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00:34.
00:51Among the 1500 men, women and children
00:55seeking refuge inside the fort
00:57were friars and priests.
00:59several natives, free blacks, slaves, and two infants, less than a week old.
01:12It had to be terrible in there.
01:141,500 people crammed inside the Castillo.
01:18I don't imagine their washing facilities.
01:20There is a well for water.
01:22In the end, I'm not sure they think they're going to make it.
01:26You didn't know how this was going to turn out.
01:28And you didn't even know if you were going to come out as a captive.
01:36Governor Jose de Suñiga knew that his soldiers were no match for the English troops from South Carolina.
01:43Spain hadn't sent provisions in months.
01:46The men were getting just two servings of bread a day.
01:51Pulling everyone into the Castillo was the only way to protect the townspeople
01:57and keep his soldiers fed.
02:02They actually rounded up the animals as much as they could and brought them close to the fort.
02:07Cattle and other things like that.
02:08The sharpshooters up on the gun deck would be able to protect anybody from getting them.
02:15In the meantime, about 1,000 English troops were descending on St. Augustine by both land and sea.
02:24They were joined by roughly as many native allies,
02:28Yama's, Creeks, and other smaller tribes that had resisted the efforts of the Spanish friars to convert them.
02:36Leading the onslaught was Carolina Colony Governor James Moore,
02:40a man known to be a ruthless slave dealer.
02:43He had been eyeing St. Augustine for a long time.
02:47The Spanish stronghold in La Florida stood in the way of English expansion.
02:52That's when the British really began to make an effective challenge to Spanish rule.
02:57You know, everybody wanted to knock down the guy in charge and take over those colonies for themselves.
03:03A century earlier, Spain had made a serious strategical error when it decided not to challenge the establishment of the
03:11English settlements of Jamestown and Plymouth in Spanish territory.
03:16King Philip III lacked the fervor that his father had for maintaining an empire in North America.
03:23It was too costly.
03:26It's difficult to maintain a series of forts up and down the coast.
03:30The priority for the Spanish king were these colonies that really produced the wealth.
03:34So Mexico, you know, the Philippines and Asia.
03:39What's more, those early British colonies seemed too small and insignificant to pose a threat to Spain's sizable territory,
03:46which stretched along the entire east coast of North America.
03:52Over the next century, however, British colonies had virtually dismembered the northern portion of Spanish-held La Florida,
04:00and they were working their way southward.
04:02And so with the settlement of Charleston, that now made a English settlement that was close enough to launch an
04:11attack on St. Augustine from land.
04:13The British saw their opportunity in 1702.
04:18Spain was in upheaval over the death of King Charles II, who had no male heirs.
04:26As the War of the Spanish Succession raged on in Europe,
04:30English colonists in South Carolina, led by Governor Moore, decided it was time to strike.
04:38Half of Moore's troops set off by sea.
04:42The rest marched south through the backcountry, preying first on Spanish missions along the way.
04:49All of a sudden, here comes a rampaging army of Englishmen and Indian allies to kill them and crush them,
04:56and by the most violent means possible.
05:00The storming of the missions destroyed most buffers St. Augustine had along the coast.
05:06But they had proven to be easy prey.
05:09The natives living on these missions had been unarmed.
05:14The friars had a issue giving firearms to the natives.
05:18The keeping firearms away from the natives is a way of keeping them pure,
05:21keeping them from harming one another, keeping them from committing murder, essentially.
05:29The British, on the other hand, issued guns to any natives who would fight on their side.
05:35When you introduce the element of guns, fire stick, now you've given our people the ability to be able to
05:42hunt and provide for their families easier.
05:45Of course, they woo a lot of the Indians away to the English side.
05:49They have more goods to give them, and the Indians can also see that they're probably the stronger side.
05:54They helped us. These are our friends. We can help them.
05:59As Moore's troops triumphantly moved southward, they continued to solicit recruits.
06:06But a baptized Choctaw woman overheard their plans.
06:11She managed to get word to St. Augustine's governor,
06:14which is why the entire town was now setting up camp in the Castillo.
06:19It was November 9th, 1702.
06:22By the time James Moore and his men arrived, the town looked deserted.
06:28Everybody's in the fort, and the town's really free for them to walk into.
06:33As the English got within range of the fort, the Spanish fired on them, and the exchange began.
06:42The Spanish artillery was so out of practice that they failed to hit anything.
06:50Spain's economy had collapsed in the 1600s.
06:54The Spanish soldiers were still armed with matchlocks that de Soto's soldiers had used in the 1530s and 40s.
07:02So the Spanish, because of their economic situation, they're behind the times.
07:08In fact, the first casualties in the Castillo weren't caused by their enemy, but instead by overzealous Spanish soldiers,
07:16who loaded too much ammunition into an old, cracked cannon.
