Thomas de la Torre, a slave in Spanish Florida

The Testimony of Thomás de la Torre, a Spanish Slave Author(s): Alejandra Dubcovsky Source: The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 70, No. 3 (July 2013), pp. 559-580 Published by: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5309/willmaryquar.70.3.0559 Accessed: 10-11-2015 20:16 UTC

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The Testimony of Thomás de la Torre, a Spanish Slave Alejandra Dubcovsky

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HOMÁS de la Torre was a slave. He was also a soldier, or perhaps a runaway; an informant, or perhaps a traitor; a spy, but without clear loyalties; an unintentional pirate, or perhaps an Indian slaver. His testimony, recorded in Spanish Florida in 1687, opens up all these possibilities. It tells the story of a Spanish slave who left the service of his master, Captain Antonio de Argüelles, joined a military expedition against South Carolina, fell captive to the English, fled onboard a pirate ship, raided for Indian slaves, and eventually made his way back to San Agustín (Saint Augustine), Florida (Figure I). “The histories of these Africans,” James H. Sweet has argued in reference to the experiences of enslaved Africans prior to the 1750s, “deserve to be told, if not for a fuller understanding of the ideas and institutions that shaped their own lives, then to better contextualize the historical processes that resulted in a polysemic, interconnected, and entangled Atlantic world.”1 Thomás de la Torre lived in and helped create that world. By pushing the limits of what was permissible and possible in such a world, La Torre sought to redefine what his enslavement and, in turn, what slavery meant in the colonial Southeast. Little is known about La Torre outside of this testimony. He appears and then quickly disappears from the historical archive. Like a bolt of lightning, La Torre’s testimony illuminates for an intense, fleeting instant the life of a slave in the colonial Southeast. Explored only tangentially by John E. Worth and Robert S. Weddle, this larga noticia (long report) provides the outline of someone who could both traverse the large boundaries Alejandra Dubcovsky is an assistant professor at Yale University. A very preliminary version of this paper was presented at the Center for Race and Gender, University of California, Berkeley, Oct. 22, 2009, and a later revision was presented at the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, Yale University, Sept. 19, 2012. The author thanks the participants at both events. She also thanks Robbie Ethridge, Ed Rugemer, and the anonymous readers for the William and Mary Quarterly for their insightful comments, thorough reads, and encouragement to tell Thomás de la Torre’s story. 1 James H. Sweet, Domingos Álvares, African Healing, and the Intellectual History of the Atlantic World (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2011), 5–6 (quotation). William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 70, no. 3, July 2013 DOI: 10.5309/willmaryquar.70.3.0559

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Figure I Places mentioned and visited in the Testimony of Thomás de la Torre, 1686–87. Drawn by Rebecca Wrenn.

of the colonial Southeast and navigate the deeply interconnected nature of that vast world. The document gives us a glimpse of an astute and resilient slave who understood as well as exploited the fluid boundaries of colonial slavery.2 2 The rest of the article will focus on unpacking the details about La Torre’s life that are known. There are scattered mentions of him throughout “Expediente de fortificación de la Bahía del Espíritu Santo,” 1686, Signatura: Mexico, 616, Archivo General de Indias (AGI), Seville. But this is the only testimony I have uncovered that focuses exclusively on him. Other documents that make reference to La Torre include “Declaración de Francisco Ruiz,” Oct. 15, 1685, Audiencia de Santo Domingo (SD), legajo 839, fols. 505–8, AGI (microfilm reel 9, 28-B, P. K. Yonge Library of Florida History, Gainesville, Florida [PKY]); Governor James Colleton to Governor Diego de Quiroga y Losada, Apr. 1, 1688, SD, legajo 839, fols. 745–51, AGI (reel 9, 28-B, PKY).

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To make sense of La Torre’s struggles and choices, his experiences must be adequately situated in the complex and international context in which they unfolded, beginning with the production of the testimony itself. The testimony can be found in a legajo (a file or bundle of documents) titled “Expediente de fortificación de la Bahía del Espíritu Santo” (Proceedings of the Fortification in the Bay of Espíritu Santo). The original six-page testimony is located in the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, Spain. Most documents relating to Florida moved through Cuba, which fell under the jurisdiction of the Audiencia of Santo Domingo. La Torre’s testimony, however, was filed under the Gobierno section of the Audiencia of México along with other documents relating to French activities in the trans-Mississippi West. The prospect of a French settlement that could both block access to the Mississippi and create competition along the Gulf of Mexico had sent Mexican and Floridian authorities into a panic. The Spaniards had organized more than ten expeditions to find and destroy the settlement established by Robert Cavalier de La Salle in 1684. Since all but one of these expeditions departed from Mexico, the Mexican government assumed responsibility for gathering and archiving materials relating to the Bahía of Espíritu Santo.3 Thus it came to be that the testimony from a mulatto slave John E. Worth acknowledges the existence of this testimony, but he focuses on other documents relating to the 1686 Spanish attack against South Carolina. Worth translated two paragraphs of the testimony; see Worth, The Struggle for the Georgia Coast: An 18th-Century Spanish Retrospective on Guale and Mocama, Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, vol. 75 (New York, 1995), doc. 11, 146–71. There is also a brief mention of this testimony in Robert S. Weddle, Wilderness Manhunt: The Spanish Search for La Salle (Austin, Tex., 1973), 126–27. This article thus provides an introduction to and contextualization of a document that is known but underused. The document is referenced by only a handful of specialists. For the most comprehensive discussion of slavery in Spanish Florida, see Jane Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida (Urbana, Ill., 1999), 19–39. For discussions of the possibilities and opportunities afforded by Africans in the colonial period, see Ira Berlin, “From Creole to African: Atlantic Creoles and the Origins of African-American Society in Mainland North America,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 53, no. 2 (April 1996): 251–88; Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Cambridge, Mass., 1998), 1–63; Jane G. Landers, Atlantic Creoles in the Age of Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 2010), 1–14. For discussions on the racial and social fluidity of the colonial South, see Peter H. Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (New York, 1974); Christina Snyder, Slavery in Indian Country: The Changing Face of Captivity in Early America (Cambridge, Mass., 2010); James H. Sweet, “Mistaken Identities? Olaudah Equiano, Domingos Álvares, and the Methodological Challenges of Studying the African Diaspora,” American Historical Review 114, no. 2 (April 2009): 279–306. 3 The testimony can be found in the “Expediente de fortificación de la Bahía del Espíritu Santo,” Mexico, 616, AGI. I have transcribed and translated a microfilm copy of the original found at PKY; see “Quiroga y Losada to the King transmitting a statement relative to the Bay of Espiritu Santo,” Feb. 24, 1688 (reel 19, Stetson Collection, PKY), hereafter La Torre’s Testimony, 1688. A transcription and translation of the testimony

