The Struggle for the Georgia Coast: An Eighteenth-Century Spanish Retrospective on Guale and Mocama. With an Introduction by David Hurst Thomas. American Museum of Natural History, Anthropological Papers, Number 75.

Athens, GA: American Museum of Natural History, 1995. Octavo, hardcover (slick, illustrated boards), 222 pages, 7 figures, 8 tables. Fine (As New). From lower cover: When General James Edward Ogelthorpe formally established the colony of Georgia in 1733, it marked the beginning of a series of battles between England and Spain. By this time, few traces remained of the Spanish missions and Indian villages tat had flourished there during the early 17th century; they had been almost completely abandoned in the face of Indian raids and pirate attacks nearly fifty years before Ogelthorpe’s arrival. In 1739, in response to the treaty violation that Ogelthorpe’s new colony represented, the King of Spain commanded the Governor of Florida, Don Manuel de Montiano, to search the archives of St. Augustine for documentary proof of Spain’s prior legal claim to the territory then known as Georgia. As open warfare threatened to break out along the Georgia/Florida border, the official governmental archive of Florida and the archive of the Franciscan convent in St. Augustine were scoured for the required proof. By August, an important record of the existence and ultimate demise of the Spanish mission provinces of Guale and Mocama during the late 17th century had been assembled. Dispatched to Spain, it was filed and ultimately forgotten as the military contest for Georgia effectively negated Spanish historical claims. In 1991 John Worth rediscovered Montiano’s package in the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, Spain, and translated it into English. Although these translations form the backbone of this volume, Worth also provides an extraordinary introductory essay recounting Spain’s gradual withdrawal from the Georgia coast and the southward retreat of the Guale and Mocama Indians. The documents themselves offer a rare glimpse into the government and politics of Spanish Florida. They include transcriptions of official gubernatorial titles, commissions, and orders to individual soldiers and sailors in Florida, a set of original letters from the Franciscan friars of Guale, an original Franciscan register with notes signed by each friar in every mission in Florida, a detailed census of Christian and pagan Indians in the Guale and Mocama mission provinces, an original visitation record of Guale and Mocama, a criminal case against the provinces, an original visitation record of Guale and Mocama, a criminal case against the provincial lieutenant of Guale, and many other documents relative to the Spanish period on the Georgia coast. With the publication of this volume, one of the least known chapters in early Georgia history is finally examined in detail. Late 17-century Guale and Mocama are revealed as the staging ground for Ogelthorpe’s Georgia, marking the end of an intriguing and important era in coastal history.