THE EARLIEST JESUIT MISSIONARY EXPLORERS IN FLORIDA, MARYLAND AND MAINE.

BY REV. JOSEPH M. WOODS, S.J.

THE missionary spirit has always been active in the Catholic Church; at no time was it more so than when this great continent of ours was added to the discoveries of the dauntless explorers of Europe.

The Franciscans, the secular clergy, the Dominicans, Recollets, Sulpicians and the Jesuits have all left after them the memories and the monuments of their heroic deeds. We may say truly that every portion of this vast territory of the United States bears the consecrated marks of their hallowed toil. They were the pioneers in civilizing the natives and bringing them to the knowledge of the one true God, and His one true religion. North, South, East and West, turn where we will, the vision of the cross-that undoubted sign of Catholicity-erected by their hands, looms up before us.

It was not enough in the designs of Providence that a Catholic, Columbus, under the auspices of a Catholic government, should make this continent known to the world. More still, Catholic missionaries were to be the first to sacrifice their all to dedicate it to God. Indeed, this soil is our own, and nowhere should a Catholic be more at home than in these United States.

It is clear that we cannot attempt in the space at our disposal to recount, even in a hurried manner, the journeys, the explorations, the discoveries, the trials, the martyrdom of all these pioneers and their successors, though a bird's-eye view, or a rapid, clear-cut sketch of it all, would be of fascinating interest, and serve for our strengthening and our glory and our comfort.

We shall confine ourselves to the members of the Society of Jesus. Nor may we follow even all of these or many of them in

their missionary excursions. That would lead us too far afield. We limit, therefore, this paper to a sketch of the earliest Jesuit missionary explorations in Florida, Maryland and Maine. We begin with the mission of Florida.

This land, Pascua Florida, embracing in the old Spanish geographies the whole of North America from Labrador to Mexico, had been the field of missionary efforts from the days when Ponce de Leon established on the peninsula his first posts in 1521. Up to the year 1565 no Jesuits had accompanied any of the expeditions. In this year, March 20, Pedro Menendez de Aviles, a hardy mariner and a rough one, of gruesome memory, whom Parkman calls a "pious cut-throat," yet no more of a cut-throat than the English and French adventurers of the times, to whom he meted out the same measure of cruelty which they had meted out to the Spaniards, received a patent from Philip II of Spain, by the provisions of which he was required to sail for Florida, conquer it, settle it and strive for the conversion of the natives through missionaries whom he was to take with him.

His armament, consisting of twenty vessels, was not ready until June. On the 29th of this month, in 1565, Menendez sailed from the port of Cadiz. While this fleet was in preparation St. Francis Borgia, then General of the Jesuits, was requested by King Philip to send twenty-four members of his order to found a mission in Florida. As it was impossible to grant so many, the Saint selected three of his religious for the purpose two priests and a lay brother-Father Peter Martinez, John Rogel and Brother Francis Villareal, men of tried and eminent virtue.2 These true, zealous and picked men were the first of the many Jesuits to set out for the New World, and the first of their order to put foot on what is to-day the territory of the United States of America.

3

They did not sail from Cadiz, but from the port of San Lucar, in a Flemish ship. This voyage was pleasant enough. No catastrophe overtook them until within a few leagues of the

'Pioneers of France in the New World, p. 161.

Sacchini, Hist. Soc. Jesu, part III, p. 86, Vol. III.

'Shea, Catholic Church in Colonial Days, Vol. I, p. 142. (Sacchini, 1. c., p. 86.)

land they had come to evangelize. Under stress of heavy weather, the vessel carrying the missionaries was separated from her consorts. It was a genuine misfortune. Ignorant of their position, not knowing the direction in which the Spanish settlements lay, their only plan was to send a boat ashore to inquire of the natives. It was difficult to get sailors to volunteer for the hazardous venture. To reassure those who were willing to run the risk, Father Martinez offered to accompany them. Hardly had they reached the shore in safety when their ship by a sudden storm was driven out to sea. The condition of the little party was critical. As they had left the ship intending to return to it soon, they were without compass or food, or articles wherewith they might obtain food by barter from the Indians.

Desperate, they struggled on partly by land, partly by water, receiving little or no aid from the natives, who suspected them, and seemed more ready to make a meal of them than give them

one.