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owned by a Florida captain was included in a Mexican collection of reports relating to French clandestine activities along the Mississippi. The testimony begins by identifying Thomás de la Torre as the “slave of the Captain Anthonio de Argüelles of the Infantry.” La Torre had supposedly “fled [San Agustín] and escaped the service of his master, and he [La Torre] went on the piraguas [sailing vessels] led by Alejandro Thomás de León, which were headed to the Port of San Jorge [Charles Town, or Charleston, South Carolina], where the mulatto remained and offered [to show the English how] to take this town [San Agustín] by any means he could.” La Torre both embraced and denied this imposed identity. He readily described himself as a slave and Captain Argüelles as his master, but refuted all allegations that he had “escaped the service of his master” or aided the English.4 Unsurprisingly we know more about La Torre’s master, Argüelles, than about La Torre himself. Argüelles was a seasoned soldier, agent, and citizen of Florida. Though not a powerful man, he was respected and well-connected. In the 1650s Argüelles was appointed lieutenant of Guale, home to some of the oldest Spanish missions in Florida.5 During his three appears online at http://oieahc.wm.edu/wmq/July13/Dubcovsky.pdf. Unless otherwise noted, this translation and all others are my own. For an overview of the struggle, see William Edward Dunn, “Spanish and French Rivalry in the Gulf Region of the United States, 1678–1702: The Beginnings of Texas and Pensacola,” University of Texas Bulletin, no. 1705 (Austin, Tex., 1917), 59–80. See also “Delgado to Márquez,” Oct. 20, 1686, in “Expediente de fortificación de la Bahía del Espíritu Santo,” Mexico, 616, no. 61–6–20, AGI (document courtesy of Professor Joseph Hall). In 1684 Robert Cavalier de La Salle had led an expedition to the Mississippi River, but, overshooting his intended destination, La Salle established a colony near present-day Galveston, Texas. John James Clune, “Historical Context and Overview,” in Presidio Santa María de Galve: A Struggle for Survival in Colonial Spanish Pensacola, ed. Judith A. Bense (Gainesville, Fla., 2003), 17; Robert S. Weddle, The French Thorn: Rival Explorers in the Spanish Sea, 1682–1762 (College Station, Tex., 1991), 40–52; Weddle, Wilderness Manhunt: The Spanish Search for La Salle, 66–75; Pierre Margry, ed., Mémoires et documents pour servirà l’histoire des origines francaises des pays d’outre-mer: Découvertes et établissements des Francais dans l’ouest et dans le sud de l’Amérique Septentrionale (1614–1754) (Paris, 1879), 19–45. 4 La Torre’s Testimony, 1688. Throughout this article brackets in quotations signify text or clarifications I have added. In some quotations, brackets also appeared in the source. In these quotations the brackets signify ones that appeared in the source, and brackets with “ed.” signify my additions. 5 For information on the military in colonial Florida, see Worth, Struggle for the Georgia Coast, 63–77, 89 n. 32; Amy Turner Bushnell, Situado and Sabana: Spain’s Support System for the Presidio and Mission Provinces of Florida, vol. 74, Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History ([New York], 1994), 12–42. As lieutenant of Guale, Argüelles oversaw one of the three Spanish provinces of Florida. John E. Worth, The Timucuan Chiefdoms of Spanish Florida (Gainesville, Fla., 1998), 1: 118. Before the 1650s, Guale extended to the north end of St. Simons Island. The province of Mocama, meaning “saltwater” in Timucua, rested between Guale and the St. Johns

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decades of service in Guale, Argüelles witnessed the destabilization of the region, the depopulation, scattering, and relocation of Guale Indian groups, and the intensification of English-Indian slaving raids. Though the extent of this violence and the speed at which it spread were new, San Agustín, the colony’s first permanent settlement, had a long and bloody history. Established in 1565 after the expulsion of the French Huguenots, San Agustín became the hub for subsequent Spanish colonization and missionizing in the Southeast.6 These efforts led to the reorganization of River. After the attacks against Spanish missions, the destruction of most Mocama missions, and the relocation of Indian populations, the Spaniards stopped distinguishing between Mocama and Guale and began referring to the whole region as Guale. Worth, Timucuan Chiefdoms of Spanish Florida (Gainesville, Fla., 1998), 1: 151–68. For developments of Guale missions, see John E. Worth, “Spanish Missions and the Persistence of Chiefly Power,” in The Transformation of the Southeastern Indians, 1540–1760, ed. Robbie Ethridge and Charles Hudson (Jackson, Miss., 2002), 39–65; Paul E. Hoffman, Florida’s Frontiers (Bloomington, Ind., 2002), 148–73; Worth, Struggle for the Georgia Coast, 9–55. 6 The attacks on Guale by Chichimecos (or Westos) are discussed in Verner W. Crane, The Southern Frontier, 1670–1732 (Philadelphia, 1929), 24; Eric E. Browne, The Westo Indians: Slave Traders of the Early Colonial South (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 2005), 75–76. Examples of early slaving raids can be found in Herbert Eugene Bolton, “Documents Concerning the Settlement of Florida, English Encroachments, and Indian Troubles,” 1639–1704, Bolton Papers, Bancroft Library, Berkeley, Calif.; Doc. 5, in Manuel Serrano y Sanz, Documentos historicos de la Florida y la Luisiana, siglos XVI al XVIII (Madrid, 1912), 193–98. From 1663 to 1687, Captain Antonio de Argüelles traveled to Guale in at least four official expeditions and several smaller visits. Even after concluding his service and becoming a reformado (a person with a military title, but not on active duty), he continued his involvement in Guale. In 1663 and again in 1665, Argüelles was sent to investigate the deteriorating conditions of the land; he interviewed Indian leaders and searched for ways to stabilize the region. Two years later the captain traveled to Guale and Mocama, evaluating how the region was coping with English aggression. Specifically, he considered whether stationing Spanish troops would ameliorate the situation. In May 1680 Argüelles visited Guale after the missions of Guadalquini and Santa Elena had been attacked by English-armed Indians. “Expediente Relative to the visit of the province of Guale Captain Antonio de Argüelles,” Escribanía de Cámara, legajo 156, fols. 519–615 (reel 14, Stetson Collection, PKY). Additional information on Spanish visits to Guale can be found in Fred Lamar Pfarson [Pearson] Jr., “The Arguelles Inspection of Guale: December 21, 1677–January 10, 1678,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 59, no. 2 (Summer 1975): 210–22; Fred Lamar Pearson Jr., “Spanish-Indian Relations in Florida, 1602–1675: Some Aspects of Selected Visitas,” Florida Historical Quarterly 52, no. 3 (January 1974): 261–73; Worth, Struggle for the Georgia Coast, 9–55. For an overview of the role and importance of violence in the region, see Matthew Jennings, New Worlds of Violence: Cultures and Conquests in the Early American Southeast (Knoxville, Tenn., 2011), esp. chaps. 5 and 6. For details on the expulsion of the French from Florida, see “Carta del Adelantado Pedro Menéndez de Avilés al Rey, October 15, 1565,” in Cartas sobre La Florida, 1555–1574, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, ed. Juan Carlos Mercado (Madrid, 2002), 141–56; Eugene Lyon, The Enterprise of Florida: Pedro Menéndez de Avilés and the Spanish Conquest of 1565–1568 (Gainesville, Fla., 1976). For early French settlement in Florida, see John T. McGrath, The French in Early Florida: In the Eye of the Hurricane (Gainesville, Fla., 2000); Patricia Seed, Ceremonies of Possession in Europe’s Conquest of the New World, 1492–1640 (Cambridge, 1995), 58.

