>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington, D.C.
>> Hello everybody.
Good afternoon.
Welcome. Thank you for joining us
to close our 2015 Hispanic
Heritage Month celebration.
On behalf of the Library of
Congress, Hispanic Division,
the LC Hispanic Cultural Society,
and the library-or not the library,
the Florida House [laughs], we are
excited to have you here today.
My name is Lia Apodaca Kerwin.
I am the Historian for the
Library's Hispanic Cultural Society.
And I just wanted to
share a personal note
that today's lecture commemorates
a city that is very fond and dear
to my heart, St. Augustine.
I am not just a Florida girl,
born and raised, and having grown
up there, but my family ancestry
traces back 14 generations
to the first Spanish
Settlement period.
So I am very excited
about this program today,
and I hope Dr. Michael
Francis, our guest speaker,
teaches me a little bit
about my family history.
Before we move on, I just
want to make a little note
that you'll see some
surveys in your chairs.
If you have a moment, we'd
appreciate you completing those,
so we can learn a bit about how you
learned about the program today.
So thank you for joining us.
And here to welcome you, is Acting
Librarian of Congress, David Mao.
[ Applause ]
>> Good afternoon everyone,
and thank you, Lia,
for that wonderful introduction.
I didn't realize you
were from St. Augustine.
At first, I thought you were going
to say about being 14 generations,
and I thought no, that can't
possibly be the case [laughs],
so thank you.
Welcome to the Library of
Congress, welcome to this program.
It's my pleasure, of
course, to welcome you all
on behalf of the Library.
The Library's Hispanic Division,
the Library's Hispanic Cultural
Society, the Florida House.
We are here to close
out the historic Hispanic Heritage
Month celebration at the Library.
And I really think that there
is no better place to do this
than at the Library of
Congress, in general,
celebrating Hispanic Heritage
Month, because we have
such fabulous collections
here at the Library
on this particular topic.
They span the earliest arrivals in
the 15th Century to the present,
and we can trace the
history of Hispanic Americans
through these collections here
at the Library of Congress,
whether they be from maps,
or manuscripts, or prints
and photographs, motion pictures
that we have, film strips,
and of course, books, because
we do have a few of those here
at the Library [laughter].
So this year, as part
of our celebration
of Hispanic Heritage Month,
the Library of Congress launched
an online selection of recordings
from its archives of
Hispanic literature on tape.
It's a series of studio-I'm sorry, a
series of audio recordings of poets
and prose raider-uh, can't
speak today-prose writers,
reading from their work
in their native languages.
It's an archive that began
here at the Library in 1943,
and contains nearly 700 recordings
of poets and prose writers.
They include writers, artists, I
should say, from all over this part
of the world, from the Iberian
Peninsula, Latin America,
the Caribbean, and of
course, the United States.
These recordings are captured on
magnetic tape reel, and until now,
you had to come here to
the Library to access them.
But we have been working
on a project
to digitize the archive,
and present it online.
And so that hopefully will
greatly broaden access
to this important material,
to not only the folks here
in the United States,
but across the world.
A couple of other things I
thought I'd mention to you.
You may know that the Library
of Congress, or the Librarian
of Congress, has the opportunity
to name a poet laureate consultant
in poetry every year, and this
year, we have Juan Felipe Herrera,
who is the first Hispanic
American to hold that position,
and he in fact had his first
reading to open up our celebration
of Hispanic Heritage
Month here at the Library.
So we have quite a bit
of opportunity here
at the Library of Congress.
And I think this lecture from
Professor Francis will just help
to showcase one little spotlight
or showcase, one little piece,
that the great history of
Hispanics here in the United States,
and also whet your appetite
to perhaps for those of you
who are not necessarily library
employees, or maybe those of you
who are library employees
and may not know very much
about our collections
in this particular area,
will whet your appetite
to do more investigation,
make use of our resources
here and then pass
that information along to others.
So today we are very pleased
to welcome Dr. Michael Francis,
who is a History Professor
at the University
of South Florida in St. Petersburg.
He is one of the nation's
leading experts
on the Spanish Colonial
experience in Florida.
In 2011, Secretary of the Interior
Ken Salazar appointed Michael
to serve on the St. Augustine
450th Commemoration Commission,
and as part of the city's
commemorative efforts,
he authored a limited edition 450th
Anniversary commemorative book,
St. Augustine: America's
First Story.
A story of unbroken
history and enduring spirit.
He is also no stranger
to the Library.
Some of you may know
that he was here
at the Library as a
J. Kislak Fellow.
I am not quite sure when-
>> 2010.
>> Ah, thank you very
much, 2010, not 2011.
And he was able to make use of
the Library's resources here
to conduct research
and work on his book.
And so thank you for coming back
to the Library of Congress today
to give this presentation.
He has his Doctorate in
History from Cambridge.
Between 1997 and 2012, he taught
at the University of North Florida,
and he has also served briefly
as the Chair of the Department
of History at that institution.
Then in April 2012, he
moved to the University
of South Florida, so
from north to south.
And his teaching fields
include Colonial Latin America,
Early Florida, Spanish Borderlands,
Pre-Columbian Americas
and Spanish Paleography.
That is quite a bit of stuff.
How do you find time
to do all of this?
And so with all of that, I
really do appreciate the fact
that you did take the time to
come up and talk to us today.
So please join me in
welcoming Dr. Francis.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Wow, what a privilege to be
back at the Library of Congress,
and thanks so much for
the kind invitation.
