Historians consider San Miguel de Gualdape, South Carolina, in 1526 as the first failed U.S. settlement, but local historian James MacDougald finds convincing evidence that the first European attempt to colonize in the U.S. was in 1521 at Safety Harbor on Old Tampa Bay.
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| