pagigna and joined for economic and political reasons
(i.e., tribute and warfare) under a paramount chief (Deagan
1978:91-92; Dobyns 1983:151-173). Similar political
organizations occurred throughout Spanish Florida from the
Calusa in the south, to the Apalachee in the modern Florida
panhandle, and northward to the Guale in Georgia,
Cofitachequi in South Carolina and on to the famous
Powhatan Confederacy in the Tidewater region of modern
Virginia and North Carolina (Deagan 1985a:288-289; Hudson
et.al 1985:723: Larson 1978:125; Lewis 1978; Milanich and
Fairbanks 1980:211-248: Quattlebaum 1956:110: Sauer
1971:166-167: Swanton 1946:175).

The subsistence base of the aboriginal population of

Spanish Florida was much more varied than that of the Taino

 

of Hispaniola. Although it was also based on horticulture,
hunting, gathering, and fishing. The greater variety of

fauna, plus the rich riverine and estuary resources, made

143
Spanish Florida very rich in hunted, fished and collected
foods (Dobyns 1983:48-125). This abundance, combined with
the cultivation of corn, beans, squash and other plants from
the fertile lands of central peninsular Florida northward,
Produced a subsistence base capable of supporting a
substantial population (Dobyns 1983:135-146,219-237; Sauer
1971:203-205).

Cultivated and gathered foods appear to have made up
the majority of the food consumed by the aboriginal
inhabitants of Spanish Florida. The cultivation system was
rainfall horticulture conducted with both stone and shell
hoes and wooden digging sticks. Unlike the Iainp of
Hispaniola, the aboriginal inhabitants of Spanish Florida
did not practice what might be construed as intensive
agriculture. There were no raised ridge fields nor
irrigation. The only dug canals were in southern peninsular
Florida, and these were apparently for communication and
transportation alone (Lewis 1978:39).

Aboriginal society in Spanish Florida was marked by a
complementary but strict sexual division of labor. Hunting,
fishing, field preparation and warfare were considered male’
activities because they demanded strength and endurance.
These sporadic labors were largely seasonal however, and
often required lengthy absences from home (Axtell 1981:103-
104: Lorant 1946:61,77,85-87,97,251).

In contrast with the sporadic nature of male
activities, female labors were more continuous. These

included clothing, utensil and pottery making, cooking,

144
child care, cultivation and the collection of fuel and food
(Axtell 1981:104). Of these activities it is obvious that
those associated with food preparation were omnipresent.
Food was prepared by roasting, baking or boiling in
earthenware pots and was served on woven mats or ceramic
dishes. Comestibles that were slated for future consumption
were preserved by salting, drying or smoking and were stored
in baskets in public granaries or private homes (Lorant
1946:77,79,81,83,199,255; Swanton 1946:351-381, 549-555).

We have a much better understanding of contact-era
aboriginal habitation sites in Spanish Florida than of those
in Hispaniola. This record is more complete in the
southeastern United States because of the artwork of
contemporary observers such as Le Moyne and White (Lorant
1946), explorers such as De Soto (Swanton 1946) and a
growing body of archaeological work on late prehistoric,
protohistoric and contact-era sites.

Aboriginal structures in Spanish Florida were similar
from north to south. All were wooden framed, with the
external covering comprised of bark, thatch, grass, cane and
sometimes daub or clay. Near Chesapeake Bay and in the
environs of the Tidewater region in modern Virginia and
North Carolina, the structures took the form of longhouses
which were inhabited by extended families. Sometimes these
homes, as well as structures for the chief and a
temple/charnel house, were surrounded by a palisade.
Whether walled or open, towns invariably contained a cleared

plaza (Lorant 1946:243,263,265).

145

Further south, in modern South Carolina and Georgia and
the Apalachee region of North Florida, living structures
were smaller, of a size suitable for a nuclear family.

These usually had a rectangular floor plans although
circular houses have also been cited. Council houses were
large, round, semi-subterranean structures or, in some
situations, longhouses (Larson 1978:131: Quattlebaum
1956:115-117: South 1972:3,11). These towns contained
cleared plazas surrounded by temples, platform mounds for
the house of the chief, granaries and the homes of the
commoners. Burial mounds were raised outside the towns.

The Timucua, of northeast peninsular Florida, lived in
circular houses of palm and thatch. These were sometimes
plastered or daubed. Villages were frequently palisaded and
built around a plaza. Communal structures had either a
round or longhouse-style floor plan. Again, mound burial for
the elite was practiced (Deagan 1978:108; LeMoyne in Lorant
1946:79,95,97,101; Milanich and Fairbanks 1980:216-217:
Ribault in Sauer 1971:203).

In the wet lands of southern peninsular Florida, the
Calusa and other groups built rectangular and round
structures which were frequently raised on pilings. The
construction of platform and burial mounds is also reported,
as is the presence of plazas (Lewis 1978: Milanich and
Fairbanks 1980:230-232,239,246).

In summary, certain elements in house and village plan
were common to all of the aboriginal inhabitants of Spanish

Florida. These include the use of palisades, longhouses,

146
mound burial and plazas. The material/formal aspects, when
combined with the presence of parts of the Southeastern
Ceremonial Complex, a religious tradition with roots in the
Mississippian period, help demonstrate the
interconnectedness of this cultural area (Howard 1968; Sauer
1971:205-206).

Two settlement patterns characterize the aboriginal
inhabitants of Spanish Florida. Along the marshy and
heavily dissected Gulf coast and southern peninsula, the
Tocobaga, Tequesta, Keys, Jeaga, Ais and Calusa tended to
build permanent villages on coastal lagoons. Their
subsistence focus on fishing, collecting and hunting and
only secondarily on horticulture, meant that access to
marine resources was important. These people also undertook
deepwater trips in oceangoing canoes and in catamarans as
far as the Bahamas and the Dry Tortugas (Milanich and
Fairbanks 1980:211, 230-250) .

The aboriginal inhabitants of the northern Spanish
Florida littoral, the Timucua, Guale and Orista, had a
settlement pattern different from that of their southern
neighbors. Like the Arawak, these horticulturalists tended
to live inland, adjacent to fresh water and fertile lands.
These were only semi-permanent villages as, seasonally, the
inhabitants would decamp for the coast to fish and gather
marine resources or inland to hunt (Deagan 1978:93,113;
Larson 1978:123,137; Quattlebaum 1956:96). This semi-
sedentary lifestyle bothered the Spanish priests, who came

to proselytize and win followers. In 1569 Father Rogel

147
wrote that when the acorns ripened the local inhabitants of
Chicora "left me quite alone, all going to the forests, each
one to his own quarter" (Quattlebaum 1956:99).

For the Spanish, whose conquest experiences had been
limited to either fully sedentary populations such as were
found in southern Spain (the Moors), Hispaniola, Mexico and
Peru or the small, physically limited population of the
Canaries, northern Spanish Florida posed a new challenge for
control. This challenge was not met during the sixteenth
century and had only limited success in the following
century. The vast interior, coupled with the semi-sedentary
nature of the aboriginal population and the changing ideas
of the Spanish government about the physical control of the
indigenous populations in the colonies, meant that a
different relationship developed between the Spanish and the
aboriginals of Spanish Florida than had occurred in the
earlier colonies (Jaenen 1976:15-17).

The relationship that developed between the Florida
aboriginals and the Spanish ultimately took a radically
different trajectory from that of the Hispaniola experience.
In Hispaniola, the Arawak were controlled as slaves under
the nepartimiento and encomienda systems. These systems,
which were extended to Mexico and Peru, were never
implemented in Florida. This was certainly not because the
Indians' labor was undesired, although the need was limited.
In the case of Florida, it was a combination of conscience,
a perceived lack of valued natural resources, and location

on the "main street" back to Spain that produced a different

148
orientation. As early as 1520, Las Casas had convinced
Charles I that "the procedure of the conquistadors in the
Indian lands had been illegal" and that the "actions of
these governors were neither Christian nor humane but are
actions of the devil" (Las Casas 1974:25). Because of this,
later explorers and settlers were given royal charters that
allowed no slaving except for those taken in war
(Quattlebaum 1956:16). Virtually every licentiate violated
these unenforcable charters. Lucas Vazquez de Ayllon, who
explored and planned to settle the modern South Carolina
coast in 1521, took 140 of the Chicora to the slave markets
of Hispaniola (Quattlebaum 1956:12). The later (1539-42)
more famous Hernando De Soto expedition was similarly
chartered by the crown not to molest the Indians, yet his
deceptions and enslavements are legend (Gannon 1983:8:
Swanton 1939:79).

The lack of mineral wealth did not produce a rush to
Florida by gold-fevered Spaniards. Also, the area's more
temperate climate, lack of dyewoods and medicinal plants,
and thin soils meant that the area was not, in sixteenth
century terms, well-suited for plantations, especially since
there was still ample lands in the Caribbean. Without
these commercial endeavors, the need of aboriginal labor was
limited.

This again leaves Florida's geographical position on
the "main street" of communication as an influencing factor
in the interaction of Spaniards and Indians. In the

sixteenth century, Spaniards came permanently to Florida to

 

149
remove the threatening presence of the French colony at Fort
Caroline near modern Jacksonville. Unlike the later French
and English use of Indian allies in warfare, the Spanish,
acting alone, in 1565 despatched the French colony (Lyon
1976:120-121). For the balance of the century Jesuit and
Franciscan missionaries worked among the Indians to
Christianize them and make them loyal to the crown. The
perceived low value of Spanish Florida as good for little
other than the defence of the trade routes, a buffer colony,
meant that limited settlement and expansion would
characterize its history. This situation led only, in the
seventeenth century, to the control of the Indians via the
mission system for limited tribute and corvee in the form of
food, porterage and labor on the castillo in St. Augustine
(Gannon 1983:57).

The lot of the Florida aboriginals under the Spanish,
while not easy, was never as severe as that suffered by
their cousins in the islands and mainlands to the south.
Their enslavement by the English for labor in the
plantations of Carolina and Barbados in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries ended the period of benign neglect they
experienced under the Spanish (Smith 1987: Wright 1981:126-
150). Thus we can see that the sixteenth century Spaniards
did not develop the aboriginal resource for a variety of
reasons, including conscience, the increased use of black
slaves and, most importantly the economic raison d'etre of
the colony-- defense of the "Main Street" of commerce (Sauer

1971:217).

 

 

150

In summary,the aboriginal inhabitants of northern
Spanish Florida were semi-sedentary, horticultural chiefdom-
level societies while those inhabiting southern peninsular
Florida were more sedentary and less horticultural. Every
society in the area formed part of one of a number of
hierarchical confederacies headed by a paramount chief,
whose position was based on kinship ties and the associated
economic aspects of reciprocity and redistribution.

With the exception of the Calusa and their south
Florida neighbors, the aboriginals of Spanish Florida tended
to live inland on more fertile horticultural lands and make
occasional collecting and fishing forays to the coast. The
inland focus of the northern aboriginal inhabitants of the
Atlantic littoral of Spanish Florida (e.g., Timucua, Guale,
Orista) was complementary to the seaward focus of the
Spanish in the sixteenth and later centuries. This is
especially important when considering the impact of disease
and acculturation on the indigenous population before the
eighteenth century encroachments of the English and French.

We saw how, in Hispaniola, the Spanish infiltration of
the island and the capture of its inhabitants led to the
extinction of the Arawak as a distinct viable population in
less than fifty years. In the region that comprised Spanish
Florida, the removal of the aboriginal population took
nearly three hundred years. The reason for this more
lengthy period of decline was not because these people were

more resilient to the diseases of the European but because

151
of the limited presence and interaction of Old and New World

populations.

The European Colony

The sixteenth-century European occupation of Florida,
like that of Hispaniola, went through four distinctive
phases of physical, economic and political expansion. In
this section, we will see that the phases of occupation of
Spanish Florida are comparable in form to those witnessed on
Hispaniola but that the time lapse between the phases varied
greatly.

This section will not recount in detail the history of
Spanish Florida. It will, instead, review the Spanish
reaction to the local environment and aboriginal population
to lend insight into the development of the colony's
economic role in the empire. A focus of this concern for
the colony's economic role is the growth of Neo-Europes
associated with the area's sixteenth-century settlement.
Emphasis will be placed on the later stages of the colony's
economy, defense, towns, people and subsistence in order
that comparisons between contemporary Spanish Florida and
Hispaniola can be made.

The primary motive for the exploration of Spanish
Florida was the same as that for Hispaniola, that is, the
discovery and capture of lands rich in precious metals and
exotic flora (Sauer 1971:158. Unlike Hispaniola, however,
Spanish Florida was poor in these resources. Nonetheless,

its location on the "main street" of communication and trade

152
between the motherland and the producers of specie and other
desired exotica made its control imperative to the
maintenance of empire. Thus, the European settlement of
sixteenth-century Spanish Florida can best be defined as a
colonial pnotective cosmopolitan frontier area, whose
primary function was the defense and protection of trade and
communication between the motherland and her colonial
anppagpiya cosmopolitan frontiers (Sauer 1971:190-192).

The lack of immediate profits to be had in Spanish
Florida forestalled effective Spanish control of the area
for over half a century and made the Spanish occupation one
of benign neglect for the duration of the first Spanish
period. Spanish Florida's long-term value was limited to
that of a buffer colony and port of refuge, rescue and
salvage (Sauer 1971:191). This limited value and primary
function was reflected in the form, pattern and military
role of the European settlement of the area (Sauer 1971:216-

218).

Phase I
Prelude, 1502-1562

We have seen that the area known as Spanish Florida was
known to navigators and cartographers as early as 1502. For
the next sixty years, thousands of Spaniards would find
themselves in this area of North America as victims of
shipwrecks, members of abortive settlement attempts or

conquistadors bent on explorations for plunder. None of the

153
groups successfully founded a permanent European habitation
(Sauer 1971) (Figure 26).

The latter groups were led by Spaniards who had already
made their fortunes in the gold fields and plantations of
the islands (e.g., Ponce de Leon) or in the plunder of the
mainland states of Mesoamerica and South America (e.g.,
Panfilo de Narvaez, Hernando de Soto).

The first, Ponce de Leon from Hispaniola and later
Puerto Rico, visited both the area near modern St. Augustine
and the southwest corner of peninsular Florida near
Charlotte Harbor in 1513, and the latter again in 1521. On
both occasions, the Spaniards were attacked by the resident
Timucua and Calusa and were driven away (Sauer 1971:26-
28,35).

At the time that Ponce was succumbing to a Calusa
arrow, another Spanish landing was taking place on the
Atlantic coast in Chicora. Originating from northern
Hispaniola, this party had sailed via the depopulated
Bahamas in search of slaves for their sugar plantations.
They returned not only with slaves but with reports of
fertile lands. The stories fueled the imagination of one of
the partners of this venture, Lucas Vazquez de Ayllon, who
later successfully petitioned the court for the right to
settle the new lands (Sauer 1971:69-71).

In 1526 Ayllon attempted to found the first settlement

in Spanish Florida. The town of San Miguel de Gualdape was

154

 

San Miguel
de Gualdape

St. Helena Sound .\\\

AYllon 1521, 1526

N
Pensacola Bay St. Augustine Inlet

 

Tristan de Luna 1559

Ponce de Leon
1513

 

 

 

 

0 100 200 300az””’)'Charlotte Harbor
K" Narvaez 1528
2?
De Soto 1539 ;/
Ponce de Leon 1521 a X a
Figure 26.

Phase I -- Prelude 1502-1562

155
founded, with some 500 men, women and black slaves, in what
would become South Carolina. In less than six months, Ayllon
and 400 of his followers died of fever, Indian arrows, or at
the hands of the troops or renegade slaves (Lowery 1959:156-
165; Quattlebaum 1956:18-27; Sauer 1971:69-76).

The year 1528 brought Panfilo de Narvaez to the Gulf
coast of peninsular Florida. Leading 400 men bent on profit
and adventure, Narvaez landed near modern Tampa Bay and
began battling northward through the lands of the Calusa,
Tocobaga, Timucua and Apalachee in search of gold. In the
end, this veteran of the conquest of Mexico and his men
would abandon their quest (Lowery 1959:172-212: Sauer
1971:36-46; Weddle 1985:185-207).

A decade later, the famed veteran of Pizarro's Peruvian
campaign, Hernando De Soto, was granted possession of the
lands north of the Gulf of Mexico. In May of 1539, De Soto
landed near Narvaez' embarkation point on the southwest
Florida coast. Over the next four years De Soto, heading
nearly 700 men, ranged over the southeastern corner of the
continent in search of gold. Like Narvaez, De Soto found
hostile native inhabitants, no gold and eventually his
grave. The frustrated survivors of his expedition made
their way home in 1543 (Lowery 1959:213-252; Sauer 1971:157-
185; Weddle 1985:208-233).

By the 1550s the Florida Straits were the preferred
return route to Spain. The principal reasons for this
accommodation were piracy in the Bahamas Channel north of

the Greater Antilles and south of peninsular Florida

156
combined with increased knowledge of the Gulf Stream, the
development of the convoy system and the use of larger less-
efficient sailing ships (Haring 1918:205,207,213,228; Sauer
1971:190,191,213).

The normal dangers inherent in shipboard travel in this
era, in addition to the presence of dangerous reefs,
corsairs and the port-less expanses of sandy beaches in the
southern reaches of the Atlantic littoral on the Florida
peninsula, encouraged the Spanish to undertake one final
attempt at settling the region. Florida was to be a port of
refuge, rescue and salvage. The plan was to maintain two
settlements, one at modern Pensacola on the Gulf coast and
the other near modern Beaufort, South Carolina, on St.
Helena sound. In 1559, Tristan de Luna y Arellano led 1500
settlers to Pensacola Bay. Less than a week after they
landed, a hurricane destroyed their settlement and supplies.
For two years, the survivors lived on the charity of the
local aboriginal population and sent an unsuccessful
prospecting expedition overland to the future site of Santa
Elena. The colony was finally abandoned in 1561. Philip II
then declared that no further attempt should be made to
colonize the east coast, because the area lay too far north
of the Tropic of Cancer to produce gold, and therefore
foreign interlopers would not be encouraged to take
possession of the area and threaten the Spanish route of
trade. Philip II was wrong (Lowery 1959:367-368, 376: Sauer

1971:193-195: Weddle 1985:265-284).