I am just going to make sure
all the technology works.
If at any point you
cannot hear me at the back,
yell or throw something, and I
will try, if I move my face away
from the microphone, I can project
pretty well, so if I move away
from it, I hope you can
still hear me alright.
It's such a delight,
really, to be back here.
The last time I was here, I
spoke about a murder mystery
in the late 16th Century in
which five Franciscan friars
were murdered.
Today's talk, I hope, will
be somewhat more uplifting
than the murder of five friars,
but I'd like to thank the Library
of Congress for hosting this
talk, and of course, Lia,
who helped to bring me
here, and Florida House,
which if you haven't been, please go
and have some freshly
squeezed orange juice.
We try to do that every
time I come to Florida.
And of course, the Florida
Humanities Council also made this
possible, and my brilliant
wife, Annie,
who makes sure I don't
say silly things.
And I try my best.
This has been a fascinating
time to work on the history
of early colonial Florida, in part
because of all these commemorations.
In 2013, it was the 500 Year
Commemoration of something related
to Juan Ponce de Leon, and
then this past year, this year,
on September 8th, the City
of St. Augustine commemorated
its 450th foundation,
the date of its founding.
How many of you have
been to St. Augustine?
Oh, wow! Okay, that's unusual.
When I leave Florida, the numbers
are usually a lot smaller than that.
Well this is-that particular
day, you see,
on the gazebo in the Main
Plaza, the large birthday cake.
I guess you need a birthday cake
if you're having an anniversary.
And if it's 450th,
you need a large cake.
And they did that in
the city for the 450th.
They did a re-enactment, which
they do every year, of the landing.
I've been attending
this almost every year
since I moved to St. Augustine.
This was really the first year
they had active protestors.
Because anniversaries
do something else.
They bring out lots of people who
otherwise really wouldn't care.
Couldn't care less that there
is an anniversary approaching.
And so the 450th, there were
a number of protestors trying
to disrupt the landing, the
activity of the landing that day
on September the 8th of 1565,
this very disgruntled
kayaker was splashing water
on a fictional Pedro
Menendez Aviles,
the founder of St. Augustine,
as they moved their
chalupa closer to town.
And then of course 10 days
later, their Royal Majesties came
to St. Augustine, also as part
of this broader commemoration
of St. Augustine's 450th.
Now, anniversaries really are rather
curious episodes for historians.
And many historians tend to
shy away from commemorations.
And when I was first asked
to be involved in the 450th,
I did so with some trepidation.
This is from an excerpt
from a wonderful book
by Michel-Rolf Trouillot,
called Silencing the Past.
And Michel-Rolf Trouillot wrote
about commemorations that they tend
to sanitize the messy
history lived by the actors.
They also contribute to the
continuous miff-making process,
and in a sense, they create a
past that is more elementary.
In other words, when you think of
how does one commemorate the 500
or the 450th, often what happens
is that entire history is reduced
to some very simple sound bytes.
Some things that you say "this
is what we are commemorating."
This is what we are
celebrating-I mean,
I spent a lot of time asking people
what exactly are we commemorating?
An actual landing?
The legacy of that landing?
Specific individuals?
Are we commemorating the
founder of St. Augustine?
What exactly is it that
we are commemorating?
Now, I think all of us
do this to some extent.
I think any time you write a book,
you're faced with these problems
of reducing something that
is extraordinarily complex
into something that is
somewhat more elementary,
somewhat more accessible.
And I am certainly guilty of it.
Boy, I hate this title.
I shouldn't say that, actually.
This is the St. Augustine
commemorative book,
St. Augustine: America's First City.
St. Augustine is not America's
first city, and it's not even close
to being America's first city.
If you want to be technical,
St. Augustine is the oldest
continuously inhabited European
settlement in the continental
United States [laughter].
Now, the press really
hated that title.
They said that it would have
to be so small on the page,
we cannot call it that,
we like first city,
and they sell the T-shirts in
St. Augustine "First City,"
and the T-shirt would wrap
around four times if we called it
by that particular title.
So it's not the first city.
It's not the oldest.
And most often, when we have oldest,
and we have first, they're not.
And we need to use those terms
with a great deal of caution.
I love what Tony Horowitz
wrote about St. Augustine.
This is how Tony Horowitz
describes St. Augustine
around the time of Jamestown.
That it was a precarious outpost.
I love this term, outpost.
It was a precarious outpost, beset
by mutinies, pirate raids, plague,
fires, Indian hostility
and other woes.
This is what I wanted to
call the book [laughter].
And the only thing that they
liked about this was pirate raids.
They said, oh, you
can use the pirates.
Because if you've been
to St. Augustine,
you realize that pirates
are ubiquitous.
And you almost get the sense that
every weekend, pirates came to town.
You know, it's the weekend,
there will be pirates here again
[laughter], and there is talk
like a pirate day, there is the
pirate museum, there is dress
like a pirate, there
is-pirates are everywhere.
How many times in the 16th
Century was St. Augustine attacked
by pirates?
Once [laughter].
One time. In the 17th Century,
we can count that on one hand.
The number of direct
pirate assaults.
Now leaving St. Augustine,
that was a different story.
If you were in a ship in the Florida
straits, in the Bahama channel,
in the Caribbean, that
was a very different tale.
But St. Augustine is not a
place where pirates showed
up every weekend for a celebration.
And yet, we have this sense
that it was this place.
Plague, as well.