07:20It misfired.
07:24Killing the gunner and two other men.
07:29Five more were wounded.
07:34To keep the British from taking cover close to the fort, Suniga made a radical decision.
07:39The governor realizes very quickly that the houses that are closest to the fort will provide a place for the
07:46English to shoot at people up on the gun decks or people that are trying to leave the fort.
07:51And so he orders about 30 houses burned that are closest to the fort.
07:57And the people who were sequestered in the fort at that time could see their houses burning. It must have
08:05been a heartbreak.
08:09The siege continued for the next 52 days.
08:15And of course, life goes on inside the Castillo.
08:19We know that there are two or three children born during the siege.
08:25The first child that's born there is actually born to a Native American woman and a black slave.
08:32A few days after the siege starts.
08:37Now, we have found evidence for the siege of St. Augustine.
08:44Archaeologist Carl Halbert made a surprising discovery among the artifacts found from the attack on the Castillo.
08:53It appears that before they abandoned their homes, the citizens of St. Augustine had made a cunning move.
09:00They fill their wells with sand.
09:03Normally, when you find wells, you find trash deposits in them.
09:08But here in this well, there was nothing, no artifacts at all in this clean sand.
09:13So it led us to the conclusion that this well may have been intentionally filled by the Spanish.
09:20So the English could not have access to a reliable water source so close to the fort.
09:29Moore's army proved weak and morale was low.
09:32The Castillo seemed to be impenetrable.
09:37What made the fort so resistant to artillery fire?
09:43This is what is expected to happen when a cannonball strikes the wall of a stone fort.
09:50Brittle rocks such as sandstone, when you start to compress, it shatters violently.
09:56The fragments will fly off.
09:57Whereas Coquina doesn't shatter and fragments do not fly off.
10:01Dr. Gattu Subash has conducted compression experiments on the unique stone used to build the Castillo, known as Coquina.
10:09His team at the University of Florida's Department of Mechanical Engineering want to understand why the fort was able to
10:17withstand artillery fire, while other structures could not.
10:22The principle behind why it withstood so elegantly and majestically is simply Coquina was able to absorb energy locally, not
10:31sending the energy to the global region, which is fracture.
10:35The Coquina walls are composed of compressed shell fragments, bonded together over thousands of years.
10:42It's all a tunneling effect.
10:44So the ball comes, material ahead of it is being crushed, crushed, crushed, crushed. That's all.
10:49The tiny shells crumble, absorbing impact so bullets and cannonballs sank into the Castillo rather than shattering the walls.
10:59Coquina is a material unique to just a few regions of the world.
11:03St. Augustine is one of them.
11:05They just got lucky. They just got lucky.
11:10As the days wore on, the English began to blame General Moore for their failure to take the fort.
11:16The British start arguing among themselves because the British invaders have put a lot of their own money into it.
11:22But they've got their own money riding on this venture.
11:27But conditions inside the Castillo were becoming dire as well. Food was running scarce.
11:35That's one of the things you do with a siege is ultimately you can starve them out. If you can't
11:39bombard them out, you know, you can just wait them out on the outside because you have access to food
11:44and they don't.
11:49The governor sent out messengers hoping one of them would reach Cuba.
11:53He's hoping that he can send someone in a small canoe down the tidal creeks, down past Fort Matanzas, down
12:01beyond what is today Palm Coast, Daytona, that whole area.
12:04Can you imagine taking a canoe out into the Atlantic Ocean?
12:10Meanwhile, the Carolina troops had also sent word to Jamaica, asking for bombs that they might lob over the walls.
12:18In preparation, they began digging trenches close to the Castillo.
12:28Suddenly, four Spanish warships from Havana appeared on the horizon.
12:36So the Spanish ships literally appear probably just at the right time.
12:42They've got troops with them. They've got, obviously, supplies and ammunition.
12:50After 52 days of fighting, the siege was finally over.
12:58But before Moore's army retreated, they set fire to the remaining buildings in town.
13:05For at least the third time since the first settlement had been established, fire had ravaged the city.
13:13It was going to take decades to fully recover.
13:18No food, no homes. It's late December and almost January.
13:22So, you know, it's not even a good time really to grow food.
13:28We do know by looking through the parish records that over the next two or three years after the siege,
13:35the birth rate in St. Augustine drops drastically.
13:39The birth rate in 1703 and 1704 is one third of what it was in 1702.
13:48Whether the mothers weren't healthy enough to, you know, bring babies to term, we can conjecture.
13:54But obviously, it is an issue of food supplies and health and shelter.
13:59And, I mean, that's a drastic drop in the birth rate.
14:05The untold emotional and physical toll that rebuilding took is probably most apparent in the Spanish skeletal remains from that
14:15era.
