ABSTRACT
European settlement on the broad swath of land in the South that extended 3,000 miles from the Atlantic to the Pacific on the southern reaches of the future United States fell on the periphery of existing empires. In the 17th century, Florida, the oldest established permanent European settlement in the future United States, had expanded north from St. Augustine onto the sea islands of Georgia; it remained one of the remotest colonies in Spain’s Atlantic empire and its northernmost outpost. Over 2,000 miles to the west, sparsely populated Spanish New Mexico paled in insignificance compared to Mexico and other Spanish colonies to the south. By the last quarter of the 17th century, France had explored and then colonized in the interior of the South, sending missionaries, soldiers, and a few colonists to the Mississippi Valley, establishing the vast Louisiana colony that included the area of future states such as Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Illinois, and Missouri. Tucked between the Spanish Southwest and Southeast, French settlements were relatively small and diffuse, mostly trading posts. Their remoteness from other European settlements provided some security, but their distance from French Canada, France, and the French Caribbean left them economically isolated as well. The French had to negotiate with neighboring native peoples to secure economic and military survival.
