The Historical Society of Avon ParkAVON PARK, FL · EST. 1886
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1717 and 1728 Florida mission censuses record no interior communities south of Lake Kissimmee

A question in the colonial ethnohistory of the Florida interior is whether eighteenth-century Spanish mission censuses record any surviving or reestablished Indigenous missions or settlements south of Lake Kissimmee, along the Kissimmee River, or on the Lake Wales Ridge surrounding Avon Park.[worth-missions][hann-2003] The presence of a settlement designated “San Joseph de Jororo” in the 1717 Spanish mission census has sometimes prompted questions as to whether Franciscan friars reentered the south-central interior following the collapse of the 1690s missions.[worth-1717][worth-missions]

Direct examination of primary archival transcriptions by Dr. John E. Worth and historical analysis by Dr. John H. Hann demonstrates that neither the 1717 census nor the 1728 census records any mission or Indigenous community south of Lake Kissimmee:[worth-1717][worth-1728][hann-1989]

  1. The “San Joseph de Jororo” recorded in the April 1717 census was not an interior mission in south-central Florida, but a refugee hamlet of 33 individuals situated within the immediate defensive perimeter of St. Augustine.[worth-1717][hann-1989]
  2. By the 1728 census, neither Jororo nor Mayaca appears on Spanish mission rosters, the refugee community having relocated away from the presidio, suffered severe mortality during a 1727 epidemic, and dispersed southward back toward the Upper St. Johns River.[worth-1728][hann-1989]
  3. Eighteenth-century Spanish administrative records document a complete absence of European posts, missions, and settled colonial presence in modern Highlands County.[worth-1717][worth-1728][hann-2003]

The 1717 census and the refugee hamlet of San Joseph de Jororo

Between 1702 and 1706, English military expeditions from South Carolina under Governor James Moore and native allies destroyed the inland Spanish mission provinces of Apalachee, Timucua, and Guale.[hann-1989] Surviving Indigenous populations withdrew into refugee camps clustered near the Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine.[hann-1989] The outbreak of the Yamasee War in 1715 triggered a subsequent wave of Indigenous migration into Spanish Florida, as former English allies sought refuge from Carolinian retaliation.[hann-1989]

In April 1717, Captain of Armored Cavalry Joseph Primo de Rivera conducted a systematic door-to-door census of the ten refugee settlements girdling St. Augustine under orders from Governor Pedro de Olivera y Fullana.[worth-1717][hann-1989] On 10 April 1717, Rivera inspected the fourth settlement on his itinerary, recorded in the Archivo General de Indias (Santo Domingo 843, folios 585r–596r) as “4.o lugar de San Joseph de Jororo del ydioma Maiaca”:[worth-1717][hann-1989]

  • Leadership: Cacique Don Juan Romo (Christian) and four Christian leading men (principales).[worth-1717][hann-1989]
  • Population breakdown: Eleven warriors (two Christian, nine non-Christian), thirteen women (three Christian, ten non-Christian), and four children (two boys, two girls, one of whom was Christian).[worth-1717][hann-1989]
  • Total headcount: 33 persons.[worth-1717][hann-1989]
  • Ecclesiastical status: No resident doctrinal friar was assigned to the community.[worth-1717][hann-1989]

Rivera explicitly identified the community’s language as Mayaca, reflecting the close linguistic and cultural relationship between the Jororo hunter-gatherers of the Kissimmee basin and the Mayaca of the Upper St. Johns River.[worth-1717][hann-1989][hann-2003] All ten communities enumerated by Rivera lay within three to five leagues of St. Augustine or within range of presidio garrisons, establishing that this community was physically located on the northeast coast, not in the Kissimmee Valley.[worth-1717][hann-1989]

Dispersal and total absence in the 1728 census

Between 1718 and 1723, parish registers in St. Augustine recorded the baptism of 26 adults and four children from San Joseph de Jororo.[hann-1989] However, the community did not maintain a stable sedentary existence beside the presidio.[hann-1989] By 1726, the Jororo had moved approximately 24 miles from St. Augustine to resume a mobile foraging lifestyle alongside Pojoy and Amacapira groups.[hann-1989] In the December 1726 official visitation of the missions near St. Augustine by Governor Antonio de Benavides (AGI Santo Domingo 844, ff. 14r–18v), the settlement designated “San Joseph” was an Iguaja (Guale) community aggregated with Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe; Jororo was absent as an independent mission.[hann-1989]

In 1727, a severe epidemic struck the native populations around St. Augustine, killing a large portion of the remaining Jororo.[hann-1989] The survivors abandoned the St. Augustine area entirely, dispersing southward back toward their ancestral foraging territories in the interior and the Upper St. Johns watershed.[hann-1989][hann-2003]

In October 1728, Franciscan Provincial Minister Fray Joseph Bullones compiled formal certifications from doctrinal friars serving the surviving native missions (AGI Santo Domingo 866, ff. 109v–114r).[worth-1728][hann-1989] The 1728 census documents seven surviving refugee settlements huddled within cannon or pistol shot of St. Augustine (Guadalupe/Aiachin, Pocotalaca at Savana Esperansa, Nombre de Dios at Amacaris, San Buenaventura de Palica at el Muelle, Nuestra Señora del Rosario at Mose, Santa Cathalina de Gualecita at Nombre de Dios Chiquito, and San Antonio de la Costa “a tiro de pistola del castillo”).[worth-1728] Bullones noted that only two distant settlements near Fort San Marcos de Apalache were omitted due to travel time, and that the Casapullas had depopulated and dispersed.[worth-1728]

Neither Jororo nor Mayaca appears anywhere in the 1728 census certifications.[worth-1728][hann-1989]

Historical implications for Highlands County

The mission census records confirm the permanence of the geographic boundary established after the 1696–1697 Jororo revolt.[worth-missions][hann-2003] The short-lived seventeenth-century Franciscan missions in Jororo territory—San Joseph de Jororo, La Concepción de Atoyquime, and Atissimi—terminated near Lake Kissimmee in modern Osceola and northern Polk counties.[worth-missions][hann-2003]

Following the 1696 revolt and the subsequent 1702–1706 Carolinian destruction of the northern mission provinces, the Spanish crown exercised no territorial administration, maintained no military garrisons, and stationed no doctrinal clergy anywhere in the Kissimmee River valley, on the Lake Wales Ridge, or within the borders of modern Highlands County.[worth-1717][worth-1728][worth-missions][hann-2003] The presence of “San Joseph de Jororo” in eighteenth-century Spanish administrative records represents the dislocation of Indigenous refugees to the coastal perimeter of St. Augustine, not a colonial footprint in the south-central interior.[worth-1717][hann-1989]

References

Where this comes from

Evidence
corroborated — More than one independent source agrees.
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unverified — Drafted from sources but not yet checked by a volunteer.
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Sources

  1. John E. Worth, 1717 Florida Mission Census (2026) · official
  2. John E. Worth, 1728 Florida Mission Census (2026) · official
  3. John H. Hann, St. Augustine's Fallout from the Yamasee War (1989) · secondary
  4. John E. Worth, Spanish Florida Missions (2026) · official
  5. John H. Hann, Indians of Central and South Florida: 1513-1763 (2003) · book

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