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Spanish Florida (Spanish: La Florida) was the first major European land-claim and attempted settlement-area in northern America during the European Age of Discovery. La Florida formed part of the Captaincy General of Cuba in the Viceroyalty of New Spain , and the Spanish Empire during Spanish colonization of the Americas .
In 1562, a group of Huguenots led by Jean Ribault arrived in territory claimed by Spain and called La Florida. [13] They explored the mouth of the St. Johns River in Florida, calling it la Rivière de Mai (the River May). The French sailed northward and established a settlement called Charlesfort at Port Royal Sound in present-day South Carolina.
The borders of East and West Florida varied. In 1783, when Spain acquired West Florida and re-acquired East Florida from Great Britain through the Peace of Paris (1783), the eastern British boundary of West Florida was the Apalachicola River, but Spain in 1785 moved it eastward to the Suwannee River.
One of the colonists who conquered Puerto Rico, Juan Ponce de León, is commonly given credit for being the first European to sight Florida in 1513. [45] [a] For political reasons, Spain would sometimes claim that La Florida [b] was all of the North American continent.
Florida was colonized in 1565 by Pedro Menéndez de Avilés when he founded St. Augustine and then promptly destroyed Fort Caroline in French Florida and massacred its several hundred Huguenot inhabitants after they surrendered. Saint Augustine quickly became a strategic defensive base for the Spanish ships full of gold and silver being sent to ...
The initial Pardo expedition left in December 1566 with 125 men. They created the first Spanish and European settlement in the interior of what became North Carolina. Pardo led his men to Joara, a large chiefdom of the Mississippian culture north of present-day Morganton. Pardo renamed the town as Cuenca, after his home town, claiming it for Spain.
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The state received its name from that conquistador, who called the peninsula La Pascua Florida in recognition of the verdant landscape and because it was the Easter season, which the Spaniards called Pascua Florida (Festival of Flowers). [2] [3] [4] This area was the first mainland realm of the United States to be settled by Europeans, starting ...