ABSTRACT
Military contact between European and native American cultures in North America began with the 1513 Florida expedition of Juan Ponce de Leon. A veteran of Columbus’ 1493 voyage and the conqueror of Puerto Rico, Ponce de Leon arrived on the east Florida coast in search of treasure. He found the fierce Calusa people whose archers drove off the Spanish invaders. Despite such technological advantages as firearms, crossbows, metal armour, and horses, the Spanish gained no easy victories over the native peoples of southeastern North America. Other Spanish expeditions followed in the sixteenth century: Lucas Vasquez d’Ayllon in 1526, Panfilio de Narvaez in 1527, Hernando de Soto in 1539, and Tristan de Luna y Arellano in 1559. De Soto’s expedition cut a wide swath across the southeast, but the rest did not prosper. There were only four survivors of Narvaez’s ill-conceived foray into Florida. Disease, hunger, shipwreck, and fierce resistance by Indians, whose bows often proved superior to Spanish missile weapons, turned Florida (a term which then embraced much of what is now the southeastern United States) into a graveyard for Spanish adventurers. Spain did not establish a permanent presence in eastern North America until the construction in 1565 of the first in a series of forts at St. Augustine. Ponce de Leon’s expedition was thus only the first step in the European “invasion” of North America, one which the native peoples of the eastern portion of the continent resisted militarily until 1815. 1