14:16Culture was under stress. Their life was a life of hardship.
14:20This was reflected in the broken bones.
14:23Virtually everybody over a few years old had terrible dental caries and abscesses in the jaws and had lost teeth.
14:31And pretty much everybody over 20 had severe arthritis.
14:37It must have been painful to do daily chores like drawing water and chopping fuel wood and grinding corn.
14:52But while the people of St. Augustine were slowly piecing their lives back together,
15:00James Moore was back in South Carolina plotting revenge.
15:06He suffered the loss of his pride.
15:10He was treated as a contemptible person for having failed in his mission to capture the castle at St. Augustine.
15:19And so Colonel Moore is in trouble back in Charleston because they lost a lot of money, the backers of
15:27this expedition.
15:28He was brought before the courts.
15:31And there was a great embarrassment to him that he had failed to capture St. Augustine and to loot it.
15:36So he decided to make up for it somehow.
15:41Piracy.
15:42How did you make a living back then?
15:45You stole from other people.
15:48Moore hatched a new plan to get revenge on the Spanish.
15:52This time he promised that South Carolina would not have to pay for the expedition.
15:57He was going to recover his costs in a highly lucrative way.
16:02It was stealing people.
16:05That the Native Americans could be rounded up.
16:08They could be walked back to Charlestown and sold in the slave markets.
16:14A promotional pamphlet is distributed around England that advises people to enslave Indians because they're cheaper and they're easier to
16:23acquire.
16:24And that was where the money was.
16:26It was in the slavery business.
16:28Indians increasingly have to choose whether to become victims or to participate in the slave trade as slave raiders.
16:35And so the Yamasees and the Lower Creeks in particular, they have become very active slave raiders.
16:41We did not understand the concept of what they identified slavery as.
16:44I think that if our people had known that this would have turned out the way it did, they wouldn't
16:50have assisted.
16:51Over the next two years, Moore and his raiders stormed Spanish missions throughout the interior of La Florida.
16:59There, he burned and maimed and killed. It's a disaster.
17:06Most of the survivors of these mission raids were captured and taken back to South Carolina.
17:12According to his own report, James Moore took over 4,000 natives, mostly women and children, to sell into slavery.
17:20The historian of this period, John Han, said that this was the largest slave raid in the history of the
17:28country.
17:29In South Carolina, about 25% of the slave population is Indian. So a full quarter is American Indians.
17:36And that's how he redeemed himself with all his slaves, all his income.
17:42There's a term, and it is an insult for a native person to say they act as if they have
17:48no family, because kinship is humanness.
17:52Because obviously they would never treat another human like that if they knew what it was to love and to
17:58hold something sacred.
18:00So in our eyes, they were less than human.
18:03It is nearly impossible to find much writing in the documentary record about Mission Indians because the English wiped out
18:11so much of their past.
18:13But Dr. Susan Parker has managed to trace several decades of the life of one Indian and his family as
18:20they endured numerous attacks by English invaders.
18:24Their story shows the enormous price that was paid by those who remain loyal to Spain.
18:31Francisco Hospo was a mission Indian, born about 10 years before the English established Carolina.
18:41Hospo grew up on a mission in what is now St. Catherine's Island in Georgia.
18:46When he was a young man, his mission was attacked several times.
18:50First by early Carolina settlers, who predated more, and then by English pirates.
18:56Hospo moved south and started his own militia.
19:03In 1715, he talks about how he is living in a village south of St. Augustine.
19:11The English Indians attacked the village.
19:18Hospo had been one of the first to take up arms to defend the settlement.
19:24They attack his village while he is out with his men.
19:27And they take his wife and children, he says, at knife point.
19:33Three times the English offered to return Hospo's family in exchange for his alliance with them, an abandonment of Catholicism.
19:41Three times he refused.
19:48In a letter to the king of Spain, Hospo said he believed his family had been separated and sold as
19:55slaves, probably to work on sugar plantations in Jamaica or the Barbados.
20:00And he says that he fears that they have been taken and perished in foreign lands.
20:06And it was a story that just, that grabbed me and certainly touched my heart, I think, when he said
20:11that he feared that his family had perished in foreign lands.
20:15The British had no interest in spreading their Christian faith among the native peoples of, say, New England or the
20:23Midwest.
20:24The English had very little interest in the welfare of the native societies.
20:29It was commonly said in what I call the powdered Whig states, the only good Indian is a dead Indian.
20:37Moore and his allies viciously killed over a thousand people during his raids.
20:42Well, it was terribly brutal.
20:45People were burned alive.
20:47People were disemboweled, flayed, crucified, Christianized Indians.
20:53The friars might be nailed to the cross.
20:56It was genocide.
