Three Voyages

THREE VOYAGES

René Laudonnière

Translated with an introduction and notes by

Charles E. Bennett

The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa

Copyright © 2001

The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

Originally published by The University Presses of

Florida in 1975.

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The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Science-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

CIP information is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-0-8173-1121-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-0-8173-8347-3 (electronic)

Gratefully Dedicated to the Memory of the late Rembert W. Patrick

Acknowledgments

THIS BOOK would not have been produced without the generous and able assistance of a number of persons. First, Luis Arana, who is a historian for the National Park Service, was of tremendous help, particularly in the preparation of the introduction. Audrey Broward, librarian for Jacksonville University, was of great help in this work, as she has been in all of my historical efforts. Salomé Mandel of Paris contributed substantially in the research and discovered the death certificate of Laudonnière and his marriage contract. Finally, I express my gratitude to my father, the late Walter J. Bennett, who stimulated my interest in translating documents of historical interest to our country and assisted me in the first translating work I did in this field.

CHARLES E. BENNETT

Contents

Foreword to Paperback Edition

Introduction

Three Voyages

Preface

The First Voyage

The Second Voyage

The Third Voyage

Appendices

A—Newly Discovered Portrait of Dominique de Gourgues

B—Laudonnière s Shipping Contract of 1572 by Jeannette Thurber Connor

C—Mutual Gift Agreement between René Laudonnière and His Wife

D—Plant life in Sixteenth-Century Florida by Tom V. Wilder

Notes

Notes to Introduction

Notes to Three Voyages

Notes to Appendix B

Index

Illustrations

Nicolas Durand, Chevalier de Villegagnon

Recreation among the Timucuan Indians

Gaspard de Coligny, Admiral of Chátillon

A Wolf

An Unidentified French Leader

Charles IX

Catherine de Medici

René Laudonnière with Coat of Arms

Chief Satouriona

Map of French Explorations in America

Timucuan Owl Totem

Chief Outina

Acorns

Fort Caroline

Dominique de Gourgues

Laudonnière's Signature

Map of the Three Voyages

Map of Mutinous Voyages from Fort Caroline

Foreword to Paperback Edition

Jerald T. Milanich

FOUR AND A HALF CENTURIES AGO in 1562, a French expedition sailed the Atlantic coast of the southeastern United States, searching for a suitable location for a settlement. Under the leadership of Jean Ribault, the French founded Charlesfort on Parris Island, South Carolina. Poorly supplied, the small colony failed soon after its leader returned to France.

A second French attempt to colonize La Florida was led by René Goulaine de Laudonnière, who had been with Ribault. In 1564, Laudonnière and his group of French Huguenots chose land on the St. Johns River near its mouth, a location he had scouted with Ribault two years earlier. The French christened their new settlement Fort Caroline. Over the next year and a half colonists reconnoitered the north half of the St. Johns River and even traveled west across north Florida. These journeys, as well as efforts to trade for needed food, brought the French into contact with a number of Timucua Indian groups, including some visited by Hernando de Soto 25 years earlier.

The French presence was a direct challenge to the Spanish monarchy whose own ships had been sailing the Southeast coast from as early as 1513 and whose conquistadors had claimed the land for Spain, naming it La Florida. A Spanish expedition was dispatched in the late summer 1565 to oust the French from La Florida. As luck would have it, the Spanish ships, captained by Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, arrived at the mouth of the St. Johns River on the heels of several French ships under Ribault who had come to resupply Fort Caroline. Over the next weeks, Menéndez would defeat the French, capturing Fort Caroline and founding his own settlement at St. Augustine.

Laudonnière was one of the few colonists who was able to elude Menéndez and escape to France. There he wrote an account—L'histoire Notable de la Floride—describing firsthand what had taken place on the three French voyages: the 1562 voyage when he accompanied Ribault; his own 1564-1565 expedition; and the 1565 voyage by Ribault, the subsequent defeat at the hands of the Spaniards, and his return to France.

Three Voyages, a translation of Laudonnière s narrative, provides a fascinating window into the past, an eyewitness account of a little known period in our country's history. The translation owes its existence to a remarkable person, Congressman Charles E. Bennett, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives for many decades while a resident of Jacksonville. Intrigued by Laudonnière and Fort Caroline, Congressman Bennett used his legislative skills to establish Fort Caroline National Memorial and, more recently, the Timucuan Ecological and Historical Preserve. His efforts to bring the history of the French in La Florida to the public included writing a companion volume to this one (Laudonnière & Fort Caroline, also reprinted by the University of Alabama Press) prior to preparing this translation of L'histoire. His proficiency as an author and scholar is at least equal to his legislative expertise.