Their place of landing, as we now know, was not far from the mouth of the St. John river, where the Spaniards had a settlement, called San Mateo. While endeavoring to reach this port, and when almost within sight of it, though the party did not know it, they were attacked by the savages. Several were slain. Father Martinez was captured and put to death on the Island Tacatacura, now called Cumberland, a few miles from the mouth of the St. John. He was the first Jesuit to crimson the soil of the United States with a martyr's blood.1

Father Rogel and Brother Villareal were, in a sense, more fortunate than their martyred companions. They reached the main body of the expedition in safety, and at the request of Menendez retired to Havana to study the language of the Indians of Southern Florida. How long they remained in Havana we cannot say. In March, 1567, we find Father Rogel at Charlotte Harbor, on the western shore of the peninsula, where a Spanish port had been established and a Catholic chapel erected. Here he acted as chaplain to the soldiers and missionary to the Indians until 1568, when Menendez, who had gone to Spain for supplies 'Sacchini, 1. c., pp. 87-88; Shea, I. c., Vol. I, pp. 142-143.

and reinforcements, returned, bringing with him a new corps of Jesuits, priests and brothers. The priests were Father John Baptist Segura, who had been appointed Vice-Provincial of Florida by St. Francis Borgia, and Fathers Gonzalo del Alamo and Antonio Sedeño; the brothers were John Carrera, Peter Linares and Dominic Baez.1

2

With this new accession of reinforcements new missions were begun. Father Segura and others, after remaining a short time at St. Augustine, took up their work among the tribes of the Province of Carlos, Tacoboga and Tequesta, i. e., in the region about Cape Cannaveral and Appalache Bay. Father Sedeño, with Brother Baez, established himself at Guale, now Amelia Island, with its city of Fernandina, on the very boundary between the present States of Florida and Georgia, and hence he may be rightly regarded as the pioneer priest of Georgia. Father Rogel fared still farther north, and made the central point of his labors the post of St. Helena, on Port Royal harbor, South Carolina. The foundation of Catholicity in South Carolina dates from this sojourn, and the year is 1568.

Meagre as are the details of these earliest Jesuit explorations in Florida, of this we are sure: they dotted the State, as well as a portion of Georgia and South Carolina, with the cross of the missionary. They traversed the whole stretch of the eastern coast from Port Royal to the southern extremity of the peninsula, and in all likelihood explored the western coast on the Gulf of Mexico. We of to-day, who so easily and so luxuriously annihilate space in ocean grey-hounds, on flying expresses, or in red-devil automobiles, can scarcely appreciate, even with the aid of the imagination, the herculean toils of these simple-minded and apostolic men.

Yet, in spite of their labor and their prayers, the savages corresponded so little to their exertions that the Fathers wrote 'These are the names given by Sacchini in his Historia Societatis Jesu, Vol. III, p. 200.

Shea, in The Catholic Church in Colonial Days, vol. 1, p. 143, says ten were sent, and then gives eleven names. He puts Carrera among the priests, and gives three additional brothers: John Baptist Mendez, Gabriel Solis, Peter Ruiz, John Salcedo, Christopher Redondo.

"History of the Catholic Missions, Shea, pp. 57-58.

discouragingly to St. Francis Borgia and proposed abandoning, for more hopeful harvests, so stony a vineyard. Answering them, the General urged them to persevere, and to encourage them sent out to Florida in 1569, as additional missionaries, Father de Quiros and several brothers.

The arrival of this new band brings us to the events which connect the mission of Florida with that of Maryland. Here are some facts we must bear in mind.

Menendez had long cherished the idea of occupying Chesapeake bay. "His plan, as subsequently exposed at length in his letter to Philip II of Spain, was first to plant a garrison at Port Royal, and next to fortify strongly on Chesapeake bay. He believed that this bay was an arm of the sea, running northward and eastward, and communicating with the Gulf of St. Lawrence, thus making New England with adjacent districts an island. His proposed fort on the Chesapeake, securing access by this imaginary passage to the seas of New Foundland, would enable the Spaniards to command the fisheries on which the French and English had encroached, to the great prejudice of Spanish rights. Doubtless, too, these inland waters gave access to the South Sea, and their occupation was necessary to prevent the French from penetrating thither.""

Menendez, therefore, resolved now to secure possession of the bay. Sole master of the whole Atlantic coast by his needlessly cruel victory over the French Huguenot adventurers, he put his long-cherished project into execution.

On August 5, 1570, the expedition sailed from St. Helena, on Port Royal harbor, South Carolina. The mission colony consisted of Fathers Segura and de Quiros, the lay brothers Gabriel Gomez, Sancho Zevallos and Peter de Linares. With them were some Indian boys, probably from the Jesuit school at Havana, who may be regarded as novices or catechists. To these must be added Don Louis de Velasco, an Indian, who, because of the prominent part he played in the fate of the colony, requires a special notice for himself.

Here is what we gather from the chronicles of the times about 'Pioneers of France in the New World, Parkman, p. 92.