Cultural Crossroads and Other Complexities: Examining Creolization at Nuestra Señora del Rosario de la Punta, St. Augustine, Florida

Cultural Crossroads and Other Complexities: Examining Creolization at Nuestra Señora del Rosario de la Punta, St. Augustine, Florida 1 Sarah M. Bennett Paper Presented at the 67th Annual Meeting of the Florida Anthropological Society, Sarasota, Florida 2015 Abstract: Nuestra Señora del Rosario de la Punta represents one of six settlements occupied by native populations surrounding St. Augustine during the second quarter of the 18th century. La Punta developed as an 18th century refugee mission community settled primarily by the Yamasee. To assess creolization at La Punta, two archaeological sites that pertain to the mission—133 Marine Street and 161 Marine Street—are considered. In order to determine the extent of creolization within La Punta, three lines of archaeological evidence are discussed: ceramics, architecture, and foodways. The results, though preliminary, suggest manifestations of creolization within La Punta. Introduction Missions functioned as a fixture in St. Augustine’s multiethnic population during the 16th century with the establishment of Nombre de Dios (Gordon 2007; Deagan 2011). Native populations allied with the Spanish Crown contracted around St. Augustine, Florida and formed a network of fluid communities which moved within areas peripheral to St. Augustine in order to protect Spanish St. Augustine as conditions warranted (Parker 1993). Nuestra Señora del Rosario de la Punta—along with other comparable mission communities (e.g. Nombre de Dios, Tolomato, and Pocotalaca)—comprised a portion of the city’s comprehensive defensive system (Sastre 2002; Halbirt 2004), and also provided an essential labor force necessary for the city’s survival during the tumultuous 18th century. La Punta developed as an 18th century refugee mission community located immediately south of the colonial city of St. Augustine.

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Indian raids, led by the Chichimeco during the 1660s, impacted the Yamasee populations residing in Spanish mission provinces. Disheartened by continued English and native slaving raids, Chichimecos’ successes, and the Spanish military’s inability to sufficiently protect the mission communities, the Yamasee relocated toward the north. They formed an alliance with the Scots at Stuart’s Town in 1685 (Worth 1995:42-47), and later with the English in Carolina (Milanich 2006). Once allied, the Yamasee acted as slavers for the English, often raiding La Florida’s missions. Following the Yamasee War (1715-1717), the Indians fled Carolina and returned to Florida with the purpose to again ally with the Spanish. The Yamasee who left Carolina comprised the majority of La Punta’s mission community, which also formed a portion of St. Augustine’s defensive barrier. History Spanish missions married religious conversion with political and economic desires (Gannon 1965; Hann 1996; Milanich 2006). While saving souls, Franciscan friars also helped to increase the pool of available labor in St. Augustine. As a presidio-- a defensive settlement-- on the frontier of the Spanish Empire, St. Augustine was often undersupplied and frequently in need of more manpower for building, farming, and protecting the city. Converting natives entailed recognizing, acknowledging, and working within the existing sociopolitical structures, starting with the provincial chiefs. Natives who converted to Christianity became allies and subjects of the Spanish Crown (Worth 1998a, 1998b). By the mid-17th century, Christianized natives were expected to participate in repartimiento, a labor draft the Spanish imposed upon native populations. Within the system, each mission population contributed a predetermined amount of young men who traveled to St. Augustine in order to complete various labor tasks.

