John E. Worth
© UWF Archaeology
Institute
One of the first and most important public structures that
would have been erected at the Luna settlement was the royal warehouse, which
would have been the secure storage location for all the colony’s food,
supplies, equipment, and munitions.
Referred to by various names in Luna expedition documentation including
“Royal House” (casa real), “King’s
House” (casa del rey), “Supply House”
(casa del bastimento), and “Royal
Treasury House” (casa de la real hacienda),
the structure would have been located on the main town plaza and very likely
nearest the path to the port landing, where supplies would have been
offloaded. Documentary accounts of the
Luna expedition (many transcribed and translated in Priestley 1928, below) make
it abundantly clear that during the first five weeks after Luna’s fleet entered
Pensacola Bay, the settlers must have first set about exploring the bay and
deciding on the best location to found their first town, after which they
doubtless cleared the undergrowth and laid out the initial grid of streets and
house lots, simultaneously unloading the equipment and supplies needed to begin
constructing housing to shelter the 1,500 people that just disembarked. Since the ships remained at anchor not far
offshore, and could therefore be used as temporary floating warehouses to store
anything not needed for the initial construction effort, the vast stores of
food not immediately needed on land were left on board (Dávila Padilla 1625:194),
and Luna’s colonists seem to have focused initially on getting their own
residences erected. Apparently, even
this task was largely incomplete when the hurricane of September 19-20, 1559
arrived from the east (see Worth 2009), devastating most of the fleet and the
food on board, and probably flattening many half-built structures on land.
The completion of a formal royal warehouse and other public
structures probably post-dated the hurricane, but given the dire straits in
which Luna’s settlers found themselves after the loss of most of their food
stores and ships, its construction must have been a priority in the aftermath
of the storm. Correspondence between
Tristán de Luna and the viceroy Luis de Velasco indicates that not only would
such a warehouse be necessary to keep all remaining food and any relief
supplies that would arrive over coming months under lock and key, but it would also
be used to keep the sails, rudders, and oars of all vessels while anchored at
port, minimizing the possibility that any of the settlers or stranded sailors could
seize a vessel to escape Florida. A huge
amount of subsequent legal documentation generated in the Luna settlement
itself (found in Legajo 1013, Justicia, Archivo General de Indias, Seville,
Spain, folios 96r-161v; see also Priestley 1928,v.1:198-v.2:137) confirms that
the warehouse was kept locked and could only be opened by the royal officials Alonso
Velázquez Rodríguez (treasurer) and Alonso Pérez (accountant) for the
distribution of rations or anything else housed there. Even Luna himself was barred from entry
during 1560 disputes with his officers over the issuance of rations for an
ill-advised journey inland to Coosa, and over his order to release the sails of
a vessel to be sent to New Spain. In
those instances, the royal officials sided with the Maese de Campo Jorge Cerón
in his refusal to allow Luna to make unilateral decisions without consulting
all his company captains and other officers.
So what would this royal warehouse have looked like, and
what might it have contained? Like all
the structures at Santa María de Ochuse, the warehouse would have been
constructed of wood poles and planks, and probably roofed with either thatch or
perhaps cypress bark, possibly even with the use of some clay daubing. It would likely have been a substantial
structure, likely among the largest in the settlement with the possible
exception of the church.
No inventory of the contents of the royal warehouse at the
Luna settlement has yet been found, and unfortunately much of the equipment and
armaments shipped from Mexico City’s own armory for the expedition was transported
in uninventoried crates according to the records we do possess. So apart from a
few brief mentions in the documents, to some extent we are left with only the
archaeological traces of lost or broken items at the site of the warehouse as
direct evidence of its general contents.
Fortunately, however, we do have a few comparative inventories from
royal warehouses in Florida’s later settlements at St. Augustine and Santa
Elena, and these can provide us a rough “snapshot” of the kinds of things
normally stored in such a structure (see also Lyon 1992). A pair of 1569 inventories from the warehouse
at Pedro Menéndez’s settlement at Santa Elena (found in Legajo 941, Contaduría,
Archivo General de Indias, Seville, Spain) illustrate a diverse range of items,
including not just foodstuffs but also clothing, tools and supplies, a wide
range of containers, and an array of weapons, armor, and even artillery
(presumably mounted at the fort, but still under inventory control of the
quartermaster).
