French Pathfinders in North America Part 4

"Why does he not lead us out to explore the country and find its treasures? He is keeping us from making our fortunes," the gentlemen adventurers cried.

Here again we are reminded of the Spaniards under Narvaez and Soto, who struggled through the swamps and interminable pine-barrens of Florida, cheered on by the delusive a.s.surance that when they came to the country of Appalachee they would find gold in abundance. (See "Pioneer Spaniards in North America.")

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Another cla.s.s of malcontents took matters into their own hands. They were ex-pirates, and they determined to fly the "jolly Roger" once more.

They stole two pinnaces, slipped away to sea, and were soon cruising among the West Indies. Hunger drove them into Havana. They gave themselves up and made their peace with the Spanish authorities by telling of their countrymen at Fort Caroline.

Now, Spain claimed the whole of North America, under the Pope's grant.

Moreover, Philip of Spain had but lately commissioned as Governor of Florida one Pedro Menendez de Aviles, a ruthless bigot who would crush a Protestant with as much satisfaction as a venomous serpent. Imagine the effect upon his gloomy mind of the news that reached him in Spain, by the way of Havana, of a band of Frenchmen, and, worst of all, heretics settled in Florida, his Florida!

Meanwhile the men at Fort Caroline, all unconscious of the black storm brewing in Spain, continued their grumbling. They had not heard of the fate of the party who had sailed away, and now nearly all were bent on buccaneering. One day a number of them mutinied, overpowered the {84} guard, seized Laudonniere, put him in irons, carried him on board a vessel lying in the river, and compelled him, under threat of death, to sign a commission for them to cruise along the Spanish Main. Shortly afterward they sailed away in two small vessels that had been built at Fort Caroline.

After their departure, the orderly element that remained behind restored Laudonniere to his command, and things went on smoothly for three or four months. Then, one day, a Spanish brigantine was seen hovering off the mouth of the river. It was ascertained that she was manned by the mutineers, now anxious to return to the fort. Laudonniere sent down a trusty officer in a small vessel that he had built, with thirty soldiers hidden in the hold. The buccaneers let her come alongside without suspicion and began to parley. Suddenly the soldiers came on deck, boarded, and overpowered them, before they could seize their arms. In fact, they were mostly drunk. After a short career of successful piracy, they had suddenly found themselves attacked by three armed vessels. The most were killed or taken, but twenty-six escaped. The pilot, who had been carried away against his will, cunningly steered {85} the brigantine to the Florida coast; and, having no provisions, they were compelled to seek succor from their old comrades. Still they had wine in abundance, and so they appeared off the mouth of the river drunk, and, as we have seen, were easily taken. A court-martial condemned the ringleader and three others to be shot, which was duly done. The rest were pardoned.

In the meantime the men in the fort had been inquiring diligently in various directions. There was still much talk of mysterious kingdoms, rich in gold. Once more they were duped into fighting his battles by the wily Outina, who promised to lead them to the mines of Appalachee. They defeated his enemies, and there was abundant slaughter, with plenty of scalps for Outina's braves, but, of course, no gold.

The expected supplies from France did not come. The second summer was upon them, with its exhausting heat. The direst want pinched them.

Ragged, squalid, and emaciated, they dragged themselves about the fort, digging roots or gathering any plant that might stay the gnawings of hunger. They had made enemies of their neighbors, Satouriona and his people; and Outina, for whom they had done so much, sent them only {86} a meagre supply of corn, with a demand for more help in fighting his enemies. They accepted the offer and were again cheated by the cunning savage.

Laudonniere draws a pathetic picture of their misery. In the quaint old English translation of Richard Hakluyt it reads thus: "The effects of this hideous famine appeared incontinently among us, for our bones eftsoones beganne to cleave so neere unto the skinne, that the most part of the souldiers had their skinnes pierced thorow with them in many partes of their bodies."

The thoughts of the famished men in Fort Caroline turned homeward with eager longing. They had still remaining one vessel and the Spanish brigantine brought by the mutineers. But they must have another. They began with furious haste to build one, everybody lending a hand. Then came a disastrous check. When things were well under way, the two carpenters, roaming away from the fort in search of food, were helping themselves to some ears of green corn in a field, when Indians fell upon them and killed them.

In this desperate pa.s.s Laudonniere took a high-handed step. He sent a party up the river, seized {87} Outina, and brought him a prisoner to the fort. This had the desired effect. His people pleaded for his release.

The Frenchmen agreed to give him up for a large supply of corn and sent a well-armed party to his village, with the captive chief. The Indians brought in the corn, and the Frenchmen released Outina, according to agreement. But when the former started from the village, each with a bag of corn on his shoulder, to march to their boats, which were at a landing two or three miles away, they were savagely attacked from both sides of the road. They were compelled to drop the corn and fight for their lives. Wherever there was opportunity for an ambuscade, arrows showered upon them from the woods. They kept up the running fight bravely, returning a steady fire, but probably made little impression on their hidden foes swarming under cover. By the time they reached the boats they had two men killed and twenty-two wounded, and but two bags of corn.

