Description
Calusas, timucuanos, guales, semínolas, creeks, were some of the tribes of Florida at the time when Pedro Menéndez de Avilés established there the settlement of San Agustín, the oldest city in the United States. Strong and ferocious warriors, who lived in almost permanent state of war and mutilated their enemies or made them slaves, offered a strong resistance to the Spanish who stepped on their territory. However, these, in exchange for many lives, hardships and suffering, managed to settle on their shores. That was the task in which the Asturian sailor insisted on starting in 1565, the beginning of the effective Spanish presence in the territory of the current United States, which lasted more than 250 years, until, in 1821, with the delivery in San Agustín of the castle of San Marcos to the representative of the American Government, the last Spanish province in those lands was lost. But Pedro Menéndez de Avilés was more than conqueror and colonizer. Several times captain general of the ships that protected the fleets that made the Carrera de Indias back from America to the Peninsula and scourged the pirates and corsairs that infested the waters of the Bay of Biscay. His fame and experience earned him the title of Lord of the Ocean Sea.
