1500s, “It is as safe to loose a stallion among a herd of mares as to let
a friar out among the Indian women.” They were often criticized, but by
and large, the Jesuits, Franciscans, and Dominicans were Spain’s “best and
brightest.” Assembled in highly disciplined, centrally directed organiza-
tions, with the most intimate connections to the throne, and, after the
advent of the Inquisition, in possession of a police and judicial power that
no individual or group could withstand, they aimed to create new Indian
societies within the old. The way to do this, they decided, was to destroy
Indian religions, uproot Indian cultures, create new forms of identity, and
forge new ties of community. Learning Indian languages and catering to
Indian tastes for ritual and ceremony, they engaged in a highly sophisti-
cated campaign of what we would call brainwashing.
In what is now the United States, the first Spaniards known to the native
population were explorers. The southeastern mainland of North America
was first visited in 1513 by Ponce de León during Easter, and the name
Florida came from the Spanish Pascua Florida,“Feast of Flowers.” Ponce de
León thought that La Florida was another of the Caribbean islands. Unlike
the gentle Arawaks, whom Columbus had described as “wonderfully timo-
rous,” however, the Florida natives fought back and fatally wounded Ponce.
His death brought Spanish exploration to a temporary halt.
Ponce was followed nearly a generation later by Lucas Vázquez de
Ayllón, who had made a fortune from sugar in the Caribbean. Not much is
known of his expedition, but it may have reached the Chesapeake, and it
certainly touched at what he called Santa Elena (roughly halfway between
the modern cities of Charleston and Savannah) in a land the Indians called
Chicora. Finding nothing of value that was portable, the captain of Ayllón’s
ship took to kidnapping Indians to sell as slaves.
Learning of his discoveries, the government pushed Ayllón to plant a
colony. Without much enthusiasm, he embarked in July 1526 in six small
ships with some 500 men, including several Indians who had been taken to
Hispaniola and taught Spanish. Along with tools and supplies, they also
took eighty-nine of what they had learned was their most fearsome weapon
of war, horses. They came ashore near Cape Fear (in what is today North
Carolina), where, to their horror, their largest ship ran aground and was
lost. The Indians they had carefully prepared to be their guides and trans-
Sugar, Slaves, and Souls 47