There are very few instances of
plague in the documentary evidence
for St. Augustine from the 16th and
early 17th Century, and in fact,
I've yet to find a single
record that refers to pandemics
in 16th Century St.
Augustine, northeast Florida.
Indian hostility-certainly
there is some.
And after Francis Drake,
the one lone pirate attack,
certainly the local indigenous
population looted much of the city.
But there are very few Indian
assaults on St. Augustine
in the entire colonial period.
So is any of this right?
Precarious outpost-and this
one is also quite fascinating,
and one that certainly, I
think, captures the popular view
of St. Augustine in the Colonial
era, a place nobody wanted to be.
You know, it was hot.
There were mosquitoes, and when
it wasn't hot, it was raining,
and when it wasn't raining,
there were hurricanes,
and when there weren't hurricanes,
there were nor-easters, and floods,
and it sounded like
a miserable place.
Yet every governor in
the 16th Century asks
for an extension [audience murmurs].
Why? And this is what intrigued
me so much about the city.
And the other thing that encouraged
me to write about St. Augustine is
because St. Augustine is
a very much organic city.
People have always
lived in St. Augustine
from the time it was founded.
And it has its entire
history has changed over time.
And the way people
remember its history,
and the way they celebrate its
history, and what they talk about,
and so I'd like to just go back
a little bit and talk about some
of the early days in
St. Augustine, and how
and why St. Augustine
becomes that place
that is the lone European settlement
founded in the 16th Century
that at least survived in Florida.
Because the Spanish attempted.
The Spanish crown wanted
permanent presence in Florida
from the beginning of the 16th
Century, and for five decades,
there were expeditions after
expeditions after expeditions.
Now, none of these
expeditions really left a legacy
of a permanent settlement
that survived.
And so we have Ponce
de Leon arriving
for the first time in
13 and again in 21.
We often give him credit for,
you see this term often,
for discovering Florida.
It must have been a curious moment
when he met the local perhaps Ayese
[phonetic spelling] population
or for lack of a better
term, Tamaqua, further north,
that they looked at him
when he set foot ashore
and said "thank you" [laughter],
thank you for discovering
us [laughter], Juan Ponce,
we have been waiting for this moment
since that goofy land bridge
flooded, and you've done it-so,
and of course, he didn't
think of it in those terms.
And there are reasons why
Europeans use those terms.
Historical reasons
in the 16th Century.
And then of course in 1526,
Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon established
really what was the first Spanish
settlement in what the Spanish refer
to as las provincias de la Florida,
which of course extended.
For them, las provincias
de la Florida extended
from the Tortugas all the way up
to the grand banks of Newfoundland.
So we are standing in what was one
of the early provinces of Florida.
Congratulations, you're all
early Floridians in that sense.
And then of course [foreign name
spoken] expedition in 1527-28,
Hernando de Soto, that
expedition extended to 1543.
Father Luis Cancer is a
fascinating character.
He was a Dominican
friar, or close associate
of Friar Bartolome de las
Casas, and Cancer wanted
to establish a utopian
community in Florida.
And he landed on the shore somewhere
not far from present-day Tampa Bay,
and was very quickly clubbed over
the head by Tocobaga Indians,
and that ended the
Dominican utopian experiment.
And the Dominicans turned to Mexico.
They didn't come back to Florida.
And Tristan de Luna established
a settlement in Pensacola,
which lasted a couple of years.
Tried to establish a land
route that connected Pensacola
to a place the Spanish called
Santa Elena, which we know today
as Paris Island, South Carolina.
And watch the news
over the next year
as Santa Elena approaches
its 450th next year.
There is a group of-there are
individuals in Santa Elena,
who really want to
establish a permanent research
and interpretive center
that tells the early history
of Spanish presence in the
continental United States.
Well Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon,
the heir, the next named governor
of Florida, decided that when he was
granted the license to be governor,
he decided, "I don't
think I'm going."
He looked at the history,
this five-decade history
of miserable failures,
and he said "No.
I'm not going to Florida."
And yet, we get to this place
with Pedro Menendez Aviles,
why on earth would
he come to Florida?
What would inspire him to go?
And why would anybody join
him on this expedition?
But in talking about the
history of St. Augustine,
I think it is important to go back
to the earliest recorded expedition.
What Ponce really does, what
was commemorated in 2013,
is Ponce named the place.
Ponce gave the name la Florida.
That is where the name comes from.
After Ponce's expedition.
And Ponce de Leon has maintained
a rather privileged space
in St. Augustine.
He is a kind of privileged figure
in the history of St. Augustine,
even though he probably
never set foot
in what is present-day
St. Augustine.
And there are streets
named after him.
And there are businesses, and of
course some other-you have a statue,
you know that they build a statue,
it has to be true [laughter].
So the statue, of course,
dates to the early 1920s.
And this statue is in one of
the most privileged locations
in the entire city,
in the main Plaza.
Not Pedro Menendez Aviles statue,
but rather Juan Ponce
de Leon's statue.
And of course, a lot of
that dates back to-St.
Augustine, as I was saying, is
this remarkable organic city that,
in many ways, as you walk
the streets of St. Augustine,
St. Augustine is, yes, a
Spanish colonial settlement.
But at the same time, in many
ways, it is an imagined community,
kind of re-framed and
re-created in the vision
of late gilded age Americans.
In particular, Henry Flagler.
And the shadow of Flagler's Florida,
really I think casts
a profound shadow
over St. Augustine's
earlier history.