157
Phase II
Plunder and Imperial Competition, 1562-1565

In 1562 Spain's greatest enemy, France, planted a
colony in Spanish Florida (Figure 27). The colony's purpose
was to harass Spain's shipping and to serve as a home for
its Protestant minority, the Huguenots (Lorant 1946:5; Lyon
1976:38-39; Sauer 1971:196-199). Charlesfort was
established by the French on St. Helena Sound, which they
renamed Port Royal. Founded by the Huguenot naval Captain
Jean Ribault, the little fortress was garrisoned by thirty
men. Their mission was to hold the French claim against the
Spanish and to win the support of the local aboriginal
inhabitants (Lorant 1946; South 1981). Although the small
group succeeded in the latter endeavor, they abandoned the
fort in 1563 and the Spanish razed it in 1564 (Quattlebaum
1956:42-53; Sauer 1971:196-199).

The French returned to Florida in 1564. This time 300
men chose a site near the modern deepwater port city of
Jacksonville, Florida. Named Fort Caroline, in honor of the
French monarch Charles IX, the town's advantages as a port
and its proximity to the Gulf Stream made it more attractive
for settlement than either St. Augustine inlet or Port
Royal. From this base, the French proceeded to alienate the
local Timucua by plundering them of gold and silver specie
that the Indians had gleaned from shipwrecks. It was not
this, however, but corsair raids on Hispaniola and Jamaica,
originating from Fort Caroline, that brought about the

colony's demise. These raids so antagonized the Spanish

158

 

- Charlesfort
Port Royal

N . Fort Caroline

- St. Augustine

 

o 100 200 300
m:

 

Figure 27.

Phase II -- Plunder and Imperial Competition, 1562-1565

 

159
that the Spanish king, Philip II, ordered his most
successful naval commander to eradicate the French menace
(Lyon 1976:35-40; Quattlebaum 1956:53-55; Sauer 1971:199-
200).

Pedro Menendez, from the Asturian town of Aviles, was
made an adeIantago or direct representative of the crown.
This position carried with it a title, estates, and great
judicial and governmental powers along with the
responsibility for getting rid of the French interlopers and
the settlement of the land (Lyon 1976:2-3,43,44,50).

After a circuitous route from Spain and the Antilles,
Menendez and his fleet arrived in Florida in August of 1565.
By the middle of September, following combat and a
disastrous hurricane that scattered Ribault's fleet at Fort
Caroline, the French threat was permanently removed from
Florida. While preparing for the capture of Fort Caroline,
Menendez chose St. Augustine inlet as his base of military
operations and established it as the first official
municipality in Florida (Lyon 1976:115-120; Quattlebaum

1956:55-59; Sauer 1971:200-203).

ase
Imperial Imposition and Expansion, 1565-1576

Pedro Menendez' asiento or contract with the crown for
removing the French from Florida provided guidelines for the
continued exploration and settlement of the area. The plan
called for the founding of at least three towns with 500

white settlers and 500 black slaves. These colonists were

160
to construct fortresses, homes, sugar plantations and mills.
Additionally, horses, cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and
chickens were to be imported for food and to promote the
hide industry. To complete this spearhead of Castilian
civilization, clerics were to be sent for the succor of the
settlers and to convert the native population (Lyon 1976:49-
50). As we will see below only a fraction of these
grandiose plans were ever realized in Spanish Florida.

After the capture of Fort Caroline, Menendez began to
fulfill his contract. In addition to the one at St.
Augustine, garrisons were established in peninsular Florida:
at San Mateo (1565-1568,the renamed Fort Caroline); Forts
San Esteban and San Gabriel (1566-1570) on the St. John's
River near San Mateo and St. Augustine (DePratter and Smith
1980:68-69): at Santa Lucia (1565- 1566): San Anton de Padua
at Calos, among the Calusa (1566-71); at Tocobaga on Tampa
Bay (1566- 1568): among the Ais at Cape Canaveral (1565-
1569) and at Tequsta on Biscayne Bay (1566-1569) (Gannon
1983:29: Lyon 1976:140,150,201-205; Quattlebaum 1956:70:
Sauer 1971:214-221). North of San Mateo, the Spanish
established the mission of Ajacan (variously Axacan or
Jacan, 1570-1571) among the Powatan on the Bahia de Santa
Mania (Chesapeake Bay) (Bolton and Ross 1925; Connor 1923:
Lyon 1976; Quattlebaum 1956:72-73,100: Sauer 1971:223-225),
Fort San Pedro and associated missions on modern Cumberland
Island, Georgia (1566-1597) (Thomas 1987:93-94), and the

colony's capital Santa Elena (1566-87).

161

Founded near the ruins of Charlesfort on Port Royal
sound, Santa Elena was the stepping off point for the only
inland penetration of Spanish settlement in the sixteenth
century. From there, Menendez' captain, Juan Pardo, led two
expeditions (1566-1568) into the hinterlands of Spanish
Florida. They were charged with securing aboriginal support
in the form of food for the coastal garrisons, missions and
settlements. They were also to find an overland route to
the silver mines of northern Mexico while continuing the
search for elusive treasure. Although Pardo failed in all
three endeavors, he did establish six garrisoned
blockhouses: San Pedro at Chiaha; San Pablo at Cauchi; San
Juan at Joara: Santiago at Guatari: Santo Tomas at Canos;
and Nueva Senora de Buena Esperanza at Orista in the modern
states of South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee
(DePratter and Smith 1980:70) (Figure 28).

Despite these efforts, Menendez' success in carrying
out his contract was limited. Among this score of
blockhouses and settlements there were less than 1,500
Spaniards (Quattlebaum 1956:69). With the exception of the
two municipalities of St. Augustine and Santa Elena, which
had a combined resident male and female civilian and
military population of about 500, the Spanish presence
consisted of isolated garrisons of soldiers or small groups
of missionaries (Lyon 1976:164-165; 1984:4,6; Sauer
1971:221). Problems of supply at these isolated posts
exacerbated intercultural conflict. Although these

outposts were supposed to be supplied by sea, their

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Phase III-- Imperial Imposition & Expansion, 1565-1576

153
garrisons were frequently driven by shortfalls to demand
sustenance from their aboriginal hosts (Lyon 1976:118-119).
The result was aboriginal hostility, massacres and the
withdrawal from all of the posts except Santa Elena and St.
Augustine by 1575 (Sauer 1971:220-221).

Archaeological and documentary evidence from this era
suggests that the Spanish inhabitants of Florida had managed
to transplant material aspects of their world to the
frontier (e.g., Lyon 1984:6; South et al. 1988). Livestock
such as cattle, sheep, goats, hogs and chickens were
imported to Santa Elena and St. Augustine. To complement
the domesticated and wild meat, fish, and shellfish, there
were gardens with both Old and New World plants (Connor
1925:83,89,93,97,101,245: Lyon 1976:204: 1984:3: Manucy
1985:39-40).

The towns and all of the outposts, with the exception
of Pardo's blockhouses, were built near the sea for supply
and communication and adjacent to aboriginal villages. At
this time no structures were constructed of stone.
Habitations and fortresses were built of wooden boards,
thatch and plaster following Old World styles (Connor
1930:123-201, 283; Lyon 1977:21; 1984:13; Manucy 1983: 1985:
Ross 1925). Although contemporary plans of the towns are not
extant for this phase, sixteenth century descriptions make a
clear distinction between "the city and fort" of each
community (Connor 1925:203,209,213). This indicates that
the towns were separated from the fortresses of San Marcos

in St. Augustine and San Salvador/San Felipe in Santa Elena

164
by an open area according to the sixteenth-century tenets
for Spanish city planning (Crouch et al. 1983). Adjacent
to the gridded towns, but bordering the open area, were
public buildings such as the church and government house.
Obviously, the cleared area not only represented a defensive
"killing ground" around the fortification but also the
classic plaza of Old Spain with its core triumvirate of
military, governmental/judicial and ecclesiastical buildings
(Deagan 1985:10: Hoffman 1978:21-38: Lyon 1984: Manucy

1985:34-53).

Phase IV
Contraction and Stabilization, 1577-1587

Much of the vigor that characterized the expansion of
Spanish Florida died in 1574 with Pedro Menendez. The low
point of the colony came in 1576 when the capital, Santa
Elena, was abandoned to the then hostile Orista from the
nearby village of Escamazu (Lyon 1984:10-11). Santa Elena's
reoccupation in 1577 marks the beginning of the end of
Spanish Florida as an defensive colonial area with
pretensions to a stable resident civilian population (Connor
1930:283; Lyon 1984:12-15).

In the 15705 and 15805, Florida had a very diverse
population in its two constituent municipalities (Figure 29)
(Connor 1930:191-201; Lyon 1977:24-25; Ross 1925). Like
Hispaniola's settlers, these colonists had come directly
from the Old World (Connor 1930:115). They represented all

the provinces of Spain: in addition, there were some French

165

 

-Santa Elena (1566-87)

N

- St. Augustine
(1565-present)

 

0 100 200 300
KM

 

 

 

Figure 29.

Phase IV-- Contraction and Stabilization, 1577-1587

166
and German immigrants (Lyon 1977:24: Lyon 1984:6: Manucy
1985:52). In 1580, St. Augustine, the colony's second city,
had some 55 house lots and an estimated population of 400,
half of whom were soldiers and half civilian families
(Manucy 1985:46,48,52). Santa Elena reportedly had sixty
houses in 1580, in addition to its garrison and fort (Connor
1930:283: Lyon 1984:13: Quattlebaum 1956:77). Given the
town's earlier preeminence as capital and designation as the
primary settlement area, the presence of recently enlarged
Fort San Marcos, a garrison of 300 with a like number of
civilians is probable (Hoffman 1978:30: Lyon 1977:22:
Hoffman 1984:4).

At this time, household composition was variable. In
St. Augustine, well over 50% of the dwellings housed
unmarried soldiers. Approximately half of the women in the
settlement were local aboriginal wives or concubines while
the remainder were of Hispanic origin (Deagan 1980:28).
Santa Elena, as the premier settlement in the colony,
probably had a greater number of Hispanic females and so, a
more balanced distribution in its Hispanic population (Lyon
1984; Manucy 1985:46-48).

This phase is marked by the presence, in Santa Elena
and St. Augustine, of a microcosm of the life and society of
peninsular Spain. There was a stratified community marked
by three classes of European society: nobles and royal
officials representing the upper class: a middle class of
skilled tradesmen and professionals who worked with their

hands: and a lower class of unskilled peasants and slaves.

167
Many occupations were represented, including farmers,
smiths, soldiers, fishermen, barber-surgeons, cobblers,
sawyers, a shield maker, pitchmaker, matchcord maker,
charcoal producer, tailors, moneylenders, tavern keepers,
carpenters, masons, dry goods merchants, notaries, and fur
and sarsaparilla root traders (Lyon 1977:23: Lyon 1984:6-7:
Manucy 1985:43-44,48).

In 1580 both communities had forts, churches, and
private residences. A sixteenth century map of St.
Augustine (Figure 30) and descriptions of both towns
indicate that their fortifications were sited to best
protect the settlements from seaborne European invaders.
Armed with iron and bronze artillery and constructed of
earth, wood and plaster, the fortifications at both cities
were built following European styles of defensive
architecture (Connor 1930:117-202: Ross 1925). In both
instances, barracks for the soldiers were built within the
walls of the fortresses (Connor 1930: 50,129,135,157,159).
In St. Augustine the civilian town lay away from the main
path of seaborne attack, on the other side of the plaza from
the fort (Connor 1930:129; Manucy 1985:34-37). Here,
following a gridiron plan, were the homes and businesses of
the civilian inhabitants. Nearby, on the edge of the plaza
closest to the fort stood government buildings and the
church (Manucy 1985:34-37). Although, no plans have been
located for Santa Elena, we can assume that it followed a
configuration similar to that of St. Augustine. It should

be remembered that both cities were founded by Menendez as

168

 

 

Figure 30. The Town Plan of St. Augustine, 1586 (by permission St. Augustine Hist. Soc.)

169
official municipalities (Lyon 1976:116,157). Contemporary
accounts reveal the presence of the Old World dichotomy of
incorporated urban town and rural country lands (Crouch et
al. 1982:27; Ortiz 1971:131). A 1580 royal grant to
Gutierre de Miranda refers to "town lots and ... country
lands" (Lyon 1984:13). At this time, Santa Elena contained
a church and sixty houses in its urban center and at least
one hog and cattle ranch at some distance from the community
(Connor 1930:189,283: Lyon 1984:13-14). Habitations and
government buildings were built of thatch, board, plaster
and wattle and daub with both flat and pitched roofs. The
settlers' fields and livestock lay beyond the town, as did
any aboriginal villages (Hoffman 1978:21-49: Lyon 1977:21;
1984: Manucy 1985:34-53).

While the towns strove to be self-sufficient, imports
of familiar Spanish foods such as wine, olive oil, raisins,
hazelnuts, wheat, cassava, quince-paste, rice, garbanzo
beans, and lentils are reported. These supplemented the
wheat, barley, melons, garlic, onions, kidney beans, squash,
corn and garbanzos grown in the colony, and the meat protein
from domesticated, hunted, fished and gathered resources
(Lyon 1977:23: 1981:286: 1984:6,10; Reitz and Scarry
1985:55,65). These foods were cooked by women in much the
same fashion as they were in the Old World. Stews were
prepared in earthenware pots and metal kettles over wood and
charcoal fires (Lyon 1977:23; 1984:6). In addition to

foodstuffs, the colony imported finished goods such as

170
ceramics, tools, equipment, wax, rope and furniture (Deagan
1980:28; 1985; Lyon 1984:7-8: South et al. 1988).

In this period, the focus of Spanish Florida's
settlement was the continued defense of the Gulf Stream
"main street" of communication (Haring 1918; Hoffman 1980).
As noted earlier, this defense was predicated on the
occupation of deepwater ports of refuge that could shelter
corsairs (Bolton and Ross 1925:12-13; Connor 1930:321: Lyon
1984:11,14; Sauer 1971:225-226). The Spanish crown had
hoped that Menendez' colony would accomplish this goal at
little cost and through commercial expansion. Yet, for all
of the industry and vigor expressed by the inhabitants of
Spanish Florida in the last third of the sixteenth century,
they were still a population that depended on an annual
subsidy from the crown and, frequently, the help of the
local aboriginal population (Bushnell 1981; Deagan 1985;
Lyon 1984:10). Florida's precarious peripheral position as
a non-productive colonial area is manifested in the low
volume of documented port activity. Only seventeen vessels
are known to have sailed into or cleared from the colony's
ports between 1568 and 1587. None of the ships leaving the
colony reported the export of a valued cargo (Chaunu and
Chaunu 1957 6(6):553). This port activity represents less
than 0.5% of the total known Imperial Spanish commerce for
the era (Chaunu and Chaunu 1957 6(7):47). Of course,
without exports there was no tax base for defense

expenditures -- the colony's primary function.

171

Florida was expensive to maintain. Between 1564 and
1577 Spain spent 130,722 ducats per year for colonial
defense of which 21% (about 27,445 ducats) was spent on
Florida (Hoffman 1980:124-125). Inflation and enhanced
imperial defense concerns between 1578 and 1587 nearly
doubled Spain's yearly expenditures to 245,558 ducats.
Florida's part of this budget remained high at 26,147 ducats
(about 11%) per year (Hoffman 1980:176-177). Without
taxable exports the entire cost of the colony fell on the
crown.

The weakness of the colony extended far beyond matters
of subsistence and expenditures to its primary function --
the protection of the "main street" Spanish route from the
New World. We have previously seen how the combination of
both situations caused contraction in the number of outposts
in the 15605 and 705. The 15805 showed just how fragile
Spain's Florida colony was. During this decade, England
planted the Roanoke colony in modern North Carolina and Sir
Francis Drake captured and burned St. Augustine in 1586
(Foss 1974; Lyon 1984:14). The following year, Santa Elena
was evacuated by the Spanish as a cost-saving measure (Lyon
1984:15). Santa Elena's citizens and its governmental
functions moved permanently to the rebuilt St. Augustine,
the last municipality in Spanish Florida (Deagan 1985:6:
Lyon 1984). At the end of this phase, only St. Augustine
survived, with a handful of coastal Guale and Timucuan
missions, to see the beginning of the seventeenth century

(Bolton and Ross 1925:15-23).

172
§ummary

Spanish Florida was variable in extent at any given
time during the sixteenth century (Sauer 1971:35). This
temperate to tropical area was adequate for most plantation
crops but was bereft of extensive deposits of noble metals
(Lewis 1978:22). What made Spanish Florida important was
its proximity to the northward-flowing Gulf Stream and the
Prevailing Westerlies (Kovacik and Winberry 1987:35-39;
Sauer 1971:29,190).

The aboriginal population of Spanish Florida consisted
of chiefdom-level of societies that supported themselves
through a combination of hunting, fishing, gathering and, in
most cases, horticulture (Dobyns 1983; Swanton 1946).
Although these people did interact with the Spanish through
marriage, trade and warfare, this contact was limited
(Deagan 1985). The Spanish, for various reasons, were
unable to gain and sustain the kind of control they had in
Hispaniola.

Spanish interests in Florida waxed and waned through
each of the first six decades of the sixteenth century.
Just as the memory of earlier disasters had dimmed, a new
attempt to discover the area's fabled resources of precious
metals was undertaken by Pardo in 1566 (DePratter and Smith
1980). Serious consideration of the area by the crown was
forthcoming only when the presence of foreign interlopers
threatened to cut the lines of communication between the

extractive colonies of Hispaniola, Mexico and South America

173
and the motherland (Lorant 1946:5: Lyon 1976:38-39; Sauer
1971:196-199).