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Yamasee movement from the Georgia Piedmont region into the Guale and Mocama provinces occurred in the 1670s and the early 1680s. Their populations increasingly comprised the greater portion of the provincial missions, which also prompted St. Augustine’s intensifying reliance on the Yamasee’s labor potential. The resurgence of Indian, French, and English raiding activities during the 1680s terminated 19 years of “relative calm” in the missions north of St. Augustine (Worth 1995b). The slave raiding prompted reorganization of the coastal mission population. Following French pirate Grammont’s spring 1683 assault on St. Augustine and the Mocama province, the Yamasee began to flee from Spanish territory. Some Yamasee relocated to the Carolina coast and inundated the area of Scottish Stuart’s Town. The Yamasee served as slavers for and deerskin traders with the Scots, and soon thereafter, the English (Gallay 2002). Though the English desired to maintain a productive relationship with the Yamasee, by 1710 the competitive nature of European colonization, England’s interest in possessing land, and continued trade abuses deteriorated the alliance. These issues contributed to the 1715 Yamasee War (Oatis 2004; Ramsey 2008). At the war’s conclusion in 1717, the Yamasee left Carolina. One hundred and sixty one Yamasee villages sought refuge in Spanish Florida. A portion of those who traveled to Florida eventually settled at La Punta. La Punta represents one of six settlements occupied by Native Americans (some Christianized) that surrounded St. Augustine during the second quarter of the 18th century (Halbirt 1996; White 2002; Bennett 2015). Miguel de Ayala’s 1736 census denotes the first known documentation referencing La Punta, in addition to seven other mission communities situated along St. Augustine’s periphery. The census includes the cacique, 16 additional men— one of whom was listed as Apalachee—who ranged in age from 12 to 80. Antonio de Arredondo’s 1737 map includes a detailed depiction of St. Augustine and its periphery, including

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six mission communities. La Punta included a church and 20 farmsteads dispersed across approximately 30 acres of land. Furthermore, the map delineates two clusters of farmsteads: 16 appear close to the mission church as the remaining 4 sit further south. Seventeen men and 17 women and children, a combined count, resided in the community in 1737. In 1738, Antonio de Benavides generated a population count based on his tenure as Governor. He proposed 41 natives inhabited La Punta. This closely corresponds with Governor Manuel de Montiano’s 1738 report, which listed 43 individuals. Güemes y Horcasitas 1739 report includes 14 families with the population totaling 51. La Punta essentially disappears from the documentary record during the 1740s and reappears in the 1752 Gelabert report. La Punta was, at that time, the largest of the six remaining mission communities and boasted a population of 25 men, 34 women, and 3 possible infants. In 1754, mission consolidation relocated La Punta’s population to the two remaining mission communities—Tolomato and Nombre de Dios. Inadequate mission infrastructure, administrative decisions made by the Spanish government, which had control of Florida’s remaining mission populations, and economic hardship experienced by the mission communities prompted abandonment. Inhabitants probably assimilated into the St. Augustine community through kinship, corporate, or commercial connections. Creolization Theoretical frameworks-- their connotations, denotations, operationalizations, and applications-- vary. In order to determine what creolization is and how creolization functions as an indicator of cultural mixture, three seemingly analogous theoretical frameworks will be discussed and compared to creolization: acculturation, assimilation, and hybridity.

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Acculturation and Assimilation Acculturation and assimilation were early anthropological cultural mixture models. Critics began to question issues of directionality as well as complexity. Acculturation—loosely characterized—requires direct contact between two cultures that may not necessitate a shift in values, behaviors, or practices (Liebmann 2013). Assimilation incorporates the process of acculturation and commonly denotes unidirectional cultural interaction in which one culture subsumes the other. Acculturation “treat[s] change as an aberration” (Gundaker 2000:130) as assimilation presumes cultural change(s) in which a “simple, passive, subordinate” colonized culture becomes ingrained within the colonizers’ “complex, active, dominant” culture (Liebmann 2013:27). The frameworks tend to arbitrarily assign static cultural roles and rely upon accommodation and/or incorporation as the explanation for cultural mixture. Hybridity Scientific notions of hybridity originated in race theory and genetics (Stewart 2011:50). Scholars now implement the term as a means of expressing “fluidity and negotiation of identities through time” (Beaudoin 2013:48). The concept now encompasses cultural processes including “incorporation, blending, adoption, or other form of mixing of discrete elements” (Card 2013:4). Hybridity attempts to analyze cultural mixture by recognizing and studying “what falls between the analytical categories defined by us . . . [the] in-between . . . [the] unclassified” (Stockhammer 2013:12). In the simplest form, hybridity signifies a state of mixture that occurs as a process rather than being fixed cultural descriptor. Creolization Originating primarily in archaeological investigations of slavery, colonialism, and plantation society, the use of cultural creolization expanded to encapsulate “a variety of