Because Flagler, of course, and many
others, thought about St. Augustine.
When Flagler built his absolutely
magisterial hotel, the Ponce,
the Ponce as they call it, the Ponce
de Leon Hotel in St. Augustine,
he was trying to imagine a
Spanish colonial settlement.
What were these places like?
Let's make St. Augustine
look like that,
because New Yorkers will love this!
When the weather gets cold in
New York, they'll come down,
and they want to see something that
looks like a Spanish community.
And so he did this.
He changed street names
from English street names
to Spanish street names.
He built buildings in the style
to make them look like
Spanish building.
And Juan Ponce de Leon
is very much woven
into this gilded age
narrative of St. Augustine.
This is a wonderful painting,
which I love, Lucas Cranach,
The Elders painting,
16th Century painting
of the Fountain of Youth [laughter].
It's a wonderful painting
of the elderly and infirm,
and then of course,
they're all young women,
while they're elderly women at
first, and then they transform
into young maidens, and then they
go into this tent, and get dressed,
and have a nice banquet, and
it's a wonderful painting
of this ubiquitous
myth-this powerful myth-that
in many ways is rooted in,
well is, rooted in myth.
There is not a single
document from Ponce's life.
Not one. Not a single
reference from his contracts.
Nothing that he has left us that
makes reference to searching
for the fountain of youth.
He never writes it.
He's never searching for
the fountain of youth.
He is disgruntled, because he has
been removed rather unceremoniously
as Governor of Puerto Rico.
And as compensation for that
removal, he gets a new contract,
to move north, to discover any
undiscovered-and by undiscovered,
what he means are islands
that have not been claimed
by other individual Spaniards
through contracts with the crown.
And so he sets out to find other
undiscovered islands to the north.
And of course, he names Florida.
He then returns in 1521.
He is injured in a skirmish,
likely with Calusa Indians
in southwest Florida.
And he dies when that wound festers,
just before he reaches Havana,
or right when he reaches Havana.
Well in the 19th Century, one of the
most remarkable pieces of property
in St. Augustine is the property
now that you know as the Fountain
of Youth Archaeological Park.
And it is an amazing
place in so many ways.
And at the end of the 19th Century,
very beginning of the 20th Century,
the woman who owned this property,
Luella de McConnell, it's a property
that had a bunch of
natural springs on it.
And as she roamed her
property one day,
she imagined Ponce de Leon
searching for his Fountain of Youth.
This was something that had entered
into popular imagination many thanks
to Washington Irving,
to the English language.
Washington Irving was so
wonderful for making up things.
Like Columbus thought that
everyone thought the world was flat,
and Columbus-this is
Washington Irving,
and Washington Irving popularized a
16th Century Fountain of Youth story
that was told originally as
it related to Ponce de Leon,
about 15 years after Ponce's death.
And it was told by the most
influential Spanish chronicler
of the day, Gonzalo
Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdez.
Great name.
You want to-if you're a writer, you
want to change your name to that,
because then everybody
will read your work
because your name is so
important [laughter].
In any case, he didn't like Ponce
very much, and Oviedo was quite fond
of ridiculing people
he did not like,
and celebrating people he
thought were great heroes.
And also inventing tales that
readers would find entertaining
about Amazon women and other
mythical cities of gold and riches,
and one of the stories he told, very
briefly, was Juan Ponce de Leon was,
for Oviedo, one of
the most credulous,
foolish individuals ever to be born.
Someone foolish enough to
believe a story so silly
that he spent his money
and his life, ultimately,
on this foolish quest to
find a Fountain of Youth.
And he died doing it.
Now, of course, Ponce is dead.
So there is no rebuttal to this.
And the story was repeated again
and again and again, and we all know
that if you repeat a story enough,
it can transform from
myth into history.
It became true.
And since then, Juan Ponce de Leon
has been inextricably connected
to a story that he never once
even referenced, and was not part
of his original motivation.
But in any case, in the
beginning of the 20th Century,
Luella Day McConnell saw
one of these springs,
and thought this is
the Fountain of Youth.
And she began to market
this piece of property
as the Fountain of Youth Park.
And this was wonderful, all
these northeasterners coming
to escape the winter, they
need some entertainment.
They come in, you get a glass of the
water, they talk about the fountain,
you see if it works, and then
the park continues [laughter].
The great irony in this entire
story is that had she not done that,
and had the next family, the Frazier
family, who purchased the family
after McConnell's death,
had the Frazier family not
preserved this piece of property,
I promise you, this image you're
looking at now would be the site
of million-dollar condominiums
or homes.
And we would have lost one
of the most important
archaeological sites in the country.
Because no, it's not
the Fountain of Youth.
But what it is is a site
with more than 3,000 years
of uninterrupted human occupation.
And besides that, it is the site
of the original St. Augustine.
This is where Pedro Menendez
Aviles landed in 1565,
and this was the original
encampment,
that lasted for less than a year.
But this was the location
of the original encampment.
And here, you see some of the
outlines of the structures
that archaeologists, particularly
Kathleen Deegan, from the University
of Florida, have been
working at this site
for more than four decades.
And archaeologists
have been on this site
from as early Smithsonian
investigations in the 1930s.
So what about this founder
then, of St. Augustine?
Pedro Menendez de Aviles.
So what an enigmatic character.
Often reduced, in the words
of Michel Rolph-Trouillot,
how a complex past
can be simplified.