20:57It was ethnic cleansing.
20:59History is written by the victors.
21:02So whoever tells the story is obviously going to tell it from their perspective.
21:08And there's an indigenous voice that really hasn't been told.
21:13In one document, there's a whole list of chiefs that were killed.
21:18Flagler College Distinguished Professor of Religion, Dr. Timothy Johnson, has been studying eyewitness accounts of the genocide that occurred at
21:26these missions.
21:28People are given the chance to deny their faith.
21:31Some of them decide to flee, but many of them decide we are going to die as Christians.
21:36They would stand up even watching and seeing and hearing what was happening and knowing full well what was coming
21:42their way.
21:43And so not only are these incredible historical documents, they're really quite inspirational, the stories of what people would do
21:50in the face of death.
21:54These accounts are part of the sworn testimony taken by the Catholic Church in 1704 when Pope Clement XI set
22:03up a commission to look into these reputed acts of faith.
22:07But it wasn't until a few years ago when Catholic historians began transcribing these records that bishops felt there was
22:15enough there to propose consideration for sainthood.
22:19There's a very sad story of a young boy by the name of Manuel.
22:23Manuel is an altar server.
22:26And he is referred to in the sources as a young boy, maybe 13 years old, but who had a
22:34great, great devotion to God.
22:36And when the Greeks came in, they set fire to the chapel.
22:42And they said, well, if you're a Christian, then pray that God will send rain to put this out.
22:49So he raised his hands and they cut them off.
22:51And they threw them to the dogs.
22:53And then what they do, it's horrible, you slice someone's neck and then pull their skin completely over their head.
23:00That's how he died.
23:03The Vatican has begun the process of canonization for some 82 Native Americans and missionaries killed for their beliefs during
23:11these raids.
23:14Among them were Apalachee, Chickasaw, Yamasee, Tocobaga, and Timuquins.
23:21The Vatican said, we believe that there are justifiable grounds.
23:26He'll declare these people as servants of God, which is the first step on the road to canonization.
23:38Only one Florida mission has ever been reconstructed based on the ruins archaeologists have found.
23:44Mission San Luis in Tallahassee.
23:48The estimate that's been given for San Luis at its height was between 1,500 and 2,000 in this
23:55area.
23:56And that was Apalachee.
23:57And at its height, there were probably 100 Spanish residents that lived here permanently,
24:02plus the soldiers who were cycled in with the garrison.
24:05But ever since Moore's first attacks in 1702, several attempts to fend off these raids killed off most of the
24:12Apalachee.
24:13The number of Spanish soldiers sent to defend the mission kept dwindling.
24:18When they heard Moore's troops were advancing, the residents of Mission San Luis burned down their buildings and fled.
24:28By 1706, the Spanish missions in La Florida had been almost completely obliterated.
24:36It dealt a demoralizing blow to Spanish Catholics, but it was also a crippling setback for St. Augustine.
24:43The missions had been its bread basket.
24:46The outlying missions supplied much of the surplus corn for St. Augustine.
24:51And that chain of missions going north became a really important source of food for the Spanish settlement.
25:03Now those fields were barren.
25:05And even a decade later, food continued to be scarce.
25:12But as the town slowly rebuilt, the British began to turn their gaze again on the Spanish presence to their
25:18south.
25:19La Florida was a threat to the British way of life, particularly on the issue of slavery.
25:27As far back as the days of the conquistadors, Africans had been an accepted and integral part of everyday life
25:34in Spanish America.
25:35Probably the first African American to this part of the world was on missions here, scouting with Ponce de Leon.
25:46The person was not a slave. He was a free man.
25:51There were free black people here from the beginning of the colony onward.
25:57These were people who helped build the early garrisons.
26:02They built residences.
26:04They did work that was critical for the survival of the community.
26:08They weren't working out, for example, on sugar plantations.
26:11That was not something that the Spanish started.
26:15Race was not the basis for slavery in the Spanish world.
26:18If somebody was Christian and Catholic, there really was no impediment to them being free.
26:26The Spanish did have slaves, but slavery under the British was not the same.
26:33Their method of enslavement and control of Africans were very different than the Spaniards, absolutely.
26:50Under English law, a slave was property or chattel without any legal or civil rights.
27:02Slaves could be bought, sold and punished, or even killed.
27:11Spanish law, on the other hand, recognized slaves as human beings with legal rights.
27:17Slaves had inherent rights.
27:19Slaves could, for example, purchase their own freedom.
27:23Slave families could not be separated by law.
27:26They marry and their marriages appear in the church records, so these were considered official marriages
27:32and recognized as legal marriages just as anyone else's were, which is a right, as we call it, that we
27:38don't often see in the British colonies.
