Menéndez de Avilés, Pedro (1519–1574)

Pedro Menéndez de Avilés (b. 1519; d. 17 September 1574), Spanish naval officer. Menéndez, a native of Avilés, Asturias, was appointed captain-general of the Indies fleet by Philip II in 1560. In a 1565 patent, he was named adelantado, governor, and captain-general of Florida; he agreed to settle and pacify the area at his own expense. In return, Menéndez received tax exemptions, a large land grant, and, in addition to those listed above, the title of marqués. At that time, Florida extended from Newfoundland to the Florida Keys; it was enlarged in 1573 to include the Gulf coast. When Philip II learned of the French establishment at Fort Caroline, he furnished royal support for the Menéndez expedition.

Menéndez sailed to Florida and defeated the French, killing many of them. He founded Saint Augustine on 8 September 1565, and established garrisons at San Mateo (the renamed Fort Caroline) and elsewhere in the Florida peninsula. In 1566, Menéndez established the city of Santa Elena on Parris Island, in present-day South Carolina; he left garrisons there and in Guale (present-day Georgia). Menéndez planned a line of fort-missions from Santa Elena to present-day Mexico, and sent Captain Juan Pardo on an expedition that reached as far as the Appalachian Mountains. First Jesuit and then Franciscan missionaries went to Florida to evangelize the Native Americans. Despite this and the coming of more than 200 settlers, Menéndez's Florida enterprise failed, largely due to difficulties between the Native Americans and the Spaniards. After the death of Menéndez in Santander, Spain, and the abandonment of Santa Elena, only Saint Augustine remained—the oldest permanent European settlement in the present United States.

See alsoExplorers and Exploration: Spanish America .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bartolomé Barrientos, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, Founder of Florida, translated by Anthony Kerrigan (1965).

Woodbury Lowery, The Spanish Settlements Within the Present Limits of the United States, 2 vols. (1901–1905).

Eugene Lyon, The Enterprise of Florida (1976).

Eugenio Ruidíaz y Caravía, La Florida: Su conquista y colonización por Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, 2 vols. (1893).

Félix Zubillaga, La Florida: La misión jesuítica (1566–1572) (1941).

Additional Bibliography

Lyon, Eugene. Pedro Menéndez de Avilés. New York: Garland Publishing, 1995.

Mercado, Juan Carlos, editor. Menéndez de Avilés y la Florida: Crónicas de sus expediciones. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2006.

                                           Eugene Lyon