An Exploration for the Oldest European Colony on the American Gulf Coast

The Beginning of the Expedition

The King of Spain was worried about the French stealing his gold and other precious metals and stones. The treasures were coming from Central America and South America by the shiploads and filling the coffers of the Spanish Crown. The French wanted some of the loot so they raided the fleets sailing back to Spain. The King responded. He ordered the Viceroy of Mexico to organize an expedition to sail to the northern Gulf Coast of the current United States and set up a colony to protect Spanish interests on land and sea. The Viceroy put his friend and veteran of the Coronado expedition to the Southwest in charge of the Gulf Coast colony. His name was Tristan de Luna. The fleet was outfitted with the very best supplies from the Mexican interior. They embarked from the coastal town of Vera Cruz and sailed into history.

After a month of fair winds and foul, 1500 people from Mexico landed on a bay on the northern Gulf Coast of the present United States. The date was August 14, 1559. The expedition was, up to that time, the largest European colonization attempt ever made to the present-day United States. The Spanish colony was established 48 years before English Jamestown and 6 years before Spanish St. Augustine.

The name given to the colony is somewhat vague. Although the colony and bay were called several names, most common was Bahia de Santa Maria Filipina (Priestley 1928). The name was given in honor of the sainted Mary and the Spanish King Philip, thus, signifying the presence of church and state. A shortened name of the colony, Santa Maria, is used in this paper.

The colony personnel were given several assignments by the Spanish government, any one of which was a monumental undertaking. The colonists were charged with establishing three settlements: one on the Gulf Coast, one in the interior at fabled Aboriginal Coosa, and one on the Atlantic coast. All of the settlements were meant, primarily, to protect the Spanish treasure fleets passing along the Florida coast back to Spain. As if these assignments weren’t enough, the colonists were also ordered to secure precious metals for the king and the church and find an overland route back to Mexico. The mission was absolutely impossible for the time.

Crippled by a powerful hurricane days after landing at the Bay of Ochuse, the Spaniards struggled to keep a colony on the bay for over two years while attempting to establish outposts in the interior. In the end, the sick and starving Spanish retreated back to the Bay of Ochuse colony and eventually left on ships destined for Mexico and Cuba, relieved to be rid of their sufferings.

The discovery of the location of the Santa Maria colony would help us to better understand the culture of the 16th century European colonists and the native Aboriginal peoples. We are looking for that colony and have made some important discoveries.

 The Specifics of the Colony Site

The Spanish were bold in their breakout of Europe into North and South America during the 1500s. They claimed the Americas and it worked for a time. They mined the gold and silver and shipped it back to Spain and the country grew into a world power. Then the Spanish got the attention of their competitors. France and Britain were the first to resist. Spanish ships were intercepted by “privateers,” licensed pirates, in the Atlantic and Caribbean on their way back to the homeland. Spain responded in kind. The Spanish king decreed that there would be colonies established in the southeast of North America to protect the precious metal shipments heading to Spain. The king contacted the viceroy of Mexico and instructed him to make it so.

A well supplied fleet of about a dozen ships was arranged by the viceroy and sent to the northern Gulf Coast from the Mexican port of Vera Cruz. The deep-water port of Pensacola Bay eventually became the landfall. They surmised that the bay was the same bay that the Soto expedition discovered and named it the Bay of Ochuse. They may or may not have been correct. None the less, the colony was established amid much hardship and lasted for over two years.

The Spanish left hundreds of pages of documentation relevant to their epic voyage. Among the papers was a description of where they chose to make their settlement. They said that it was inside a bay on a high area which overlooked the anchorage of their ships (La Rua Bluff?).

They recorded that a red bluff on a peninsula was visible to them across the bay and divided the bay east to west as a peninsula (Gulf Breeze Peninsula?). They also noted that after a hurricane crippled their fleet, they found supplies floating in a “creek” near their settlement (the narrow mouth of Bayou Texar?). A very logical location for that colony is near the mouth of Bayou Texar. Unusually high ground is there. 16th Century Spanish shipwrecks are relatively near the bay shore to the south. The shipwrecks were discovered and tested by the Florida Division of Historical Resources (Underwater Archaeology Program) and the University of West Florida.