Santa
Elena Warehouse, 1569
Pedro Menendez Marquez and Juan de la Bandera
combined inventories (modernized quantities)
|
Food
35 casks of wheat flour with 775 lbs. of flour in each
one
18 casks of flour from New Spain, each one with 8 iron
hoops, full and in good condition.
3 casks of rotten flour
12,450 lbs. of corn
3,453 liters of wine in 11 casks
25 liters of olive oil in 4 olive jars
1.5 liters of honey in an olive jar
734 lbs. of salt at the amount of 140 lbs. per fanega, amounting to 5.25 fanegas
Clothing
18 pairs of stockings
7 felt hats with their thin cords
25 blankets, 20 all white and 5 striped
32 complete sword belts, and another 2 hangers without
belts
40 pairs of sandals
19 pairs of shoes
Tools and Supplies
2 steelyard scales, one weighing 378 lbs. with its
weight, and the other of 200 lbs. with its weight
2 balances of iron with copper pans
2 iron weights, one of 1 lb. and the other of ½ lb.
1 iron pick
5 shovels of iron
3 mattocks
9 pole hooks
1 small grindstone for grinding
2 pairs of shackles
1 set of prison stocks, old, broken, and without a lock
2 iron padlocks with keys and without screws
300 lbs. of scantling nails
175 lbs. of siding nails
150 lbs. of flooring nails
151 lbs. of bolts
2 large cauldrons for whaling
17 harpoons for whaling
10 lancets
3 spoons
1 basket with 20 whaling knives
Containers
1 large copper cauldron weighing 34 lbs.
1 large copper pot weighing 50 lbs.
1 copper pitcher with 7.5 liter capacity
2 wine bags with their nozzles
392 wooden bowls, small and large
90 wooden plates
8 ceramic olive jars of ½ arroba [6.28 liters]
88 casks that were received with wine and flour and
empty.
41 broken casks
360 iron barrel hoops
5 burlap sacks
3 crates without locks or keys
7 barrels in which the nails [above] were received
Weapons and Armor
17 complete crossbows
17 goats-foot levers
49 dozen crossbow bolts
17 cords, on each crossbow its own
7 crossbow stocks
17 quivers.
8 pikes with their tips
8 extra pike tips
117 bucklers of dragon-tree wood
65 escaupiles
(cotton padded armor)
Artillery
1 bronze cannon weighing 5,369 lbs.
1 bronze cannon weighing 5,250 lbs.
1 bronze half-saker
1 bronze half-saker weighing 385 lbs.
1 bronze half-saker weighing 1,414 lbs.
1 bronze half-culverin weighing __96 lbs.
1 bronze half-culverin weighing 3,140 lbs.
1 bronze saker weighing 2,021 lbs.
1 bronze saker weighing 1,200 lbs.
1 bronze piece weighing up to 900 lbs.
37 barrels of gunpowder, and in them are 3,515 lbs. of
cannon powder
175 lbs. of arquebus powder in 2 barrels
309 artillery balls
9 copper loaders for loading the said [artillery] pieces
_ ramrods
1 hoist for the service of the artillery
1 large iron hammer for the said [artillery]
8 pulleys of wood for the service of the artillery
36 loafs of lead that weighed 4,435 lbs.
3 molds for making shot for versos [small artillery]
|
To these comparative inventories from 16th-century east
Florida we may also add a 1559 list of munitions, tools, and trade goods
requested from Spain by Viceroy Luis de Velasco for the use of Luna’s Florida
expedition (found in Legajo 283, Contaduría, Archivo General de Indias,
Seville, Spain). Even though these goods
may never have actually been offloaded at the Luna settlement (the request was
not fulfilled in Spain until early 1560, and the shipment did not arrive in New
Spain until mid-year for dispatch on one of the relief expeditions), they
nonetheless provide an illustration of some of the kinds of items that may have
been included in uninventoried crates loaded on the first fleet, that eventually
ended up stored in the royal warehouse at Santa María de Ochuse.