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identities” (Bolland 2006; Bader 2013:259). Unlike acculturation and assimilation, creolization acknowledges the presence of conflict resulting from power relations, but also disregards presuppositions concerning the dynamics of interaction, as well as the potential cultural product, of the cultural mixture. Creolization is not analogous to assimilation or acculturation. The former embraces human agency and avoids sociocultural binaries (e.g. colonizer/colonized, dominant/ subordinate, core/periphery) (Gundaker 2000; Worth 2012:143). Neither is hybridity analogous. Innovation and creativity, open-endedness, multidirectionality, and culture(s) in conversation with themselves comprise creolization frameworks. Hybridity, though fluid, suggests a cultural spectrum that becomes finite and fixed upon reaching (an admittedly variable) point of cultural cohesion. In contrast, creolization can incorporate acculturated/assimilated cultures, overlaps with hybridity, and, if ethnogenesis occurs, persists, though redefined, within a new culture. Creolization requires ongoing dialogue between and among the elements of all cultures involved in cultural creation (Bolland 2006). Creolization studies examine a complex cultural phenomenon in which cultural interfaces result in the “restructuring” of a people (Stewart 2010:18). Within the context of this study, creolization denotes a creative, fluid confluence of cultural traits and processes that emerges from two or more distinctive cultures, neither of which possesses primacy in relation to the new culture. Creolization dictates the convergence, divergence, and stability of multiple components of society and culture in varied, complex, and non-predictable manners. The juncture of cultural mixture commences a process of shared creation leading to a spectrum of cultural continuity, change, incorporation, and/or modification.

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Archaeology in St. Augustine In 1987, the City of St. Augustine implemented the St. Augustine Archaeological Preservation Ordinance, which mandates archaeological excavations in specific areas of the city prior to any type of ground-penetrating activity. Approximately 200 of the City’s 650 archaeological investigations relate to mission areas as defined through historical maps or archaeological surveys. These investigations occur primarily within three of the six remaining mission sites: La Punta, Nombre de Dios, and Pocotalaca. La Punta represents one of the few 18th century Spanish missions to be investigated archaeologically. In the context of this discussion, two areas—133 Marine Street and 161 Marine Street—connote the site of La Punta. Results and Interpretation Archaeological evidence from three modes of analysis—ceramics, architecture, and foodways—demonstrate that creolization is present at La Punta. Categories are assessed individually in order to demonstrate the manifestations of creolization within La Punta’s mission community. Ceramics Though a minimal ceramic type in the La Punta assemblage, colonoware (n=20) represents an “intercultural artifact” (Singleton and Bograd 2000:4) that embodies a process of interaction. These vessels occur on Yamasee sites in South Carolina (Sweeney 2005; Southerlin et al. 2001), within St. Augustine (Deagan 1983), and at La Punta. Whether colonoware was used by the Yamasee, was produced for the Yamasee, the Spanish, or both, and what socioeconomic role the ceramic type possessed remains unclear (Ferguson 1992; Melcher 2011). San Marcos vessels served as the major form of utilitarian ware in 18th century St. Augustine, persisting with greater frequency than all same-use ceramic types. Colonoware, however, adopts the tempering

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and decorative qualities of San Marcos and also includes European vessel form attributes. Ceramicists’ decision to integrate Spanish vessel forms with aboriginal ceramic characteristics, as well as the Spanish utilization of such vessels, demonstrates cultural fluidity. Although considerably rarer than San Marcos in La Florida, colonoware embodies multiethnic production and practices. When examined together, 133 Marine Street and 161 Marine Street align with 18th century St. Augustine’s ceramic pattern (Deagan 1983). Aboriginal ceramics, namely San Marcos, occur most often within assemblages. Furthermore, Hispanic tablewares dominate European tablewares and British ceramics appear frequently. Intra-site ceramic comparisons, however, lend further evidence of creolization at La Punta. Differing type frequencies and, presumably, uses of ceramics at two different households within the same community suggests the presence of creolization (Table 1). 161 Marine Street denotes an assemblage more characteristic of 18th century St. Augustine while 133 Marine Street ceramics align with an intermixed criollo and a native household (Deagan 1983). TABLE 1. COMPARISON OF CERAMIC SUB-GROUPS AT LA PUNTA, DE HITA, DE LA CRUZ, AND PONCE DE LEÓN SITES