A silver coin and a copper coin from the 1500s have been found near the La Rua Bluff by local people. 16th century Spanish trade artifacts have been found in aboriginal sites across the bay. Negative evidence is also compelling. No 16th century Spanish artifacts have been found anywhere on Pensacola Bay except for the near proximity area of the mouth of Bayou Texar (shipwrecks, coins, pottery) and the Gulf Breeze peninsula (trade beads and pottery).

Figure 1: 16th map of Florida and the northern Gulf coast (public domain)

Recent Archeological Research Design

The archeological site of the Luna colony on Pensacola Bay has not been found. We are conducting an archeological survey to locate remains of that settlement. An enormous amount of archeological excavations have been conducted in the bay area of Pensacola. Interestingly, only four sites have produced artifacts from the mid-1500s. Four terrestrial site areas have produced Luna period artifacts. A silver coin known as a “Charles and Johanna” minted during the mid- 1500s was found along side a railroad track at the mouth of Bayou Texar by a young boy in the early 1900s. A local family in the 1950s-60s found 16th century Spanish trade items in native mounds on the Gulf Breeze peninsula across Pensacola Bay from the coin site. The State of Florida also found two mid-1500s shipwrecks just offshore of the coin site in the late 20th and early 21th centuries. The ships date to the time of the Luna colony. A second coin, copper minted in the late 1400s or early 1500s, has also been found near the mouth of Bayou Texar.

Spanish pottery of the same period has also be found near the mouth of Bayou Texar.

So where is the land based location of the colony of that bold attempt at colonization of 1559? It stands to reason that the colony would be near the shipwrecks and the Spanish artifact discoveries, but where? The following is a record of recent test excavations for the colony in the La Rua Bluff area (we coined the name for convenience). It should be remembered that this colony was the first attempt at European settlement on the northern Gulf Coast and hence a landmark of the cultural change of a continent.

Our research design is relatively simple and straight forward. We look for private property on high areas at the mouth of Bayou Texar which overlooks the anchorage of the two 16th century Spanish shipwrecks, as the Spanish noted. The geologic marine terrace is unique in this area in that it is very high ground overlooking Pensacola Bay, Bayou Texar, and the two shipwrecks found by the State of Florida. We ask permission to examine private lots. We interview the local homeowners for their knowledge of the area and any artifacts they might have recovered.

We perform subsurface tests with the aid of ground penetrating radar and metal detectors, excavate test units, make photographs, and keep records. This article presents some of these recent research endeavors. The following pages define each site and present the archeological evidence of Spanish occupations during the 1500s at the time of the first Spanish colony. We plan on continuing our research by raising funds for more research.

Figure 2: The Spanish Land in la Florida (public domain image)

A project such as this in a residential neighborhood cannot be accomplished without the cooperation of the homeowners. We have found that the property owners not only grant us permission to explore their property but are also personally interested in our findings.
We thank them all: the Browns, Carrs, Currans, Donovans, Heads, and Williams.
Thanks to Terry Berling for endorsing our research on La Rua Bluff and providing me with relaxing down time at Bimini. Thanks as well to the Tower East Group for providing office and lab space. Thanks to Chuck Pinson for the donation of funds and of many expensive hours of remote sensing as well as his cartographic skills. Thanks to Dr. Eugene Wilson for sharing his expertise on the geography of the area and his encouragement. Thanks to Jerry Gill for editing the manuscript and keeping us editorially correct. Thanks to Dick Barnes for keeping us plied with smoked mullet. Thanks to David Dodson for sharing his skills as a Spanish translator and historian, and for donating funds to the project. Thanks to Randolph Head for sharing his knowledge of the area and freely providing me with documents and artifacts. Thanks to Dr. Keith Little for donating his lab for preservation of significant iron artifacts we found. It should also be noted that our dogs Lucky and Tip kept the varmints in the woods away from the field team while we did our diligence.

We are not finished with this research. I suspect that before it’s over there will be many more folks to thank and data to report.