No other individual has contributed more to our understanding of France's early efforts to conquer the southeastern United States. Thanks to Charles Bennett the story of René Laudonnière and Fort Caroline will forever be told.

Introduction

AN EXPEDITION sent by the French to the New World in 1562 explored a portion of the Florida coast and established the short-lived Charlesfort settlement in present-day South Carolina. This voyage was followed in 1564 by the enterprise that resulted in the founding of Fort Caroline, on the shore of Florida's St. Johns River. Then in 1565 a third French expedition came across the Ocean Sea to reinforce the tenuous foothold on the St. Johns.

A man was present on each of these three occasions. He came as the second-in-command on the Charlesfort voyage, then commanded the force that established Fort Caroline, and finally welcomed the additional men sent to strengthen that colony. That man was René Laudonnière, and his destiny also called for his witnessing the tragic dénouement of the early French effort to secure a permanent place under the New World sun.

Upon his return to Europe, Laudonnière wrote an account of his participation in the aborted expeditions, which he presumably entitled Three Voyages. A new translation of this French narrative, placed in context with contemporary events and with other French, English, and Spanish narratives about these voyages, is presented in this book. The late distinguished historian Rembert Wallace Patrick encouraged the endeavor; and Luis Arana, able historian for the National Park Service, made it possible by his substantial and scholarly guidance.

The French expedition of 1562 was led by Jean Ribault.¹ Born about 1520, Ribault held reputation as the ablest French navigator of his time. In the 1540s, Henry VIII and Edward VI of England had employed him as a consultant in navigational matters,² and in 1559 he had briefly represented French interests in Scotland. Gaspard de Coligny, admiral of France, had chosen him for the command.³

The expedition struck Florida's coast on April 30, 1562. Coasting northward, Ribault discovered the St. Johns River next day in the morning and named it the River of May. The following day he erected a stone column on a hill near the river's mouth. Engraved with the king's arms, it was meant to show French possession. Ribault then sailed north along the coast, passing nine rivers or inlets and naming most of them after rivers in France, until he reached today's Port Royal Sound.⁴

To hold the sound, Ribault built Charlesfort, which he named in honor of Charles IX of France. He also erected there another column to indicate French possession of the country. Promising to return within six months, Ribault sailed for France in June. But within short order, the fort's storeroom burned down, food became scarce, dissension broke out in the small garrison, and Charlesfort was doomed. At last the soldiers built a boat and returned to Europe.⁵

Since the beginning of the 1500s, the French had been active in exploring and attempting to settle in the New World. Possibly since 1503 Breton fishermen regularly worked off the present-day Labrador coast, which they had called the Land of the Bretons and regarded as an appurtenance of France's Brittany. Then, Francis I commissioned Giovanni Verrazano to go to the New World, and the latter reached North America's coast near 34° latitude in 1524, explored it northward to 50°, and named it New France. Moreover, France financed Jacques Carder's visit to the Newfoundland coast in 1534, and the discovery and exploration of the St. Lawrence River and building of a fort on the estuary of St. Charles River in 1535-36. In the latter trip, Cartier held two ceremonies of taking possession, in one of which he raised a cross and the arms of France over the fort.⁶

Attempts to settle the discovered land had followed. Cartier established Charlesbourg Royal, four miles up the St. Lawrence River, in 1541. The following year, as Cartier left for France to report on the apparent wealth of the country, the Lord of Roberval took charge of the settlement. Upon his appointment as lieutenant general of Canada, an unknown country, wags in the French court had dubbed Roberval king of Canada and his wife queen of Nowhere. The term nowhere was prophetic, for Roberval abandoned the St. Lawrence River settlement in 1543, after changing its name to France-Roy, exploring the river as Cartier had done, and failing to discover the expected material wealth of the land.⁷

The French had tried to settle next on land already held by Portugal. In 1555, Nicolas Durand, Lord of Villegagnon, built Fort Coligny in Brazil, but was wiped out five years later.⁸ The Charlesfort voyage ensued.