With the removal of the French Florida settlement, the
Spanish investment in Florida was not unlike that seen in
Hispaniola some sixty years earlier. Then, as in Florida,
there was an initial rush to "show the flag" and to quickly
examine and exploit the resources of the region (Lyon 1976).
The resources desired by Spain were lacking in Florida and
this resulted in the number of outposts being reduced to the
main port settlements. In Hispaniola, the remaining
outposts were associated with gold mining and plantations
(i.e., productive), whereas, in Florida, the establishments
at Santa Elena and St. Augustine were associated with
defense (i.e., protective) (Lyon 1976:vi).

These enclaves of Castile carried many of the hallmarks
of Spanish civilization, including incorporated
municipalities, town plan, housing, social stratification
and physical separation of the races (Lyon 1977:23; 1984:43-
44;Manucy 1985:43-44,48). What weakened and limited the
development of the Florida colony was the predominance of
soldiers in the population (Manucy 1985:46). These single
men were dependent on the support of the crown and, the
general populace (Lyon 1984:4-7). The relatively small size
of the civilian population, combined with the unreliable
government subsidy to the garrisons, placed too great a
burden on this military colony's sustenance base (Lyon
1984:5). When imported and locally produced stores ran low,

the soldiers and civilians alike turned to the local

174
aboriginals for help (Lyon 1984:9). The burden of providing
for some 1000 people was more than the aboriginal population
could or wanted to bear. The result was often strained and,
frequently, hostile relations (Lyon 1984:10-11).

While the defensive intentions associated with the
maintenance of Florida were noteworthy, in reality it was
Spain's paper tiger. Certainly Francis Drake's attack was a
crushing blow, but the presence of an hostile European
colony in North Carolina and the earlier victory of the
local aboriginal population over the colony's largest
settlement is symptomatic of a larger, more general, malaise
associated with benign neglect. Spanish Florida was a drain
on the Spanish coffers (Bushnell 1981). It produced little
that could be profitably exported and was incapable of
supporting itself without a subsidy (Lyon 1984:7). Yet
Florida's position on the "main street" of communication
made its maintenance imperative (Lyon 1976:vi). In 1587
however, Spain was concerned with the mounting of the Great
Armada of 1588 (Howarth 1981). At that time, consolidation
of the Florida colony to a single enclave was deemed most
cost efficient (Lyon 1984:14-15). The potential of Florida
had been tested and found wanting save for defense. Spanish
presence in the area for the next two centuries would be
limited to an ever-shortening chain of missions and small
military outposts up the Atlantic littoral and across

northern peninsular Florida to the Gulf (Bushnell 1981).

CHAPTER 6

BRIDGING THE GAP:
FROM THE DOCUMENTARY IDEAL TO THE MATERIAL REALITY

Introduction

The primary motivation for Spanish expansion in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was economic. From the
Iberian peninsula to the Canary Islands, Hispaniola, Florida
and the rest of the New World Spain established its dominion
by planting parts of its culture in each settlement and
colony (Foster 1960). Both the environment and aboriginal
inhabitants in each area influenced the nature and form of
Spanish settlement and culture. How these alien
environments and new cultures shaped each colony and its
place in the hierarchy of empire was reflected in the
ability of each to create a "Neo-Europe" (Crosby 1986;

Gerhard 1980).

The Qgcumentapy Becord

Much of the evidence presented in Chapters Four and
Five showed the validity of Foster's (1960) "conquest
culture" concept in the sixteenth-century settlement of
Hispaniola and Spanish Florida. In both areas are found the

generalized overt physical symbols of Spanish control. These

175

176
shared characteristics include familiar aspects of the
market economy, religion and government control. The most
obvious physical manifestation of these highly visible
cultural traits is the layout of colonial settlements. Each
officially chartered municipality was laid out in a gridiron
pattern (Crouch et al. 1982). Around the central plaza
stood the homes and businesses of the wealthy, a Catholic
church, and a city hall, governor's palace or fortress,
representing the central power triumvirate of the state, the
church and the marketplace.

Spanish colonial settlement plan is an outgrowth of the
fortified, gridded towns of the Begonguista (Foster 1960).
The city plans of Santo Domingo and other settlements in
Hispaniola are classic examples of Old World town sites with
the focus on the central plaza. Their Spanish Florida
counterparts have been cited as examples that deviate from
the older settlement patterns (Deagan 1982:190). In
reality, these municipalities met city planning ordinances
of the era for settlements where there were concerns about
pirates and defense (Crouch et al. 1982:9). In these
settings:

The main plaza is to be the starting point for the

town: if the town is situated on the sea coast, it

should be placed at the landing place of the port, but
inland it should be at the center of the town...

(Crouch et al. 1982:13).

In port towns, the church was to be constructed in sight of

the sea and in such a position that it could be used for

defense. Similarly, town layout was to consider the future

177
growth of a settlement around the central plaza and the
benefits of sanitation and communication when a river or
stream was present (Crouch et al. 1982:13-15).

The sixteenth century plan of St. Augustine (Figure 30)
indicates that indeed the Florida settlements were as
systematically planned as Santo Domingo (Figure 20) or any
other New World city. We should see Spanish Florida's
settlements primarily as garrisoned, military strongholds or
ppaaigipa rather than civilian settlements (Moorhead
1975:27: Quattlebaum 1956:72). The ppaaigip concept was
born in the Becongnista when the presidio was designed to
function as an enclave of Christianity in a heathen land
(Foster 1960: Moorhead 1975). These static defenses served
a nuclei for civilian settlement and to occupy territory
against the establishment of foreign bases or the
encroachment of the indigenous population (Moorhead 1975:3-
10). These civilian/military posts were designated vilIas
or pneblos at founding and frequently were gridded in such a
way that the plaza lay between the town and the fort
(Moorhead 1975:232,239).

Beyond these physical manifestations of a generalized
or standardized Iberian culture, there was an attempt to
create "Neo-Europes" at each of these urban enclaves through
the importation of familiar plants, animals, and products as
well as the social aspects of Iberian culture (Boxer 1975;
Crosby 1986). The success of each colonial area and

settlement at creating such "Neo-Europes" reflects the

178
hierarchical position of each settlement in a colonial area
and each colony in the larger system.

In the preceding chapters, we have seen, through the
documentary record, how local environment and aboriginal
population combined with the larger systemic concerns of the
Spanish Empire to affect the nature of colonial settlement
in Hispaniola and Florida. Comparing the evidence from both
areas begins to reveal and define the dynamic hierarchical
economic relationship within and between colonies in the
empire and how these differences affected the creation of
"Neo-Europes."

The documentary record alone is too imprecise to
illuminate particular differences within and between areas.
It can, however, suggest behavioral observations that can be
tested in the archaeological record. Archaeologically
derived information provides measurable units of comparison
that are useful in determining the relative success of a
colony in creating a "Neo-Europe." Together these lines of
evidence combine to reflect the reality of the Spanish

colonial system and the way of life of its colonists.

Predicpions Erom The Past

In Chapter Two the focus of this thesis was outlined in
eight propositions that guided the information, drawn from
documentary sources, presented in Chapters Three, Four and
Five. This documentary evidence alone, however, can suggest
a far too static and simple generalized Iberian culture

(Foster 1960) view of Spain's sixteenth century colonies and

179
does not show how functional differences in the settlements'
hierarchy in the empire's hierarchy affected a colony's
ability to create a "Neo-Europe". Deductions made from
these documentary sources about the nature of the colonial
economic hierarchy lead to predictions about the relative
ability of colonies and settlements within colonies to
create "Neo-Europes." Among the hypotheses derived from
these predictions some are testable in the archaeological

record.

The Propositions

(1) The documentary evidence demonstrates a hierarchy of
colonies within the system. These differences are revealed
not only in the value of exports but also by the amount of
contact each colony enjoyed with Spain. Between 1568 and
1587 Hispaniola exported produce valued at 247,016.2 ducats
each year and was the primary port of call for 14.8% (458
vessels) of Spanish commerce during the era (Chaunu and
Chaunu 1957 6(6):497-520,998,1000,1008,1017,1026,1028,1031).
In this same period, Spanish Florida had no exports and
attracted only seventeen documented ships (0.5%) of the 3100
that sailed from Spain (Chaunu and Chaunu 1957 6(6):553:
6(7):47). These documentary markers indicate that
Hispaniola ranked higher in the colonial hierarchy than

Florida.

(2) It was proposed that the focus of a colony was

produgtive or protectiva with the former ranked higher than

180

the latter. It was proposed that a continuum of value
existed between colonies based on the monetary value of
colonial export commodities divided by expenditures for
defense of the colony by Spain. Documentary evidence from
Hispaniola and Florida demonstrates cost/benefits to Spain
of each area.

Hispaniola exported 247,016 ducats worth of produce
each year between 1565 and 1587 (Chaunu and Chaunu 1957
6(6):998,1000,1008,1017,1026,1028,1031; Hoffman 1980:255).
In that same period the crown's defense expenditures for the
colony were 1501 ducats per year (Hoffman 1980:176-177).
Spanish Florida during the same period produced negligible
returns on produce but cost the crown over 26,000 ducats in
annual support (Chaunu and Chaunu 1957 6(6):553: Hoffman
1980:124—125,176-177). The 1500 ducat expenditure for the
defense of Hispaniola was 1/164th the value of yearly
exports from the colony. As such the colony was proaucpive.
In comparison, the yearly cost for the Florida establishment
and its focus on defense of the "main street" of

communication made it a less-valued ppotactiva colony.

(3) It was proposed that a colony's ability to create a
"Neo-Europe" was influenced by the colony's position in the
economic hierarchy of the empire. Documentary evidence
relating to the value of exports, defense expenditures and
the amount of inter-colonial ocean traffic indicates that
Hispaniola's position in the hierarchy was higher than that

of Spanish Florida. Yet, both areas shared the highly

181

visible physical aspects of a generalized or standardized
Iberian culture -- the state, the church, and the market --

in the chartering, layout, zoning and basic functions of
the municipality. Based on the documentary record alone, it
is difficult to see how each colony's ability to create a
"Neo-Europe" was influenced by the area's position in the
economic hierarchy of the system.

In this proposition it is assumed that the ability to
create a "Neo-Europe", is based on access to material goods.
Given that Hispaniola enjoyed greater commercial contact
with Spain than did colonial Florida, it would have been
more successful at creating a "Neo-Europe." We would expect
that, if Hispaniola were positioned higher in the economic
hierarchy, then it should be more materially similar to
Spain in artifacts and ecofacts (i.e., plant and animal
remains) than was Florida.

The more successful a "Neo-Europe" was, the more
demographically-balanced the European colonial population
(Boxer 1975:36-39). These immigrant families brought with
them a cultural template for the preparation and
presentation of Iberian cuisine and for the furnishing of
domestic structures. Although every archaeological site
contains numerous classes and functional groups of artifacts
that can be categorized for pattern recognition within and
between communities (e.g., South 1977:95-96), the artifact
class that is most indicative of the economic focus of each
settlement, its commercial position within the colony and

the larger systemic hierarchy is ceramics.

182

Ceramics are durable and therefore ubiquitous on
historical archaeological sites. Their form, surface
decoration and method of manufacture make them highly
identifiable markers of function, status, and cultural point
of origin. In some of the earliest work on the cultural
significance of ceramics in the Spanish empire, Charles
Fairbanks(1973) noted the role of table, utilitarian (i.e.,
ceramics used for cooking and cleaning) and storage (i.e.,
ceramic containers used for storing foods) wares in Spanish
New World culture as markers of status and ethnicity. This
hypothesis has been tested by Kathleen Deagan (1985b:23-28)
and others (e.g., Skowronek 1984). Their research
suggested that the frequency of majolica and other Spanish
wares correlates favorably with the social status and
ethnicity of its users. In this study, the frequency of
European-made or imported ceramic ethnicity-marking table
and utilitarian wares is considered in conjunction with the
frequency of locally-produced utilitarian wares as a
sensitive indicator of each settlement's demographic
composition and its ability to create a "Neo-Europe."

If the hypothesis were confirmed, the more "successful"
"Neo-Europes" would have greater frequencies of ethnicity-
marking European ceramic wares. Confirmation of the null
hypothesis would suggest that there is no relationship
between the frequency of European ceramics and the
successful creation of a "Neo-Europe" or that despite

Hispaniola being a pngductiva colony with more contact with

183
Spain, Florida and Hispaniola were equally successful in
creating "Neo-Europes."

Another hypothesis relating to the establishment of a
"Neo-Europe" relates to diet. Since an acceptable supply of
familiar foods was important in establishing a colony and
attracting a demographically-balanced immigrant population,
the frequency of imported Old World foodways artifacts
(e.g., ceramic storage wares) at more successful "Neo-
Europes" should be lower than at less successful ones during
the considered time period. By the 15405, food was no
longer the primary commodity exported to the colonies (Lynch
1984:169) because local production was providing the bulk of
familiar foods (Crosby 1972:1986; Super 1988). In those
areas where local production could not meet the demands of
the population, their creation of a "Neo-Europe" could only
be effected by importing familiar foods (Crosby 1986: Super
1988:41).

If the hypothesis were confirmed, the more successful
"Neo-Europe" would exhibit a lower frequency of imported
ceramic food storage wares than the less successful ones.
Confirmation of the null hypothesis would suggest that
shortages of familiar food continued even in ppodngpiva
colonial areas. Thus, in examining proposition 3, three
categories of ceramics are used: Spanish Empire: Locally-
Produced and: Spanish Storage wares (see Appendices A-H).

The first two ceramic categories reflect the ethnic and
demographic make-up of each colonial area. The Spanish

Empire ware category is comprised of all Spanish-made or

184
Spanish-imported, non-storage ceramics. These include table
and utilitarian ceramics, such as Italian Montelupo and red
lead-glazed earthenwares, used in the presentation and
preparation of foods. The Locally-Produced ceramic category
represents those aboriginal or colono-Indian utilitarian
wares used by the Spanish colonists and their Indian wives
and servants when Spanish Empire wares were unavailable or
the demand for them was lacking.

The relative proportions of the two ware categories
reflect the demographic and ethnic make-up of the population
in the colonial area. The more balanced the sex ratio of
the Iberian population, the greater the proportion of
Spanish Empire wares in the assemblage. When imbalance
occurs in the European population, the aboriginal population
plays a greater role in the foodways of the colonists; this
is reflected by higher proportions of locally-produced
wares.

The last category, Spanish Storage wares, reflects the
colonists' success at altering the local environment into a
"Neo-Europe." Spanish Storage wares, such as Olive Jar, are
used as containers for transporting food. Thus, the
relative presence or absence of this ware category suggests
the dependence of a colonial area on the motherland for
familiar food. When the colonists are able to produce
locally acceptable foods, they no longer have to import
familiar foods from Spain. If this transformation is

incomplete, however, they will remain dependent on imports

185

of stored familiar foods. Thus, the ceramic assemblage in
these areas contains a high proportion of storage wares.

Using the relative proportions of these three
categories of ceramic wares, we can demonstrate the
relationship between the position of a colony in the
hierarchy of empire and the ability of that colony to create
a "Neo-Europe." The higher the position of a colony in the
hierarchy of empire, the greater the proportion of Spanish
Empire wares and the lower the proportion of Locally—
Produced and Spanish Storage wares vis-a-vis colonies that

are ranked lower.

(4) Exploitable environmental potential influenced the
economic development of both of the colonies because of the
limitations of sixteenth century technology (Blakewell 1987;
Cipolla 1976). Both Hispaniola and Spanish Florida had gold
resources, exotic plants and appropriate climates and soils
for plantations (Sauer 1966; 1971). Yet, of the two areas
only Hispaniola developed a pnoductiva economic focus.
Documentary evidence has demonstrated that the Spanish
ability to exploit bullion resources was crucial in the
formation of an area's economic focus. Unless proven
mineral sources were located (usually with the help of the
indigenous population) a "rush" of immigrants did not
materialize (Blakewell 1987). The location of bullion
sources attracted immigrants and investments. Once a
valuable physical plant was in place, other resources were

exploited and plantations were established (Sauer 1966).

186

Hispaniola and the rest of the Antilles produced precious
metals only during the first half of the sixteenth century
(Hamilton 1934:43). Between 1565 and 1587, however,
Hispaniola's exports included sugar, leather, canafistula,
ginger, gaiac, brazil wood and tincture wood. These
renewable resources brought an average of 247,016.2 ducats
per year (Chaunu and Chaunu 1957 6(6):998,1000,1008,
1017,1026,1028,1031; Hoffman 1980:255).

Spanish Florida never produced gold. For sixty years,
Spaniards searched in vain for bullion in the southeast
(Sauer 1971). Even after Philip II concurred in the belief
that the area lay too far north to produce gold (Weddle
1985:265-284) Menendez sent Pardo in search of treasure
(Smith and DePratter 1980). The lack of exploitable mineral
resources limited immigration and interest in developing
other resources. Certainly we do know of small ranches and
sassafras root and fur traders, but the returns on these
renewable resources were negligible (Chaunu and Chaunu 1957
6(6):553). Thus, the effective settlement of Florida was
predicated nap on the exploitation of mineral resources and
the later production of renewable exotic goods but rather on
the protection of commerce originating from productive
colonies (Sauer 1971:275). Environmental potential that is
exploitable by contemporary technology does influence the
course of cosmopolitan settlement and the economic focus of

a colonial area.

187
(5) Another concern of this study is the influence of the
aboriginal population on the lifeways of the European
colonists. Non-Spaniards, be they Moslems and Jews in
southern Iberia, Guanche in the Canaries, Arawaks in
Hispaniola or the Indios of Spanish Florida, experienced
similar situations with their Spanish conquerors (Crosby
1972: 1983). All resisted Spanish conquest and were met
with the inquisition (Las Casas 1974: Gannon 1983).
Mandatory conversion followed by expulsion, enslavement or
placement in the repartimiento or encomienda systems was the
lot of each of these peoples.