27:40So we have to be careful not to say that somehow Spanish slavery was good slavery, better than English slavery,
27:48it's still slavery.
27:50At the same time, Spanish laws that govern slavery were fundamentally different from, say, English laws that govern slavery.
27:59Spanish slaves could own property, sue their owners in court, and both men and women could even petition the king.
28:07One of the largest differences was the belief that Africans were human beings who had souls, whereas the British did
28:15not believe that at all.
28:17They were just savages and, you know, beyond redemption.
28:20It's very hard for audiences in the United States to get that because we're so much more familiar with chattel
28:29slavery,
28:30which was the English system where a person enslaved was considered no more than a piece of property like a
28:36horse or a cow,
28:38which is why people ran from that system to seek some sort of sanctuary among Spanish people usually.
28:50Ever since the late 1600s, Spanish Florida was becoming a sanctuary for African slaves who fled from British plantations.
28:59Long before there was an underground railroad that ran north, there was an underground railroad that ran south.
29:05Long before there were.
29:08La Florida started granting asylum to slaves after a small group escaped by canoe from the Carolinas in 1687.
29:15They asked Governor Diego de Quiroga for asylum, saying they wanted to become members of the true faith—Catholicism.
29:22Catholicism.
29:23The Spanish who had founded La Florida in part
29:26to convert the new world to Christianity
29:29could hardly refuse.
29:31And the Spanish governor's not quite sure what to do with them.
29:35What status do these people have?
29:38Do we risk a potential conflict with the English over this?
29:44And he keeps writing to Spain,
29:45what do I do about this?
29:47After five years of this,
29:49King Charles II finally responded that as a, quote,
29:52prize for having adopted the Catholic doctrine,
29:55they should all be set free
29:57and given anything they needed.
29:59And he says, by my example and liberality,
30:03others will do the same.
30:05And he's hoping to drain off the plantation slaves
30:08from South Carolina, weaken the English usurpers.
30:12The king's edict declared that runaway slaves
30:15who became Catholic
30:16who were willing to help defend the town
30:19would be granted freedom.
30:21And, of course, that then initiates waves of runaway slaves
30:26from the Carolinas, from Virginia.
30:28You see in the record some slaves
30:30from as far north as New York
30:32who are escaping plantations to reach St. Augustine.
30:37The English were angry about it
30:39and they sent people to try to recover these slaves
30:42and they never would return them.
30:44The British were very much afraid
30:46of Spain's sovereignty in Florida,
30:50accepting people and allowing them to gain their freedom.
30:54In fact, Spain's open-door policy
30:56was not just a vehicle to save more souls
30:59for the Catholic Church.
31:00It was also a way to destabilize the plantation economy
31:04of the British colonies.
31:06The planters were particularly concerned
31:09that if waves of runaway slaves make it to St. Augustine,
31:14all that's going to do is encourage more runaway slaves
31:17and that will, in the end, dismantle the entire system.
31:21And it will encourage rebellion in these plantations.
31:28Around this time, a young Mandingo child
31:30was captured in West Africa
31:32and taken to the Carolinas to work the plantations.
31:36Eventually, he was given the European name Francisco Menendez.
31:40The ship arrived in the Carolinas
31:44with less than three-fourths of its cargo,
31:47of its human cargo.
31:48So, aboard that ship, most of the slaves
31:53that were captured from Mandingo in West Africa were dead.
31:59To imagine surviving that cramped in a space
32:03smaller than this chair,
32:06not a lot of sun, not a lot of food,
32:09not a lot of cleanliness.
32:11You know, it takes an extraordinary will to live
32:14when you're seeing others dying around you,
32:17and how you do that at eight or nine, I don't know.
32:21As he grew into manhood,
32:23Francisco Menendez became indispensable
32:25to his British owners.
32:27He could not only do the work of several men,
32:29but he also learned to speak several languages.
32:36When he first escaped to Spanish La Florida in the early 1700s,
32:40Menendez sought refuge with various Indian tribes
32:43living in the backwoods to the north.
32:45But what he learns in the three years living in the wilderness
32:49is how to move through the forest without harm, hurt, or danger,
32:55sound or footprint,
32:57how to track and hunt.
32:59But he also learns during that time
33:02how to master British firearms.
33:07In 1715, Menendez proved himself a fierce warrior,
33:11fighting the British alongside natives
33:12in a conflict known as the Yamasee War.
33:16The Yamasees had once been allies with the Carolina colony,
33:19but the British slave raiders had begun to turn on them.
33:22In the 1710s, the Indian slave trade
33:25has sort of reached its height.
33:27It's frenzied.
33:28So many native groups are now vulnerable,
33:30and they're watching their own family members
33:33or friends become slaves.
33:34And they're seeing that they are on a slippery slope downwards,
33:37that they will end up as slaves.