Munitions, Tools,
and Trade Goods Requested by the Viceroy of New Spain for the Florida Colony,
1559
|
Tools and Supplies
50 [pieces of] canvas
50 barrels of tar
10,000 lbs. of pitch
600 lbs. of bolts, each 3/8 of a yard
long
600 lbs. of sharp half-foot nails, of
the longest that are found
6,000 lbs. of round bolts
1,000 lbs. of siding nails
1,000 lbs. of flooring nails
1,000 lbs. of half-size flooring
nails
50,000 tacks
100,000 pump tacks
2 pairs of bellows, some large and
others small
10,000 lbs. of sheet and bar iron
2,000 lbs. of steel
12 levers
12 iron mattocks and as many shovels
4 grapnel anchors for the shallops,
each one of 400 lbs.
2 grapnels for the skiffs
2 seine nets for fishing, each one 60
fathoms long, with their accessories
Trade Goods
2 boxes filled with glass beads of
all types
some little brass basins and red
buttons and knives from Flanders and scissors and cheap mirrors and hawk’s
bells, all of which should cost up to 200 ducats
400 yards of simple taffetas, yellow
and sunflower and red and blue and carmine
1 dozen pieces of linen from Calcutta
1 piece of blue cloth
1 yellow piece
2 red pieces
1 green piece
1 purple piece
Weapons and Armor
150 inexpensive arquebuses
50 breastplates
50 Biscayan corselets
100 morion helmets
50 round shields
1,000 javelins
200 light javelins
200 half-pikes
100 pikes
4,000 lbs. of gunpowder
1,000 lbs. of sulfer
12 goat’s foot levers
Artillery
2 bronze artillery pieces of 2,000
lbs., each one with 200 iron shot
2 bronze artillery pieces of 1,500
lbs. with 300 iron shot
4 bronze falconets with chambers of up to 800 or
1000 lbs., each one with 600 shot
|
Indeed, the 2015 discovery by UWF archaeologists of a
handful of glass trade beads along with hundreds of sherds of Spanish olive
jars and other ceramics, plus an array of wrought iron nails and diverse other materials,
and several small subsurface pits that might have been used for storage, would
seem to provide support for the idea that this particular location may well have
been the site of the settlement’s warehouse.
 |
| Trade beads from the Luna settlement site (left: Nueva Cadiz bead; right: Faceted 7-Layer Chevron beads) |
Further testing and analysis of artifact assemblages across
the Luna settlement site may eventually allow us to understand whether
residential areas and other specialized structures and activity areas had
different relative proportions of specific categories of material culture. In
addition, we will search for physical traces of the public and private
structures erected there more than 450 years ago, such as preserved posts or more
ephemeral traces of architectural features.
While this type of archaeological analysis and interpretation is by no
means an easy or quick affair, we look forward to making inroads into
understanding the internal configuration of the Luna settlement, and getting
better glimpses of the lives of its 16th-century inhabitants.
Selected References
Dávila Padilla, Augustín
1625 Historia de la Fundación y Discurso de la
Provincia de Santiago de México de la Orden de Predicadores, por las vidas de
sus varones insignes y casos Notables de Nueva España (pp. 189-229 for the
Luna section). Online Here
Lyon, Eugene
1992 Richer Than We
Thought: The Material Culture of Sixteenth-Century St. Augustine. El
Escribano 29:1-117.
Priestly, Herbert Ingram
1928 The Luna Papers: Documents Relating to the Expedition of Don Tristán de Luna y Arellano for the Conquest of La Florida in 1559-1561. DeLand: Florida State Historical Society. Volume I online Volume II online
1928 The Luna Papers: Documents Relating to the Expedition of Don Tristán de Luna y Arellano for the Conquest of La Florida in 1559-1561. DeLand: Florida State Historical Society. Volume I online Volume II online
Worth, John E.
2009 Documenting
Tristán de Luna’s Fleet, and the Storm that Destroyed It. The
Florida Anthropologist 62(3-4): 83-92.