French colonial expansion in the New World to 1562 aimed at restoring religious unity at home by engaging Protestants in breaking down the monopoly held by Spain and Portugal by virtue of Papal grant in 1493. This monopoly was a throwback to medieval canonical law and therefore had no chance of being respected in a Europe about to break out into the Renaissance and the Reformation. As early as 1510, John Maior, an English philosopher at the University of Paris, observed that the Pope had no authority to distribute the earth's surface to anyone, since the kingdom of Jesus was not of this world. Individual French fishermen were not deterred by threats of excommunication from asserting their right to travel the ocean freely. But at the same time, despite his belief that God did not create the New World for Spain and Portugal alone, Francis I had cautiously assured himself that Verrazano would not trespass upon forbidden dominions.⁹

The French believed that voyages to parts of the world not occupied by Spain did not violate the guarantee of free navigation by both Spanish and Frenchmen contained in the Treaty of Nice (1538). Indeed, the 1541 Roberval commission forbade the occupation of any country belonging to Spain or Portugal. But in the Treaty of Cateau Cambrésis (1559) the French failed to incorporate an article differentiating between regions actually occupied by the Spanish and those only claimed by them, but not settled. Instead, Spain and France agreed that the treaty would not be binding west of the Papal line of demarcation. This brought a state of continuous Franco-Spanish warfare in America, while the countries remained formally at peace in Europe.¹⁰

By touching at the St. Johns River and Port Royal Sound in 1562, the French trespassed upon land claimed by Spain by right of discovery, exploration, and unsuccessful attempts at settlement. Juan Ponce de León had discovered Florida in 1513, but met failure and death eight years later in his effort to colonize in the southwest of the peninsula. Likewise, Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón lost his bid to settle in today's South Carolina in 1526. But Pánfilo de Narváez (1528) and Hernando de Soto (1539) enlarged the known area of Florida through their explorations. Father Luis Cáncer de Barbastro's exclusively ecclesiastical enterprise (1549) to establish a colony on the west coast died on the sands. And Tristán de Luna's promising beginnings at Pensacola and Angel de Villafañe's search for a site in South Carolina in 1559-61 ended in withdrawal. Consequently, in 1561 Spain considered abandoning her efforts in the areas north of Mexico, a possibility quickly discarded when she found out that France had launched her 1562 expedition.¹¹

Back in France from Florida, Ribault immediately fought in support of the Protestant rebels of Dieppe against the Catholic government of France. When the town fell, he fled with his English allies to England. There, he planned with Queen Elizabeth for the succour of the Frenchmen at Charlesfort. Becoming restive and uncertain as to English motives in the projected return voyage to the New World, Ribault tried to flee the country. But he was apprehended and imprisoned in the Tower of London.¹²

It was probably in jail that Ribault found time to write an account of his 1562 voyage. Although the original manuscript of this work has never been found, an English translation appeared in May 1563 under the title The Whole and True Discouerye of Terra Florida.¹³ Ribault's prose provided such sparkling and beautiful descriptions that the book went into a second printing.¹⁴ A facsimile reprint of the 1563 edition, with an account of the same in modern English, and a biography of Ribault by Jeannette Thurber Connor, was published in 1927 by the Florida State Historical Society.¹⁵ More recently, to commemorate the quadricentennial of Florida's founding, Connor's volume was reprinted, with an excellent historiography by David L. Dowd, in the Floridiana Facsimile and Reprint Series.¹⁶

France sent René Laudonnière in 1564 to establish Fort Caroline on the banks of the St. Johns River, in present-day Jacksonville. Thus began the permanent settlement by Europeans within the present limits of the United States. Laudonnière's place and date of birth have never been clearly established. But it is believed that he was born in 1529 in the province of Poitou, in northern France, in an area called Laudonnière. In his youth he became a citizen of the port of Dieppe. He was a Protestant and a protégé, perhaps a relative, of Admiral Gaspard de Coligny. The admiral, despite the honorary character of his title, was one of the most able leaders of all time, the acknowledged head of the Huguenots (French Protestants) and the official advisor of the royal house of France. In 1561 Laudonnière, a resident of Dieppe and in command of the ship Le Chien, was captured by the Spanish off Catalonia. He was carrying war materials to the natives of Algiers, an act which then violated international and religious law.¹⁷

