by John E. Worth
© UWF Archaeology and Anthropology
As has been explored extensively on this blog and elsewhere, the Luna expedition was sent in 1559 to found a Spanish colony on the lower Atlantic coast of South Carolina, in an effort to block (correctly) rumored French intentions to do the same. Planning to reach the Atlantic coast by road from the northern Gulf coast, Luna was directed to establish a first Spanish colony at the deep-water bay known to them at that time as the Bay of Ochuse (Pensacola Bay), originally discovered by Francisco Maldonado during the Hernando de Soto expedition (1539-1543), and revisited multiple times during that expedition. Many years had passed since the Spanish first frequented Ochuse and its environs, so a reconnaissance expedition was sent in the fall of 1558 to set the stage for the colonial fleet the next year.
Guido de Lavazaris was sent in charge of a reconnaissance expedition that departed San Juan de Ulua (at modern Veracruz) on September 3, 1558 and returned the following December 14. At that time, the route to Pensacola Bay was apparently only known in reference to a well-known shoal off the northern coast of the Yucatan peninsula on the southern side of the Gulf, called Los Alacranes (the Scorpions), and so Lavazaris took a meandering route across the Gulf that would permit him to sail due north and arrive at or near Ochuse. Initially landing along the coast of Mississippi, apparently pushed west of his intended landfall at the Bay of Ochuse by strong winds from the east, Lavazaris explored eastward until entering the large bay now known as Mobile Bay. Finding it to be “the largest and most spatious in all that district,” he explored it extensively, deciding to name it “Baia Felipina” (Bahía Filipina) in honor of King Phillip II of Spain. However, when he returned to the sea and attempted to continue eastward toward his original goal at Ochuse, “contrary winds” deterred his progress on two separate attempts, after which he returned to San Juan to give his report.
Despite the passage of a poorly-documented second reconnaissance expedition that reported having passed all along the northern Gulf coast while traveling from Havana to San Juan de Ulua, it would ultimately fall to Tristán de Luna himself to choose a name for the bay he would settle on, which Lavazaris had failed to reach. Following the same meandering route as Lavazaris, Luna’s fleet initially made landfall somewhat east of Pensacola Bay (probably around modern Navarre, Florida). After taking on water and firewood following their lengthy Gulf crossing, the fleet departed on July 17 westward in order to locate the fabled Bay of Ochuse, with a shallow-draft fragata leading the way along the coastline. Completely missing the mouth of Pensacola Bay, however, the fleet ultimately found themselves at Mobile Bay, which they recognized from Lavazaris’ descriptions as Bahía Filipina. The fleet waited while the fragata returned eastward and finally discovered the Bay of Ochuse, some 20 leagues away. Since 100 of the original 240 horses loaded onto the ships had died during the voyage, during this time Luna ordered the remaining horses ashore at Mobile Bay, sending the corresponding cavalry units to travel overland to Pensacola.
Ultimately, subsequent documentation confirms that the two bays—Mobile Bay and Pensacola Bay—carried the name Phillipina in honor of King Phillip, but while Mobile Bay was referred to simply as Bahía Phillipina, Pensacola Bay had the added name of Santa María Phillipina in honor of the Feast of the Anunciation, on the vigil of which Luna’s fleet made first entry. Perhaps for this very reason, the more common name used for Pensacola in subsequent documentation for the expedition was “Santa María de Ochuse,” even simply shortened to its original indigenous name of “Ochuse.” Moreover, even the reference to “Bahía” or Bay was commonly interchanged with “Puerto” or Port, in deference to the newly-established (if ultimately short-lived) port town located on the Emanuel Point terrace overlooking the heart of the bay.
As a postscript, at some point during the Luna expedition, a new name—Polonza—was also given to the port settlement, and seems subsequently to have been used interchangeably with the earlier name “Ochuse.” The 1561 testimony of a soldier who had just arrived on the island of Hispaniola after spending two years in Florida makes explicit note that the fleet had originally arrived safely “at the port of Ochuz, which is now called Polonça.” The origins of this name are presently undocumented.
Parenthetically, it should be pointed out that the modern names of these two bays have no direct connection to these earliest Spanish colonial names. Both Pensacola and Mobile Bays were later renamed for the Native American groups that were living there during the late 17th century (Panzacola and Mobila, the latter of which had actually relocated south from their original homeland well to the north). But Pensacola Bay did indeed retain the name Santa María when it was re-explored in 1693, though with the new suffix “de Galve” in honor of the viceroy of New Spain at the time. As explicitly noted in the account by Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, “it seemed just to me not to deprive it of such an august name.” Only after the Spanish colonial era did the name Santa María ultimately disappear from usage.
References
Dávila
Padilla, Agustín
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 (2nd ed.). https://books.google.com/books?id=4Fz1SgfwgdkC&pg=PP2#v=onepage&q&f=false
Lavazaris, Guido de
1559 Testimony regarding the Florida expedition, February 1, 1559. AGI Patronato 19, Ramo 8, ff. 1v-3v. In Priestley (2010, v.2:330-337).
Luna y Arellano, Tristán de
1559 Letter to the Spanish Crown, September 24, 1559. AGI Patronato 179, No. 5, Ramo 1. In Priestley (2010, v.2:242-247).
1559 Letter to the Spanish Crown, [May 1, 1559]. AGI Mexico 97, ff. 37r-38v. In Priestley (2010, v.2:210-213).
Montalván, Alonso de
1561 Testimony, August 11, 1561. AGI Patronato 19, Ramo 10, ff. 1r-4r. In Priestley (2010, v.2:282-301).
Sigüenza y Góngora, Carlos de
1693 Descripcion que de la vaya de Sancta Maria de Galve, (antes Pansacola) de la Movila, y Rio de la Palisada en la costa setemptrional del Seno Mex[ican]o. Transcript in Historia general de la Florida, by Pedro Fernández del Pulgar, Ms. 2999, Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid, Spain.
Velasco, Luís
de
1559 Letter to the Spanish Crown, September 24,
1559. AGI Patronato 19, Ramo 9. Faulty transcription in AGI Mexico 280, in
Priestley (2010, v.2:268-277).
Selected Basic Sources on the Luna Expedition
Priestly, Herbert Ingram
1928 Historical Introduction. In The Luna Papers: Documents Relating to the Expedition of Don Tristán de Luna y Arellano for the Conquest of La Florida in 1559-1561, xix-lxviii. DeLand: Florida State Historical Society. http://palmm.digital.flvc.org/islandora/object/uwf:46938#page/spine/mode/2up
Hudson, Charles, Marvin T. Smith, Chester B. DePratter, and Emilia Kelley
1989 The Tristán de Luna Expedition, 1559-1561. Southeastern Archaeology 8(1): 31-45. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40712896
Worth, John E.
2009 Documenting Tristán de Luna’s Fleet, and the Storm that Destroyed It. The Florida Anthropologist 62(3-4):83-92. https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00027829/00207/9j
2018 Florida’s Forgotten Colony: Historical Background. In Florida’s Lost Galleon: The Emanuel Point Shipwreck, ed. by Roger C. Smith, pp. 34-67. University Press of Florida, Gainesville.
Worth, John E., Elizabeth D. Benchley, Janet R. Lloyd, and Jennifer Melcher
2020 The Discovery and Exploration of Tristán de Luna’s 1559-1561 Settlement on Pensacola Bay. Historical Archaeology 54(2): 472-501. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41636-020-00240-w
