1566 - Spanish Florida
In the mid-16th century, Spain and France competed for control of North America. The Spanish government believed it had exclusive rights to the continent by the blessing of the Catholic Church, and France disagreed. To protect its Atlantic shipping route from English and French privateers, Spain colonized points along the southeastern coast from the Caribbean to the Carolinas. One of these outposts was Santa Elena, the first colonial capital of Spanish Florida.
The town of Santa Elena on what is now Parris Island, South Carolina was the sixteenth-century capital of Spanish Florida. It was founded in 1566 by Pedro Menendez de Aviles (who had previously served the Spanish government as a privateer) to prevent the French from expanding their colonies into the area claimed by Spain as La Florida. From 1562 to 1563, the French had occupied the area in a settlement called Charlesfort, but lacking supplies, abandoned the area three years before Santa Elena was established. Several Spanish forts protected Santa Elena, including Fort San Salvador, Fort San Felipe (built directly on top of Charlesfort), and Fort San Marcos.
From Santa Elena, the Spanish expanded inland, building forts into the Appalachian Mountains and working to “pacify” the Native Americans through trade, violence, and conversion to Catholicism. Native Americans burned these forts, and Spain did not rebuild them. The Native Americans around Santa Elena also objected to the Spanish presence. In 1576, Native Americans from the nearby towns of Orista and Escamacu burned Santa Elena, which the Spanish rebuilt.
For 21 years following colonization in 1566, Santa Elena’s Spanish leadership struggled to keep the coastal village working. The soil on the island could not support the farming needed to feed everyone, so there were food shortages. The Spanish were not on friendly terms with the native American Indians in the region – the Orista and Guale tribes – so the colonial farmers could not expand their farms beyond the fort’s protection. To reduce the number of people they had to feed, Menéndez’s lieutenant and kinsman, Esteban de las Alas, sent away all but 46 soldiers. This left the town vulnerable to attacks by the French and Native Americans. When ships from Spain arrived in 1571, carrying supplies and more colonists, they also brought a deadly sickness. At around the same time, a fire at San Felipe (I) destroyed the fort. Menéndez’s son-in-law, Don Diego de Velasco, oversaw the construction of a new fort, also named San Felipe (II). The purpose of this new fort was to protect and support the Spanish population during a raid.
In 1580, some 2,000 Native Americans again attacked the settlement, but were repelled. In 1587, the Spanish left Santa Elena, relocating to their settlement at St. Augustine, Florida to focus on colonizing other areas.
In response to the English threat, Spain decided to shrink the scope of its Florida colony and consolidate its colonial towns to strengthen them. Menéndez Márquez returned to Santa Elena in 1587 and ordered his men to destroy the town infrastructure and the second Fort San Marcos (II). The Parris Island colonists moved to St. Augustine and the Spanish abandoned Santa Elena for good. For two centuries after the Spanish left, Scottish and then English colonists occupied Port Royal Sound. The coastal region was a trading ground for American Indians and Europeans before plantations developed in the coastal low country in the early 1700s. South Carolina became part of the United States at the end of the 18th century, and the plantations thrived until the American Civil War.
In 1915, the United States Marine Corps created the Marine Corps Recruit Depot on Parris Island. Archeology in and around Santa Elena goes back to the mid-1800s, with excavators disagreeing whether the town was French or Spanish. In 1957, National Park Service historian Albert Manucy studied the artifacts and identified them as Spanish colonial. Excavations reveal that the town was home to as many as 60 houses and upwards of 450 settlers and soldiers.
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