Arrival of the Spanish in Tallahassee

Doug Alderson

Educator Arielle O’Hara, portraying an early Spanish Woman at Mission San Luis

The Spanish were the first Europeans to arrive in the Tallahassee area long before it was Florida’s capital and long before it was even called Tallahassee.

The first group of Spaniards was Panfilo de Narvaez and his band of 300 men and 40 horses who arrived in 1528 on a quest to find gold. The Apalachee Native Americans lived in this region and other tribes had told the Spaniards of the rich abundance of Apalachee gold, likely confusing it with elaborate copper ornaments and ceremonial items.

Narvaez attacked and occupied the first Apalachee village they encountered, raiding the stored corn and other foodstuffs and holding the village chief and other villagers hostage. “The Indians made war on us continually,” wrote Cabeza de Vaca, a member of the expedition, “wounding the people and the horses as we went to fetch water, shooting arrows at us from the safety of the lagoons where we could not retaliate.” Apalachee archers were said to be of large build, pulling bows as tall as a person and able to shoot an arrow through a tree as thick as a man’s leg. They were said to be accurate at two hundred paces.

Narvaez’s band journeyed to the coast along present-day Apalachee Bay where they waited for rescue ships that never came. Eventually, their numbers dwindling, they built crude rafts with sails and sailed for Texas with hopes of traveling inland to Mexico City. Only a handful of men survived the journey and Cabeza de Vaca made it back to Spain where he wrote about his adventures.

Narvaez was followed by Hernando De Soto eleven years later. De Soto boasted 600 men, 223 horses, 12 priests and several dogs. They penetrated the heart of Apalachee territory and occupied the Apalachee capital of Anhaica in what is now the Myers Park area near downtown Tallahassee. They were met with stiff resistance from Apalachee warriors. Under constant threat of attack, the Spaniards likely observed the first Christmas mass in the New World. Surely, it was a solemn affair, with signs of the cross on Spanish armor and chain mail, arms at the ready. “It was not a time of gift-giving in those days,” wrote Henry Cabbage in Tales of Historic Tallahassee. “It was a time of religious ritual. The Spaniards probably did sing merry songs. That custom was a couple of hundred years old by then, but more than anything else, it was a celebration of the nativity to them. Christmas trees weren’t in vogue until 300 years later.”

De Soto stayed a few more stressful weeks in Anhaica before embarking for hoped for riches to the north and west. One can visit the site of De Soto’s occupation at the Governor Martin House off East Lafayette Street where archeologist Calvin Jones first found Spanish chain mail, nails, copper coins and other artifacts in 1987.

It was only after disease sapped the strength of the Apalachee empire did Spanish missionaries successfully set up a series of missions among the Apalachee in the 1600s, the most prominent being San Luis de Talimali on the west side of Tallahassee. The mission lasted for almost 50 years until the English and their Muscogee Creek allies raided from Georgia in 1704. Missions and villages were destroyed and the surviving Apalachee and Spanish fled the area.

Today, San Luis is the only reconstructed Spanish mission in Florida and is considered the most thoroughly investigated mission in the Southeast. Here, visitors can stroll the San Luis mission site where Spanish and Apalachee buildings have been carefully reconstructed based on historic records. First person interpreters bring history to life on weekends and special events.

Doug Alderson is a Tallahassee-Leon County Bicentennial content provider for Visit Tallahassee and the Chair of the Bicentennial History Task Force. He is also the author of several award-winning books about Florida history and natural history.

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