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Spanish Florida (Spanish: La Florida) was the first major European land-claim and attempted settlement-area in northern America during the European Age of Discovery. La Florida formed part of the Captaincy General of Cuba in the Viceroyalty of New Spain , and the Spanish Empire during Spanish colonization of the Americas .
Spanish Florida in the 16th and 17th centuries was a frontier colony. There were only some 2,000 Spaniards in the colony, and between 800 and 1,500 people in the Presidio of St. Augustine. Florida was a poor colony, with no source of precious metals and little else of value to the Spanish.
Pedro Menéndez de Avilés. The first European known to have explored the coasts of Florida was the Spanish explorer and governor of Puerto Rico, Juan Ponce de León, who likely ventured in 1513 as far north as the vicinity of the future St. Augustine, naming the peninsula he believed to be an island "La Florida" and claiming it for the Spanish crown.
Spanish Florida was established in the 1500s, when Spain laid claim to land explored by several expeditions across the future southeastern United States.The introduction of diseases to the indigenous peoples of Florida caused a steep decline in the original native population over the following century, and most of the remaining Apalachee and Tequesta peoples settled in a series of missions ...
The name "Seminole" likely is derived from the Spanish cimarones, meaning "wild or untamed", as opposed to the christianized natives who had previously lived in the mission villages of Spanish Florida (In the 17th century the Spanish in Florida used cimaron to refer to christianized natives who had left their mission villages to live "wild" in ...
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In 1576, natives of the nearby Orista and Escamacu settlements burned Santa Elena. The Spanish abandoned Fort San Felipe, which was also burned. A year later, the Spanish returned and rebuilt the settlement, at the same time constructing Fort San Marcos. In 1580, the Spanish repelled an attack on the island by 2,000 natives. [7]
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