#73 Mission San Carlos (100 Great Things about Jackson County, Florida)

View of Lake Seminole from the Mission San Carlos site

A long-forgotten Spanish mission that stood on a hilltop near Sneads is #73 on our list of 100 Great Things about Jackson County, Florida.

Please click here to see the entire list as it is unveiled.

The first attempt by Spanish missionaries to convert the Chacato Indians of Jackson County to Christianity ended in disaster. Less than one year after two missions and a part-time church were established west of the Chipola River, the Chacato rose up against the priests and drove them from the area in 1675.

Restored fort at Mission San Luis in Tallahassee

Spanish authorities responded by sending soldiers and Apalachee militia from Fort San Luis at present-day Tallahassee. The towns and fields of the Chacato were burned and the people forced to flee into the woods. Many eventually joined the Alabama/Coushatta (Coosada) towns of the Upper Creeks near Montgomery, Alabama.

The Chacato who had converted to the Catholic faith, however, remained behind and relocated from western Jackson County to the high hill overlooking the confluence of the Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers near present-day Sneads. Spanish documents first refer to their presence at this site in 1680.

Jim Woodruff Dam from Mission San Carlos site

Because the group of Christian Indians came primarily from the destroyed village at Mission San Carlos (in Washington County), they named their new village San Carlos as well. The chiefs appealed to the Spanish for a new friar to lead them and in 1680 the name of Mission San Carlos appeared in official documents.

For the next 16 years, Mission San Carlos or Senor San Carlos de Chacatos was the most outlying Spanish settlement and Royal outpost in Florida. This gave it critical importance as the launching point for numerous exploration and diplomatic parties that entered western Florida and Alabama during the years 1680-1696. Among these was the 1686 diplomatic mission to the Upper Creeks led by Marcos Delgado and the 1693 crossing of the Florida Panhandle by the exploration party of Governor Don Laureano de Torres y Ayala.

Restored Spanish church at Mission San Luis in Tallahassee

Life at Mission San Carlos for the American Indians who lived there consisted of farming, fishing and hunting, as well as Catholic Mass in the chapel. The mission likely had a smaller version of the restored church that can be seen today at Mission San Luis in Tallahassee. The priest lived next door in a convento or residence.

The arrival of the English in South Carolina, however, spelled the doom of Mission San Carlos and its peaceful inhabitants. The English wanted slaves to do heavy labor in the development of their American colonies and arranged to purchase captives taken by the Creek Indians for that purpose. With slave trading now a profitable enterprise, the Creeks set out on a series of raids against the mission settlements in Florida, rounding up men, women and children to be taken to Carolina and sold into slavery.

The church at Mission San Carlos was smaller but
probably constructed in a similar manner to this one
at Mission San Luis in Tallahassee.

It is a little known fact that the first large group of slaves in the American colonies were peaceful Christian Indians from Florida. Between 1693 and 1706, the Creek slave raids wiped out the Timucua, Apalachee, Chacato and other tribes that had lived in Florida for hundreds of years. The captives wound up living in slavery as far north as New England.

The Creeks first attacked Mission San Carlos in 1693. The church and homes were looted and captives taken. The raid did not destroy the settlement, but severely damaged it. The mission's days, however, were numbered.

Spanish friars served at Mission San Carlos in 1680-1696.

Creek warriors returned to Mission San Carlos three years later in 1696. They destroyed the Chacato village, desecrated the church, looted the settlement and made off with a large number of captives to be sold as slaves to the English. The remaining inhabitants scattered into the woods and swamps.

Mission San Carlos was never rebuilt after this 1696 raid. A village named San Carlos was established near modern Tallahassee a short time later and populated by Chacato refugees from the Jackson County settlement. That community, in turn, was destroyed by raiders in 1702-1704. Some of the surviving Chacato fled to St. Augustine. Others made their way west to Mobile Bay where they soon settled near the French, who also practiced their Catholic faith. Their descendants live in Louisiana and Texas today.

Jackson County Spanish Heritage Trail
(Click to Enlarge)

A major historic site, Mission San Carlos is now Stop #3 on the Jackson County Spanish Heritage Trail. A new 150-mile driving tour of important Spanish colonial sites in the county, the trail begins and ends at the historic Russ House & Visitor Center on West Lafayette Street in Marianna. Free guidebooks are available there.