It is evident that the social life of these Indians was organized on the community-system, just as we have seen it to be among the Iroquois, of the North. They could supply the Frenchmen with corn in considerable quant.i.ties, taking it out of a {88} stock kept for the whole community.

Unlike the Iroquois, however, they lived by families, in individual houses.

The distress at Fort Caroline was now extreme, owing to famine within and war without. In this dark hour, one day, four sails appeared, steering toward the mouth of the river. Was this the long-expected relief from France? Or were these Spanish vessels? Presently "the meteor flag of England" floated out on the breeze, and soon a boat brought a friendly message from the commander, the famous Sir John Hawkins. Being a strenuous Puritan, he was a warm sympathizer with the Protestants of France. Returning from selling a cargo of Guinea negroes to the Spaniards of Hispaniola--not at all a discreditable transaction in those days--he had run short of water and had put into the River of May, to obtain a supply.

Touched by the pitiful condition of the Frenchmen, he opened his ship-stores, gave them wine and biscuit, and sold them other supplies very cheaply, taking cannon in payment. Then, smiling grimly at the two pitiful little craft in which they purposed sailing for France, he offered them all a free pa.s.sage home. Laudonniere would not {89} accept a proposal so humiliating, but was very glad to buy a small vessel from Hawkins on credit.

Just when all was in readiness to sail for home came news of an approaching squadron. It was an anxious hour. Were these friends or foes? If foes, the garrison was lost, for the fort was defenceless.

Then the river was seen full of armed barges coming up. Imagine the wild joy of the garrison, when the sentry's challenge was answered in French!

It was Ribaut. He had come at last, with seven ships, bringing not only soldiers and artisans, but whole families of settlers.

One might imagine that Fort Caroline's dark days had pa.s.sed. But it was not so. Ribaut had been there just a week when his vessels, lying outside the bar, were attacked, about dusk, by a huge Spanish galleon.

The officers were on sh.o.r.e, and the crews cut the cables and put to sea, followed by the Spaniard firing, but not able to overhaul them. Ribaut, on sh.o.r.e, heard the guns and knew what they meant. The Spaniards had come! Before he left France he had been secretly notified of their intentions.

The next morning Don Pedro Menendez in his great galleon ran back to the mouth of the {90} St. John's. But seeing the Frenchmen drawn up under arms on the beach and Ribaut's smaller vessels inside the bar, all ready for battle, he turned away and sailed southward to an inlet which he called San Augustin. There he found three ships of his unloading troops, guns, and stores. He landed, took formal possession of his vast domain--for the Florida of which he had been appointed Governor was understood by the Spaniards to extend from Mexico to the North Pole--and began to fortify the place. Thus, in September, 1565, was founded St.

Augustine, the oldest town of the United States.

One of the French captains, relying on the speed of his ship, had followed Menendez down the coast. He saw what was going on at St.

Augustine and hastened back to report to Ribaut that the Spaniards were there in force and were throwing up fortifications. A brilliant idea came to the French commander. His dispersed ships had returned to their anchorage. Why not take them, with all his men and all of Laudonniere's that were fit for service, sail at once, and strike the Spaniards before they could complete their defences, instead of waiting for them to collect their full force and come and attack him, cooped {91} up on the St. John's? Such bold moves make the fame of commanders when they succeed, and when they fail are called criminal folly.

Unhappily, Ribaut neglected to consider the weather. It was the middle of September, a season subject to terrific gales. Making all speed, he sailed away with every available man, leaving Laudonniere, sick himself, to hold dismantled Fort Caroline with disabled soldiers, cooks and servants, women and children.

The French ships arrived safely off St. Augustine, just before the dawn, and narrowly missed taking Menendez himself, who was on board a solitary Spanish vessel which lay outside the bar. Just in the nick of time she escaped within the harbor.

Before entering, the Frenchmen prudently reconnoitred the strange port.

Meanwhile the breeze freshened into a gale, and the gale rose to a hurricane. The Frenchmen could no longer think of attacking, but only of saving themselves from immediate wreck. Down the coast they worked their way in a driving mist, struggling frantically to get out to sea, in the teeth of the hurricane remorselessly pushing them toward the deadly reefs.

While his enemies were thus fighting for their {92} lives, Menendez executed a counter-stroke to that of the French captain. Through the raging gale, while every living thing cowered before driving sheets of rain, this man of blood and iron marched away with five hundred picked men. A French deserter from Fort Caroline and an Indian acted as guides, and twenty axemen cleared the way through the dense under-growth.

What a march! Three days they tramped through a low, flooded country, hacking their way through tangled thickets, wading waist-deep through mud and water, for food and drink having only wet biscuit and rain-water, with a sup of wine; for lodging only the oozy ground, with not so much as a rag of canvas over their heads to shelter them from the torrents of rain.