We often, and I certainly see this
in textbooks, he was a-and a term
that you most often
see-is conquistador.
He was a conquistador.
But what exactly does that mean?
What was the difference between
a conquistador and a settler?
Were they different?
We call them the same thing.
So I'll let you stew on that,
while we talk a little bit
about Pedro Menendez
Aviles, because going back
to this five-decade history of
failure, you know, this was a guy
who was well connected
with the Spanish crown.
He was already quite wealthy.
He had been named Commander
of the Indies Fleet in 1555.
From some accounts, I've not tried
to test this, but it's
probably true.
He likely crossed the
Atlantic more than 50 times.
Now, how many people
have done that by plane?
Let alone in a ship.
And one of his journeys
was in a small chalupa.
He made it from St. Augustine to
the Canary Islands in 18 days.
Now this guy was a marvelous
navigator, sailor, inventor,
had quite a rich background
before Florida.
And you look at this list, and he
looks at it, and you think died
in Florida, died in Florida,
probably sank somewhere in the Gulf
of Mexico, died and was placed
at the bottom of the Mississippi,
died in Florida, failed
expedition, failed expedition,
failed expedition, chose
not to even bother.
And here is Menendez who says this
time it's going to be different.
We can go to Disney and the
beaches are lovely [laughter],
and you know, come along with me.
And you have to wonder, was this
guy, if we did a reality show
from the day, could he be, you know,
the ten most foolish individuals
from the 16th Century and here is
the number one fool for thinking
that he is something is going to
come of this, because do you think
by this point he thinks he is going
to find silver or cold or emeralds?
No, they know there are not gold
mines here, so it doesn't fall
within that great triumvirate
motivations, God, glory and gold,
and he thinks he is going
to find some gold mines
that nobody else had
managed to find?
This is just a contemporary
rendering of Pedro Menendez Aviles,
so I wanted just to highlight
some of his contract,
we'll go through it really quickly
because it does give us a window
into what the crown really wanted.
Because the crown wanted
permanence in Florida.
But the crown didn't
want to pay for it.
And so most of these contracts,
when we go back to the 16th Century,
these are private contracts,
with private individuals
who fund the expeditions.
The crown does not.
The crown doesn't want
to pay for anything.
So the crown wants permanence,
because Florida remains
a strategic location.
The French, of course, have launched
an expedition there in 1562.
There was a settlement on what is
now Paris Island, South Carolina.
Didn't last very long before
the French abandoned it.
Then in 1564, they went back
and founded what became known
as Fort Caroline, in what is the
present-day Jacksonville, Florida.
Well, the Spanish and Menendez
did not know the French were
at Fort Caroline when
this contract was signed.
So the contract was not to
get the French out of Florida.
That was not the purpose.
And the crown doesn't invest
anything in the expedition
until it learns that
the French are there.
And when it learns that, it gives
Menendez some more soldiers,
and some other supplies.
But this is what he has to do.
He has a month and a half to prepare
six small ships, well 10 really,
small vessels, and load
them all with supplies
and prepare them for warfare.
He has to pay for this.
He and the people who invest in it.
So you think, okay, there is no gold
or silver there, what
are they doing?
He has to take 500 men, 100 of
them must be farmers, 100 sailors,
and the rest men and
offers of sea and war.
At least two clerics, right, he
brings four, but at least two,
and men skilled in stone-cutting,
carpentry, farriers, blacksmiths
and surgeons, all will be armed.
Of course, everybody is armed
on these early expeditions,
including the English expeditions.
Everybody has a weapon.
But of course, you get from
this the crown wants permanence.
The crown wants one-fifth of
these individuals to be farmers,
and then of course, the
others to possess the skillset
of people required for permanence.
He has to prepare his
galleon, the San Pelayo.
He loved this ship so much.
Another time, if I'm
ever invited back,
I'm going to tell you the story of
the San Pelayo, because a few months
after this episode the San Pelayo
sinks off the coast of Denmark.
It's an amazing story.
But that was his precious.
This was one of the most
spectacular galleons,
or galleathas, in Europe
at the time.
This was a ship that
certainly according to people
who worked most closely with
the ship itself, this was a ship
that was almost 100 tons.
The largest of the Jamestown ships,
to give you an idea, was 120.
This was a magnificent galleon.
So he was to bring
that, and he can load it
with goods to trade in the Indies.
Here, you see the first clue of what
this contract might be for Menendez.
He can load it with stuff that he
can sell elsewhere in the Indies,
as long as he leaves enough room
to carry 300 men and supplies,
and that again gives you a sense
of the size of this vessel.
He has to pay for all of these
men, more than 1,000 of them.
He has to pay for them,
for one entire year,
from the moment they
board the ships.
This looks like a horrible contract.
You know? But this is
the only way he is going
to get people to join him.
Come to Florida.
You don't pay for anything
for a year.
And then he has three years to
do the following: send 500 men,
200 of them must be married,
because we all know married
men stay put [laughter],
and 200 of them must be
married, 100 farmers,
they must be religiously
clean-in other words, the crown,
they couldn't be of what
the crown categorized as the
"prohibited ones," Moors,
suspected Jews, Protestants.
They all go on Menendez's
expedition.
Menendez was very clever at
avoiding having to get anyone
to get licenses to
go to the Americas.
He would always say, gosh, I'd love
to get the licenses for everyone,
but wow, oh, and the French are
there, and more French are coming,
I can wait, but then you'll
probably lose Florida.
