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A History of Columbia County Florida (1996) Edward F. Keuchel 6/340

A History of Columbia County, Florida

Becoming a Christian was a long and involved process.
Indians were not baptized until they had undergone considerable
preparation in religious instruction, and they were not allowed to
receive the Sacrament of the Eucharist and Penance until they
satisfied the friar that they understood the basic theology behind
them. The friars taught the Indians rudimentary European arts
and crafts as well, and the mission settlements reflected the fusion
of the Indian and European cultures.
During the 1630’s and 1640’s, considerable mission expansion
took place in the northern and central sections of Florida. By 1650
there were as many as seventy Franciscan missionaries and 26,000
Indian converts in the more than thirty-eight principal missions in
Florida. Most of the missions in Timucua were built along or near
the road the Spanish established in the 1630’s running through
Timucua and connecting St. Augustine with the missions in
Apalachee. The road ran through the southern part of present
Columbia County. A revolt among the Timucuan Indians in 1656
resulted in the destruction of some of the missions in central
Florida, but most were rebuilt and others were added.5
All Florida missions were under the religious jurisdiction of
the Bishop of Cuba. In 1674 Don Gabriel Diaz Vara Calderon,
Bishop of Santiago de Cuba, conducted an inspection visit of his
Florida domain. His travels covered a strenuous ten month period
during which he visited thirty-six mission stations in the colony
including Santa Catalina de Afuca in present Columbia County
and Santa Fe in present Alachua County.6

Santa Fe was the most important mission in Timucua. It was

6 Robert Allen Matter, “The Spanish Missions of Florida* The Friars Versus the
Governors in the ‘Golden Age/ 1606-1690,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of
Washington, 1972, pp. 88-90, 102; Gannon, Cross in the Sand, pp. 53-55.
6Mark F. Boyd, “Mission Sites in Florida,” Florida Historical Quarterly 17
(April, 1939), pp. 255-80; Mark F. Boyd, “Enumeration of Florida Spanish
Missions in 1675,” Florida Historical Quarterly 27 (October, 1948), pp. 184-87.

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