33:39You have constant encroachments on our land.
33:43Along with the taking and kidnapping of our children,
33:46it forced us to a situation
33:48where all the head warriors came together
33:50and we're talking about war.
33:55Francisco Menendez knew the enemy well
33:57and proved to be a valuable fighter for the Yamasees.
34:02When the war was over two years later,
34:05Menendez headed to St. Augustine
34:07to petition the Spanish governor for his freedom.
34:09But on his way there, he was betrayed.
34:13An infidel Yamasee named Pero Bravo,
34:18which is wild dog,
34:20somehow acquired him in the trail down here.
34:24And Pero Bravo threatened to kill him
34:29and other slaves that he held in his possession
34:31if the Spaniards didn't pay for them.
34:34Menendez was sold back into slavery
34:37for a bottle of rum
34:38and a small harvest of corn.
34:42He was later sold at auction
34:44to Florida governor Antonio de Benavides,
34:47who blatantly ignored the Spanish edict
34:50to free escaped slaves
34:51and even bought and sold them himself.
34:55In, you know, the 18th century in Spanish Florida,
34:59not many people could read and write
35:02and here's an African man who can.
35:04That gave him tremendous status.
35:07And he was linked to the very important people
35:09in the community.
35:14Benavides put Francisco Menendez in charge
35:16of the black slave militia
35:18to help the Spanish regiments defend St. Augustine.
35:22He hates the English.
35:24He'd been their slave.
35:26He knows the terrain.
35:27He's fought them for years.
35:30Eventually, Spain outlawed the sale
35:33of runaway slaves in Florida to private citizens.
35:36A new governor, Manuel de Montiano, took office.
35:39He offered members of the black militia their freedom,
35:42provided they would serve four more years first.
35:48In 1738, Francisco Menendez
35:51was finally granted unconditional freedom.
35:55He becomes the leader of a new free community
35:58here.
36:00Escaped slaves had been living in St. Augustine
36:02for nearly a half century now,
36:04and they had become an integral part of the community.
36:10In 1738, Governor Manuel de Montiano
36:12gave them their own land
36:14and chose Francisco Menendez,
36:16now a free man, as its leader.
36:20The community was located about a mile and a half
36:22outside the city.
36:25It was called Gracias Real de Santa Teresa.
36:28La Teresa de Mose, or as it's known today, Fort Mose.
36:32It was the first legally sanctioned free black community
36:35in what is now the United States.
36:38This was 125 years before the Emancipation Proclamation.
36:44That experience is not like anything we learn in our African American history textbooks,
36:50so they usually miss a whole century and a lot of different experiences
36:55if you think of it only as an enslaved plantation experience.
37:00It's very difficult to understand U.S. history without understanding Florida.
37:04I think it's when you start to integrate the narratives about the experiences, for example,
37:10of Africans in the United States,
37:12and you fail to look at the Africans in Florida,
37:14you get a very distorted picture of what's unfolding.
37:18The new fortified settlement had its own church
37:22and was comprised of skilled blacksmiths,
37:25carpenters, cattlemen, boatmen, and farmers.
37:31This was a rough frontier.
37:33It wasn't easy for anybody.
37:34So I don't mean to glamorize it by saying people were made free here.
37:40Sometimes the food supplies would be disrupted.
37:43Sometimes there were epidemic diseases that wipe out black and white alike,
37:47and Indians worse.
37:49It's not easy, but it's at least the possibility
37:52of everybody living freely in an urban setting,
37:56having property,
37:57not worrying that their children are going to be sold away from them.
38:00Those sorts of things are quite different.
38:03In the 1970s, Dr. Jane Landers was just a graduate student
38:07when she discovered documents in the archives of Spain
38:10describing the settlement.
38:13One day I almost jumped
38:15because I came across a census
38:17of the town of Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose.
38:22And it was household by household,
38:24exactly who lived in the households,
38:27whether they were already converted
38:29or on their way to full Catholicism.
38:32And I was able finally to get the full picture of the community.
38:36She found a treasure trove.
38:39Most historians have thought
38:42that African-American life was totally almost undocumented.
38:47They were really the people without history.
38:49She was able to find census data
38:52and information about where the people came from
38:57and what they did and their names and ages.
38:59And that was tremendously exciting for us.
39:02When I brought all this back
39:03and made some reports on it,
39:05then the archaeologists could start digging.
39:10Dr. Kathleen Deegan led the dig.
39:12We were then able to work with some of her information
39:16and do large-scale surveys
39:19and low-level aerial satellite imagery
39:24and verify that this place,
39:27we thought probably was Fort Mose, really was.
39:32Deegan's and Landers' findings
39:34gave a glimpse of what life was like
39:36in the first free black settlement
39:38in what is now the United States.