But that's your call.
And the crowd-oh, okay go.
And he would be able to go.
And it makes it frustrating
for historians
because we can't piece together
who all these people are.
But through other documents, we know
that on all of these expeditions,
there are Africans, there are Moors,
there are Conversos [assumed
spelling], there are people
who probably shouldn't
have been there
or would not have received license,
plus it was a very mixed group.
At least 30% of his
fleet was probably made
up of people who were not Spanish.
Portuguese, Flemish, German, Irish,
English, Italian, North African,
Greece, other parts
of the Mediterranean.
These are the people who
founded St. Augustine,
and to call it Spanish Florida is
really a misnomer in many ways.
He has to build or
populate two or three towns,
take at least 10 or 12 Friars.
At no time in the 16th Century
are there 12 Friars in Florida.
This myth that, you know, everywhere
in the New World, when it starts
to rain, it's only Friars that come
descending from the sky to watch
and make sure that people
are observing the faith.
There is never one moment
in 16th Century Florida
in which there are 12 Friars.
Never. That only happens
beginning really
in the 1630s and into the 1640s.
At least four from the Society
of Jesus, and of course,
he does bring Jesuits the next year,
and the Jesuits establish a series
of missions in the Gulf and around
present-day Miami, and of course,
the mission farthest to the North
that the Jesuits established
was a place called Hakan,
which we now today
as Chesapeake Bay.
There were Jesuit Friars
in Chesapeake Bay in 1570.
This narrative that the
Jamestown people arrive,
and this is that first
magical moment
of encounter is an
English invention.
There are probably still people
alive who remember the Jesuits,
and they would likely
remember the Jesuits,
because all those Jesuits
were slaughtered.
And so that story would not
have been lost to the people
who encounter the first
Jamestown folks.
They would have seen Europeans,
and would have seen many
Europeans long before the Jamestown
crew arrives.
Horses and mares, calves, hogs,
sheep, any other livestock,
and then at the bottom, you see he
shall attempt to place 500 slaves,
who will grow sugar cane.
Here you begin to see what
the crown anticipates is going
to be the financial
benefit of this colony
that does not have gold or silver.
Now, Menendez has different plans.
He's not interested in sugar cane.
He never brings anywhere
close to 500 slaves.
In fact, in the 16th Century,
the largest number of both slaves
and enslaved blacks were probably
somewhere between 30 and 50.
Now, you might not think that's
much, but in terms of percentage
of the population, it
was quite high to have 30
or 50, both free and enslaved.
And that is the case with
all these expeditions.
He has to try to do this in a nice
way, in friendship and Christianity.
Now, this doesn't always work.
But this was in his contract.
And then in case of non-compliance,
he has to leave a 15,000 ducat bond.
This is a lot of money.
A skilled surgeon at the time
would make an annual salary,
annual, of about 96 ducats.
So the crown is saying "you're going
to leave a bond of 15,000 ducats,
and if you get to the Caribbean and
you decide you're not going to go
to Florida, thank you very much,
because the crown could
use this extra cash.
But you're going to
comply with this contract.
And so you think when
you look at these terms,
you think well really he must be one
of the most foolish
characters to do this.
And the cost of this.
So we have to look and see,
what does he get in return?
Well he gets 15,000 ducats cash.
So he can use that to buy supplies,
and to pay some of the men early on.
He gets a grant in 1565
that very few people get.
In fact, the crown is not issuing
these kinds of contracts any longer.
He gets the right to issue
[foreign word spoken].
He gets the right to
issue land grants.
The crown doesn't want that right
issued, granted to individuals.
The crown wants that
to be then taken
over by crown-controlled
institutions.
Not private individuals.
But Menendez says "I
have to get people to go,
and the only way I can
get people to go is
if you grant me the right
to issue land grants."
He gets 500 slave licenses.
Now, what does he do
with those licenses?
Well, he certainly doesn't
bring them to Florida.
He trades them, sells them under
the table in the Caribbean.
It's like giving him cash.
This is a wonderful
concession for resources.
He gets the title of Captain and
Governor General, an annual salary,
but note that the crown says you
get your 2,000 ducat annual salary,
but you have to draw it
from the fruits of the land.
So in other words, the crown is
not paying anything yet into this.
You know, the 15 ducats
is kind of a wash,
but the crown is saying
you don't get that.
The title of [foreign word spoken],
literally means "he who
goes before others."
There were about 70 people,
Spaniards in the 16th Century,
who were conferred
this particular title.
It was a prestigious title.
It does have an association with a
military rank, but it was a title
that he was granted in perpetuity.
So there is an Adelantado
of Florida, who has a palace
in [foreign word spoken]
and a residence in Madrid.
He gets that in perpetuity.
The next point doesn't really
matter because it doesn't happen,
but he gets about 110,000 acres
of land for him to choose.
Anywhere in Florida from the
Tortugas to the Chesapeake,
basically, 110,000 acres.
One-fifteenth shares in all
royal profits in perpetuity,
two fisheries in perpetuity.
So if I were his heir, I'd be going
straight to Disney and saying "Well,
I get my one-fifteenth share
of land in perpetuity,"
settlers pay fewer taxes, he
gets concessions on taxes,
he gets political power when he
leaves, he is free from having
to pay duty on goods
bound for Florida.
It is not surprising that
most of the local merchants
in Seville despise this guy.
They really did.
Because he could undercut
a lot of this trade.