In some cases the Spanish invaders either drove out
local inhabitants or simply excluded them from economic and
social enterprise. In other cases, the local peoples were
drawn into the system as workers and as wives and concubines
(Deagan 1985a; Sauer 1966; 1971).

Even groups that were excluded from mainstream aspects
of Spanish culture as direct influences could play an
important role in the development of a Spanish-American
culture through the creation of a mestizo population (Deagan
1985). The marriages and liaisons of the Spanish invaders
with indigenous women created kinship ties that influenced
local colonial policy and settlement among unassimilated
groups (Deagan 1985a: Lyon 1976:149).

The aboriginal influence on Spanish New World culture
is invisible in the documentary materials associated with
commerce, but can be seen in the archaeological record.

Work at eighteenth-century Spanish sites in Florida and

188
California has demonstrated that when acculturation changes
aboriginal economic focus to one that is compatible with
European needs, indigenous populations tend to lose those
parts of their material culture associated with pre-contact
economic behavior and have replaced them with European
products (Deetz 1978). While artifacts associated with
food production changed rapidly, those connected with food
preparation tended to be conserved (Deagan 1983: Deetz
1978). Factors influencing the continued use of traditional
food preparation objects include: 1) whether it is
aboriginal or Iberian women actually doing food preparation:
and 2) the availability of material aspects of Spanish
culture at these outposts. In other words, the influence of
aboriginal people on Spanish society is to be found not in
the documentary record, with its bias toward formal economic
transactions, but in the less visible aspects of subsistence
in these communities. Problems in supply created
shortfalls in food-preparation materials and affected
immigration of female colonists. Shortages in cookwares
and lack of knowledge on the part of aboriginal women about
the preparation of Iberian cuisine created a demand for
imported familiar food and locally—produced substitutes for
European cookwares.

Thus, we would expect that in areas where the
aboriginal population influenced the creation of Spanish
"Neo-Europes," aboriginally produced ceramics should be
present. If this hypothesis is true, in remote areas with

little external contact and a small female Iberian

189

population, there should be a greater frequency of
aboriginally-produced ceramic wares than in more successful
"Neo-Europes." The null hypothesis suggests that the
economic hierarchy is not reflected by the degree of
inclusion of an aboriginal population in the social milieu.

To examine this proposition we are able to turn to the
archaeological record, specifically the Locally-Produced
ceramic utilitarian wares (see Appendices C-H for counts).
As discussed in Proposition 3, the less produgpive a colony,
the less demographically balanced the Iberian population and
the less commercial contact with Spain. In these settings,
such as Spanish Florida, the Spanish population turned to
the local aboriginal population for wives and concubines.
This greater reliance on the aboriginal population should be
reflected in the larger proportion of Locally-Produced
ceramics associated with the assemblages from these areas.
Thus, it is position on the continuum of value from
productiva to protectiva that determines the amount and kind
of interaction between the Spanish and the indigenous

inhabitants of the colonial areas.

(6) Hispaniola and Spanish Florida experienced similar
phases of diachronic incorporation into the Spanish empire.
First a "Prelude" stage, from initial observations to
prolonged contact, and later a "Fixation" stage of rapid
settlement expansion and eventual contraction and
stabilization. The duration of each of these phases was

dictated in part by the perceived value of the area in terms

190
of exportable exotica. Thus Hispaniola, went through these
two stages in some thirty years because of the discovery and
exploitation of gold and other exotica such as dyewoods
(Sauer 1966).

Spanish Florida, while a "rich" area in the modern
period, was perceived by sixteenth-century Spaniards as
impoverished in desired exotica relative to their
discoveries in the Antilles and on the Mesoamerican and
South American mainland (Sauer 1966; 1971). Thus Florida,
perceived as lacking desired produce, languished for decades
in the "Prelude" stage until the presence of a hostile
foreign power necessitated its incorporation into the
Spanish empire through settlement (Sauer 1971: 196-203).
These differences between the two areas, therefore, lay in
the variables of natural resources and larger external
systemic factors, rather than in the ability of the

individual conquerors.

(7) Settlement pattern in each area will be dictated by the
economics of transportation. In Hispaniola the focus of
settlement shifted from the island's north shore to the
south as the empire shifted westward. Santo Domingo on the
island's south shore, was adjacent to the "main street" of
communication from Spain to the New World (West and Augelli
1976:64). Siting of settlements was keyed, in both Florida
and Hispaniola, to the presence of safe harbors (Lyon
1976:156-157). Seaborne commerce meant cheap multipurpose

transportation, which did not require the development and

191
maintenance of a road network that could become obsolete

through economic changes in empire (Taaffe et al. 1963).

(8) Settlement function is largely dictated by the
settlement's position in the communication hierarchy of the
colonial area (Casagrande et al. 1964). The settlement
located nearest to the "main street" of communication to or
from the mother country, with internal lines of
communication radiating from it, is the leading or capital
municipality for the area (Taaffe et a1. 1963). In
Hispaniola, Santo Domingo lay adjacent to the "main street"
and was the terminus of the road to the gold fields (Sauer
1966). The documentary record of port activity demonstrates
Santo Domingo's preeminence in Hispaniola. As we saw in
Chapter 4, 91% of the vessels that sailed to Hispaniola
between 1568 and 1587 called at Santo Domingo (Chaunu and
Chaunu 1957 6(6):497-520).

Similarly, Santa Elena, in Spanish Florida, was sited
at the interface of the Prevailing Westerlies and Gulf
Stream on the "main street" home to Spain (DePratter and
Smith 1980). It served as the anchor for Juan Pardo's
trail to the west. Although the precise documentary
evidence is lacking for port activity between Santa Elena
and St. Augustine, the larger civilian population and the
location of Menendez's home at the former settlement made it
both the nefacto and gejure preeminent municipality in the

colony.

192

This documentary evidence of a colonization gradient
from a primary entrepot to less functionally diverse
settlements suggest that the more remote a settlement, the
less contact with Spain. We would expect this lessening in
outside contact to be reflected in the European and
aboriginally-produced ceramic material assemblage found at
each settlement.

The role of Iberian and aboriginal women in the
creation of "Neo-Europes" have already been discussed (Boxer
1975; Crosby 1986: Super 1988). The greater the outside
contact of a settlement the more demographically balanced
the Iberian population and the greater the ability to create
a "Neo—Europe". However, as communication at these
hinterland, less functionally-diverse, settlements becomes
more tenuous we would expect that the ability to replicate a
"Neo-Europe" would be lessened.

If that hypothesis is validated those populations at
the entrepot would have greater access to locally-produced
European foods and European produced ceramic utilitarian and
presentation wares because of their location vig-a-vis the
"main street" of communication and the presence of a large
Iberian population representing different social classes and
professions. Further, these populations would have less
need for aboriginally-produced preparation wares and
imported Spanish foods (represented by ceramic storage
wares). The more remote a settlement in the colonization
gradient, the smaller the Iberian population and the less

access to the material culture of Spain. At more remote

193
settlements, there would be a greater reliance on
aboriginally-produced ceramic wares and imported familiar
foodstuffs. Thus, we would expect if the colonization
gradient is present that as one moves away from the primary
entrepot the frequency of European-produced or imported
table and utilitarian wares will decrease while
aboriginally-produced utilitarian wares and storage wares
increase. If the null hypothesis is validated it indicates
that either the documentary evidence is incomplete or biased
or that our perception of the colonization gradient is not
operational in these contexts.

This study suggests that the "colonization gradient" or
communication hierarchy is reflected in the material culture
of each settlement. In Proposition 8 the presence or
absence of various ceramic categories are considered as a
measure of this position. Here four ceramic categories are
used: Spanish Ethnicity-Marking: Spanish Utilitarian:
Locally-Produced and: Spanish Storage Wares (see Appendices
A-H for specific types and counts). The first two
categories -- Spanish Ethnicity-Marking and Spanish
Utilitarian ware5-- represent a division of the earlier
Spanish Empire wares category. This division was chosen to
more clearly reveal the amount of communication or external
contact experienced by a settlement as reflected in the
proportion of Spanish Ethnicity-Marking wares such as
majolica and porcelain. Spanish Utilitarian wares, such as
red lead-glazed earthenwares, are associated with Iberian

women, since these wares are associated with cooking

194
vessels. The presence or absence of these wares reflects
not only external contact but a demand for these materials
by a portion of the populace. The presence or absence of
the categories of Locally-Produced wares and Spanish Storage
wares are respectively associated with the role of
aboriginal society in a settlement and the dependence of

each settlement on imported foods.

Bnidging Iha Gap

On the basis of documentary evidence we have classified
two Spanish colonies as pppgnppiya or ppppagpiya, depending
on their economic focus. These differing economic foci led
to differing positions on the system's economic hierarchy.
This evidence implies that differences in economic position
affected each colony's ability to create a "Neo—Europe."
The documentary record further suggests that the success of
this creation should be reflected in the material culture
associated with the colonial settlements. Because of the
inherent biases associated with the documentary record,
however, we turn to the archaeological record in order to
more accurately assess these differences in ability to
create "Neo-Europes."

A demonstration that the archaeological record reflects
the ability to create "Neo—Europes"
would allow accurate positioning of each settlement in the
"colonization gradient" of a colonial area: each area in the
economic hierarchy of empire; and each settlement in the

economic hierarchy. Thus, such comparisons would more

 

195
clearly demonstrate the relationship between economic focus
(i.e., prgducpive, protegpive) and the ability to create a
"Neo-Europe."

These differences should be reflected in the
archaeological remains associated with these differentially
functioning colonial areas and settlements. It is expected
that the relative frequencies of European and aboriginally-
produced artifacts in the primary entrepot and other less
functionally diverse settlements in the pnogugnive colony of
Hispaniola will be more similar to those found in Seville
than will similarly functioning settlements in Spanish
Florida.

To examine these questions, there is a substantial body
of archaeological data available from Spain, Hispaniola and

Spanish Florida.

The Archaeological Record
Introduction

Anthropological archaeological investigations of early
modern Spanish colonial New World sites began nearly forty
years ago under the aegis of John Goggin of Florida. His
baseline work (1968) in Hispaniola, Florida, Mexico and the
Caribbean basin has been recently built upon in detailed,
site-specific studies in Haitian Hispaniola (e.g., Ewen
1987: Willis 1984) and in Spanish Florida (e.g., Deagan
1983: South 1979). These studies focus not only on the more
traditional aspects of archaeological research, that is, the

spatial relationship of ceramic and non-ceramic artifactual

196
evidence, but also on associated faunal and floral ecofacts.

Unfortunately the focus of Post Medieval archaeology,
the Old World equivalent of historical archaeology has been
on earlier historical periods, and material evidence of the
early modern era is limited. To make up for these
shortcomings, archaeologists have relied on information
recovered from contemporary New and Old World shipwrecks
(Skowronek 1984).

The following pages outline the archaeological evidence
used for this study from Spain, Hispaniola and Spanish
Florida. This study considers ceramics exclusively for its
main avenue of inquiry. The reason for this exclusion of
other artifact categories is two-fold. First, our knowledge
of non-ceramic sixteenth-century Spanish artifacts is still
somewhat rudimentary. Although notable exceptions exist
(e.g., South et al. 1988) that have begun to document the
meaning and use of these items in the Spanish empire, their
ethnic- or status-marking position is not as clear as that
associated with ceramics (e.g., Skowronek 1984). Second,
the types of non-ceramic artifacts found at each settlement
are not always comparable between sites. This is because of
variable preservation and importantly the function of each
site , wherein certain categories of non-ceramic artifacts
may not have comprised the systemic assemblage of the
settlement.

In the following sections each archaeological site is
described. Detailed information on these ceramic data sets,

including type and count, are presented in Appendices A-H.

197
This study considers sherd counts rather than a calculated

minimum number of vessels.

Spain

A central premise of this thesis is that to discern a
hierarchy in settlement pattern and function in the Spanish
New World colonies requires defining material norms against
which position can be measured. Given the tenets of
cosmopolitan colonization wherein it is desireable to
maintain close ties between the core and the periphery of
empire, the norm for this study need be drawn from Old Spain
and preferably from its leading sixteenth-century city. In
the sixteenth century Spain's international economic hub was
Seville (see Chapter Three).

Less than five years ago no post-medieval
archaeological investigations had been undertaken in
Seville. In 1983 a mid-sixteenth century site was tested in
the city by the Sevillian Provincial Archaeological Museum.
This site, Banos de la Reina Mora, part of an Augustinian
convent, was analyzed by Bonnie McEwan (1986; 1987; 1988) of
the University of Florida. Although the excavations were
not extensive, sealed sixteenth century contexts (dating
from 1550) were identified (McEwan 1988:81).

The ceramics from Banos are used here although they
have been reclassified from McEwan's functional
classification (1988) into ceramic ware types to make them
comparable to materials from other sites (Appendix A).

Since Banos de la Reina Mora was home to a convent of

198

Augustinian nuns we can be certain that food was prepared
and served there. Thus, utilitarian and table ceramic wares
are expected in the assemblage. Given the sites location in
Seville -- Spain's leading city and the hub for the Indies
trade-- no American aboriginal pottery is expected and the
frequency of Spanish Storage wares should be low. This is
because a large variety of foods were grown in the environs
of Seville for the consumption of the city and for shipping.
thus, the convent would have had access to fresh food and
the need for stored foods would have been lessened

(Defourneaux 1966:77-105).

Shipwrecks

A single, partially excavated terrestrial site is
inadequate for drawing comparisons between the Old and New
World Spanish presence. Since there are no other
archaeologically excavated sixteenth-century terrestrial
sites from Old Spain that have been quantified and reported,
I have turned to shipwrecks for additional data.

Because ships were floating extensions of their
countries' commerce and society, shipwreck-derived data is
useful in comparative studies of this kind (Muckelroy 1978;
Skowronek 1984). When shipwreck data is used in this way,
ships are seen as the equivalent of a single function
activity locus at the far end of the colonization gradient
(Skowronek 1984). Shipwreck data, added to that from

Seville, forms the baseline from which we can judge the

199
ability of the settlements and colonies to create "Neo-
Europes."

There are two main sources of archaeological
information about excavated sixteenth-century Spanish
shipwrecks. These include the remains of: La_In;nigag
yaIangapa, ganta Mania de Ia Rosa, gipgna, §an Juan ga
Sicilia and §anta Ana Mania -- all of the Great Armada of
1588 lost off Britain and Ireland: and the remains of the
Espiritu §anto and San Esteban of the 1554 fIgpa, lost off
the Texas coast. The Armada remains are well described in
the literature (Martin 1979a: 1979b: 1980), but they remain
unquantified and cannot be used here. Further, their use as
troop transports skew the nature of their assemblages with
greater than normal amounts of Spanish food storage
containers and personal mess dishes. On the other hand, the
ceramic remains of the 1554 filapa, initially excavated by
treasure salvors and later by the State of Texas, have been
compiled.

Merchant ships, such as the 1554 Ilgpa, are appropriate
for this study because of the nature of its resident
populace-- the crew. This population mirrored the social
organization of the Spanish homeland. On the ships the
captain and his officers formed the elite, while specialists
like the carpenter, surgeon and sailmaker formed the middle
rank. Sailors formed the lowest rank in the hierarchy
(Muckelroy 1978:219-230). On board ship, as on land, people
had expectations regarding food and its preparation and

service. Although only stored food was available,

200

preparation and presentation followed homeland practices
(Palacio 1986:138; Skowronek 1987:105). Thus, while no
American aboriginal utilitarian ceramics are expected in
these collections, other Spanish utilitarian and table wares
should be present along with high frequencies of Spanish
storage ceramics (Skowronek 1987:104).

Because ceramic collections from both of these
homeward-bound merchant ships are well described and
quantified they are used in this study (Arnold and Weddle

1978:265: Olds 1976: Skowronek 1987) (Appendix B).

Hispaniola

Santo Domingo

In 1954, the late John Goggin of the University of
Florida conducted some of the earliest excavations of
Spanish colonial sites on the island for his now classic
studies on Hispanic ceramics (1960: 1968). His work at the
mid-sixteenth century Convento de San Francisco in Santo
Domingo is used in this study.

The convent was occupied early in the sixteenth
century. Resident priests lived in the convent and
ministered to the needs of Santo Domingo and its environs.
Within the convent the priests lived, worked and slept.
Aboriginal neophytes were in residence there as well. They
served as servants and cooks. At the convent we would
expect to see not only Spanish utilitarian, table and
storage wares but Locally-produced utilitarian ceramics as

well. Since there was a full-time resident population at

201
the convent, whose own internal hierarchy mirrored that of
the community, the artifacts recovered at the site should be
representative of the community as a whole.

Goggin's stratigraphic excavations of a 5 x 35 foot
trench at the four hundred and fifty-year-old site resulted
in a seriation of ceramics (Goggin 1968:101-114). In his
and subsequent (Council 1975) studies of the site, attention
was focused on the description of ceramic and non-ceramic
artifactual remains -- specifically those from the deepest
part of the stratigraphic cut Section (0'-5') (Goggin
1968:103). In that section, all ceramic materials
encountered below 59" are clearly in a sixteenth-century
context and will be used in this study (Goggin 1968:113).

In addition, I have examined Goggin's collections and
original notes housed at the University of Florida
Archaeology Lab at the Florida State Museum. This
investigation revealed that Sections 5'-10'(below 75"), 10'-
15'(below 67"), 20'-25'(below 48"), 25'-30'(below 32") and
30'-35'(below 32") were intact sixteenth-century zones.

This ceramic information is quantified with that of

published Section 0'-5' in this study (Appendix C).