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nearby Indian communities, to fighting with and between Indian groups, and to many small and several large Indian uprisings: there were revolts in Guale in 1577 and 1597, war with and in Timucua in 1656, and perpetually tenuous relations with Apalachee groups, especially after 1647. Sudden and unforgiving epidemics also exacerbated Spanish-Indian relations; violence erupted in Timucua when the Spaniards, instead of aiding the province that had recently been ravaged by disease, demanded that the Timucuas continue supplying men to build and defend the San Agustín presidio.7 Conditions only worsened with the arrival of the English. South Carolina—“settled in the very chaps of the Spaniards”—did little to alleviate Florida’s problems.8 Although the Treaty of Madrid (1670) had envisioned peaceful relations between Florida and South Carolina, San Agustín and Charles Town settlers viewed each other with deep distrust and even deeper animosity. The proprietors of South Carolina had grand visions for their new colony and no intention of limiting Charles Town’s potential by obeying some inconvenient, unenforceable agreements made in Europe. English agents and traders quickly penetrated the southeastern interior. They traveled farther and faster than the Spaniards had ever dared to imagine. As Florida officials struggled to retain allies, protect Spanish missions, and defend land claims, Indian slaving and slavery propelled 7 For the effects of Spanish missions in the Southeast, see Kathleen Deagan, “St. Augustine and the Mission Frontier,” in The Spanish Missions of La Florida, ed. Bonnie G. McEwan (Gainesville, Fla., 1993), 87–110; Ethridge and Hudson, Transformation of the Southeastern Indians, xi–xxxix; McEwan, ed., The Spanish Missions of La Florida (Gainesville, Fla., 1993); Jerald T. Milanich, Laboring in the Fields of the Lord: Spanish Missions and Southeastern Indians (Washington, D.C., 1999). For changes to interIndian relations, see David H. Hally, “The Nature of Mississippian Regional Systems,” in Light on the Path: The Anthropology of the Southeastern Indians, ed. Robbie Ethridge and Thomas J. Pluckhahn (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 2006), 26–42; Stephen A. Kowalewski, “Coalescent Societies,” ibid., 94–122; John E. Worth, “Bridging Prehistory and History in the Southeast: Evaluating the Utility of the Acculturation Concepts,” ibid., 196–206. Although these conflicts took place beyond the walls of San Agustín and outside of Spanish control, the effects of these Indian struggles reverberated in the Spanish presidio. For an overview of these Indian uprisings, see Hoffman, Florida’s Frontiers, 48, 59–66, 82–86, 122–24, 128–33; J. Michael Francis, Kathleen M. Kole, and David Hurst Thomas, Murder and Martyrdom in Spanish Florida: Don Juan and the Guale Uprising of 1597, vol. 95, American Museum of Natural History Anthropological Papers (August 2011); John H. Hann, The Native American World beyond Apalachee: West Florida and the Chattahoochee Valley (Gainesville, Fla., 2006), 1–21. For a critical overview of the impact of disease in the South, see Paul Kelton, Epidemics and Enslavement: Biological Catastrophe in the Native Southeast, 1492–1715 (Lincoln, Neb., 2007), 83. Disease hit in 1649 and 1655. By 1680 Timucuas had lost 90 percent of their population, and the Guale and Apalachee populations “suffered less but nonetheless saw their numbers dramatically decline” (ibid.). 8 Joseph Dalton, “Joseph Dalton to Lord Ashley,” in Collections of the South Carolina Historical Society (Charleston, S.C., 1897), 5: 183.

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South Carolina and its Indian allies to power.9 By 1686 the Spaniards had given up “on finding a way to stop the English without violating the agreed upon treaties” and decided to mount an armed response.10 La Torre, at forty-six years of age, joined these forces commissioned to repel and hopefully expel the encroaching English. Though La Torre was the only slave to be listed in the 1686 roster of the expedition against South Carolina, the participation of slaves in military expeditions was not unusual in Spanish Florida.11 At the time of his testimony, the African and Afro-Spanish community in San Agustín was small but highly visible. Four years before, Governor Juan Márquez Cabrera had organized the “Pardo and Moreno militia,” a black regiment composed of forty-two soldiers and six officers.12 Though the size and racial exclusivity of the 1683 regiment was new, free and enslaved Africans had participated in many aspects of Spanish society. They had built the Spanish presidio, explored La Florida, participated in military ventures, and defended Spanish missions.13 As sawyers and blacksmiths, as soldiers and interpreters, and as 9 From 1566, the year of the last major Spanish entrada (literally meaning “entry,” it refers to an expedition or journey to unchartered territory) to the interior, to the 1600s, Spanish efforts to missionize and colonize La Florida waned. But in the early decades of the seventeenth century, the Spaniards renewed their efforts. Mission activity and conversion peaked in the 1650s. But when English and French incursions exerted pressure on Spanish control, officials turned inward. As Amy Turner Bushnell argues, the Spanish chose “to strengthen the presidial center at the expense of the peripheries.” San Agustín became stronger, but the Spanish military presence in the interior virtually disappeared. Bushnell, Situado and Sabana, 15. For discussions on South Carolina– Indian relations and the rise of Indian slavery, see Crane, The Southern Frontier, chaps. 4, 5, and 6; Alan Gallay, The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670–1717 (New Haven, Conn., 2002); William L. Ramsey, “‘Something Cloudy in Their Looks’: The Origins of the Yamasee War Reconsidered,” Journal of American History 90, no. 1 (June 2003): 44–75; Snyder, Slavery in Indian Country, 46–79; Robbie Ethridge, From Chicaza to Chickasaw: The European Invasion and the Transformation of the Mississippian World, 1540–1715 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2010), esp. chap. 6. 10 Melchor Portocarrero to Francisco Salazar, Sept. 15, 1683, 58–1–37/1, AGI (reel 16, Stetson Collection, PKY). 11 This roster is incomplete. See Worth, Struggle for the Georgia Coast, doc. 11, 164 n. 2. 12 Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida, 22, app. 1; Peter H. Wood, “The Changing Population of the Colonial South: An Overview by Race and Region, 1685– 1790,” in Powhatan’s Mantle: Indians in the Colonial Southeast, ed. Wood, Gregory A. Waselkov, and M. Thomas Hatley (Lincoln, Neb., 1989), 35–103, esp. 60. 13 Slaves participated in Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón’s 1526 expedition; see Paul E. Hoffman, “Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón’s Discovery and Colony,” in The Forgotten Centuries: Indians and Europeans in the American South, 1521–1704, ed. Charles Hudson and Carmen Chaves Tesser (Athens, Ga., 1994), 36–49. For information on Estebanico (an African slave who survived the disastrous Pánfilo de Narváez expedition and journeyed through the American mainland alongside Spanish explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca for more than eight years), see Andrés Reséndez, A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca: The Extraordinary Tale of a Shipwrecked Spaniard Who Walked

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servants and slaves, Africans had helped secure Spanish interests in the North American Southeast. La Torre’s testimony alluded to the many (and different) relations he fostered as a Spanish slave. He interacted with Spaniards from all levels of society: government officials, military officers, and soldiers. He had complex connections with local Indians—often relying on Indian guides and expertise but also attempting to place himself above the indigenous populations.14 La Torre fought, traveled, and lived alongside other mulatto, pardo, moreno, and negro men and women. To survive in San Agustín, he not only had to identify all these different categories but also work within and through them. His ability to leave his master’s service and join a military expedition speaks both of La Torre’s great industry and of the opportunities accessible to slaves in San Agustín. La Torre made only one reference to his life in San Agustín prior to embarking for the attack against South Carolina. He explained that “the lawsuit for his freedom was pending” when Captain Alejandro Thomás de León recruited him.15 This brief sentence offers a great deal of insight. First, it reveals that whatever opportunities La Torre had as a slave, he still yearned and fought for his freedom. It also shows the legal recourses available to him and, more importantly, La Torre’s ability to employ the law for his own advantage.16 Third, La Torre mentioned this lawsuit in the context of his departure from San Agustín. The connection he drew between his expected, across America in the Sixteenth Century (New York, 2007), 55–56. Slaves also participated in Hernando de Soto’s 1539 entrada. See Hudson, Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun: Hernando De Soto and the South’s Ancient Chiefdoms (Athens, Ga., 1997), 48–66. In 1565 Luis, an African shipwreck survivor, helped the adelantado (a military and legal title held by Spanish conquistadores) Pedro Menéndez de Avilés negotiate with the powerful Calusa Indians. Jerald T. Milanich, ed., Earliest Hispanic/Native American Interactions in the American Southeast (New York, 1991), 300; Anna Brickhouse, “Toward a Theory of Narrative Unsettlement: The Ladino Account of Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda,” Clio: A Journal of Literature, History, and the Philosophy of History 40, no. 1 (2010): 35–61; John E. Worth, “Fontaneda Revisited: Five Descriptions of Sixteenth-Century Florida,” Florida Historical Quarterly 73, no. 3 (January 1995): 339–52. For the most comprehensive book on the topic, see Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida, 7–60. 14 The Indians mentioned in La Torre’s testimony are identified as “companion[s]” but also as “servants.” Worth, Struggle for the Georgia Coast, 170 (quotations). For other examples of complex Afro-Indian relations in San Agustín, see Governor Quiroga y Losada, June 8, 1690, SD, legajo 227B, fols. 148–60, AGI (reel 5, 28-B, PKY). 15 La Torre’s Testimony, 1688. 16 There is a long historiography concerning the connection between slavery and the law in Spanish America. For a summary of the historiography, see Audra Diptee, Juanita De Barros, and David V. Trotman, eds., Beyond Fragmentation: Perspectives on Caribbean History (Princeton, N.J., 2006), chap. 2. See examples in Jennifer M. Spear, Race, Sex, and Social Order in Early New Orleans (Baltimore, 2009); Rebecca J. Scott, Degrees of Freedom: Louisiana and Cuba after Slavery (Cambridge, Mass., 2005).