An interpretive kiosk for the mission site has been purchased by the Jackson County Tourist Development Council and was erected this morning (6/4/2014) by the Jackson County Parks Department with assistance from the Town of Sneads and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Learn more about the Jackson County Spanish Heritage Trail by visiting http://visitjacksoncountyfla.com/heritage/spanish-heritage-trail/

Lake Seminole History, Part Three

This aerial view shows the western end of the Jim Woodruff Dam at the point it intersects with the commanding bluff overlooking Lake Seminole in Jackson County, Florida.

The paved parking area visible in the left center of the photograph is the West Bank Overlook, a park area near Sneads that provides a beautiful view of the main lake.

The overlook and surrounding hilltop was the site of Senor San Carlos de Chacatos, a Spanish mission established here in around 1680 to serve a village of Christian Chacato Indians.

The Native Americans who inhabited the village on this site had originally lived west of the Chipola River, but relocated here between 1675 and 1680 after the two missions originally established to serve them had been abandoned following an uprising by part of the Chacato nation.

Spanish missionaries returned to this site and established a church that functioned for sixteen years as the most outlying European settlement in Florida. The presence of the mission establishment here was mentioned in the 1686 journal of Marcos Delgado and again in the documents relating to the 1693 expedition of Don Laureano de Torres y Ayala. The latter official led the first known overland crossing of Northwest Florida from the Apalachicola River to Pensacola Bay by European explorers.

The mission at this site was attacked and destroyed by Alibamo (Alabama) and Apalachicoli (Lower Creek) warriors in 1696. Many of the inhabitants were carried away as slaves and sold to the English in South Carolina. The church was destroyed and the implements used in the religious services there were looted. The survivors of the raid fled to a new site near present-day Tallahassee.

Florida Park Service archaeologist Ripley P. Bullen relocated the site of Mission San Carlos in 1948 while conducting studies in the area as the Jim Woodruff Dam was being built. No structural traces of the mission were found, but he did locate broken fragments of Spanish ceramics and other items consistent with the presence of a 17th century settlement at the site.

There are no markers at the site, but it is open to the public. Searching for artifacts is strictly prohibited on U.S. Government property.

Our series will continue.

Namesake of Jackson County's first church

This is a painting of Saint Nicholas of Tolentino, the Italian saint for whom the early Jackson County Spanish mission of San Nicolas de Tolentino was anmed.

The mission was established on June 22, 1674, by a party of Spanish missionaries and soldiers who had entered the area to minister to the Chacato Indians then living between the Chipola River and Holmes Creek. The journal of Fray Rodrigo de la Barreda, a Franciscan missionary, indicates that Mission San Nicolas stood in a Chacato village located at the mouth of a large cave. Of the more than 200 known caves in Jackson County, the only one that closely matches the description left by Fray Barreda is Gerrard's Cave located about two and one-half miles northwest of Marianna.

Spanish documents indicate that a church was built at San Nicolas in June of 1674 and was dedicated on June 22, 1674, with a special mass. This was the first recorded Christian religious ceremony in Jackson County history. An infant nephew of the Chacato chief of the village was baptized on the same day, the first recorded baptism in the history of the county.

Mission San Nicolas lasted only about one year before the church was destroyed and the resident missionary driven away in a Chacato uprising. It was visited several times in later years by Spanish explorers, but each time was described as "abandoned."

Jackson County's own St. Nicholas

It is a little known fact that the first European settlement in Jackson County was named for St. Nicholas or, as we remember him these days, Santa Claus.

The Spanish mission of San Nicolas was founded in 1674 by Franciscan missionaries who made their way west from the mission center of San Luis in present-day Tallahassee. Located at a large village of Chatot or Chacato Indians (sometimes confused with the Choctaw, even though they never lived in the area), San Nicolas consisted of a rough church, a home for the priest Fray Rodrigo de la Barreda and a storage building.

Mission San Nicolas was only occupied for about one year before a rebellion among the Chatot forced a wounded Fray Rodrigo to flee for his life. Although it is not believed that the church was ever again occupied, the site of San Nicolas remained an important landmark and camping spot for Spanish explorers over the next few decades.

The exact site of the mission has never been determined. Based on a journal kept my Fray Rodrigo, it is evident that the church stood at the mouth of a large cave somewhere west of the Chipola River. He mentions passing Calistoble (Blue) Spring and a severe swamp (the Natural Bridge of the Chipola) before arriving at the site. The cave at the mission site was described as extremely large and with a stream of water flowing inside.

The two most likely possibilities for the mission site are the now largely collapsed cave at Waddell's Mill Pond and the well-known Arch Cave about three miles northwest of Marianna. No evidence of the mission's existence has ever been found at these sites, but they are the only known caves in the area matching the priest's descriptions. Both are on private property and the owners do an admirable job of protecting the caves from damage.