Puerto Real

Since the late 19705 the University of Florida has been
involved in the excavation of the sixteenth century inIa of
Puerto Real on the north coast of Hispaniola in Haiti. The
focus of several articles, theses and dissertations (e.g.,

Deagan 1985a; Ewen 1987; Hamilton 1981; McEwan 1983: Willis

202
1984), Puerto Real is by far the most extensively studied
sixteenth-century Spanish colonial site in the Caribbean
basin. These problem-oriented investigations have answered
processual questions regarding diet, settlement plan and
acculturation in addition to identifying, describing and
quantifying the remains found at the site. Because these
projects have examined not only the city plan but several
structures in the town, including the church, a high-status
residence and a low-status residence it is assumed a
representative sample of the community was available for
this study. The Spanish abandoned the site in the late
15705: therefore I have used here only the Spanish-related
ceramic materials from Willis' (1984) Stratum III, Ewen's
(1987) early and late contexts and McEwan's (1983) Levels 3

and 4 are used in this study (Appendices D,E,F).

Spanish Florida

Santa Elena

Twentieth-century excavations at the site of the first
capital of Spanish Florida, Santa Elena, began as early as
1923, with Major (U.S.M.C.) George H. Osterhout's
excavations on Parris Island, South Carolina. He declared
the site to be the remains of France's Charlesfort
(Osterhout 1936). Reanalysis of the Osterhout materials in
the 19505 suggested that in fact the site was that of Santa
Elena, Spanish capital of Florida (Manucy 1957).

Since 1979, Stanley South, of the South Carolina

Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology has conducted a

203
series of projects in the area adjacent to the Osterhout
excavations. In these projects, Fort San Felipe II and some
adjacent and associated structures have been excavated and
reported (South 1979, 1980, 1981, 1983, 1984, 1985). From
these projects a representative sample of the settlement's
artifacts and ecofacts have been collected, described and
quantified (Reitz and Scarry 1985: South et al. 1988).
Given the short occupation of the site (1566-87) all of the
Spanish period ceramic artifacts are from middens and
features (Appendix G). At Santa Elena Spanish utilitarian,
table and storage wares, as well as, Locally-Produced

aboriginal utilitarian wares are present.

St. Augustine

Spanish Florida's second town and the oldest
continuously occupied European municipality in the United
States is St. Augustine. St. Augustine and its environs
have been the focus of archaeological investigations by the
U.S. National Park Service, Florida State University and the
University of Florida for nearly thirty years (Deagan 1983).
Since 1976 a multi-disciplinary investigation of the
sixteenth-century component of the town has been conducted
that has provided a representative sample of the town, its
activities and its inhabitants. A summary of the results of
this investigation has been published (see Deagan 1985:
Reitz and Scarry 1985).

St. Augustine's resident population of Spanish soldiers

and civilians and aboriginal women were involved in the

204
production, preparation and presentation of familiar food.
The ethnic make-up of the population and the settlement's
location are reflected in the composition of the ceramic
assemblage. In sixteenth—century Spanish St. Augustine
Spanish utilitarian, table and storage wares in addition to
Locally-Produced aboriginal utilitarian wares are present.
Therefore, with the exception of ceramic wares imported
after 1590, the entire ceramic component is used in this
study (Appendix H).

The ceramic artifacts recovered from these sites (see
Appendices A-H) are used in the next chapter to examine
propositions 3, 5, and 8. It is the relative presence or
absence of these materials that helps us measure the success
of each settlement's "Neo-Europe" and so, their place in the

empire.

Summapy

In this chapter the eight propositions that guided the
research were examined against the data presented in the
previous three chapters. Of them five were addressed using
the documentary record. It is clear from these data that
the documentary record cannot examine all aspects of
hierarchy and culture change. To examine the other three
propositions hypotheses were derived that are testable in
the archaeological record. For these tests archaeological
evidence from sites in the Old and New World were described
and the artifacts appropriate for the tests were detailed

that will help us delimit these differences.

CHAPTER 7

EXTRACTING MEANING FROM PATTERN: COMPARING THE COLONIES

Introduction

Mercantile economic gain was the motivation for Spain's
capture and maintenance of a New World empire (Hamilton
1934: Hoffman 1980). This led to the founding of primary
extractive/productive colonies whose function was to provide
desired produce such as bullion, dyewoods, medicinal plants
and plantation crops. Because the economic returns from
these colonies far outstripped the costs incurred for their
defense, the productive colonies were highly valued (Chaunu
and Chaunu 1957; Hoffman 1980). Secondary, less-valued
colonial areas, which cost the state more to maintain and
protect than they produced in valued exports, are termed
here protective. Although both colonial area types shared
general aspects of Spanish settlement and culture (Foster
1960), their radically different economic roles affected
their ability to create "Neo-Europes" (Crosby 1986).

The documentary record suggests that there is a
relationship between a colony's position in the empire's
economic hierarchy and communication with the motherland
(Chaunu and Chaunu 1957). This relationship is important in
the ability of a colony to create a "Neo-Europe" since

205

206
greater communication provides greater access to material
aspects of the Old World. In terms of actually discerning,
however, the success of a colony or settlement at creating a
"Neo-Europe," the documentary record, with its bias towards
commerce is inadequate. The archaeological record, from
which we can determine something about the material and

activities of everyday life can help answer this question.

Archaeological Evidence

Every archaeological site contains many classes and
functional groups of artifacts that can be categorized for
making comparisons within and between communities. When
systematic archaeological excavations are undertaken, a
representative sample of the range of material culture may
be retrieved, categorized and examined (e.g., South 1977:95-
96). For example, the collections available for study from
Puerto Real in Hispaniola and Santa Elena and St. Augustine
in Spanish Florida, were drawn from a representative variety
of archaeological situations including features, middens and
structures (Deagan 1985b: Ewen 1987; McEwan 1983; South
1979,1980,1982,1983,1984,1985: Willis 1984). These
diachronically deposited collections represent a sample of
the total material culture associated with the systemic
context of the Spanish sixteenth century occupation.

Samples from the Convento de San Francisco in Santo Domingo,
the Banos de la Reina Mora site in Seville and the remains

of the 1554 flota are limited by the nature and scale of

 

their excavation or their deposition.

207

Excavations at the Convento were stratigraphic and for
the express purpose of creating a ceramic seriation (Council
1975: Goggin 1968). However, since these excavations
focused on a diachronically deposited midden there is
increased confidence in the representativeness of the
collection from this site (Council 1975: Goggin 1968:32,
101-114).

At the Bafios de la Reina Mora site, excavations focused
on a single, discrete and synchronically deposited feature
(McEwan 1988). The nature of this deposit suggests its
representativeness may be questionable. However, given the
uniqueness of excavations on sixteenth-century sites in
Spain, the value of this collection is immeasurable

The 1554 prpa materials were recovered by treasure
salvors (Olds 1976) and by the State of Texas (Arnold and
Weddle 1978; Skowronek 1987). Because of the archaeological
rigor imposed by the State's excavations there is increased
confidence in the representativeness of the entire
collection from the flppa. The materials from this site
represent a self-contained, synchronic sample or a form of
"de facto refuse" (Schiffer 1977:23-24). Although
synchronically deposited, like the materials from Bafios, the
self-contained and thus, complete nature of the 1554 {Inna
suggests that the sample collected from it is representative
of the operating shipboard community (Skowronek 1984:3).

What joins the six sites and makes their collections
comparable, is the nature of their activities. Each site

served as a habitation where people cooked, ate, worked and

208
lived. Although the nature of their economic activities
differed, they shared an Iberian cultural background. The
aspect of the archaeological record that reflects this
background most clearly is that associated with foodways.
This includes ecofacts and artifacts, especially ceramics --
an artifact class that is of primary importance in
determining the relative ability of a settlement to create a

"Neo-Europe."

Ceramics

Pottery vessels are inherently fragile, but the sherds
that comprised these artifacts are durable and therefore
ubiquitous on historical archaeological sites. Of
importance in this study is the cultural significance of
ceramics in the Spanish empire as indicators of ethnicity
and social status. In some of the earliest work on this
subject, Charles Fairbanks (1973) noted that Spanish-made or
Spanish empire-produced ceramic table, utilitarian and
storage wares served as markers of ethnicity and social
status in Spanish New World culture. The hypothesis was
tested by Kathleen Deagan (1983:237-244: 1985b:23-28) and
others (e.g., Skowronek 1984) with collections from St.
Augustine and materials from the 1733 flpna. This research
suggested that, in the Spanish Empire, imported tablewares
(of various manufacture) and all forms of tin-glazed
earthenwares (known as majolica) correlated favorably with
the ethnicity and social status of its users. In these

studies peninsuIana and creole households had greater

209
frequencies of these wares than did magpiag and Indian
households.

Other imported lead-glazed and unglazed ceramic wares
are divisible into two categories storage and utilitarian
(cooking and washing) (Lister and Lister 1976: South et al.
1988). Storage wares included the ubiquitous olive jars
(Goggin 1960) as well as other containers used for the
shipping and storage of anything that could be poured,
including such foodstuffs as wine, garbanzo beans and oil
(Fairbanks 1973:143-144; Goggin 1960; Skowronek 1984; 1987).
As colonial areas matured and gained demographically
balanced populations, local agricultural produce met the
needs of the colonists, thus lessening the need for imported
food and, presumably for these shipping and storage
containers (Lynch 1984:169).

In Chapter 3, we learned that Iberian women used lead-
glazed ceramic wares for washing and cooking. Given the
expense of importing materials to the colonies it is
suggested that the presence of European-made lead-glazed
ceramic cooking and washing vessels are indicative of the
presence of Iberian women in the population of the colonies.
Familiar ceramic forms would have been preferred for the
correct preparation of Spanish cuisine and thus the creation
of the less visible aspects of the Old World in the "Neo-
Europes" (Deagan 1980:28-29; 1983:122,233-234,266-268).

In addition to these imported ceramic wares, we
sometimes find in Spanish contexts locally-produced

utilitarian cooking wares in aboriginal styles. The

210
frequency of these wares correlates with fewer Iberian women
in the population and more Indian wives and concubines
(Deagan 1980:28-29; 1983:1_-104,266-268).

The relative frequencies of these four categories: 1)
Spanish Ethnicity-marking wares: 2) Spanish utilitarian
wares: 3) Locally-Produced utilitarian wares: and, 4)
Spanish storage wares (see Appendices A through H) are
indicative of the ethnic composition of the settlements and,
as such, their success at creating a "Neo-Europe" (Crosby

1986).

Testing The Hypotheses

Introduction

The documentary record shows that, between 1567 and
1587, the productive colony of Hispaniola enjoyed more
commercial contact with Spain than did the protectiva colony
of Spanish Florida (Chaunu and Chaunu 1957: Hoffman 1980).
This evidence suggests that Hispaniola ranked higher in the
economic hierarchy of the empire and, thus, had greater
access to material goods used in the creation of a "Neo-

Europe."

Proposition 3 -- The Creation of "Neo-Europes"

It was proposed (3) that a colony's ability to create a
"Neo-Europe" was influenced by the colony's position in the
economic hierarchy of the empire. Thus, we would expect the
sites in Hispaniola to have a higher proportion of Spanish

Empire ceramics (i.e., to be more similar to Spanish sites)

211

than those in Spanish Florida. A comparison of the ratio of
ceramics from the five terrestrial sites (Table 1; Figure
31) confirms the hypothesis. The frequency of Spanish
Empire ceramics in Hispaniola is greater than that in
Spanish Florida. This information suggests that the
inhabitants of the commodity-rich pnpgngpiya colony of
Hispaniola were better able to create a "Neo-Europe" by
importing Spanish Empire ceramics than was the population in
the commodity-poor ppotecpive colony of Spanish Florida.

Proposition 3's second hypothesis seeks to examine the
success of a "Neo-Europe" by measuring each area's ability
to replicate the diet of Spain. Although some controlled
studies of the faunal and floral remains from the Spanish
Florida and Hispaniola have been made (e.g., Ewen 1987:
McEwan 1983; Reitz and Scarry 1985), no systematically
recovered representative remains are available from sites of
the 1554 flppa, Banos de la Reina Mora or the Convento de
San Francisco in Santo Domingo (Arnold and Weddle 1978:
Council 1975:34-42; McEwan 1988:81-82). This lack of
comparable direct information on diet in the colonies and
Spain can, in part, be rectified by using inferential data
derived from ceramic storage wares.

Ceramic storage containers were used to transport
foodstuffs from Spain to those colonies that were unable to
produce familiar food locally. It was hypothesized that the

smaller, demographically unbalanced population in the

212

Table 1

CERAMIC FREEDENCY BY AREA

 

 

Spain Hispaniola Spanish
Florida

Ceramic Wares % % %
Spanish Empire 99.3 63 18
Locally-Produced
(aboriginal) 0 23 52
Spanish Storage 0.7 14 30
Total 100 100 100

(See Appendices A and C through H for a listing of the

ceramic types and their proveniences)

213

 

 

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Figure 31.

Ceramic Frequency by Area

214
pnppagpiya colony of Spanish Florida would be more dependent
on imported foods than the pnodugtiva colony of Hispaniola.
This hypothesis was confirmed (Table 1; Figure 31) by the
presence of higher frequencies of ceramic storage wares in
Spanish Florida relative to their frequency in Hispaniola

and Spain.

Discussion

Throughout Spain's New World empire, a generalized
culture was shared, no matter the position of a colony in
the economic hierarchy of the system. As discussed
previously,within this extension of the normative cultural
template were the primacy of the state, the church and the
market (Foster 1960). These aspects were physically
expressed throughout the empire in the layout of every
official municipality (Crouch et al. 1982). There the
social hierarchy was epitomized in the central position of
government, religious and elite structures in each community
(Lockhart and Schwartz 1983).

Beyond these obvious similarities, the colonies did
differ. For the higher a colony's position in the economic
hierarchy of imperial Spain the greater its ability was to
create a "Neo-Europe." Hierarchical position was related to
the value and volume of commodities exported relative to the
cost of colonial defense of the area. Thus, when an area
was pnogngtive, as was Hispaniola, it will be attractive to
more colonists seeking to improve their social

circumstances. The gains realized from their economic

215
endeavors will be reflected in their greater ability to
create a "Neo-Europe" through both purchases of ethnicity-
marking goods, such as ceramics, as well as through the
transformation of their colonial environment into a closer
facsimile of Europe that is capable of supplying familiar
sustenance (Crosby 1986; Super 1988:41).

Less productive or protective areas were attractive to
neither colonists nor commerce. The ability of the
inhabitants of these areas to create "Neo-Europes" was
lessened beyond the general aspects detailed above. These
areas, like Spanish Florida, were to a greater degree less
able to purchase and produce a "Neo-Europe." This inability
to attract colonists to create the "Neo-Europe," meant that
there was a greater dependence on imported foods. The few
ships that came contained more storage jars of familiar food
and fewer material markers of ethnic and social status (such
as European ceramics) for the greatly reduced economic

spectrum represented by its colonists.

Proposition 5 -- The Role of The Aboriginal Population

It was proposed (5) that when an aboriginal
population was present in a colonial area, eradication,
expulsion or inclusion might follow (Bartel 1980). If the
first two responses were elicited from the European
colonists then, of course, the aboriginal role in colonial
culture would be negligible. In situations where inclusion
was the norm, transculturation was expected and such contact

would alter the nature of the created "Neo-Europes."

216

In these areas of cultural contact, physical aspects of
precontact male aboriginal economic behavior were
supplanted. These behavioral practices were subsumed under
the mercantile economic focus of the dominant European
society through such systems as nepartimientg and
encomienga. Thus, while this important part of the
aboriginal population can be materially absent in the
archaeological record, the economically-focused documentary
record reveals their important role in colonial culture
(Deetz 1978:180-181: Sauer 1966). While physical aspects of
aboriginal male behavior were lost or excluded because of
their subservient role in the European economic system,
aboriginal females often had direct roles in colonial
society.

Intimate contact between European males and
aboriginal females, through concubinage and marriage, was a
characteristic of inclusive Spanish colonial areas. Such
liaisons created not only kinship ties for the economic
benefit of Spain, but literally gave "birth" to a mestizo
society (Deagan 1985a:289,304-305). Women's roles are
virtually invisible in the strongly state and economically-
focused documentary record (e.g., Connor 1925: 1930). Yet,
we have seen the important role of women in the transmission
of the less documentarily visible aspects of culture
including subsistence activities (DeFourneaux 1966:152).
Thus, in colonial Spanish America, where Iberian women were
rare -- except in areas with extensive external commercial

contact (Boxer 1975:38,51) -- aboriginal behavioral

217
practices in the less-visible preparation aspects of
subsistence activities were probably substantial (Deagan
1983:103-104,122,233-234,266-268).

Since the immigration of Iberian women was influenced
by the ability of a colonial area to create a "Neo-Europe"
and the success of the creation was linked to the amount of
outside commercial contact, we would expect that aboriginal
females played a larger role in food preparation activities
in Spanish Florida than in Hispaniola. An indication of
this increased role would be in the greater frequency of
aboriginally produced ceramic utilitarian wares in these
more remote areas of the empire. Over 52% of the ceramic
assemblage from Spanish Florida is comprised of these
aboriginally produced utilitarian wares. The frequency of
these wares in Hispaniola is lower at 23% of the total

(Table 1: Figure 31).

Discussion

The role of the female aboriginal population in the
shaping of colonial Spanish America into a mestizo society
was apparently very great. In Chapter 3 the large role of
women in the foodways of Iberian culture was outlined
(Defourneaux 1966:152; McEwan 1988:63,209-212). We need
only examine the frequency of utilitarian ceramic wares in
the Spanish empire in the latter half of the sixteenth
century to see how this crucial but little known part of
Spanish culture was altered. The frequency of non-status

marking Locally-made utilitarian wares in Hispaniola and

218
Florida (@ 23%-52%; Table 1) demonstrates the different
roles of Indian women in each colony. These changes are
attributable to both the availability of these European
wares and also to the demand for them by the growing mestizo
population.