When they reached Fort Caroline their ammunition was wet and their guns useless. They were half-famished and drenched to the skin. Still they were willing to follow their leader in a rush on the fort, relying on cold steel.

The night of September 19th the inmates of Fort Caroline listened to the dismal moaning and creaking of the tall pines, the roar of the blast, and the fitful torrents of rain beating on the cabin-roofs.

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In the gray dawn of the 20th a trumpeter who chanced to be astir, saw a swarm of men rushing toward the ramparts. He sounded the alarm; but it was too late. With Spain's battle-cry, "Santiago! Santiago!" (St.

James, her patron saint) the a.s.sailants swept over the ramparts and poured through a breach.

They made quick work. The shriek of a helpless mother or the scream of a frightened infant was quickly hushed in death. When, however, the first fury of butchery had spent itself, Menendez ordered that such persons should be spared, and fifty were actually saved alive. Every male above the age of fifteen was, from first to last, killed on the spot.

Laudonniere had leaped from his sick-bed and, in his night-shirt, rallied a few men for resistance. But they were quickly killed or dispersed, and he escaped to the woods, where a few half-naked fugitives were gathered.

Some of these determined to go back and appeal to the humanity of the Spaniards. The mercy of wolves to lambs! Seeing these poor wretches butchered, the others felt that their only hope was in making their way to the mouth of the river, where lay two or three light craft which Ribaut had left. {94} Wading through mire and water, their naked limbs cut by the sedge and their feet by roots, they met two or three small boats sent to look out for fugitives, and were taken aboard half dead.

After two or three days of vain waiting for the reappearance of the armed ships, the little flotilla sailed for France, carrying Laudonniere and the other fugitives, some of whom died on the voyage from wounds and exposure.

The Spaniards had Fort Caroline, with one hundred and forty-two dead heretics heaped about it and a splendid booty in armor, clothing, and provisions--all the supplies lately brought by Ribaut from France.

Everybody has read how Menendez hanged his few prisoners on trees, with the legend over them, "I do this not as to Frenchmen, but to Lutherans."

Meanwhile Ribaut and his ships had been blown down the coast, vainly struggling to keep away from the reefs, and were finally wrecked, one after another, at various distances to the south of St. Augustine.

Let us pa.s.s quickly over the remainder of this sickening story. One day, after Menendez had returned to St. Augustine, Indians came in, breathless, {95} with tidings that the crew of a wrecked vessel, struggling northward, had reached an arm of the sea (Matanzas Inlet), which they had no means of crossing. Immediately Menendez started out with about sixty men in boats and met them.

The starving Frenchmen, deceived by his apparent humanity in setting breakfast before them, surrendered, and, having been ferried over the inlet in small batches, were led back into the sand-hills and butchered.

About two weeks later word was brought to Menendez of a second and larger party of Frenchmen who had reached the same fatal spot. Ribaut himself was among them. Not knowing of the horrible fate of his countrymen, he tried to make terms with the Spaniards. While he was parleying with Menendez, two hundred of his followers marched away, declaring that they would rather take chances with the Indians than with these white men whom they distrusted.

Ribaut, having surrendered with the remaining hundred and fifty, was led away behind the sandhills and his hands were tied. Then he knew that he had been duped, and calmly faced his doom. "We are of earth," he said, "and to earth must return! Twenty years more or less matter little."

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As before, the deluded Frenchmen were brought over in tens, led away, tied, and, at a given signal, butchered.

Some twenty days later, Menendez received tidings of a third band of Frenchmen, far to the southward, near Cape Canaveral. This was the party that had refused to surrender with Ribaut. When he reached the place, he saw that they had reared a kind of stockade and were trying to build a vessel out of the timbers of their wrecked ship. He sent a messenger to summon them to surrender, pledging his honor for their safety. Part preferred to take the chance of being eaten by Indians, they said, and they actually fled to the native villages. The rest took Menendez at his word and surrendered, and they had no reason to regret it. He took them to St. Augustine and treated them well. Some of them rewarded the pious efforts of the priests by turning Catholics. The rest were no doubt sent to the galleys.

Everybody is familiar with the story of the vengeance taken by Dominique de Gourgues, a Gascon gentleman. Seeing the French court too supine to insist upon redress, he sold his estate, with the proceeds equipped and manned three small vessels, sailed to the coast of Florida and, {97} with the a.s.sistance of several hundred Indians, who hated the cruel Spaniards, captured Fort Caroline, slaughtered the garrison, hanged the prisoners, and put up over the scene of two butcheries the legend, "Not as to Spaniards, but as to traitors, robbers, and murderers."

Thus closed the last b.l.o.o.d.y act in the tragedy of French colonization in Carolina and Florida. A long period--one hundred and thirty-four years--was to pa.s.s before the French flag would again fly within the territory now embraced in the Southern States.