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On October 3, 1675 – A Spanish Court, led by Juan Fernandez de Florencia would issue a summons for Juan Fernandez Diocasale – accuse him of attempting to kill a Spanish priest, and attempting to start an uprising against the Spanish in the area that would eventually become Walton County. Through his influence, a tribe of Native Americans would rise up and try to dislodge the Spanish by defending a fort on the Choctawhatchee River.
The Backstory of Juan Fernandez Diocasale
Diocasale was born to a family of mixed lineage: his mother was a Euchee indian who’d recently arrived with her kin from the mountains of Tennessee, and his father was a Chatot Chieftan. Much had changed in his 80 years of life. The Southeastern United States had come under the sphere of influence of the Spaniards, and much bloodletting had taken place between the Europeans and the many Native American tribes in what now makes up Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and North Carolina.
Juan Fernandez’s birth marked the beginning of, if not an alliance, then a kinship between the Chatot and the Euchee – both smaller tribes trying to carve out their place in this new world with rapidly changing power dynamics. The two tribes did not speak the same or similar languages, but were geographically settled next to one another.
Both tribes lived on land next to a much more powerful tribe to their east, the Apalachee. The Apalachee derived much of their power from the fact they’d made an alliance with the Spaniards and had access to their troops and weapons. The Apalachee would essentially serve as subcontractors to the Spanish desire to conquer the land and subjugate all of the people in the area.
As Diocasale approached middle age, he would meet his lifelong nemesis, the Spanish. Royal power would assume the shape of a middle-aged Timicua, Spanish Sergeant Major Diego Salvador. Salvador, one of the many Christianized Indigenous people from the East Florida colony, was a loyal son of a distant emperor with a proclivity for languages. He would use his considerable powers to broker a peace agreement between the Chatot and the Apalachee – something that the Natives believed could not be achieved because the Chatot had never been at peace, according to local tradition.
Allowing Spanish priests into their villages
Between their first contact with the Spanish and their later shenanigans, Diocasale’s kinsmen allowed Spanish Priests to be present in their midst and even to take on positions of authority within Chacato society. Historian John Hann noticed in his studies and wrote, “The change of heart [towards Catholic Christianity] may have been abetted by loss of faith in the native religious system as a bulwark for their power. Such chiefs may have viewed the exotic goods provided by Spaniards and the esoteric knowledge and skills Spaniards made available as enhancing the chiefs’ prestige in the eyes of their people. That may explain the eagerness of many converts to learn to read and write and the [local] chief’s willingness to permit destruction of the idols in five villages under his immediate jurisdiction.”
Spanish missionaries gave exaggeratedly high estimates of the number of Native Americans who lived between the Perdido and Apalachicola Rivers, but Willey, Mooney, and other archaeologists who specialized in the Florida Panhandle’s Native American societies estimate the number at between 10,000 and 12,000 for the four inheritor tribes of the Fort Walton Culture. Apalachee were the largest number.
Another scholar estimates the Apalachee population closer to 13,152, based on a letter from the Bishop of Santiago de Cuba, who visited the area in 1675. In his notes, the Bishop explained that he believed there were about 10,000 Apalachee, excluding children. He explained this number by noting that he provided “long dresses for 4,081 women in Apalachee who were wearing nothing but short skirts that covered them from knees to waist.”
Soon, the Chatot too began to incorporate the Catholic religion and other trappings of Spanish culture into their own – but not seamlessly. In the 1670s, Chatot chiefs’ children were baptized, and Franciscan friars were present in Chatot villages.
Diocasale gains power and increases Spanish concerns
At this point, a priest baptized Diocasale and ‘converted’ him to Christianity. But the syncretism that many new Catholics experienced throughout the Spanish Empire was no exception in Florida. Diocasale continued to live with four wives in defiance of Church teachings. In addition, his mother’s tribe – the Euchee- was described by the Spanish Bishop of St. Augustine, Diaz de Vara Calderon, as “Our enemies, rebellious people, untamed and brought up licentiously without the moderating effect of culture or other advantages. Devoted solely to the hunt, which is their sustenance.” The Bishop estimated about 4,000 Euchee in total and that their culture was “closely related to the Creek, Shawnee, and other northeastern peoples.”