Hispaniola by mid-century had larger Iberian and
mestizo populations than did Spanish Florida because of its
lengthy occupation and its amount of commerce (Connor 1930:
Lyon 1984: Manucy 1985; Sauer 1966). We can infer that, in
areas where there was a large Iberian female population the
demand for and presence of familiar European utilitarian
produce was great, but where mestizo populations
predominated, locally-produced wares had become a part of
the "Neo-Europe." What was important was the marking of
ethnicity. In Hispaniola Spanish Ethnicity-marking ceramic
wares comprised one-third of the assemblage. The
preparation of food was done in seclusion by aboriginal and
Iberian women using their own cultural styles. How that
documentarily invisible activity was completed did not
matter to the Iberian males. Thus, we see aboriginal
cultural traits penetrated the created "Neo-Europes"
through the kitchen door.

Spanish Florida, though at the same developmental
phase, had been occupied for less than a generation. The
adult population was still largely male and female Iberians
and aboriginal women. Although the documentary record
indicates a low frequency of outside contact, the presence

of high frequencies of imported foods (storage wares 30%)

219
suggests that the necessities were flowing to the colony.
Thus, in this era Spanish Florida had a greater concern with
what was eaten and how it was prepared than how it was
presented. For them, this material aspect (ethnicity-
marking wares) of social differentiation was lessened in
importance because racial differences readily differentiated
these two parts of the population. Through time, the growth
of a mestizo population led to a lessening in these racial
differences and a greater emphasis on the marking of status
in the colony (Deagan 1983:239-244: Skowronek 1984). Thus,
what we see in the colony of Spanish Florida is the very

beginning of the mestizaje process (Deagan 1983:99).

Proposition 8 -- The Colonization Gradient

It was proposed that settlement function was dictated
by a town's position in the communication hierarchy of the
colonial area (Casagrande et al. 1964). In this study that
settlement located nearest to the "main street" of
communication was the leading or capital municipality for

the area (Taaffe et al. 1963).

Hispaniola

For Hispaniola the documentary record suggested that
Santo Domingo was far more cosmopolitan than Puerto Real on
the island's northern coast. Santo Domingo was a port of
call for 91% of the commercial traffic bound for the island
(Chaunu and Chaunu 1957). It was home to the highest

governmental and religious offices, diverse industries, and

220
a population of Spanish elites and foreign entrepreneurs
(Sauer 1966).

Puerto Real's population was smaller, less economically
diverse and far removed from the "main street" of external
communication (Ewen 1987; McEwan 1983: Sauer 1966: Willis
1984). What ships did call at the port represented less
than three per cent of the island's total commerce for the
era (1567-1587) (Chaunu and Chaunu 1957). These differences
between the two communities in the amount of outside contact
should be reflected in the ceramic assemblages associated
with each community and, thus, each community's ability to
create a "Neo-Europe."

Figure 32 and Table 2 show the percentage of each of
the four ceramic groups considered diagnostic in this study
in the ceramics recovered from Santo Domingo and Puerto Real
(see Appendices C through F for identified types and
counts). Santo Domingo's status as primary entrepot for a
valued ppogngtive colony is demonstrated by the presence of
high frequencies of Spanish Ethnicity-marking wares and
European utilitarian wares and low frequencies of Locally-
Produced utilitarian wares relative to Puerto Real. As was
noted earlier the Iberian/European population of Santo
Domingo was more demographically balanced than was that of
Puerto Real. By mid-century, the aboriginal population in
this part of Hispaniola had ceased to exist as a distinct
population (Sauer 1966:201-203). In their place on the
plantations was a growing number of black slaves and

Europeans (Moya Pons 1976:80). The city became a European

221

 

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Figure 32.

Ceramic Frequency by Group --

Santo Domingo & Puerto Real

Hispaniola Frequency

222

TABLE 2

of Ceramic Groups by Settlement

Santo Domingo

Puerto Real

 

 

Ceramic Groups # % # %
Sp. Ethnicity-Marking 1119 72.4 15599 32
Spanish Utilitarian 255 16.5 1748 3.6
Locally-Produced 0 0 22694 46.4
(aboriginal)

Spanish Storage 171 11.1 8780 18
Total 1545 100 48821 100

(See Appendices C through F for a listing of the ceramic
types and their proveniences)

223
enclave where the conspicuous consumption of imported
European materials and the presence of Iberian women acted
in concert to validate status (Boxer 1975). Iberian women
demanded familiar utilitarian ceramic wares while their
husbands sought to validate their ethnicity and status with
ostentatious material displays of their wealth. Frequent
commercial contact with Spain allowed them to fulfill these
demands. This idea is being further validated by
archaeological testing programs in Santo Domingo's environs.
At the sixteenth-century home of Diego Caballero, for
example, we find that Locally-Produced ceramics are very
rare (about three per cent) in the assemblage (Ortega et al.
1982:86-93).

Santo Domingo's success, relative to Puerto Real, at
creating a "Neo-Europe" is further reflected in the
frequency of ceramic storage wares recovered at the Convento
de San Francisco. As discussed above,these containers were
used to ship familiar foods to the colonists (Goggin 1960).
At Santo Domingo storage wares comprised less than 12% of
the ceramics compared with 18% at Puerto Real. Although
both settlements were founded at the turn of the sixteenth
century, Santo Domingo, as the colony's primary entrepot
nearest to the "main street" of communication, attracted a
larger, more demographically balanced European population
than did Puerto Real (Moya Pons 1976:77-78; Sauer 1966:157).
This population not only demanded familiar foods but
established farms for their production (Super 1988:41).

During the island's fourth phase, Santo Domingo's environs

224
produced not only exportable plantation crops but also Old
World comestibles for local consumption (Sauer
1966:203,206,209). This growing self-sufficiency in
familiar foodstuffs lessened the need for importing them
from Spain and, thus, decreased the frequency of ceramic
storage wares at Santo Domingo.

Meanwhile at Puerto Real, on the island's remote
northern coast, the economy continued to focus on the cattle
industry and the Indian slave trade (Sauer 1966:159-160:
Willis 1984:29-30). Thus, because Old World floral
domesticates were not grown for local consumption, food

continued to be an important imported commodity.

Discussion

These observations suggest that in Hispaniola the
colonization gradient is reflected in the ceramic material
culture of each settlement. Multi-functional settlements
such as Santo Domingo served as the equivalent of Casagrande
et al.'s (1964) entrepot or frontier town (the high end of
the gradient) for the colonial area. Its extensive internal
and external commercial ties attracted a more
demographically balanced European population than the more
remote settlements. The larger and more diverse population
allowed the creation of a more successful "Nee-Europe"
through the active transformation of the local environment
with imported plant and animal species as well as through
the importation of finished, Spanish Ethnicity-marking Old

World goods.

225

In the hinterland settlements, such as Puerto Real, the
transformation was much less complete. There a smaller,
less demographically balanced European population relied
more on the aboriginal population. The ceramic assemblage
has a lower frequency of status-marking and Spanish
utilitarian wares because of the composition of its
population and its reduced external commercial contact.
Puerto Real's greater functional specialization placed it
lower on the colonization gradient than Santo Domingo and
thus limited its ability to create a "Neo-Europe" through
the transformation of the local environment. To make up for
shortfalls in familiar foods, the Iberian settlers were
forced to import food from Spain and thus were able to
expend fewer resources on the less basic aspects of
civilization. As more of the contemporary settlements are
excavated more of the material reflection of the
colonization gradient will be illuminated and, thus, will be
able to serve as a gauge for determining the affect of
external commercial contact on the creation of "Neo-

Europes."

Spanish Florida

The documentary evidence pertaining to the external
commercial contact enjoyed by any settlement in Spanish
Florida is much less clear (Chaunu and Chaunu 1957). There,
the differences between the capital, Santa Elena and the
colony's second city, St. Augustine, are not as great as

those between Santo Domingo and Puerto Real in Hispaniola.

226
Certainly, Santa Elena was the home of majority of the
colony's elite population, the anchor for Pardo's inland
trail, and the center for governmental and religious
affairs, but the lack of a productive economy relegated the
settlement to the status of a frontier administrative town
(Depratter and Smith 1980: Dobyns 1980: Lyon 1976: 1984).
St. Augustine, although designated the colony's secondary
settlement apparently differed little from Santa Elena in
the variety of activities performed and in the size of the
population and garrison (Connor 1930: Lyon 1984: Manucy
1985).

Yet, even given the similarities between the two
settlements, there are recognizable differences in the
ceramic material assemblages that are reflective the of the
colonization gradient in this protective colony. Figure 33
and Table 3 show the percentages of the four ceramic ware
groups in the materials recovered from Santa Elena and St.
Augustine (see Appendices G and H for specific counts and
types considered). In Spanish Florida as in Hispaniola, the
frequency of Spanish Ethnicity-marking and Spanish
utilitarian wares is greater at the capital city, home of a
more demographically balanced Iberian population, than in
the secondary settlement. Similarly, we see that Locally-
Produced wares and storage wares are more common in
hinterland assemblages than in that of the primary entrepot.

Although these differences are not as great as those in
Hispaniola, they should be seen as representing the

propective colonial expression of the colonization gradient.

227

 

 

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Figure 33.

Ceramic Frequency by Group --

Santa Elena & St. Augustine

228

TABLE 3

Spanish Florida Frequency of Ceramic Groups by Settlement

 

 

Santa Elena St. Augustine

Ceramic Groups # % # %
Sp. Ethnicity—Marking 10061 17 743 7.5
Spanish Utilitarian 3638 6.1 494 5.0
Locally-Produced 28910 48.7 5447 55.3
(aboriginal)

Spanish Storage 16763 28.2 3168 32.2
Total 59372 100 9852 100

(See Appendices G and H for a listing of the ceramic types
and their proveniences.)

229

Discussion

In Spanish Florida the most demographically balanced
Iberian population lived in the capital, Santa Elena. To
this frontier town they brought and imported Spanish
Ethnicity-marking and Spanish utilitarian ceramic wares
which were familiar to them. Their "Neo-Europe," with farms
and ranches, was much more complete than that of St.
Augustine and required less importation of food (although
neither area was self-sufficient) (Connor 1930; Hoffman
1978; Lyon 1977: 1984: Manucy 1985: Reitz and Scarry 1985).

In both settlements, the role of the female aboriginal
population was evidently quite great as evidenced by the
high frequencies of locally-produced ceramic wares. Given
the high number of troops in each settlement and the small
Iberian civilian population, aboriginal women became wives,
concubines and servants for the largely male population
(Connor 1930: Hoffman 1978:30: Lyon 1977: 1984).
Thus, in Spanish Florida a colonization gradient did exist
from the capital, Santa Elena to St. Augustine. Although
both settlements were functionally similar Santa Elena, as
capital and administrative hub, attracted a more
demographically balanced Iberian population whose success at
creating a "Neo—Europe" was reflected in the establishment
of farms and ranches and in the greater frequency of
imported Spanish Ethnicity-marking ceramic wares and in the
lesser reliance on imported food. St. Augustine's secondary
position in the colony is reflected in the lower frequency

of imported ceramics and in the greater reliance on the

230
aboriginal population and on imported Old World foods.
Although no other municipalities were founded in the colony
during the sixteenth century, we would expect these trends
to continue to the dispersed military, trading and religious
outposts that were founded by Menendez and his followers in

the hinterlands of Spanish Florida.

Systemig Hienarchy and the Cglonization gnaaiant

Introduction

The physical configurations associated with a colony's
colonization gradient are contextualized by comparison with
the motherland and other colonies in the system. Such
comparisons between settlements and areas in general can be
used for predicting the expected frequency of ceramic
artifacts recovered from sites in this system and so, be
able to measure the variable success rate at each settlement
for creating "Neo-Europes" . Such an examination allows
accurate positioning of each settlement and area in the
empire and thus, more clearly demonstrates how the economic

focus (i.e., productive, protective) affects the ability to

create a "Neo-Europe".

The Systemic Gradient

If there is a relationship between economic focus,
colonial "value," and the ability to create a "Neo-Europe,"
then we would expect that a hierarchy between functionally
similar settlements in different colonial areas. Thus, the

primary entrepot in a productiva colonial area would be

231
expected to create a more successful "Neo-Europe" and
therefore be more similar to sixteenth century Seville than
the primary entrepot in a pnppagpiya area. These
differences should be reflected in the ceramic remains
associated with these settlements.

We have seen that a successful "Neo-Europe" is
materially reflected in the frequency of three categories of
pottery. "Spanish Empire" ceramics (Spanish Ethnicity-
marking and utilitarian) reflect commercial contact and the
replication of the social hierarchy of Spain (South et al.
1988). The frequency of locally-produced wares reflects the
integration of indigenous peoples into Spanish colonial
society. The less successful the "Neo-Europe," the fewer
Iberian women in residence and the greater the number of
aboriginal wives and concubines. Finally, a crucial aspect
of the creation of "Neo-Europes" is the transformation of
the local environment to produce familiar foods. Once self-
sufficiency in subsistence is achieved, replication of the
social hierarchy may follow. The frequency of storage
wares in the ceramic assemblage reflects the success of the
colonists in creating a sustenance providing "Neo-Europe".
Higher frequencies of those wares represents a greater
dependence on the motherland and, thus, a less successful
"Neo—Europe."

In this study the ceramic data from Old World and New
World contexts demonstrates the presence of this hierarchy.
Table 4 and Figure 34 shows the frequency of Spanish Empire,

locally-made and storage ceramic wares recovered from Bafios,

232

TABLE 4

Ceramic Frequency and Systemic Hierarchy

 

 

Banos Sto Prto Sta St 1554
Dngo Real Elna Agstn {Ina
Ceramics
Spanish
Empire 99% 88% 35.5% 23% 12.5% 6%
Locally-
Produced
(abrgnl) 0% 0% 46.5% 48% 55.5% 0%
Spanish
Storage >l% 12% 18% 29% 32% 94%
Total 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%

(See Appendices A through H for a

types and their proveniences)

listing of the ceramic

233

 

 

 

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Ceramic Frequency and Systemic Hierarchy

Figure 34.

234
the 1554 figpa, Santo Domingo, Puerto Real, Santa Elena and
St. Augustine.

Our measure for positioning on the hierarchy is drawn
from Spain's economic capital and the "Mirror of the Indies
of Castile," Seville (Defourneaux 1966:74,92). At the
Banos de la Reina Mora site in Seville, over 99% of the
ceramic assemblage are table and utilitarian wares, the
remainder being storage wares (Appendix A; McEwan 1988).

The infrequency of storage wares demonstrates the
availability of fresh produce from the city's hinterlands.

Hispaniola's capital, Santo Domingo is, of the sites
considered, materially most similar to Bafios. Eighty-eight
per cent of the ceramic assemblage from the Convento de San
Francisco are Spanish Empire wares, while some 12% is
storage wares (Appendix C). As the primary entrepot for a
productive colony, the settlement created a "Neo-Europe" by
transforming the local environment with familiar Old World
plants and animals and through importing the artifacts of
the motherland (Chaunu and Chaunu 1957; Sauer 1966). Faunal
remains from the Convento suggest how complete the
transformation was. The majority of the biomass is domestic
species of cows, pigs, sheep, goats and chickens while the
minority is fish (Council 1975:38-39).

According to the documentary record the role of the
aboriginal population in the city was apparently very
limited. The archaeological record from the Convento de San
Francisco appears to validate those records. Although it

may be tempting to suggest bias in the collection of

235
aboriginally-made ceramics in excavations at this site,
Goggin (1968:105) clearly states that none were encountered.
These findings are corroborated by recent reports of low
frequencies of aboriginal wares from other sites in the city
(Ortega et al. 1982). These data, coupled with documentary
evidence of the European demographic make-up of the
community, suggests that it is reasonable to assume that the
influence of the aboriginal population was slight (Boxer
1975; Moya Pons 1976; Sauer 1966). Thus, the Convento's
ceramic frequencies reflect the settlement's success at
creating a "Neo-Europe."

Puerto Real, a hinterland settlement on Hispaniola's
north shore, was far less cosmopolitan than Santo Domingo
and thus, less like Seville (Appendices D through F). Only
35% of the ceramic assemblage recovered from Puerto Real are
Spanish Empire wares. This low frequency corresponds with
documentary evidence regarding the few vessels that called
at this remote port (Chaunu and Chaunu 1957). Although
there were profitable industries at Puerto Real, primarily
cattle raising and slaving, there were few Iberian women in
the Spanish populace (Sauer 1966; Willis 1984). Thus,
aboriginal women were included into the colonial society of
the community (Deagan 1985). The influence of this ethnic
group can be reckoned by the high frequency (46.5%) of
Locally-Produced ceramics recovered throughout the site
(Ewen 1987; McEwan 1983; Willis 1984).

Finally, the success of Puerto Real's alteration of the

environment into a "Neo-Europe" is reflected in the

236
frequency of storage wares (18%) in the ceramic assemblage.
At Puerto Real, these wares are one-and-one-half times as
frequent as they are in Santo Domingo, indicating a greater
reliance on imported Old World plant foods. Although farms
were rare in this community, herding was not (Willis 1984).
Studies of the faunal remains from the site show that over
90% of the available biomass was beef, pork and mutton, with
the remainder composed of turtle, fish and birds (Ewen
1987:194; McEwan 1983:84-85; Willis 1984:233).

Santa Elena occupied the third position in the
hierarchy. This settlement served as the capital for the
protactiva colony of Spanish Florida. Twenty-three per
cent of the ceramics recovered (Appendix G) from this site
are Spanish Empire wares, while Locally-Produced and storage
wares comprise 48% and 29% respectively. Santa Elena was a
capital and, presumably, the primary entrepot for a distinct
colony, yet its material face is more like to a remote
hinterland settlement in Hispaniola than a mirror of Seville
and Spain. The low "value" of the colony in the Spanish
system of empire had little to recommend it for colonization
and commerce. The majority of those Spaniards that
comprised its European populace were there at the pleasure
of the crown as bureaucrats. soldiers and priests (Connor
1930; Lyon 1984; Manucy 1985; Ross 1925). Although some
civilian families were present, their creation of a "Neo-
Europe" was far less developed than those of their cousins

in Hispaniola.