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still delayed, freedom and his reasons for joining Captain León’s company underscores La Torre’s frustration with the slowness of the legal process. He was not satisfied with waiting. Although his case was making its way through the system and his emancipation might have been pending, La Torre decided to take matters into his own hands. In colonial Florida slaves had several avenues to challenge their legal status or, at the very least, improve their position within the Spanish community. They could pursue legal action, gain the patronage and protection of an important member of Spanish society by tapping into existing social institutions such as compadrazgo (godparenthood), or join the military. La Torre explored all his options. These legal protections and social opportunities were fairly standard practice in Spanish America, but they contrasted sharply with the limited rights and mobility afforded to slaves by the English. English colonists had come to Carolina determined to replicate the economic success of Barbados and thus heavily invested in slave labor. When La Torre sailed for Charles Town in 1686, slaves already constituted a significant portion of South Carolina’s population—though the colony still lacked a profitable staple crop.17 As slavery grew in South Carolina, Africans became more than participants in Florida society; they took center stage in the Anglo-Spanish imperial rivalry reshaping the colonial Southeast. In October 1687, two months before La Torre’s return to Florida, a group of nine slaves (six men, two women, and one child) arrived in San Agustín seeking asylum. No sooner had the Spaniards welcomed these fugitives than their English masters appeared at the gates of San Agustín clamoring for the return of their missing property. Governor Diego de Quiroga y Losada refused to surrender these slaves, offering instead to reimburse the South Carolina masters for their loss. This exchange created an ambiguous but important precedent regarding runaway slaves. Fugitive slaves, though not freed, would at least not be returned to South Carolina if they reached Florida and agreed to embrace the Catholic faith. South Carolinians would later depict Spanish Florida as a haven for runaway slaves, yet it was South Carolina’s visceral opposition to the Spanish policies, more than San Agustín’s 17 For godparenthood, see Jane Landers, “Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose: A Free Black Town in Spanish Colonial Florida,” American Historical Review 95, no. 1 (February 1990): 9–30, esp. 11. Though I do not have La Torre’s baptismal records, during his testimony, he swore “before God with a sign of the Cross made correctly.” La Torre’s Testimony, 1688. This action implies that La Torre was Catholic and probably had knowledge of the protections and rights given by the Catholic Church. Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida, 29–60; “The Spanish in South Carolina: Unsettled Frontier,” Public Programs Document Packet No. 3, Department of Archives and History, Columbia, S.C., 5; Bushnell, Situado and Sabana, 91–92. For experiments with rice in the 1690s, see S. Max Edelson, Plantation Enterprise in Colonial South Carolina (Cambridge, Mass., 2006), chap. 2, esp. 63–64, 77–78. For population, see Wood, “The Changing Population of the Colonial South,” 60, 70–76; Wood, Black Majority, 131–66, esp. 144–52.

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protect African fugitives, that shaped the measures adopted by the Spaniards. The more English slave owners clamored for the return of their property, the more Florida officials opened their doors to runaways.18 But for all South Carolina’s protests and Florida’s welcoming policies, it was the slaves themselves, as La Torre’s testimony shows, who seized this opportunity. The Declaración (Testimony) begins with questions concerning La Torre’s status. He “was asked which cause or motive he had in embarking without a license from the Governor of San Agustín or Antonio de Argüelles, his master, [and] for leaving [like a] fugitive from this Town.”19 La Torre replied that he was not a fugitive. Though he lacked a license, he had left his master’s service in good faith. He claimed that even the governor had been privy to his departure. La Torre testified that Governor Márquez Cabrera . . . [and Alejandro Tomás de León] reached an accord and they agreed that this witness [La Torre] would go with the said Alejandro Tomás [de León], the said [León] assuring him [the governor] that he [León] would not free [La Torre] but employ him as a slave in the attack against the settlement of San Jorge. If he [La Torre] perished [during the attack], he [León] would pay his master [Argüelles]. [A]fter those formalities were established, he [La Torre] embarked in the said piragua.20 Governor Cabrera and Captain León had discussed the circumstances and agreed on a course of action. La Torre had only joined Captain León after receiving assurances that his master, Argüelles, would be properly compensated. La Torre insisted that the governor had it all wrong. There was no ill will or deceit in his decision to leave Argüelles. 18 “Governor Quiroga addressed the crown, reporting the arrival of certain Negro slaves who came from San Jorge to become Christians,” Feb. 24, 1688, quoted in Irene A. Wright, “Dispatches of Spanish Officials Bearing on the Free Negro Settlement of Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose, Florida,” Journal of Negro History 9, no. 2 (April 1924): 144–95 (quotation, 145). The first Spanish cédula (decree) regarding runaway slaves was not published until Nov. 7, 1693—five years after the arrival of the first fugitives. Florida’s attitudes and policies toward these fugitive men and women developed ad hoc. For the 1693 cédula, see Wright, Journal of Negro History 9: 156–57 (doc. 108, June 8, 1690); for reenslaving of South Carolina runaways, see ibid., 9: 153 (doc. 86, Aug. 16, 1689); and for reversal of this runaway policy, see ibid., 9: 166–72 (doc. 18, Apr. 12, 1731); “Recommendations on how to deal with English slaves,” Apr. 12, 1731, 86–5–21/33, AGI (reel 40, Stetson Collection, PKY). For more on Spanish policies toward fugitive slaves, see Jane Landers, “Spanish Sanctuary: Fugitives in Florida, 1687–1790,” Florida Historical Quarterly 62, no. 3 (January 1984): 296–313. 19 La Torre’s Testimony, 1688. 20 La Torre’s Testimony, 1688 (quotation); also see Worth, Struggle for the Georgia Coast, doc. 11, 164 n. 5.