He then can take, and
here we see the crux
of what Menendez really thinks
this Florida enterprise is going
to be for him.
In the first six years, he can sail
two galleons, or he can lease them
to other individuals, and two
pataches to any part of the Indies.
So this includes Peru, Mexico,
Cuba, any, Rio de la Plata,
he can send them anywhere
in the Indies,
load them with food and drink only.
How carefully do you think
they followed that policy?
If you can only put food and
drink on your ship, no problem,
it's only food and drink.
Sure, all kinds of other goods
get in there, and then on return,
he doesn't have to pay tax on that
merchandise that he brings back.
And then, in those same six
years, he can send ships,
ten different ships
to the Caribbean.
So what Menendez is thinking, he is
going to create a commercial empire.
In the Caribbean, the Gulf, and
in the continental United States.
These are the kinds of professions
of people he brings with him.
These are the people we
call the conquistadors.
Stone cutters, brick layers
and carpenters, and tailors,
sheep shearers, and blacksmiths,
and rope-makers, and locksmiths,
and surgeons, and a hat maker,
a trumpeter, 117 laborers.
And then one day I'm
going to find this guy.
I don't know his name
yet, but the bottom guy,
I just love this guy,
[foreign name spoken].
[Laughter] A master beer brewer.
You can't-nobody is going to go
on an expedition unless you
have your master beer brewer
with you on the expedition.
If I were Budweiser, this is
what I'd use as my commercial.
This is a 500 ton galleon,
a replica, 500,
just to give you a sense.
His was 996 tons.
And so imagine these ships
sailing off the coast of Florida,
and these are the men
that he brought with him,
because of course he learned
that the French were there.
This is just a replica
of the San Pelayo.
I'm going a little bit quickly
because I'm running out of time.
But the whole commercial enterprise
was disrupted somewhat when Menendez
and King Philip the Second
learned that the French were there.
And they learned that from the
Spanish Ambassador in Paris.
This is not the actual letter that
[foreign name spoken] sent back
to the crown, but it's
quite similar.
And I love his correspondence,
because a lot of his
correspondence is in code.
So this is what is coming back
form the court in Paris to Madrid,
and so I'm working with
one of my students now
on code decipherment,
which is great fun.
And of course when they learn
that the French are there,
the king issues him an order.
And you know you have a good
document when somebody writes
"Secreto," secret in the margin.
Like that is going to keep it secret
as you outline it and
you write secret.
In any case, it said if
anybody asks where you're going,
tell them you're going to Rio
de la Plata, the southern cone.
And the French learn
that he's going.
And that whole story with the French
and the Spanish is
quite fascinating.
He picks up a couple of-really
10 Englishmen-on his way
in Puerto Rico, who also take
part in this conquest expedition.
And remember, in his
contract he was supposed
to establish two or three towns.
This is what he does in
the first three years.
What in the world is he thinking?
Two or three?
One, two, three, four, five, six,
seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven,
twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.
And why is he in Tennessee?
And North Carolina [laughter].
In other words if you think
about the crown's motivation
to control this shipping lane as
the Spanish fleet moves up here,
and then sails back, Menendez
clearly is far less interested
in controlling the
shipping lane than he is
in a commercial enterprise.
And in particular, what he
is interested in is a place
in northern Mexico called Zacatecas.
Why Zacatecas?
Well, this is the site
of the great silver mine,
only found by Europeans
in the 1540s.
And here is Menendez, trying to
control ports on the gulf coast,
the Atlantic seaboard, to
what he believes is going
to be his principal port at
Paris Island, South Carolina.
Not far from Hilton Head.
Deep water port.
Great for sailing galleons
back to Europe.
And then a series of garrisons
inland that connect his enterprise
to the silver mines of Mexico.
And what if that silver no longer
has to go overland down to Vera Cruz
across the Havana, up a very
dangerous Bahama channel
and Florida straits,
and back to Spain?
What if that silver
can move overland?
And what if you're the governor
and Adelantado in perpetuity?
And you control a whole series of
garrisons that then can feed that?
This is his view of this enterprise.
And yet in the textbooks we
reduce him to conquistador.
Is that what he is?
Now, of course, what Menendez
doesn't realize at this time,
it's a long, long,
long, way to Zacatecas.
The other thing he
does not appreciate is
that other people live there.
And they were less
enthusiastic about this enterprise
than Menendez was about this
enterprise, and of course,
the soldiers that he stationed
in these places were not excited
about being isolated
in these garrisons.
So by the time we get to 1580,
by the time we get to 1573,
only St. Augustine and
Santa Elena are left.
Just in the few years.
By the time we get to 1587,
after Frances Drake's attack,
the only one left is St. Augustine.
And St. Augustine survives.
And I guess we have to
do part two next time,
when we move into the next set.
So on that note, I think
I'm over my time limit.
I will tell you that he
was frustrated by it,
and he sent a letter to the crown
asking the crown for permission
to enslave all of the
Indians who lived
from Tampa Bay along the coast,
all the way up to Cape Canaveral
to get them out of there, because
they were disrupting his enterprise.
The crown, not surprisingly
said "no."
And of course, he doesn't do that.
So thank you so much.
And so see most of you that have not
been to St. Augustine, I invite you.
And I'm delighted to answer
any questions you might have.
Thank you so much.
Appreciate it.
[ Applause ]
>> So thank you so
much, Dr. Francis.
That was a wonderful talk.