39:42They had fields outside of a fort.
39:45They grew crops.
39:47They had animals.
39:48They fished.
39:49They gathered cattle, wild cattle,
39:52roaming in the hinterlands.
39:54They rode horseback through the woods all the time.
39:57They were pilots and they were, you know, corsairs.
40:01I think that the United States is richer.
40:05Its history is richer
40:06because it demonstrated
40:08that African and European people
40:11could live together,
40:12could benefit from each other's skills.
40:17And that, as a beginning,
40:19I think we would have a very different picture
40:22of the United States.
40:24What I think is really important
40:26is it's a story of empowerment and of freedom.
40:29I think it's such a different narrative
40:32than saying everybody got off a slave ship bedraggled
40:35and sweated in a cotton field somewhere.
40:38This is centuries of other kinds of experience
40:41and I think it is important to show that too.
40:46The location of Fort Mose
40:48at the edge of town
40:49was an important defensive move.
40:51There was no better soldier to defend St. Augustine
40:54than a man who did not want to become enslaved again.
40:57They have every motive and impetus
40:59to fight hard against any British attacks.
41:03Well, we know that they're going to fight
41:05and they're going to fight to the death
41:09against their former oppressors.
41:12The militia at Fort Mose would soon be tested.
41:16A year after the town was established,
41:18the largest slave uprising
41:20in the British mainland colonies
41:21erupted in South Carolina.
41:23On the ground, it's personal, you know.
41:27People who thought they had slaves,
41:28they're running away to Florida.
41:30They're angry.
41:31They want to come get them.
41:33Finally, King George II
41:35ordered Georgia's troops
41:37to take St. Augustine
41:39and end the practice of harboring runaway slaves.
41:42They were adamant that this place had to fall,
41:47so they had to be wiped out.
41:49General James Oglethorpe had founded Georgia
41:52and had been its first governor.
41:54Although he was actually against slavery,
41:56he'd been anxious to take La Florida
41:58away from the Spanish for years.
42:00He's very close to St. Augustine
42:02and even moves down to put some forts
42:04near the mouth of the St. Johns River.
42:06So he actually comes into what is today,
42:08is today Florida.
42:10King George commanded Oglethorpe to, quote,
42:20Francisco Menendez had successfully led
42:22several attacks on the British before this,
42:25but when Governor Montiano heard
42:27that the English were coming
42:28to avenge the slave owners,
42:30he feared for the safety
42:31of the people at Fort Mose.
42:33So he orders them to abandon Mose
42:36and to come into St. Augustine
42:37for their protection,
42:38because he figures they'll either be all killed
42:40and were captured.
42:42And so they come into St. Augustine
42:45and the British just walk right
42:46into Fort Mose and take over.
42:49But 16 days later,
42:51the Spanish, the black militia,
42:53and the native allies returned.
42:55They caught the British by surprise
42:57at daybreak and easily retook the fort.
43:00The British called it
43:01the Battle of Bloody Mose.
43:05There's a quote by Shakespeare.
43:06Some are born great,
43:08some achieve greatness,
43:10and some have greatness thrust upon them.
43:13Francisco Menendez,
43:15greatness was thrust upon him.
43:17Here were Africans
43:18who were demonstrating
43:19that they had the skills
43:21to defend not only themselves,
43:23but the Spaniards.
43:25They were very brave people.
43:27And so that is a form of pride
43:30for African Americans.
43:33As many as 75 British soldiers
43:35were killed.
43:37One of the people
43:38that was killed
43:38at the Battle of Mose,
43:40Colonel Palmer,
43:41had attacked St. Augustine
43:42several times.
43:43He had, you know,
43:44had been reported
43:45for brutalities
43:46against Spaniards and blacks.
43:48And so it was,
43:49it was a great feat
43:51to capture him
43:52and kill him
43:53at the Battle of Mose.
43:56Ogilfarb and his men retreated.
44:00Some of the stories
44:01that came out after Mose
44:03and some of the things
44:04that the English claimed
44:06the black militia did
44:07to the people
44:09that they killed
44:10and captured
44:10had created this view
44:13among the English
44:14that, you know,
44:16they committed
44:16all kinds of atrocities.
44:18And they used this
44:20as powerful propaganda
44:22as well.
44:23This is what happens
44:24if these slaves escape,
44:26and this is what they do
44:27to people.
44:30Though they had won
44:31back their land,
44:32the village of Mose
44:34had been completely
44:35destroyed in the battle.
44:36The free blacks
44:38from Mose
44:38move into St. Augustine
44:40and they live in St. Augustine
44:41and they're property owners
44:42in St. Augustine
44:43and they become
44:44a critical part
44:46of the city's fabric.