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Captain León, who recruited La Torre, agreed. In a letter to Governor Cabrera, León defended his decision to employ La Torre and personally vouched that La Torre would remain loyal to the Spaniards. Andrés Hernández, the new lieutenant of Guale, did not share Captain León’s positive assessment of La Torre. He had tried to apprehend La Torre, but Captain León stood in the way, preventing Hernández from returning La Torre to his master.21 Though León never explained how or how well he knew La Torre, the captain made it perfectly clear that he regarded La Torre as a valuable addition to his forces. Perhaps La Torre knew the paths and towns in the contested land between Florida and South Carolina, for he had probably traveled extensively through Guale with Argüelles. Perhaps La Torre could communicate and foster alliances with key Indian groups, for he engaged in partnerships with his fellow Guale and Apalachee Indian soldiers. Perhaps La Torre knew English, for he understood the officials at Charles Town without a translator. Or perhaps La Torre had simply appealed to Captain León for help leaving his master. Since neither Captain León nor La Torre left clear explanations for their actions, we can only speculate on the relations and arrangements between these two men. Perfectly clear, however, was that Captain León could only employ La Torre as a slave. La Torre could not be freed. He joined the expedition knowing that neither his military service nor his bravery would emancipate him.22 Or so he testified before Governor Quiroga y Losada. La Torre’s actions, however, reveal that he was not as complacent with his enslavement as his promises and assurances insinuated. In August 1686 La Torre joined Captain León’s attack against South Carolina. By then, Florida had been on the receiving end of English aggression for more than fifteen years. The Spaniards, ready to retaliate, found early success in their military campaign. Floridian forces raided and burned English plantations along the coast. Governor Cabrera’s men even struck directly at the family and property of South Carolina’s governor, Joseph Morton. In the attacks Morton lost his brother-in-law, thirteen slaves, and his Edisto plantation. The Spanish forces also managed to destroy the 21 Captain León came to La Torre’s defense “in a letter that he wrote to the said Governor Don Juan Márquez Cabrera, who had dispatched the said order [to apprehend La Torre—ed.], assured his [La Torre’s] person, in which conformity he took him in his company to the plantations of the said settlement of San Jorge.” Ibid., 164 n. 5. 22 La Torre’s Testimony, 1688; Berlin, Many Thousands Gone, 15–63 (quotation, 46); Ben Vinson III and Matthew Restall, “Black Soldier, Native Soldier: Meanings of Military Service in Spanish American Colonies,” in Beyond Black and Red: AfricanNative Relations in Colonial Latin America, ed. Restall (Albuquerque, N.Mex., 2005), 15–52; Jane Landers, “Africans and Native Americans on the Spanish Florida Frontier,” ibid., 53–80.

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Scottish colony in Port Royal.23 “The whole country seems to be an entire map of Devastation,” lamented Major William Dunlop as he evaluated the damage done by Governor Cabrera’s men.24 But the Spaniards had little time to celebrate. Days after their success at Port Royal, a terrible storm wrecked Captain León’s ship, claiming his life and the lives of his crewmen—that is, the lives of most of his crewmen. La Torre was onboard that ship.25 That La Torre survived the storm seems clear enough, but how and why he managed to escape the fate of his commander and crewmates is not as simple. Many aspects of La Torre’s life remain a mystery; some seem intentionally muddled in his testimony. La Torre provided a confusing account of how he survived the wreck, explaining that once he came ashore he found Captain León and followed his commander’s orders. This claim allowed La Torre to depict himself as loyal to the Spaniards and their cause, but it contradicted all other accounts, which placed Captain León aboard El Rosario as the ship fought a losing battle against the storm. After reaching land, La Torre described how he, along with two Apalachee Indians and Captain León, wandered the land in search of safety. But the shipwrecked Spaniards were quickly “surrounded by a large number of Chiluque Indians [who] apprehended and took them [the Spaniards] to where there were more than two hundred English and several other Indians.”26 These statements run contrary to what other Spanish soldiers remembered. The soldiers argued that La Torre 23 The first galeota (galliot) was El Rosario, commanded by Captain Alejandro Tomás de León; the second was Nuestra Señora de Regla, which was on loan from Havana, Cuba; and the third galeota had been commandeered from the pirate Nicholas Sieur de Grammont during his failed attack on San Agustín. Worth, Struggle for the Georgia Coast, doc. 11, 146–71. For more on Florida’s 1686 attack on South Carolina, see Crane, The Southern Frontier, 31–33; Wood, Black Majority, 50; Worth, Struggle for the Georgia Coast, doc. 11, 146–71; “Letter from Mr. Randolph to the Board, March 16, 1698/9,” in A. S. Salley Jr., ed., Records in the British Public Record Office Relating to South Carolina: 1663–[1710] (Columbia, S.C., 1946), 4: 88–95; J. G. Dunlop, “Spanish Depredations, 1686,” South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 30, no. 2 (1929): 81–89; Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida, 23. The small town of Port Royal, settled less than two hundred miles north of San Agustín, proved an easy target. For more on Port Royal, see Robert M. Weir, Colonial South Carolina: A History (New York, 1983), 58–59, 62–64. 24 Dunlop, South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 30: 81–89 (quotation, 84). 25 See Worth, Struggle for the Georgia Coast, 170 n. 76. 26 La Torre’s Testimony, 1688 (quotation). For information on the Chiluque, see my discussion on the following page and John H. Hann, “St. Augustine’s Fallout from the Yamasee War,” Florida Historical Quarterly 68, no. 2 (October 1989): 181–200; Hann, “Summary Guide to Spanish Florida Missions and Visitas: With Churches in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” Americas 46, no. 4 (April 1990): 417–513; Robert C. Galgano, Feast of Souls: Indians and Spaniards in the Seventeenth-Century Missions of Florida and New Mexico (Albuquerque, N.Mex., 2005), 124. For identification of Chiluque as Mocama, see Worth, Timucuan Chiefdoms of Spanish Florida, 1: 155.

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had not reached the shore by some turn of fate. Simón Penante believed that La Torre had planned to abandon the Spaniards and join the English from the very start of the expedition; Salvador de Barios commented that “achiev[ing] his liberty” had been the ultimate goal for the enslaved man.27 These sentiments corroborated an earlier description of La Torre during the 1686 French attack on San Agustín. Francisco Ruiz, a Spanish soldier captured during the pirate raid on Anastasia Island (near San Agustín), detailed the workings of a “certain Mulato Thomás, a slave here of Captain Antonio de Argüelles, whom they expected to run off” and aid the invading forces.28 La Torre, the three men argued, was a cunning and disloyal slave. These statements, however, need to be read with care; after all, they were the testimonies of men who had just participated in a failed attack and were likely looking for someone to blame.29 La Torre argued against these allegations in his Declaración. Ever mindful that the Spanish officials who could enslave or liberate him were the audience of his testimony, La Torre constructed a careful account that depicted him as a victim of circumstance who had been loyal and obedient to the Spanish authorities even when stranded in enemy land. La Torre wove many facts together to form a well-conceived tale. He explained how foul weather, not foul intentions, had forced him to come ashore. This account was plausible. After all, a storm had wrecked Captain León’s fleet, leaving a handful of Spanish survivors stranded in English lands; La Torre could have been among them. He then blamed Chiluque Indians for apprehending the shipwrecked Spaniards. Chiluque Indians, who lived near the Santa Elena region, had recently severed ties with San Agustín and had joined Westo slaving raids into Spanish Florida.30 Captured in the land Captain León had tried to reclaim and imprisoned by the very Indians Spanish forces had hoped to intimidate, La Torre presented an explanation that appealed to the sensitivities of his audience and had a ring of truth. His Declaración revealed a keen understanding of the geography, Indian populations, and current Spanish-Indian interactions. Governor Quiroga y Losada was no fool. He listened to La Torre with great care, pressing him for more information. The governor was particularly preoccupied by what had happened to La Torre after he was apprehended by the English. Quiroga y Losada inquired about “what proceedings 27 The testimony of Salvador de Barios and Simón Penate are in Worth, Struggle for the Georgia Coast, 170. 28 “Declaración de Francisco Ruiz,” Oct. 15, 1685, SD, legajo 839, fols. 505–8, AGI (reel 9, 28-B, PKY). 29 Worth, Struggle for the Georgia Coast, 146. 30 Carta del Governardor Pablo de Hita Salazar to SM, St. Augustine, May 14, 1680, doc. 9, in Serrano y Sanz, Documentos historicos de la Florida y la Luisiana, 216–19; Galgano, Feast of Souls, 124.

