Founded in April 1566 by Pedro Men\u00e9ndez de Avil\u00e9s on present-day Parris Island, Santa Elena was the northernmost settlement of the Spanish province of La Florida. At that time La Florida in theory extended from the Florida Keys north to Newfoundland. Spaniards had used the name \u201cSanta Elena\u201d for the area around Port Royal Sound south to Tybee Island, Georgia, since 1526, when Lucas V\u00e1zquez de Ayll\u00f3n\u2019s expedition explored these lands on August 18, the feast day of St. Helena, mother of the emperor Constantine. Fear that the French would claim the excellent harbor at Port Royal Sound led Men\u00e9ndez to the Parris Island site, where in 1562 Captain Jean Ribault had built the short-lived Charlesfort in the name of France\u2019s king. Challenges from the French and, later, the English shaped Santa Elena\u2019s history in important ways.<\/p>\n
Santa Elena was the capital of La Florida for much of its first ten years, during which time the growing settlement conducted political and religious outreach to the native population of a broad region. As part of these interactions, the Spaniards also sought to extract food and labor from the Indians for this growing colony, which chronically faced supply shortages. The company of Captain Juan Pardo arrived at Santa Elena in July 1566 to strengthen the Spanish presence there after a mutiny took most of the initial one hundred soldiers from the fort. Efforts to bring native peoples inland under Spanish rule began when Pardo led expeditions from Santa Elena northwest through present South Carolina into North Carolina and eastern Tennessee in 1566 and 1567. The Spaniards\u2019 goal of evangelizing the Indians gained more attention when Jesuit priests arrived in La Florida in 1566. They attempted to found missions in the Santa Elena area and, when those failed, one on the Chesapeake Bay. This effort resulted in the massacre of several priests and the withdrawal of the Jesuits from La Florida in 1572. Members of the Franciscan order arrived the next year and continued this work in the area of Santa Elena. The Spaniards\u2019 demands on the Indians grew as families arrived in the town, beginning with a 1569 expedition of nearly two hundred colonists. Pedro Men\u00e9ndez de Avil\u00e9s brought his own wife and household to Santa Elena in 1571. Conflict between the settlers and members of Men\u00e9ndez\u2019s extended family, who governed during his frequent absences from La Florida, soon tore this small community as each group sought to assert its privileges. War with the Orista, Guale, and Escamazu tribes eclipsed these concerns in 1576, as these peoples\u2013angered by years of Spanish demands and abuses\u2013united to drive the Spaniards from their lands.<\/p>\n
Indians destroyed Santa Elena in 1576, but one year later Spaniards rebuilt there by order of their king, who feared that the French would learn of their absence and occupy this site. The French had indeed returned to Port Royal Sound, where the ship Le Prince <\/em>wrecked crossing the bar. Many of the survivors perished when Indians attacked them in the belief that they were Spaniards. Those whom the Indians spared became valuable allies to the Orista and Guale chiefdoms. With the combined French and Indian threat that continued into the early 1580s, military concerns dominated the second period of Santa Elena\u2019s Spanish occupation. St. Augustine became the colony\u2019s capital under Pedro Men\u00e9ndez Marqu\u00e9s, whom Philip II appointed to replace his now-deceased uncle Pedro Men\u00e9ndez de Avil\u00e9s as governor. Spaniards rebuilt the town of Santa Elena, and families occupied it once more, but they lived under military rule with no municipal institutions through which to assert their rights. A guarded peace returned in early 1583, after Pedro Men\u00e9ndez Marqu\u00e9s launched a war of fire and blood against the Orista and Guale chiefdoms, which was followed by a severe drought. Santa Elena was once again a thriving community\u2013albeit one supported by the Spanish crown\u2013when Philip II ordered the town\u2019s abandonment following Sir Francis Drake\u2019s 1586 raid on St. Augustine. The English attack raised yet again the issue of the Florida settlements\u2019 vulnerability. In August 1587 Pedro Men\u00e9ndez Marqu\u00e9s arrived at Santa Elena and carried out the command to destroy the Spanish fort and town and relocate its inhabitants to St. Augustine. In 1979 the archaeologist Stanley South verified that Parris Island was Santa Elena\u2019s location, and since then he and others have conducted excavations there. The National Park Service designated the Charlesfort\u2013Santa Elena site a National Historic Landmark in January 2001.<\/p>\n Lyon, Eugene. Santa Elena: A Brief History of the Colony, 1566\u20131587. <\/em>Columbia: South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of South Carolina, 1984.<\/p>\n Paar, Karen L. \u201c\u2018To Settle Is to Conquer\u2019: Spaniards, Native Americans, and the Colonization of Santa Elena in Sixteenth-Century Florida.\u201d Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1999.<\/p>\n South, Stanley, Russell K. Skowronek, and Richard E. Johnson. Spanish Artifacts from Santa Elena. <\/em>Columbia: South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of South Carolina, 1988.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Founded in April 1566 by Pedro Men\u00e9ndez de Avil\u00e9s on present-day Parris Island, Santa Elena was the northernmost settlement of the Spanish province of La Florida. At that time La Florida in theory extended from the Florida Keys north to Newfoundland. Spaniards had used the name \u201cSanta Elena\u201d for the area around Port Royal Sound […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":-1,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","class_list":["post-14823","entry","type-entry","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","ecms-a-z","ecms-beaufort-county","ecms-encyclopedia","ecms-environment-and-geography","ecms-ethnicity","ecms-lowcountry","ecms-military","ecms-native-americans","ecms-pre-colonial-south-carolina-before-1670","ecms-s"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n