Florida

D

Local Government

Florida is divided into 67 counties, most of which are administered by a board of five elected commissioners. The county commissioners are responsible for matters at the county level, including local elections, taxes, public welfare, and education. Other elected county officials include a county judge, sheriff, tax assessor, tax collector, superintendent of public instruction, and surveyor.

Most of the larger cities in Florida are governed under the council and city manager form of municipal government. Notable exceptions are Jacksonville, Orlando, and Tampa, which have the mayor and council form of municipal government. Some cities, such as Jacksonville and Miami, have municipal governments that are wholly or partially consolidated with the governments of the counties in which they are located.

E

National Representation

Florida elects two U.S. senators and 25 members of the House of Representatives. The state casts 27 electoral votes in presidential elections.

VIII

History

A

Early Inhabitants

There were an estimated 350,000 Native Americans in what is now Florida when Europeans first arrived early in the 16th century. They belonged to three major nations, the Calusa along the southwestern coast, the Timucua in the northern half of the peninsula, and the Apalachee where the peninsula joins the panhandle. Peoples dominated by the Calusa lived along the southeastern coast.

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All were settled agricultural peoples, as skilled with the hoe as they were with canoes or with bows and arrows. They lived in villages, where they cultivated corn, beans, and other crops. Noted warriors, they fiercely resisted early attempts to bring them under submission, but coexisted peacefully with the Spaniards for most of the first 198 years of Spanish occupation.

The populations of these Native Americans were drastically reduced by diseases introduced by the European explorers. They had no resistance to pathogens such as measles, smallpox, and typhoid fever that Europeans normally survived. The Native Americans also lost ground because of slaving raids by English forces from South Carolina and Georgia. By mid-18th century these nations no longer existed. The modern Native Americans of Florida are the Seminole, originally Creek from the Georgia-Alabama border, who entered Florida in the period 1716 to 1767. Today they have five reservations in the state. They farm, hunt, and fish, run tourist-related businesses, and operate a large bingo hall near Miami.

B

The 16th Century

B

1

Spanish Discovery and Exploration

The Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León landed on the Atlantic Coast of what is now Florida, probably at or near Melbourne Beach, early in April 1513. He is generally credited with being the first European to set foot in Florida, although he may have been preceded by slavers from the Spanish-held island of La Isla Española (Hispaniola) in the Caribbean Sea. In 1521 Ponce de León returned with two shiploads of colonists to found a settlement on the Gulf Coast, probably in the vicinity of Charlotte Harbor, but he was driven off, mortally wounded, by a Native American attack. A dubious legend of later years attributed his explorations in Florida to a quest for a magic fountain of youth.

Later explorations gave Spain a claim to the vast, uncharted area north and west of the peninsula. For many years the name La Florida, given by Ponce de León to the peninsula, was applied by Spain to the entire Atlantic coastline of North America as far north as Newfoundland.

In 1528 an expedition of 300 men led by Pánfilo de Narváez landed on the Gulf coast, probably at Tampa Bay. The party marched northward through forests and swamps to the area north of Apalachee Bay. Having found no gold there, and beset by continual Native American attacks, they set out for Mexico in crude wooden barges. Most of the members of the expedition were drowned when a sudden storm swamped the barges near Texas. In 1539 the quest for gold brought explorer Hernando de Soto and a force of more than 600 Spanish soldiers to the Tampa Bay area. After exploring the land to the north and northwest, they ventured westward, and, in 1541, discovered the Mississippi River.

B

2

French and Spanish Rivalry

In 1562 Spanish claims to Florida were challenged by Jean Ribault, a French naval captain, who discovered the mouth of the Saint Johns River and thought it a likely site for a French settlement. Two years later René Goulaine de Laudonnière, one of Ribault’s officers, established Fort Caroline there. Spain, a Roman Catholic country, objected to the French settlement for religious as well as political reasons because the French colonists were Huguenots, or Protestants.

In 1565 Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, the newly appointed Spanish governor of La Florida, commanded a colonizing expedition that landed 64 km (40 mi) south of Fort Caroline and established San Agustín (now Saint Augustine), the first permanent European settlement in what is now the United States. Menéndez led a successful overland attack on Fort Caroline, while a French fleet, which was attempting to attack Saint Augustine, was destroyed by a violent storm. The Spaniards massacred most of the French at Fort Caroline and executed all but a few survivors of the shipwrecked fleet. Three years later, in revenge for the Fort Caroline massacre, a French expedition destroyed the Spanish garrison there. However, no further French settlements were made on the peninsula.

After the founding of Saint Augustine, Menéndez established a number of coastal outposts and a second major settlement, Santa Elena, at Parris Island in present-day South Carolina. Santa Elena was abandoned in 1586.

C

The 17th and 18th Centuries

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