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were conducted [with the English] in the prison, and what [military] designs they had against this presidio, and how he had escaped the said settlement.”31 The governor wanted to know if La Torre had conspired with the English, and if so, how much this renegade had revealed. In the aftermath of the failed Spanish attack, Quiroga y Losada had even written to South Carolina’s governor, James Colleton, requesting the return of La Torre, “so that he may live as a Christian”; Colleton replied that La Torre had been in Charles Town but, like so many of South Carolina’s slaves and servants, had fled to Florida.32 Colleton’s response, intended as a jab at San Agustín’s welcoming fugitive slave policy, corroborated La Torre’s assertions that he had been kept in Charles Town against his will. La Torre’s own testimony, however, remained deliberately vague about what happened in South Carolina, never answering fully Governor Quiroga y Losada’s most pressing question: “what business had [La Torre] . . . conducted with the English?”33 Though the testimony was silent on this matter, La Torre most certainly did not keep quiet during his time in Charles Town. He could have been one of the fugitives whom Governor Colleton mentioned as having provided the English with information about the Spaniards. La Torre could have told the English about the strength of San Agustín, the ways to reach the port, and the weaponry used by the Spaniards. There is no way of knowing exactly what La Torre said or how detailed his account was, but had La Torre remained quiet, withholding relevant information from the English, his story would have ended there. La Torre’s ability to report on San Agustín probably proved to be his ticket out of jail.34 Charles Town officials were not the only ones with questions about Spanish Florida. La Torre testified how “after having spent about three weeks in jail, a Dutch corsair called Yanque [Jan Willems or Captain Janke] arrived in the Port of San Jorge with three vessels, two with masts and one small, [and had a force of] two hundred men,” and proved very interested in La Torre’s intimate knowledge of San Agustín. Captain Janke “asked this witness the best modes and methods to come to this [Spanish] presidio since the governor of said port [Charles Town] had offered to supply [Janke La Torre’s Testimony, 1688. Governor Colleton to Quiroga y Losada, Apr. 1, 1688, SD 839, fols. 745–51 (quotation, fols. 747–48), AGI (reel 9, 28-B, PKY). 33 La Torre’s Testimony, 1688. 34 Though La Torre’s voice is not recorded in English sources, there are hints of his presence. William Dunlop reported how Governor Morton, after the 1686 attack, was “positively informed by Two fugitives from the Spaniards (of whose Deposicon you have here inclosed a true coppy) that the Enemye was on Edeston Island att Mr. Grimballs,” in J. G. Dunlop, South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 30: 84. La Torre could have been one of these “fugitives from the Spaniards.” 31 32

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with] three hundred [additional] men, making a total of five hundred. [The Dutch corsair] asked many questions of this witness.”35 Although La Torre “revealed all that he knew” and aided what was shaping up to be a major military assault against the Spanish, he said he kept Florida’s interest at heart. La Torre had offered the Dutch corsair a dreary prediction of what an invasion of San Agustín would entail and, as the enslaved man spoke of the strength of the Spanish garrison, Captain Janke’s “company became discouraged and abandoned their plans.”36 La Torre’s information had helped foil Captain Janke’s attack, or so he argued in the Declaración. While he carefully described his collaboration with a Dutch pirate as being shaped by Spanish interests, La Torre did not take full credit for thwarting this invasion. He acknowledged that the new English governor had also spoken against the attack, probably because news of peace between England and Spain had reached Charles Town before Captain Janke and the South Carolina force could depart. Regardless of whether La Torre had played any role in influencing Captain Janke’s decision to abort the attack, the retaliatory raid “fitted out and manned with two hundred good pirates and three hundred Carolinians . . . did not set sail.”37 La Torre, however, did leave Charles Town. He secured passage with Captain Janke and joined him in an expedition “to the Islands in search of recruits, since the vast majority of [Janke’s] men had remained in San Jorge.” Therein lies another problem with La Torre’s account. If the answers La Torre had given to Captain Janke’s “many questions” had “discouraged” the pirate attack so that they “abandoned their plans,” why would Captain Janke help release him from prison and invite him to help recruit men for a renewed assault against the Spaniards?38 What had La Torre really told Janke about San Agustín? Had the English simply offloaded this captive once he had revealed all he knew? What was La Torre not saying to Governor Quiroga y Losada? Unfortunately, the Declaración offers only “many questions” and no certain answers.39 35 La Torre’s Testimony, 1688 (quotations). English sources also confirmed the planned raid. Their numbers support La Torre’s claims. The only discrepancy is that they described the corsair as French, not Dutch. “I learn that in September last the Spaniards came to Carolina about one hundred and forty strong, plundered the Governor’s house and carried off twelve of the slaves, doing much damage. The inhabitants are now sending two French privateers with two hundred of the privateers’ crews and three hundred of their own to take the forts and burn the town of St. Augustine.” “America and West Indies: December 1686,” nos. 1,027–1,088, in Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series: America and West Indies (London, 1899), 12: 293–307 (quotation, 12: 295–96). For Yanque’s (Jan Willems or Captain Janke) overture in Jamaica, see David F. Marley, Pirates of the Americas (Santa Barbara, Calif., 2010), 2: 588, 822–24. 36 La Torre’s Testimony, 1688. 37 Herbert E. Bolton, Arredondo’s Historical Proof of Spain’s Title to Georgia, a Contribution to the History of One of the Spanish Borderlands (Berkeley, Calif., 1925), 43. 38 La Torre’s Testimony, 1688. 39 Dunn, University of Texas Bulletin, no. 1705, 353.

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La Torre explained that after his imprisonment in Charles Town, he “went [with Captain Janke] and decided to stay in the Island of Jamaica.” There is no evidence that corroborates La Torre’s voyage to Jamaica, but none that contradicts his testimony either. La Torre offered only a cursory overview of his travels, merely stating that he stayed in Jamaica briefly before joining “two vessels about to go wreck-salvaging in a stretch near the coast of Santo Domingo.” La Torre never specified if these “two vessels” were Dutch, English, French, or Spanish, or even if they were piratical or government-sanctioned ships.40 Vessels of all nationalities and legal standings were known to stop in Jamaica before heading to other Caribbean islands or to the Gulf of Mexico; it is thus possible that if La Torre reached Jamaica, he could have made his way back to the North American mainland by mid- to late 1687.41 This extraordinary sequence of events is narrated almost completely devoid of personal information. La Torre lists the locations he visited without interjecting his own opinions or experiences. In this respect La Torre’s testimony reads like most declaraciones of the time. He was interrogated by the governor, his words recorded by a notary, and what mattered was the information La Torre possessed, not the interpretations he had formulated. La Torre could only provide the pieces; Spanish officials were the ones responsible for putting them in order. But there were still glimpses of this man’s ordeals quietly folded into the larger testimony. For example, he briefly mentioned that securing passage from Jamaica to the coast of Santo Domingo was not easy since “there was a shortage of ships.”42 He quickly acknowledged the problem he encountered—a problem that hindered an otherwise effortless transition from Florida to South Carolina and from Jamaica to Santo Domingo—and then used this obstacle to showcase his own initiative. In his search for a way off the island, La Torre revealed that he was not being passively traded among colonial powers. He, as he proudly explained, was moving himself. In Jamaica, he “befriended one of the [two] captains” organizing an expedition to Santo Domingo and convinced him to change headings. 43 The captains might have been shorthanded in Jamaica, but La Torre reported that there were plenty of Indian slaves ready for the taking along the Gulf Coast. Tantalized by La Torre’s tales, the captains agreed to La Torre’s Testimony, 1688. William Edward Dunn, “The Spanish Search for La Salle’s Colony on the Bay of Espiritu Santo, 1685–1689,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 19, no. 4 (April 1916): 323–69, esp. 352. 42 La Torre’s Testimony, 1688. For more on Spanish interrogations, see Alejandra Dubcovsky, “Connected Worlds: Communication Networks in the Colonial Southeast, 1513–1740” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2011), 31, 66–67. 43 La Torre’s Testimony, 1688. 40 41