The religious bureaucracy in St. Augustine dispatched Friar Barreda to the small Chacato outpost of San Carlos to teach Christianity to the newly converted. This Franciscan Priest had two known traits that made him well-suited to the job: he was apparently unafraid to call out those who violated the strictures of the Catholic Church, and he had no fear of the consequences. Barreda called out leaders of the Chacato power structure, including Diocasale, now in his 80s, and several others, for their polygamy and infidelity at Sunday Mass to their faces. When public shaming wasn’t enough to stop Diocasale, Barreda had three of the four women in his home removed and demanded the Chacato leader marry the woman he’d been with the longest in a Christian ceremony.
The assassination attempt
All the while, Diocasale made several moves to reclaim the mantle of leadership from this meddling Franciscan who could not or would not respect cultural practices indigenous to the Chacato. Later revealed in court by his son, who testified against him for the Spanish, he’d already begun scheming ways to root out Spanish power among the Chacato using his mother’s tribesmen, along with Chacato loyal to him.
Along with several other leaders chastised by Friar Barreda, Diocasale plotted to have Barreda killed. The conspirators told Friar Barreda that a band of Euchee was on its way to the village to murder him, and handed him over to two guides who would take him to safety. Little did the friar know that Diocasale ordered the two guides to kill the priest as soon as possible. Soon into their journey, the guides asked the father to share tobacco with them. As the friar reached into his bag, one of the guides attempted to wedge his skull open with a hatchet.
Apparently, Friar Barreda was not just hard-headed about religious doctrine, because he survived the blow, along with another hatchet strike to the face. He killed his assailant with a well-placed musket ball. The other would-be killer fled back to the village to warn of the Friar’s apparent invincibility, and Barreda walked to safety to inform his superiors of the incident.
The Spanish would dispatch soldiers and native warriors to put the conspirators to the sword, but also offered amnesty if they were to turn themselves in. After initially fleeing, the conspirators returned to the scene of the crime to take the clemency deal.
Rebellion of the Euchee
Soldiers took Diocasale, now close to 90 years old, into custody and sequestered him in a kind of house arrest in St. Augustine, according to Historian John Hann. While there, his son, Pedro, would testify against him in court, and he would admit to attempting to throw the Spanish out and kill Friar Barreda.
In 1676, Diocasale received a delegation of Euchee, his mother’s tribe, at his prison. There, he apparently urged these residents of the Emerald Coast near the Choctawhatchee River to begin an uprising against the Apalachee and Spanish and to put Christian Indian villages to the torch. At the same time, a new group, the Yamassee, carried out similar but unrelated raids, compounding fear and destruction throughout the area west of Modern Tallahassee.
As a result of the raids, the Spanish effectively abandoned the Apalachee militarily, leaving the Christianized Chacato and Apalachee to fend for themselves against the Euchee, the Apalachicoli, and a new enemy, the British colonists of Carolina.
The Christian Indians took the offensive. Some 800 warriors would move north to the Flint River near the intersection of Florida, Georgia, and Alabama today. Informants allied with the Apalachicola would tip off their leader, who’d ambush the force and kill three-fourths of the army, essentially crippling any hope of a future effective fighting force of Natives in the Emerald Coast and leaving them vulnerable to what would happen next.
Meanwhile, the Euchee left their home on the Apalachicola River Delta and moved to the Choctawhatchee River in Walton County, where they built a fortification and waited for retaliation from the Spanish or Apalachee. By 1677, the Apalachee decided to attack the fortifications. The Apalachee, believing the Euchee did not have enough in the way of firearms to defeat them, marched to the East to destroy their enemies. The Apalachee laid siege to the palisade that the Euchee had constructed, and, after a volley of fire from their arquebuses, the Euchee fled the fort. The next day, the Apalachee would set fire to the Euchee settlements near the fort – burning many of the inhabitants alive so that the raiding party reported back hearing the screams of the dying to their superiors in St. Augustine – and leave. The Apalachee would return to their lands on the day of Our Lady of the Rosary, October 5, 1677.
Many of the Chatot would decide that if they could not kill the friars, they would leave their home. Many of them went and were assimilated into the growing Creek Confederacy, which was gaining strength in the north.
Later expeditions into the lands of the Emerald Coast by the Spanish would experience little or no contact – it was a region that seemed devoid of human presence. The Spanish made the trek in 1693 to the newly re-founded settlement of Pensacola. They reported seeing no natives, except for a couple of Chatot settlements ringing Choctawhatchee Bay.