Life at French Fort Caroline is described in two contemporary accounts. One is the report on the voyage of Englishman John Hawkins to Africa, the West Indies, and Florida in 1564-65, written by John Sparke, Jr. During this trip Hawkins visited the French settlement from July 15 to July 28, 1565.¹⁸ The other is a letter written by a soldier at Fort Caroline to his father in Rouen. The letter contained a sketch of the fort, the earliest printed view of a European settlement in America north of Mexico, and perhaps the first eyewitness account by a European of what is now the United States.¹⁹ An English translation of the letter and the sketch of the fort have been republished recently.²⁰

The third French expedition to Florida in 1565 resulted from Coligny's decision to reinforce Fort Caroline and transfer command there to Jean Ribault. Ribault arrived in the vicinity of Fort Caroline on August 28, but on the same day Spain's Pedro Menéndez de Avilés also reached Florida with his flotilla for the purpose of ejecting the French from the land. A devout Catholic, Menéndez had felt not only patriotic accomplishment but also religious fulfillment when he received his orders. In Florida he established St. Augustine, which became the oldest permanent settlement in what is now the United States.²¹

Apprised of the Spaniard's arrival and of his purpose, Ribault left Laudonnière at Fort Caroline and attempted to mount an attack against the Spanish ships. A hurricane wrecked the French fleet south of Matanzas Inlet. While the survivors marched northward, Menéndez cleverly marched north from his base of operations at St. Augustine and captured Fort Caroline, which he garrisoned and renamed San Mateo. Then he marched south to Matanzas Inlet, where he slew most of the Frenchmen, who in two groups came there to ask his mercy. Among those killed was Ribault, and saved were Catholics and persons with skills needed for the newly established community at St. Augustine.²²

The accounts of the French debacle in Florida began appearing in what nowadays has been called instant history. Among the Frenchmen who escaped from Fort Caroline on September 20 were Laudonnière, Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, and an elderly carpenter by the name of Nicolas Le Challeux, the latter of whom had come over in the 1565 voyage.²³ All three wrote accounts of their experiences.

The Le Challeux account was the first to be published. Full of inspiring and religious fervor, it came out in 1566 and that same year went through four different French editions²⁴ and the first English translation.²⁵ The next French edition, printed thirteen years later, was part of a history of the New World,²⁶ as were also the first Latin edition, published in 1578,²⁷ and the two German editions²⁸ that appeared in the rest of the continent.

The 1566 English translation of Le Challeux's account is less awkward for the modern reader than the 1587 English translation of Laudonnière's narrative. Even in such ancient English, the carpenter's account comes through with vitality and charm. Yet some words have changed meaning through the years, and we are indebted to Stefan Lorant for a modernized English version.²⁹

Interrupting the chronology in the appearance of the accounts, dealing with the loss of Fort Caroline, let us dispose of the Le Moyne narrative before coming to that of Laudonnière. Le Moyne had been one of the 1564 settlers of Fort Caroline, and after his flight from there he settled in England. He gathered the events which he saw and knew about from his presence at Fort Caroline and from information he had learned from others, principally from Laudonnière. Le Moyne wrote in more detail than the other two chroniclers, and drew very instructive and ably done illustrations. His narrative, the drawings, and a map were turned over to Theodore de Bry by Le Moyne's widow. De Bry had the manuscript translated into Latin, the drawings and map made into engravings, and the whole published in 1591.³⁰ This first appearance was shortly followed the same year by a German edition.³¹

The first translation into English of the Le Moyne narrative, done by Fred B. Perkins, was not published until 1875.³² The Perkins translation and reproductions of all the De Bry engravings, as colored by an unknown artist of the sixteenth century, have again been made available recently.³³ A new English translation from the Latin and all forty-two of Le Moyne's drawings and maps from De Bry had appeared a score of years earlier.³⁴ Curiously enough, Le Moyne's original manuscript, which he may have written in French or English, has never been discovered.

After the fall of Fort Caroline, René Laudonnière succeeded in returning to Europe. He reached England late in 1565 and stayed there until he left for France to report personally to King Charles IX in March 1566. During this sojourn Laudonnière wrote, as is apparent from the text, the delightful account of his adventures in Florida in 1562, 1564, and 1565. The narrative is primarily a carefully written, official communication apparently for the eyes only of Charles or perhaps Admiral Coligny.

Only Laudonnière was present on all three voyages, and thus he rightly became their chief historian. None of the other three major