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journey along the Bahía of Espíritu Santo.44 La Torre had seen firsthand the development (and devastation) of Indian slavery. That he might have managed to talk the captains into changing their original destination with promises of “as many [Indians] as they could grab” speaks to the lucrative nature of the Indian slave trade.45 And that he, a slave himself, proposed the enslavement of Indians hints at the complex and often negative relations between Africans and Indians in the colonial Southeast.46 There was a simple catch to La Torre’s promises of wealth. He held the key that unlocked this great treasure chest. To reach, let alone capture, these potential Indian slaves, the captains needed a guide. La Torre “assured [them] that of the said coast [Bahía of Espíritu Santo] he was well knowledgeable and understood the Indian tongue, and that he would lead them.” How “knowledgeable” La Torre truly was or how much he “understood the Indian tongue” did not matter as much as his ability to convince others that his words were true and his skills indispensable.47 La Torre accomplished both of these tasks. He persuaded the captains to head for the Gulf of Mexico and, more importantly, to trust the geographic and linguistic abilities of a Spanish slave. Later in his testimony, La Torre claimed that he never intended to help capture or locate Indian slaves. According to La Torre, these were false pretenses, part of a complex lie that would enable him to return to Florida. La Torre had merely, and perfectly, tapped into what these two unnamed captains desired. 44 Ibid. The Bahía of Espíritu Santo referred to any number of bays on the Gulf Coast. After La Salle’s colony was settled at Matagorda Bay in 1684, the name “Bahía of Espíritu Santo” came to refer to Matagorda Bay—or what the Spanish assumed was Matagorda Bay. The vague and inconstant nature of this appellation means that identifying La Torre’s whereabouts after he departed Jamaica is not easy. 45 La Torre’s Testimony, 1688 (quotation). For more information on the Gulf of Mexico during this time see Ethridge, From Chicaza to Chickasaw, 116–93, esp. 156. That La Torre knew the Gulf of Mexico coastline was a prime slaving target reveals his understanding of both the Indian slave trade and the Atlantic economy that supported this trade. 46 For examples of tense Indian-African relations in Spanish Florida, see “Governor Quiroga y Losada to King,” June 8, 1690, SD, legajo 227B, fols. 148–60, AGI (reel 5, 28-B, PKY); Jennifer Lynn Baszile, “Communities at the Crossroads: Chiefdoms, Colonies, and Empires in Colonial Florida, 1670–1741” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1999); Patrick Riordan, “Finding Freedom in Florida: Native Peoples, African Americans, and Colonists, 1670–1816,” Florida Historical Quarterly 75, no. 1 (Summer 1996): 25–43; William S. Willis, “Divide and Rule: Red, White, and Black in the Southeast,” Journal of Negro History 48, no. 3 (July 1963): 157–76; Jane Landers and Barry Robinson, eds., Slaves, Subjects, and Subversives: Blacks in Colonial Latin America (Albuquerque, N.Mex., 2006), 53–80. 47 La Torre’s Testimony, 1688. Internal evidence in the testimony, such as La Torre’s eagerness to reach Apalachee and the relative ease with which he moved through the province, suggests that La Torre had the ability to speak or at least understand Apalachee. See the last paragraph of La Torre’s Testimony, 1688.

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The next leg of his voyage was to the Bahía of Espíritu Santo. As had been the case during his stay in Charles Town and in his dealings with a Dutch corsair, La Torre assumed the role of informant. Once again, his dual ability to know and communicate the appropriate information— whether of the military capacity of San Agustín or of the Apalachee language—made him appear indispensable and pushed him further along on his journey. La Torre claimed disinterest in all of these adventures. As the reluctant protagonist of his own story, he concluded the testimony by arguing that every step he had taken since becoming shipwrecked off the South Carolina coast—leaving Charles Town, joining a Dutch pirate, traveling to Jamaica, and then reaching a port along the Bahía of Espíritu Santo—had been done “in the hopes that he could make his escape.” The assumption in La Torre’s testimony was that he planned “to escape” back to the Spaniards, but where he truly intended to flee, and to what end, is not evident. The only certainty in La Torre’s actions was that he performed them with unflinching “ánimo” (determination).48 It was this spirit that led La Torre to an important discovery: a French colony within the boundaries of Spanish Florida. Though the officials interrogating La Torre immediately assumed that he had located the La Salle colony on Matagorda Bay, La Torre never explained where exactly along the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico he had landed. La Torre’s descriptions as well as his subsequent journey “in a canoe” to Apalachee make the Apalachicola River region a likely candidate for the location of his landfall in the Gulf of Mexico. After searching for a suitable port, La Torre claimed that he led the crew up a large river, probably the Apalachicola, only to stumble on a “poblazon de franzeses” (a French settlement).49 And therein lies yet another problem. There were no French settlements in the Apalachicola region during this period.50 If La Torre was near the Apalachicola River, he was many hundreds of miles away from Matagorda Ibid. Ibid. 50 In the early 1680s, there had been French incursions into Spanish Florida. In 1682 the French had raided and destroyed the fort of San Marcos de Apalachee at St. Marks (built in 1679 and plastered to look like a stone fort). It is possible that La Torre was alluding to the San Marcos fortification, and not to the French efforts in the west. But there are no mentions of La Torre during the attack of San Marcos or references in the testimony to this earlier French incursion. There is a mention of a mulatto interpreter named Tomás who joined these earlier French attacks, but this Tomás appears to have died in the attacks. Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida, 21. For more on the attack, see Amy Bushnell, “The Menéndez Marquéz Cattle Barony at La Chua and the Determinants of Economic Expansion in Seventeenth-Century Florida,” Florida Historical Quarterly 56, no. 4 (April 1978): 407–31, esp. 428; Mark F. Boyd, “The Fortifications at San Marcos De Apalache (St. Marks, Wakulla Co., Florida),” Florida Historical Quarterly 15, no. 1 (July 1936): 4–35. 48 49