44:48They stayed in St. Augustine
44:50for the next 12 years.
44:52Francisco Menendez
44:53went to St. Augustine
44:54with the others.
44:55But when the king of Spain
44:57didn't compensate him
44:58for his service,
44:59Menendez signed on
45:00to a Spanish ship
45:01that was attacking
45:02English settlements.
45:05He's eventually
45:06recaptured
45:07by the English
45:08and fully admits
45:10who he is.
45:11Menendez acknowledged
45:12that he had been
45:13the leader of the battle
45:14of Bloody Mose
45:16and his English captors
45:17became incensed.
45:21The tales of vicious savagery
45:23on the part of these
45:24former slaves
45:25had become legend
45:26in the British colonies.
45:28And they torture him
45:29brutally
45:31because they believe
45:32the whole
45:32Spanish Negro conspiracy
45:36and they also say
45:38there were people
45:39who were tortured
45:40at Mose
45:41in that battle
45:42and you're responsible.
45:45They gave him
45:46a beating
45:49with a whip
45:50and
45:53in between
45:54they brined him
45:55in a salt
45:56that tickled him.
45:58So he was placed
46:00in a solution
46:03that is
46:04effectively
46:05eats away
46:06at his skin.
46:07A high concentration
46:08of salt
46:09and vinegar
46:09and
46:10have been
46:12beyond
46:12enormously painful
46:14to experience that.
46:15They just
46:16decided to sell him
46:17as part of the loot
46:18that they took
46:18on the ship
46:19and they take him
46:20to the Bahamas
46:21and he's sold
46:22back into slavery.
46:25It is not known
46:26whether Spanish governors
46:27negotiated his freedom
46:29or he ran away
46:30but once again
46:32Francisco Menendez
46:33miraculously
46:34escaped slavery
46:36and returns
46:37to St. Augustine
46:38where again
46:39he becomes
46:40captain of the
46:41new Fort Mose.
46:43Menendez
46:44led his community
46:45of free slaves
46:46back to the site
46:47of the old
46:47Fort Mose
46:48and reestablished
46:50the town.
46:53By 1763
46:54St. Augustine
46:55had been
46:56the Spanish stronghold
46:57in what is now
46:58the United States
46:59for nearly 200 years.
47:03During that time
47:04the town
47:04had fended off
47:05every attempt
47:06by the British
47:07to conquer it
47:08but ironically
47:09it took just a single
47:10stroke of the pen
47:11for all of that
47:13to change.
47:15It happened
47:16at the end
47:17of the Seven Years' War
47:18when Spain
47:19was faced
47:20with the possibility
47:21of losing
47:21its valuable port
47:23in Havana.
47:24It chose instead
47:25to give up
47:27La Florida
47:27to the British.
47:32for the people
47:33of St. Augustine
47:34this was an
47:35unimaginable twist
47:36of fate.
47:37It meant
47:37certain death
47:38or enslavement
47:40for La Florida's
47:41free blacks
47:41and natives.
47:43There was only
47:44one choice.
47:46If the British
47:47are coming in here
47:48in 1763
47:49bringing their
47:50alternative view
47:51of everybody
47:52and of law
47:53and property
47:55the Spanish
47:56are leaving
47:57and they take
47:57everybody that wants
47:58to go with them.
47:59And so
48:00by February
48:01of 1764
48:033,019 people
48:06had left
48:07St. Augustine
48:08for Havana.
48:10Every single Spaniard
48:12with the exception
48:13of three families
48:14all of the Spaniards
48:16all of the free blacks
48:18all of the slaves
48:20that those Spaniards
48:20owned
48:21the entire city
48:22was depopulated.
48:24Everybody left.
48:26They set sail
48:27for other lands
48:28among them
48:30the free men and women
48:31of Fort Mose
48:31who headed to Cuba
48:33in hopes of keeping
48:35their freedom.
48:37Francisco Menendez
48:38leads the Exodus
48:39in 1763 to Cuba
48:41and he leads
48:42that community
48:43into exile.
48:45They had made
48:47a mark
48:48in history
48:49that demonstrated
48:51how blacks
48:52could contribute
48:53how they could
48:55be free
48:55how they were
48:56not in need
48:58of control
48:59like animals
49:00to be chained.
49:02They would have
49:02to start all over
49:03again in Cuba
49:05but they were free.
49:07As the Spanish
49:08ship sailed away
49:09from St. Augustine
49:10the first legally
49:12sanctioned
49:13free black
49:13community
49:14in the United States
49:15disappeared with them
49:17into the horizon.
49:44God bless you
49:45and you
49:46next time.
49:46He's gonna be
49:47a part of the
49:47battle
49:48Man.
50:12There must have
50:42Transcription by CastingWords
51:05CastingWords