Non-Hispanic Tablewares

Ponce de León (criollo)

Hispanic Tablewares

de Hita (criollo)

Aboriginal Tablewares/ Colonoware

de la Cruz (mestizo)

Non-Hispanic Utilitarian Wares

161 Marine Street

Hispanic Utilitarian Wares 133 Marine Sreet 0

500

1000

1500

Aboriginal Utilitarian Wares*

*All Aboriginal Utilitarian Wares, except for 133 Marine Street, contain 3,000 more ceramics than the chart indicates. In order to better represent the remaining ceramic sub-groups, the Aboriginal Utilitarian Wares groups were reduced in Table 1.

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Architecture 161 Marine Street yielded postholes related to three possible circular structures separated by approximately 6 meters (Figure 1). 133 Marine Street produced evidence of a potential square structure with an ephemeral attachment (Figure 2). If both associated with La Punta, the square residence, a divergent residential building shape, offers evidence of creolization. Furthermore, the circular structures’ spatial relationship suggests an altered settlement pattern. When in Carolina, Yamasee populations typically settled in non-nucleated clusters with residences spaced 50 to 120 meters apart from one another. La Punta’s circular structures appeared urbanized with the homes clustered. Distance between the structures varies from approximately 3.5 meters to roughly 10 meters. Other creolization evidence stems from the lack of trash pits identified at La Punta and the communal walk-in well present at 161 Marine Street. These architectural features differ from typical 18th century St. Augustine household behaviors. Yamasee sites in Carolina offer no evidence of refuse disposal or the use of wells. Foodways The combined faunal assemblages from 133 Marine Street and 161 Marine Street represent an array of wild and domesticated species, though the lack of food selection diversity is striking (Table 2). Similar to 18th century colonial St. Augustine households and to the Yamasee population that occupied Old Field I, a Carolina site, fishes comprised a significant portion of the mission community diet. In contrast to Old Field I and the St. Augustine sites, 133 Marine Street and 161 Marine Street demonstrate a more balanced use of domesticate and wild mammals. Overall, the mission population adhered to dominantly traditional native foodways with evidence of European influence. Heavy utilization of estuarine food sources were supplemented by domestic and wild mammals. Although the assemblage recovered from 133 Marine Street and

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FIGURE 1. Proposed structures at 161 Marine Street.

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FIGURE 2. Proposed structures at 133 Marine Street. 11

TABLE 2 SPECIES COUNTS RECOVERED FROM LA PUNTA SITES 200 180 160 140

120 100 80 60 40 20 0

161 Marine Street appears akin to the Old Field I assemblage, parallels also exist with the criollo household assemblages that Reitz and Cumbaa (1983:151-186) examine. La Punta foodways incorporated domestic species while also maintaining traditional foods such as fish, turtles, deer, black bear, rabbits, and other game. Fishes, which served as an easily accessed resource, comprised a major portion of the mission diet, aligning well with the foodways at Old Field I and within colonial St. Augustine. 133 Marine Street and 161 Marine Street, however, demonstrate a more balanced use of domesticate and wild mammals, though most resources originated from wild environments. La Punta residents likely utilized domesticated birds more frequently, even if marginally, than people occupying Old Field I. The La Punta faunal assemblage embodies trends found in both the Old Field I and the criollo household assemblages. Faunal variation between the two mission sites is difficult to determine with the current level of analysis.

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Conclusion Analysis of archaeological remains at 133 Marine Street and 161 Marine Street not only indicates the population of La Punta experienced creolization, but also provides details regarding the ceramic, architectural, and dietary manifestations of this process. Cultural influence and intermixture occurs in varied, unpredictable manners and its manifestations may remain constant or may change through time. Assessing and understanding creolization within the context of La Punta, and within broader contexts, requires more nuanced artifact analyses, additional archaeological investigations, and research questions designed to probe cultural intermixture at multiple scales and through various periods of time.

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