Atlas of Hispanic-American History

In the 17th century, Spanish

Franciscan priests converted most of the

Timucua and Apalachee peoples of

northern Florida to Christianity, estab-

lishing a chain of missions as far north as

Georgia. In 1698 Spain founded

Pensacola in the Florida panhandle. But

Spain’s foothold in the region was weak.

English colonists pushed south from

Jamestown (founded in Virginia in 1607),

settling the Carolinas and Georgia by the

early 18th century. English raiders

attacked Spanish Florida settlements and

destroyed missions. In 1682, French

explorers traveling south from their ini-

tial foothold in Quebec reached the

mouth of the Mississippi River. All the

land drained by the river and its tributar-

ies—a vast section of North America—

was claimed for France as Louisiana. By

the early 18th century, the French in

Louisiana were harassing Pensacola and

had settlements throughout a territory

then known as West Florida, correspon-

ding to the Gulf Coast strip of present-

day Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana

east of the Mississippi River. Squeezed

militarily by the British to the north and

50 ATLAS OF HISPANIC-AMERICAN HISTORY

Pirates in the Caribbean, 1564–1573

In 1525, news had spread across Europe of the silver and gold shipped to Spain from the Americas. Angered by Spain’s monopoly

over the Indies, other nations began plotting to seize Spanish treasure. In the 1500s, the French, English, and Dutch commisioned

privateers such as Francis Drake to plunder the Spanish, taking some treasure for themselves and sharing some with their

governments. To protect their riches, the Spanish ordered treasure ships sail for Spain just once a year in a heavily guarded fleet known

as a flota. When flota became more difficult to attack, privateers and, later, pirates took to attacking smaller merchant ships and

coastal towns. The map above shows several of the most famous pirate routes, as well as the inbound and outbound route of the flota.