Before I give my closing
remarks, we would like to hear
from Maria Molina [assumed
spelling].
She is the Cultural Attaché
from the Embassy of Spain.
She is going to say
a few event remarks.
[ Applause ]
[ Silence ]
>> Oh, ladies and gentlemen.
It would have been a pleasure
to introduce so fascinating
and entertaining a speech on
behalf of the Spanish Embassy,
but unfortunately I
was late and thank you
for giving me this opportunity
to close with some remarks
on our collaboration with Dr.
Michael Francis, a wonderful scholar
on the Spanish presence
in the United States.
I would just like to add to what
may have been said on your work,
that his book has been offered,
has been given, to their Majesties,
the King and Queen of
Spain, during their visit
to St. Augustine last
18th of September.
I don't know if this was mentioned.
And also, to an array of guests from
Spain, who attended an encounter,
a business encounter
between the U.S. and Spain,
within the commemoration.
So after the commemoration, it
took place in St. Augustine.
Well, we are closing, we are
culminating with the commemoration
in St. Augustine, a
cycle of commemorations,
which have celebrated
our Spanish legacy.
You know, they started in 2013 with
the participation of Michael in one
of the projects I'd like to mention.
I don't know if it has
been already alluded to,
but I would like to
thank him for that.
It started in 2013, with the
anniversary of the arrival
to Florida by Ponce de Leon.
And it went on by commemorating
the discovery of the Pacific
by Vasco Nunez de Balboa, and also
the third centenary of the birth
of [foreign name spoken],
and it has culminated now
with this commemoration.
And I think this has
given us great opportunity
to highlight our cultural legacy,
exploring our common roots,
our common past, our shared history.
Not only with the United States, but
also with Latin America, of course.
And as a last effort, I
would like to inform you
that our cultural program,
Spain Arts and Culture,
is bringing a final exhibition.
Designing America is the title.
Spain's imprint on the U.S. And
we hope to host you, Michael,
for that event also, in a parallel
activity to the exhibition.
This exhibition will span from
exploration to modern day.
It will deal more on architecture,
urban planning and so on,
and it has been organized
in collaboration
with our [foreign word spoken].
So the National Library of Spain.
Michael has collaborated with
many Spanish institutions,
and most of all with [foreign word
spoken], the Spanish Cultural Agency
for Promotion Overseas
and also within Spain.
He was commissioned to Q-rate the
great project Imaging La Florida.
And he has given you some hints
on what he uncovered there,
the myth of the Fountain
of Youth, and so on.
So I would like to express my
gratitude for your collaboration.
It's through your research that we
are more aware of a common history
and I think this helps
us to bring us together,
bring us closer, enrich
our relationship.
So thank you very much.
Congratulations for your work.
[ Applause ]
>> Thank you so much, Miss Molina.
So, what a wonderful way to end
Hispanic Heritage Month here
at the Library of Congress.
On behalf of the Hispanic
Division, the Office of Inclusivity
and Compliance, and the
Hispanic Cultural Society,
we wanted to thank Dr. Francis
by presenting him with
this certificate.
So thank you so much.
[ Applause ]
>> Thank you.
Yeah, absolutely [laughs] and
it truly was such a great way
to wrap things up for
Hispanic Heritage Month 2015.
It feels like ages ago, but just 30
days ago, we had our kickoff event
with Juan Felipe Herrera,
the Poet Laureate,
who is the first Hispanic Poet
Laureate that has been named
by the Library of Congress.
And throughout this month, we have
had lectures, tours, concerts,
gallery talks and they have
all showcased the rich history
of Hispanics here in
the United States,
and they have all honored
the theme for this year,
which was Honoring our
Heritage, Building Our Future.
So we have paid tributes to the
generations of Hispanic Americans
that have positively influenced
and enriched this nation's society,
many of which you mentioned
earlier today during your talk.
And we did this here at
the Library of Congress.
And I don't know if many of
you realize, but we have less
than 80 employees that work here,
that identify themselves
as Hispanic or Latino.
And so we were able to put
together over 10 events this year
to preserve this important history
and to celebrate this beautiful
culture history that we have.
So we did want to thank a
few different offices here
at the Library.
We couldn't have done this
without the help of collaborating
with other offices
within our institution.
So we wanted to thank the
American Folk Life Center,
the Office of Opportunity
Inclusiveness and Compliance,
and of course, Georgette
Doren [assumed spelling]
in the Hispanic Division.
And we also have a
wonderful team of Ford Members
for the Hispanic Cultural Society.
So I first wanted to thank,
and if you could all stand,
I wanted to thank Carelis
Rodriguez [assumed spelling],
she is our Treasurer, and
she is just fantastic.
She does-she has all sorts
of roles here at the Library.
She is event planner extraordinaire,
accountant extraordinaire.
Also if Roberto Salazar,
Maria Perez,
Rosabelle Santos-Flores [assumed
spelling], Lia Apodaca Kerwin,
who was the one who introduced
this wonderful topic to us today,
and finally, the event planning
factotum of the Library of Congress,
Katalina Gomez [assumed spelling].
[ Applause ]
>> And all of you individuals have
spent countless hours before work,
after work, putting
these events together,
and definitely their passion
for Hispanic culture shows.
So with this, we conclude
Hispanic Heritage Month here
at the Library of Congress.
Thank you so much for coming.
Thank you so much Dr. Francis.
And if you would like
to join me in the Lobby,
we will be having a small reception.
>> Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at LOC.gov.