The Mysteries of the 1528 Narváez Expedition

April 15, 1528 was a cataclysmic day in Jungle neighborhood history ‒ the day when Old World collided with New World at the Jungle Prada Site. Spanish conquistador Pánfilo de Narváez and his crew were in search of gold and a desirable location to establish a Spanish colony.

After arriving, forty-five of Narváez' men undertook two excursions from their base camp near Jungle Prada and probably marched through current day Azalea Park and Tyrone Square Mall on their way across the Pinellas Peninsula to Tampa Bay. There, they encountered the capital of the indigenous Tocobaga nation and made a curious discovery of cargo boxes from Castile, Spain. According to one account, inside the boxes were "Christian" (Spanish) corpses, wrapped in painted animal skins.

The natives, communicating with sign language, informed the Narváez explorers that the boxes came from a shipwreck. Author James MacDougald, an expert on the 1528 expedition, says the boxes were from Ponce de León's 1521 failed settlement.

Enraged at the sight of these boxes, the mercurial conquistador Narváez ordered that they be burned.

When I first heard this story, I wondered why the Tocobaga natives would treat Spanish corpses with such reverence, preparing the bodies in the same manner as they would their own. Why would the Spanish deceased still be awaiting burial if the colony was established and then abandoned seven years ago? Why would Narváez disrespect "Christian" bodies by burning them?

In his new book, The Maps That Change Florida's History: Revisiting the Ponce de León and Narváez Settlement Expeditions, MacDougald writes that there are three known accounts of the Narváez excursions and only the last one, years after the incident, identified the bodies as "Christian." He concludes that the most reasonable explanation is that the bodies were deceased Tocobaga natives. Other items said to be in the boxes ‒ shoes and scraps of iron ‒ had been left behind by the Spanish colonists.

Background: Juan Ponce de León attempted to establish the first European settlement in what is now the United States on the west coast of Florida in 1521. Historians disagree on the location of Ponce de León's failed colony. For many years the prevailing opinion has been that the settlement was to the south of Tampa Bay in the vicinity of Charlotte Harbor. But based on written accounts of the Ponce de León (1521) and Narváez (1528) expeditions, it can be said that Safety Harbor in Tampa Bay was the most likely location. Based on the expedition's departure and return dates, MacDougald believes the colonists were in Safety Harbor for three to four months before pulling out.

Painting of Ponce de Leon's ships arriving in St. Augustine in 1513.
A similar arrival of Ponce de León's ships occurred in Tampa Bay in 1521.

Submitted for your approval, the highly improbable coincidence that the Narváez explorers would stumble upon remnants of the 1521 colony. Narváez originally set off to establish a colony near present-day Tampico, Mexico, but storms made crossing the Gulf impossible. His ships were loaded with perishables, so he was forced to look for an alternate landing site on the Gulf coast of Florida. The crew decided to head for Tampa Bay, an excellent harbor known to the Spanish. The navigators missed sighting the opening to the bay and the crew disembarked north of Tampa Bay in the vicinity of Jungle Prada.

Probable route of the explorers in 1528 across the Pinellas peninsula superimposed on current map.

Then forty-five members of the Narváez crew marched across the Pinellas Peninsula to the Tocobaga capital in Safety Harbor. They were in uncharted territory and uncertain of their surroundings, yet they miraculously ended up at a Tocobaga charnel house where cargo boxes from Castile, Spain were being used as temporary coffins by the Tocobaga. As a result of the string of coincidences that led Narváez to Jungle Prada and then to Safety Harbor ‒ and the written accounts of the expedition ‒ there is compelling evidence that the first attempted European colonization in the United States was at Safety Harbor in 1521.