237

The few ships that did call brought basic supplies such
as food and a few Old World commodities like ceramics
(Bushnell 1981; Chaunu and Chaunu 1957; Deagan 1980:28; Lyon
1984:6). Study of faunal and floral remains from Santa
Elena reveals that most Old World domesticates were
available to the populace (Reitz and Scarry 1985:56,65,66).
Yet, less than 30% of the faunal remains were beef, pork,
mutton or chicken; the remainder were fish and game animals
(Reitz and Scarry 1985:66-68). This heavy reliance on
hunted and fished foods and the high frequency (29%) of
imported storage wares suggests that the locally established
farms and ranches were unable to meet the demands of the
Iberian population (Connor 1930:189,283; Lyon 1984:5,10,13-
14). In 1573 one soldier complained that "rations of
biscuit, maize, flour, jerked beef, wine...oil" were
sporadically issued. "When there was nothing they ate
herbs, fish and other scum and vermin" (Connor 1925:98—99).
As we have seen (Chapter 3), the standard diet in Philip
II's army was comprised of cereal products, meat, fish, milk
products, oil and drink. If these familiar items were
unavailable to the troops, the grumbling would not be
limited to their bellies (Braudel 1973:88) Thus, mutiny was
a constant fear in the colony (Lyon 1984:2). The high
frequency (48%) of locally-produced utilitarian wares
suggests that the aboriginal populace played an important
role in Santa Elena. Indeed in addition to providing wives

and concubines for the soldiers, Indians labored on the

238
fortress of San Marcos and supplied food and other tribute
to the community (Lyon 1984:5,9,14).

The colony's second municipality, St. Augustine
continues the trends observed in the other settlements. The
city's primary military focus is reflected in its ceramic
assemblage (Deagan 1985b) (Appendix H). There, Spanish
Empire ceramics comprise only 12.5% of the recovered
pottery. With Santa Elena as capital and primary center for
civilian settlement, St. Augustine's Iberian populace was
largely comprised of soldiers, petty bureaucrats and some
civilians (Lyon 1977; 1984; Manucy 1985). Thus, the demand
for Spanish Empire ceramics was low.

In St. Augustine, the integration of the aboriginal
population was even greater than in Santa Elena. As Deagan
has observed (1980:29; 1985a:304), St. Augustine's mastigo
population was born in the sixteenth century when Indian
women acted as wives, concubines and servants for the
Spanish garrison. At this settlement, over fifty per cent
(55.5%) of the ceramics are Locally-Produced wares. As in
Santa Elena, the aboriginal populace supplied both labor and
commodities to the Spanish (Deagan 1985a:293-294; Lyon
1976:50, 118-119).

If St. Augustine's population did not lend itself to
the creation of a material "Neo-Europe," its transition of
the environment was similarly underdeveloped. Again many
Old World cultigens have been identified from archaeological
excavations in the community (Reitz and Scarry 1985:56), but

the high frequency of storage wares (32%) indicates that

239

shortfalls in familiar produce plagued the community and
thus needed to be imported. It is interesting to note,
however, that nearly half the faunal assemblage identified
from the municipality has been identified as domesticated
Old World species. As compared to the lower frequencies
identified in Santa Elena, this may represent St.
Augustine's attempt to create a simplified culinary "Neo-
Europe." Given the largely male make-up of this military
outpost, the nuances of the generalized Iberian culture
differed from that found nearer the main line of
communication and commerce. Spanish men and their Indian
wives could not produce "Spanish" meals from local foods.
To compensate for this shortfall and to validate their
cultural position and create their version of a "Neo-Europe"
beyond gridded streets, the Catholic church, and the Spanish
language, they relied more on familiar Old World foods.

The last segment of the system's hierarchy considered

here is the 1554 flota. Research on shipwreck remains from

 

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries suggested that they
be viewed as the furthest extension of colonial empire and
thus, represent a "floating frontier" (Johnson and Skowronek
1986). There is no reason to suspect that the
archaeologically retrieved materials from these sixteenth—
century vessels be viewed any differently from terrestrial
sites (Arnold and Weddle 1978; Olds 1976; Skowronek 1987).
The social hierarchies that characterized sixteenth-century
Spain were mirrored on board the vessels that transported

their people and cargo to and from the colonies. There were

240

both elite and commoner people among the crew with clear
indications of the status of each individual aboard
(Muckelroy 1978; Skowronek 1984). Thus, while the frequency
of Spanish Empire wares is low in the assemblage (6%) (see
Appendix B), this does reflect the needs of the crew and the
problems of supply in a "frontier" setting. To create their
"Neo-Europe" in this hostile environment, the crew were
supplied with familiar stored and fresh foods (storage wares
94%). These included the identified remains of olives and
hazelnuts and pig bones (Arnold and Weddle l978:265,373).

The lack of locally-produced wares reflects the closed
nature of shipboard life, wherein women and children were
only aboard as passengers, and the dependence of the crew in
this setting was on familiar Spanish Empire ceramics and
non-ceramic cooking wares (Arnold and Weddle 1978; Olds

1976; Skowronek 1987).

Discussion

By integrating archaeological and documentary evidence
from many locales in the Spanish sixteenth-century empire,
we are able to more clearly understand what aspects of
Spanish culture were considered important and, thus,
exported as a "conquest culture" (Foster 1960). Further,
these two types of data can lead to a clearer understanding
of how "Neo-Europes" were formulated and influenced by the
environment, the aboriginal population, and larger systemic

concerns .

241

We have seen that "Neo-Europes" are comprised of more
than the aspects of the church, the state and the economy
and their manifestations in city plan, architecture,
language and societal norms as documented in written
records. We have seen that access to familiar food was
basic for colonization whether exported in storage wares or
produced locally. The relative success of a "Neo-Europe"
was based on the ability to produce these familiar
foodstuffs locally, as was seen in Santo Domingo (Sauer
1966). When these comestibles were regularly produced, the
need for imported foods fell and the immigration rate of
Iberian women rose (Super 1988:41). With a more balanced
population, colonial society began to increasingly mark its
internal hierarchy with material items, including Spanish
Empire ceramics. Concurrent with the rise of craoia
society, there was a lessening of dependence on locally-
produced ceramic wares. Thus, people sought to mark their
Spanish roots with Spanish cuisine, prepared by Iberian
wives using European ceramics and techniques and presenting
their repast on status-marking Spanish Empire wares (Boxer
1975; Deagan 1983; Skowronek 1984; South et al. 1988).

Environmental potential affected the "value" of each
colonial area. As value decreased so too did the volume of
commercial contact with the motherland. And with the fall
of shipping traffic and their cargoes, the ability to create
"Neo-Europes" in these less-productive and ppopective
colonies was affected. Yet, these differing economic roles

did not affect how the aboriginal population was integrated

242
into colonial society. In both areas, women served as
wives, concubines and servants while tribute in the form of
labor and materials was expected from the aboriginal males
(Deagan 1985a). The Spanish sought to bring the aboriginal
population into their Old World society as part of their
"Neo-Europes". As such, when possible, the Spanish sought
to eradicate aboriginal cultural practices (Deagan 1985a:
Sauer 1966; 1971). Yet, in areas with limited external
contact, aboriginal culture left its mark in the Spanish
community. We see this physically, in the form of a
mestizo population, and materially in the less visible
aspects of food preparation.

Thus, within the Spanish colonial system, there was a
hierarchy of colonization whose manifestation was the
creation of a "Neo-Europe." In the sixteenth-century
colonies of Hispaniola and Florida, settlements of similar
function, which shared general parts of a "conquest
culture," differed considerably in the degree of their
success at creating "Neo-Europes." Although both areas
shared similar environments and resident aboriginal
societies, their "value" as ppognctiva or pnppagtiya
affected their positions in the hierarchy of the empire and,
in turn, their respective abilities to create a "Neo-
Europe." Thus, even secondary and tertiary settlements in
a proguctive colony may have created more successful "Neo-
Europes" than a primary entrepot and capital of another

colonial area.

CHAPTER 8

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

Introduction

The traits shared by Spanish New World colonies have
been termed "conquest culture" (Foster 1960). This
generalized Iberian culture is a distillation or
standardization of the colonists' range of Old World
experiences. Through this generalized Iberian culture, the
colonists sought to create a social and material facsimile
of their Iberian homeland -- a "Neo-Europe." In these
"Neo-Europes," generalized aspects of the more visible parts
of Spanish Old World culture occur (Crosby 1986). Thus,
throughout the Spanish colonies, we see a common language
and hierarchy in governmental, religious and social
institutions. Repeatedly, in each settlement in each colony
these institutions are physically manifested in community
function, town plan, architecture and siting of buildings in
the community.

Yet, if we look beyond this veneer, it is clear that
Spanish settlements in the New World were not invariably
stamped out; instead they were shaped by a variable
combination of internal colonial constraints and external
systemic concerns that resulted in a hierarchical

243

244
relationship within and between colonies in the empire.
Through the archaeological and documentary records, we have
begun to define the nature of that relationship by measuring
the relative success of the created "Neo-Europes" in
Hispaniola and Florida. The differences that were revealed
reflect the hierarchy of economic relationships within

colonies and between colonies and the motherland.

Modelling Sixteenth Century §panish CoIoniaapign

The differences we have observed in the relative
success of settlements and colonial areas in creating "Neo-
Europe" can be used to determine the positions of other less
known locales in the system. In such settings, the eight
propositions that guided this thesis may be tested and
further refined on other European sites in these colonial
areas or in other parts of the sixteenth-century Spanish
Empire. A review of these propositions serves as a summary

of the findings of this research.

(1) Hierarchy characterized Spain's colonial system. This
hierarchy was reflected not only in the amount and value of
exports from each colonial area but also in the amount of
contact each colony enjoyed with Spain. During the two
decades following 1568, Hispaniola was the destination of
nearly 15% of the ships that cleared Seville for the New
World. These vessels removed nearly a quarter of a million
ducats of produce annually from the island (Chaunu and

Chaunu 1957). In the same era, Florida produced no exports

245
and attracted less then 1% of the shipping (ibid. 1957).
Thus, those areas that produced exotica enjoyed greater
contact with Spain and so ranked higher in the hierarchy of
empire than areas that produced few or no exports. Where
documentary evidence exists for other Spanish colonial areas
of this era, it should be possible to rank them against
Hispaniola and Florida and, thus, determine their position

in the hierarchy.

(2) Economic focus in the Spanish sixteenth-century
colonial empire was described as a continuum of value based
on the monetary value of colonial export commodities divided
by expenditures for defense of the colony by Spain. At the
higher end of this continuum were productiva colonies; those
at the lower end were termed protective. The value of
Hispaniola's exports was 164 times the amount spent on
defense while the Florida colony annually cost the crown
26,000 more ducats than it produced (Chaunu and Chaunu 1957;
Hoffman 1980). Using this scale, the economic focus of,
Hispaniola was more producpive while that of Spanish Florida
was more protective. This proposition and the first
proposition suggest that the more productive a colony was,
the higher its rank in the hierarchy of empire. In other
colonial areas for which documentary evidence on the value
of exports and defense expenditures exists, it should be
possible to place such areas on this continuum and, thus,

determine their roles in the empire.

246
(3) It was proposed that a colony's ability to create a
"Neo-Europe" was influenced by the colony's position in the
economic hierarchy of the empire. As we have seen, the
documentary record suggests that certain aspects of a
generalized Iberian culture, such as architecture and city
plan, are present regardless of a settlement's or colony's
economic focus or hierarchical position. However, since a
"Neo-Europe" is created both by physically altering the
ecology of the colonial area as well as by importing goods
directly from Spain and the Old World, we would expect that
those areas that enjoyed greater contact with the motherland
were more successful in their replications than those that
suffered from commercial neglect.

To see this differential in success rates, we turned to
the archaeological record. Ceramic remains (specifically
those associated with food storage, preparation and
presentation) were used as sensitive indicators of the
nature of the colonial population and its ability to create
a "Neo-Europe." These ceramic remains were categorized as
Spanish Empire, Locally-Produced and Spanish Storage wares.
The relative proportions of the first two were categories
reflect the make-up of the population in the colonial area.
Thus, the more demographically balanced the Iberian
population, the greater the proportion of Spanish Empire
wares in the assemblage. When imbalance occurred in the
European population, the aboriginal population played a
greater role in the foodways of the colonists; this is

reflected by higher proportions of locally-produced wares.

247

The last category, storage wares, reflects the colonists'
success at altering the local environment into a "Neo-
Europe." When the colonists were able to produce familiar,
acceptable foods locally, they no longer had to import
familiar foods from Spain. If this transformation was
incomplete, however, they had to remain dependent on imports
of stored familiar foods. Thus, the ceramic assemblage in
these areas contains a high proportion of storage wares.

Using the relative proportions of these three
categories of ceramic wares, we have demonstrated a
relationship between the position of a colony in the
hierarchy of empire and the ability of that colony to create
a "Neo-Europe." The higher the position of a colony in the
hierarchy of empire, the greater the proportion of Spanish
Empire wares and the lower the proportion of locally-
produced and storage wares vis-a-vis colonies that are
ranked lower. By using this scale, the success of colonial

areas at creating "Neo-Europes" may be measured.

(4) It was proposed that exploitable environmental
potential influenced the economic focus of each colonial
area. Indeed, it was shown that, while both areas had
potential gold resources, exotic plants and appropriate
climates and soils for plantations (Sauer 1966; 1971), only
Hispaniola developed a ppognctive economic focus. The
documentary record suggests that the Spanish ability to
exploit bullion resources (and other commodities such as

pearls and precious stones) was of primary importance in the

248
development of a progucnive focus (Sauer 1966). If such
resources could be located, those and other secondary
commodities would be exploited while other products were
developed for export (Blakewell 1987). Areas where Spanish
explorers failed to locate precious resources attracted few
settlers and tended to be less valued and ranked lower in
the hierarchy of empire. In such settings, the "Neo-
Europes" were less successful than in those with bullion or

that had previously produced similar precious commodities.

(5) The influence of the aboriginal population on the
lifeways of European colonists varied according to the
economic focus of the colony and its position in the
hierarchy of empire. A ppoductiva, valued colony such as
Hispaniola tended to exclude the indigenous population from
the European population and settlements, whereas in Spanish
Florida, the aboriginal population played a larger role in
the creation of Spanish-American culture. Documentary
information on the indigenous population in the sixteenth-
century Spanish Empire is largely limited to descriptions of
their ferocity in battle, their mistreatment at the hands of
the Spanish or their short life expectancies (e.g., Las
Casas 1974); it gives little information about their
interactions with the colonists (Deagan 1985a).

To make up for these shortcomings, we were able to turn
to the archaeological record, specifically the locally-
produced ceramic utilitarian wares. As discussed in

Proposition 3, the less productive a colony, the less

249
demographically balanced the Iberian population and the less
commercial contact with Spain. In these settings, such as
Spanish Florida, the Spanish population turned to the local
aboriginal populations for wives and concubines. This
greater reliance on the aboriginal population is reflected
in the larger proportion of locally-produced ceramics
associated with the assemblages from these areas. Thus, it
is position on the continuum of value from pnoductive to
protactive that determines the amount and kind of
interaction between the Spanish and the indigenous

inhabitants of the colonial areas.

(6) The diachronic phases of incorporation of colonial
areas into the Spanish Empire vary only in duration. All
areas pass through four phases: Prelude; Barter and Plunder;
Imperial Imposition; and Contraction and Stabilization. The
duration and scale of each phase is dictated by the
perceived value of each colony in relation to the presence
of exportable exotica (including gold, dyewoods and slaves)
or the presence of hostile European powers (Sauer
1966:61,77-79,153-155; 1971:196-203). Passage through these
phases, therefore, lies in the variable of the Spanish
perception of natural resources and larger external systemic
factors, rather than in the ability of individual

conquerors.

(7) The study showed that settlement pattern was dictated

by the economics of transportation from the colonial area to

250
Spain. A colony's primary entrepot was sited on a safe
harbor adjacent to the "main street" of communication from
Spain to the New World (Sauer 1971:192,213-214; West and
Augelli 1976:64). Other secondary and tertiary settlements
were located inland or at other less convenient ports
adjacent to desired commodities and, thus, were usually
supplied via the entrepot (Taaffe et al. 1963). It is thus
expected that, in other colonial areas, the primary entrepot
would be located adjacent to the most convenient route to
the Old World and that the settlements and road system would

focus on that primary port.

(8) In these cosmopolitan colonies, we saw that settlement
function was dictated by the settlement's position in the
communication hierarchy of the colonial area (Casagrande et
al. 1964). The settlement that was located nearest to the
"main street" of communication and was joined to other
settlements in the colony by trails or sea lanes served as a
primary multi-functional entrepot for the colony. From
this location, information and finished goods were sent to
the hinterlands and to it flowed the products or information
desired by Spain. It follows that the more remote the
siting of a settlement vis-a-vis the primary entrepot, the
less functionally diverse it would be (Dobyns 1980). Thus,
settlement function is predicated on position in the
communication hierarchy or colonization gradient of a colony

(Casagrande et al. 1964).

251

Because of this relationship between function and
communication, the relative position of each settlement in a
colony is discernible by its ability to create a "Neo-
Europe." Given the difficulty in comparing the similar
aspects of "conquest culture" as it is recorded in the
documentary record, the degree of this success is best
measured using material culture. Ceramics are a powerful
tool for this measurement because they are highly diagnostic
as to function, age, and point of origin and because the
presence or absence of certain categories can suggest
different interpretations for the observed phenomenon.