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Bay. If La Torre visited the La Salle colony, he was nowhere near the Port of Tampa, which he claimed was close to his landing site. La Torre was lying. Once again, his lies were rooted in a clear understanding of the world he inhabited. First, he had a good grasp of the region’s geography. He gave a rather accurate description of Matagorda Bay: ten leagues long (about thirty-five miles) from southern to northern tip. Second, he described a French settlement, “which had about two hundred inhabitants, including men, women, children, and slaves,” and a sturdy French redoubt “made of stone, fortified with iron and lead beams. . . . reportedly ten feet high on the side facing the river and six feet high with fourteen small iron pieces on the side facing the land.”51 Though the specific details of the garrison were as clever as they were fabricated, La Torre was not wrong about the location (somewhere in Matagorda Bay) or the nature of the French settlement (to establish a permanent colony). La Torre probably knew that San Agustín officials valued information regarding French colonial projects. Since the early 1680s, talk of French attacks, pirates, and potential settlements had been rampant in Florida. There were formal investigations and lengthy declarations taken of anyone who knew anything about France’s efforts in the region. La Torre had personal experience with the growing French threat. A couple months before he had left for South Carolina, French pirate Nicholas Sieur de Grammont (Agramón to the Spanish) had attacked San Agustín. The Spaniards struggled to push back the enemy, sending two separate forces against Grammont. La Torre participated in the second bout of attacks, helping the Spanish forces pinpoint the location of the French enemy.52 La Torre not only understood that information about the French was likely to have traction but mobilized that information to his advantage. According to his testimony, the “poblazon de franzeses” was everything the Spaniards had dreaded. Both the size and the composition of the population La Torre described seemed to confirm San Agustín’s fear of a self-sustaining French force near Florida; the presence of an “iron and lead” redoubt fed Spanish anxieties about a permanent French settlement in the region.53 But La Torre’s information also revealed the limits of his knowledge—limits that La Torre’s Testimony, 1688. For Spanish efforts to find the French colony, see Antonio Matheos, Carta del Teniente de Apalachee, May 19, 1686, doc. 5, in Serrano y Sanz, Documentos historicos de la Florida y la Luisiana. For French efforts in the region, see Ronald Wayne Childers, “Historic Notes and Documents: A Late Seventeenth-Century Journey to Tampa Bay,” Florida Historical Quarterly 80, no. 4 (Spring 2002): 504–22; Dunn, Univerity of Texas Bulletin, no. 1705, 59–80. For the 1686 pirate attack against Spanish Florida, see Luis R. Arana and Eugenia B. Arana, “Grammont’s Landing at Little Matanza’s Inlet, 1686,” El Escribano: The St. Augustine Journal of History 9, no. 3 (1972): 107–13. Captain Argüelles commanded the Spanish forces La Torre aided during Grammont’s attack. 53 La Torre’s Testimony, 1688. 51 52

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became all too evident when he described his journey “in a canoe” from the French colony to Apalachee.54 Had he found the La Salle colony, La Torre would have been more than seven hundred miles away from Apalachee, and though a seven-hundred-mile journey along the Gulf Coast in a canoe is not impossible, it seems improbable. Florida’s governor listened without questioning or interrupting any of La Torre’s assertions about the French settlement; this enslaved man’s words provided the Spanish governor with the first concrete evidence of the rumored French settlement in the area. Though Quiroga y Losada had probed La Torre’s claims about South Carolina, the Florida governor welcomed any and all details about the “poblazon de franzeses” and was predisposed to trust information he had long sought. He was not the only San Agustín official to believe La Torre; the record of the interrogation sent to the viceroy of Mexico, who was leading the search for the French colony, is evidence that this testimony was considered accurate or at least noteworthy. La Torre, a keen observer of the environment and the people who surrounded him, probably noted the interest in this portion of his testimony. La Torre had learned to quickly gauge any situation that presented itself, identify the information or traits the parties involved deemed important, and respond accordingly. This skill was how he had managed to escape from the Charles Town gallows, how he had convinced a Jamaican crew short on supplies to search for Indian slaves, and finally how he had crafted his statements about a French settlement to an eager Spanish audience. La Torre manipulated the conditions he faced through the information or misinformation he spun. After “six days” of exploring the land around the Apalachicola River, La Torre learned from some pilots that the port of Tampa was nearby. La Torre insisted that “there were Indians there,” presumably ones who could be easily captured and enslaved. Upon reaching the southern edge of Apalachee, La Torre instructed his fellow travelers “to wait for him while he went to find Indians.” He never returned. Instead, he ventured deep inland, “cross[ing] rivers and thickets [malezas],” and eventually, with the help of an Indian 54 Ibid. The French made note of vessels that reconnoitered the region near the La Salle colony; there are no records of boats at the time of La Torre’s supposed voyage, in late 1686 or, most likely, early 1687. See Henri Joutel, Joutel’s Journal of La Salle’s Last Voyage, 1684–7 (Albany, N.Y., 1906), 91; Weddle, Wilderness Manhunt, chap. 3; Weddle, The French Thorn. Joutel also recorded mentions of Spanish presence in the region; see Joutel, Joutel’s Journal, 126–27. Joutel mentions an incident in which the Indians in the region “gave me to understand, that they had been among the Spaniards, who are nevertheless about two hundred Leagues from them. They spoke some Words of broken Spanish, as Capita, instead of Capitan, a Captain, and Cohavillo instead of Cavallo.” See Joutel, Joutel’s Journal, 150. Joutel acknowledged the connection between Indians and Spaniards but never recorded any Spanish (or Dutch or English, for that matter) parties landing in the area.

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guide, he arrived in La Chua, where he was apprehended by the Spaniards.55 La Torre’s determination to escape from the Bahía of Espíritu Santo serves as a reminder that for all his ability to move and communicate across imperial lines, he was still a slave. His willingness to continue risking his life offers a sobering glimpse into La Torre’s reality. At every turn, La Torre seems to have struggled to obtain control over his life. In the end, La Torre returned to Florida. A year and a half after departing with Captain León, he reentered the sphere of Antonio de Argüelles, his master. La Torre used his return as a testament of his loyalty to the Spaniards. He gave no other explanation of why he chose to leave behind English officials, Dutch pirates, and Indian slavers to reach San Agustín. La Torre might have grown weary of his uncertain travels and longed instead for a place he knew. His familiarity with Spanish Florida had been difficult to shake. From Chiluque Indians to Dutch corsairs, every path he had taken, every journey he had traveled, had linked him back to San Agustín. In the interconnected colonial Southeast, La Torre discovered that severing ties with Florida was not as simple as running away.56 These connections had enabled La Torre to embark on this adventure and even to take control over certain aspects of his journey, but they had also reinforced his status as a Spanish slave. La Torre might have returned to San Agustín in the hope of establishing a new type of relationship. After all, if his lawsuit was favorably resolved, La Torre could find in Florida what no one and no other place had been capable of giving him: freedom. Throughout his testimony La Torre presented himself with confidence and as loyal to Spanish interests, but independent and capable of mastering the colonial world. In his journey, La Torre adopted and adapted to many roles: slave, pirate, spy, prisoner, sailor, soldier, and guide. And he played those roles for different audiences, as he moved through Spanish, English, Dutch, French, and Indian spaces. La Torre’s ability to step from one colonial context to another might seem extraordinary—and he most certainly embellished some of the details—but the connections he exploited were both necessary and real. Pirate attacks, French settlements, Indians alliances, abandoned Spanish missions, and English encroachments were not 55 La Torre’s Testimony, 1688 (quotations). For more on La Chua, see Bushnell, Florida Historical Quarterly 56: 407–31. 56 For interconnections within the Southeast, see Ethridge and Hudson, The Transformation of the Southeastern Indians, 3–38, 65–78, 115–35; Joseph M. Hall Jr., Zamumo’s Gifts: Indian-European Exchange in the Colonial Southeast (Philadelphia, 2009). For the connections between the Southeast and the Caribbean, see Kenneth J. Banks, Chasing Empire across the Sea: Communications and the State in the French Atlantic, 1713–1763 (Montreal, 2002), esp. chap. 3 for transportation routes; Gallay, The Indian Slave Trade, 350–57; Landers, American Historical Review 95: 9–30; Crane, The Southern Frontier, 4–11; Wood, Black Majority, 13, 32–35.

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separate or sequential processes; they were developments that were happening concurrently, tugging the peoples of the Southeast in different ways. La Torre traveled unapologetically through all these worlds.

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