Thus, in Hispaniola the documentary record suggested the
preeminence of Santo Domingo in the colony's "colonization
gradient" and the secondary role of Puerto Real on the
island's north shore. Comparison of the proportions of
various categories of ceramic wares demonstrated the
relative success of Santo Domingo's "Neo-Europe" compared
with that created by Puerto Real. Comparison of Santa Elena
and St. Augustine in Spanish Florida revealed a similar
relationship between these two settlements.

The value of these material correlates of the
"colonization gradient" and the varying success at creating
"Neo-Europes" lies in the ability to examine intra- and
inter-colonial relationships. On the intra-colonial level,
these material comparisons can be used to interpret
discrepancies in the documentary record and to understand
how each settlement was adapted to its own local

environment. When the same comparisons are made on an

252
inter-colonial level, the relationship of each settlement
and its version of a "Neo-Europe" to the rest of the empire
is discernible. Thus, we can see that, while Santa Elena
served as the capital and primary entrepot for Spanish
Florida, its version of a "Neo-Europe" was more akin to that
of Puerto Real, a remote settlement, than to that of Santo
Domingo, Hispaniola's primary entrepot. As more settlements
in these colonies and other areas receive archaeological
attention, their position in the Spanish Empire can be
determined on this same basis. This will allow more precise
inter- and intra-colonial comparisons that will show how
internal colonial constraints and external systemic concerns
combine to affect the role and hierarchical position of each

settlement in Spain's system of empire.

Reevaluating The Theoretigal aase

This study of two colonies in Spain's sixteenth-century
New World empire lends insight into the early modern
colonization process beyond the creation of a model suitable
for archaeological and documentary testing. Some of these
insights are considered below.

At the base of this research lies world systems theory
and its focus on the creation of the modern European-
centered world economy. In this view the world is
characterized as bipartite with a European core of consumers
being supplied by a periphery of colonial producers
(Stavrianos 1981; Wallerstein 1974; Wolf 1982). As this

study has pointed out a division into "core" and "periphery"

253
is too simple, for indeed there is hierarchy within the
periphery that results in some areas being more peripheral
than others.

Another pillar of this research is the "cosmopolitan"
concepts of Frontier Studies (Lewis 1984: Steffen 1980).
Part of this term's definition is that continuing contact
with the motherland allows only modal change and no
fundamental change in the colonial area. As detailed
earlier, not all cosmopolitan colonies enjoy a high level of
contact with the motherland. This issue of the degree of
contact and change must be considered when categorizing a
colony as "cosmopolitan" or "insular" in focus (Lewis 1984:
Steffen 1980). Activities performed within a colony do not
automatically place it in one category or another. As we
have seen part of the colonization process is the alteration
of the environment into a Neo-Europe, both materially and in
the production of familiar foods (Crosby 1986). Thus, even
if a colony only produces goods for internal consumption and
not for export they still may have a cosmopolitan focus
similar to that associated with Spanish Florida. Knowing
where a colony "fits" requires a knowledge of the system of
which it was a part -— and that knowledge can only come
through comparison.

Additionally, the physical manifestations of a
cosmopolitan frontier or colony should be considered within
the framework of the colonization gradient (Casagrande et
al. 1964). In this study "cosmopolitan" was defined as

having extractive/productive or associated protective

254
activities which were conducted for the ultimate benefit of
a remote motherland. Thus, while ranching, mining,
plantations and lumbering may be associated with the
furthest reaches of the colonization gradient-- the
hinterlands or single activity sites, we can see that
administrative centers (entrepots and frontier towns) and
their associated activities are no less a part of the
cosmopolitan colonial milieu. Ultimately it is the Iaiagn
d'atpa for the settlement of an area that must be considered
and not simply the activities performed therein.

Finally, this study has suggested that the stages of
area incorporation, and the development of lines of
communication proposed by Meinig (1986) and Taaffe et al.
(1963) may be a global phenomenon. Is it because these
models are too general or is it because the quest for
efficient profit making is a culturally overarching hallmark
of the world economy? Only through continued comparative
work on the modern era and other time periods can we begin

to see the broader applicability of these models.

De Omnibus Dubitandun -- guidelines Fog Futuna Beseancn

As this last section's title suggests, everything ought
to be doubted until it is tested. An important part of this
study was based on variably collected material remains. In
the upcoming Columbian Quincentennial Observances, this
model should be tested on other sites within the former
Spanish colonies of Hispaniola and Florida and in other

contemporary but differently endowed Spanish colonies.

255

Its ramifications for larger cross-cultural and
diachronic considerations of cosmopolitan colonization
efforts is also manifest. Questions might include: "Was
Spain alone in the creation of hierarchically ordered "Neo-
Europes" in a single system or can these trends be seen
among the other European colonizers?": and "Did Florida's
hierarchical position change as new lands such as
California, Arizona and New Mexico were colonized in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries?"

Much work remains but a testable foundation has been
laid. We have seen that Spain's New World colonies, despite
their sharing of an overt generalized Iberian culture, were
quite different in economic focus. These colonies were
shaped by various combinations of internal constraints and
external concerns, resulting in a hierarchical relationship
within and between colonies in the empire. Our future goal
is to further define the nature of that relationship and

ultimately its limits.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX A

Banos de la Reina Mora Ceramics*

Ceramic Types Number

Spanish Ethnicity-Marking Wares:

Andalusia Plain 114
Andalusia Polychrome "A" 28
Andalusia Polychrome ”B" 6
Bisque 14
Caparra Blue 1
Columbia Plain 939
Dibujo de Encaje 1
Eroded Tin-Glazed 1
Green Tianlazed 124
Green & White tin-Glazed 115
Indeterminate Tin—Glazed 143
Iron Brown Yayal 2
Isabela Polychrome 12
Lustreware 2
Melado 38
Paterna Tin-Glazed 1
Puerto Real Green on Green 11
Santa Elena Mottled Blue on White 54
Sevilla Blue on Blue 21
Santo Domingo Blue on White 105
Unclassified Blue on White 238
Unclassified Polychrome Majolica 41
Yayal Blue on White 283
Bizcocho 1321
Feldspar Inlaid Redware 2
Feldspar Tempered Redware 8
Fine unglazed coarse earthenware 53
Orange Micaceous 2
Blue on White Delft 1
Ligurian Blue on Blue 15
Ming Porcelain 3
Pisan Slipware 13

Total 4412

Percentage 46.1%

256

257

Appendix A (cont'd)

Ceramic Types Number
Spanish Utilitarian Wares:
Anafe 46
Arcaduz 1003
Green Bacin 21
Green Lebrillo 103
Lead Glazed Coarse Earthenware 2556
Mortar 9
Unglazed Coarse Earthenware 1355
Total 5093
Percentage 53.2%
Spanish Storage Wares:
Tianlazed Olive Jar (tinaja) 2
Lead Glazed Olive Jar 22
Unglazed Olive Jar 43
Total 67
Percentage 0.7%
Total Ceramics 14732
Percentage 100%

Source: McEwan 1988:85-90,224-227
* McEwan’s functional classification has been adjusted
to reflect the economic categories considered in this study

APPENDIX B

Flota of 1554 Ceramics

Espiritu San
Santo Esteban
Ceramic Types (41WY3) (41KN10) Total

.*~*———~a———-—-——_n—N-——-—-——_—--—--s—-_‘————u—u-——.-_—_-—-———-—--

Spanish Ethnicity—Marking Wares:

Columbia Plain 1 11 12
Yayal Blue on White 0 3 3
Santo Domingo Blue on White 0 2 2
Santa Elena Green and White 0 1 1

Unidentified Majolica 1 8 9

Honey Colored Ware 0 12 12

Montelupo Polychrome 0 2 2

Montelupo Blue on White 0 2 2

Cologne Stoneware 0 7 7

Mexican Red Painted O 1 1
Total 51
Percentage 5.3%

Spanish Utilitarian Wares:

Red Lead Glazed 8 5 13
Total 13
Percentage 1.4%

Spanish Storage Wares:

Olive Jar 754 143 897
Total 897
Percentage 93.3%

Total Ceramics 961

Percentage 100%

Source: Skowronek 1987:104, Table 1

258

Convento de San Francisco Cereeics ty Location and Type

 

O‘Sit.’

APPENDIX C

Horizontal Location iron Datu-

5-10 it 10-151t 20-251t 25-301t 30-35it

 

Vertical Location (Level)

 

Ceraeit Types below 59' bin 75' 67-75' blu 48' Die 32' bin 32' Nueber
Sp. Ethnicity-flirting Hares:
Coluebia Plain 248 3 4 176 55 96 582
Yayal Blue on Uhite 12 0 0 31 5 16 64
Santa Dooingo Blue on Hhite 1 0 2 0 2 0 5
Coparra Blue 0 0 1 0 0 0 1
Isabela Polychrooe 2 0 0 2 1 2 7
010 Blue on finite leiolica 7 0 0 6 4 0 17
Honey Colored Here 16 0 0 14 0 14 44
Hontelupo Polychroee 0 0 0 0 0 2 2
Reduare 11 3 0 B4 5 236 339
Orange Hicaceous 1 0 0 1 0 3 5
Red Slipped (Hexican Red?) 0 0 0 2 0 8 10
Feldspar lnlaid 0 0 0 0 2 7 9
Cuerda Seca 0 0 0 0 0 9 9
Porcelain 0 0 0 0 l 0 l
Unidentified Tablenares 18 0 0 6 0 0 24
Total (1) 1119 (72.41)
Spanish Utilitarian Hares:
Green Lead Glazed 0 0 0 0 1 0 1
Red Lead Glazed 136 9 11 62 14 22 254
Total 111 255 116.51)
Spanish Storage dares:
Olive Jar 109 B 8 0 22 24 171

Total (1)

Total Cereeics 11)

171 111.12)

1545 110011

 

4 Figures in this coluen are adapted iron Goggin 1968:109. All other data iron Boqgin's iield notes,
Convento de San Francisco, 0.9., Ciudad Trujillo, Jan., Feb., July 1954,‘ on file It the Florida State
Huseue, Boinesville, FL. For eore inioreation see Council 1975:55-118.

ZESSJ

APPENDIX D

Puerto Real, Building A Ceramics

Ceramic Types Number

Spanish Ethnicity-Marking Wares:

Columbia Plain 353
Columbia Green 8
Yayal Blue on White 5
Santo Domingo Blue on White 9
Caparra Blue 1
Honey Colored 172
Faenza White 6
Montelupo Polychrome 8
Ligurian Blue on Blue 30
Redware (thin and unglazed) 135
Orange Micaceous 15
Unidentified/bisque 56
Cologne Stoneware 3
Porcelain 7
Feldspar Inlaid 12

Total (%) 820 (62.3%)
Spanish Utilitarian Wares:
Green Lead Glazed 56

(Green Basin and Green)

Red Lead Glazed (E1 Morro and Yellow 87

Total (%) 143 (10.9%)
Locally Produced Utilitarian:
Aboriginal/Colono-Indian 87

Total (%) B7 (6.6%)
Spanish Storage Wares:
Olive Jar 266

Total (%) 266 (20.2%)
Total Ceramics (%) 1361 (100%)

Source: Willis 1984: 218—219, 223-224, 295, 298, 316,
318, 320. This study used Strata III and IV (1503—78);
cuenca tile and lattice are omitted. Strata I and II
(1578-1605) are not used in this study.

260

APPENDIX E

Puerto Real, Area 35 Ceramics

Ceramic Types Number

Spanish Ethnicity-Marking Wares:

Columbia Plain 431
Yayal Blue on White 6
Caparra Blue 4
Isabela Polychrome 2
Unidentified Majolica 57
Honey Colored 22
Ligurian Blue on Blue 12
Redware 83
Orange Micaceous 35
Feldspar Inlaid 13
Unidentified wares 120

Total (%) 785 (21.8%)
Spanish Utilitarian Wares:
Green Lead Glazed 22
Red Lead Glazed 21

Total (%) 43 (1.5%)
Locally-Produced Utilitarian Wares:
Aboriginal Types 1694

Total (%) 1694 (60.6%)
Spanish Storage Wares:
Olive Jar 272

Total (%) 272 (9.8%)
Total Ceramics 2794 (100%)

Source: McEwan 1983:66-67,116-139, Levels 3 and 4,
Features. Cuenca Tile is not considered.

261

APPENDIX F

Puerto Real, Locus 19 Ceramics

Ceramic Types Number

Spanish Ethnicity-Marking Wares:

Columbia Plain 7673
Columbia Plain Green 186
Yayal Blue on White 70
Santo Domingo Blue on White 16
Caparra Blue 15
Isabela Polychrome 12
Santa Elena Green and White 45
White 337
UID/bisque/polychrome/blue on white 711
La Vega 3
Honey Colored 584
Sevilla Blue on White 1
Sevilla Blue on Blue 3
Puerto Real Green and Green 24
Lustreware 1
Montelupo Polychrome 9
Ligurian Blue on Blue 11
Redware 320
Orange Micaceous 806
Cologne Stoneware 25
Porcelain 45
Faience 34
Unidentified/unglazed-glazed 2739
Delft 62
Feldspar Inlaid 262

Total (%) 13994 (31.3%)
Spanish Utilitarian Wares:
Green Lead Glazed (inc. Green Basin) 346
Red Lead Glazed (inc. E1 Morro) 1214

Total (%) 1560 (3.5%)
Locally Produced Utilitarian Wares:
Aboriginal Types 20913

Total (%) 20913 (46.8%)
Spanish Storage Wares:
Olive Jar 8242

Total (%) 8242 (18.4%)
Total Ceramics (%) 44709 (100%)

——-----—----—-——-—————.I———-———-——-——-————~_*—“—-———~-*n

Source: Ewen 1987:175-180. Data include both Early
and Late materials but omit cuenca tile.

262

APPENDIX 8

Santa Elena Ceroeics by Project!

 

Ceraeit Types 1 2 3 4 5 Total 8
leported Status Bares:
Coluebie Plain 68 880 622 1052 1390 4012
Boluebie Plain Buneetal 6 14 118 311 1375 1824
Yayal Blue on Ibite 3 70 27 85 156 341
Santo Boeingo Blue on Unite 0 50 19 66 19 154
Caparra Blue 0 2 7 2 4 15
Tsabela Polychroee 0 12 10 7 9 38
Santa Elena bottled Blue on Unite 0 65 0 135 213 413
Santa Elena Green and Uhite 0 0 0 173 203 376
Fine Unite 0 0 0 21 7 28
Trianr Seville Polychroee 0 0 2 0 4 6
Le Vega 0 0 0 0 3 3
Seville Blue on Uhite 0 0 0 0 l 1
Unidentified Uajolica 7 153 178 1080 3 1421
Honey-Colored 0 0 6 0 0 6
Hontelupo Polychroee 0 21 0 0 0 21
Ligurian Blue on Blue 1 15 20 26 24 86
Red-are 14 0 0 11 294 319
Orange Hiceceous 14 99 9 20 25 167
flexican Red Painted 5 15 11 B9 57 177
Fine Orange 0 82 18 45 68 213
Yucatan Colonial 0 6 2 0 11 19
Feldspar lnleid 0 2 3 2 0 7
Porcelain 1 67 18 20 3 109
Unidentified Tableaares 0 26 38 227 14 305

Total (1) 10061 (17.01)
Spanish Utilitarian Bares:
Breen Lead Blezed 18 75 93 220 211 617
Bed Lead Slated 42 107 71 1513 1288 3021

' Total (I) 3638 (6.11)

Locally-Bede Utilitarian flares:
Aboriginal types 109 5183 9039 9427 5152 28910

Total (1) 28910 (48.71)
Spanish Storage lures:
Ulive Jar 776 3816 1976 4329 5866 16763

Total (I) 16763 (28.21)

Total Bereeics (1)

 

-------------------------------==— —

22623

59372 (1002)

 

.2154

Appendix 8 (cont'd)

lSources: Project 1--South 1980: hut, p.22.

Project 2--South 1982: 8 level, p.70; Features, p.71.

Project 3--South 1983: B zone, pp.34-35; Features, pp.35-36; ooat fill, p.67;
II Bastion, A zone, p.68: 118 Bastion, B zone, p.69.

Project 4--South 1984: 3'sguares, p.105; 10' squares, p.116: Features 178' sesh, p.120:
Features 174' oesh, p.125

Project 5--South 1985: 10' squares, p.71: Features, p.125; North sell 1F3351, p.127-128;
Beplaceeent sell 1F3331, p.129; sell 1F172l, p.130-l3l; South sell 1F146l, pp.133-l34.

APPENDIX H

St. Augustine Ceramics*

Ceramic Types Number

Spanish Ethnicity-Marking Wares:

Columbia Plain 177
Caparra Plain 7
Isabela Polychrome 4
Santo Domingo Blue on White 34
Yayal Blue on White 12
UID Polychrome 14
UID Blue on White 64
UID Plain 109
Cologne Stoneware 1
Ligurian/Sevilla Blue on Blue 114
Feldspar Inlaid 4
Mexiacan Red Painted 84
Orange Micaceous 45
Yucatan Colonial 4
Redware 56
Porcelain 14

Total (Z) 743 (7.5%)
Spanish Utilitarian Wares:
Green Lead Glazed (Basin) 6
Lead Glazed Coarse Earthenware 106
Lime Clay 25
UID Earthenware 357

Total 494 (5.0%)
Locally-Made Utilitarian Wares:
Aboriginal types 5447

Total 5447 (55.3%)
Spanish Storage Wares:
Olive Jar/Storage Jar 2423
Glazed Olive Jar 734
Glazed Storage Jar 11

Total 3168 (32.2%)
Total Ceramics 9852 (100%)

Source: Deagan 19B5b:11-12, Table 1

*Note: Mexican-made wares imported after 1590 are not
used. Types excluded: Fig Springs (San Juan) Poly,
Ichtucknee B/W, San Luis B/W and Mexico City White

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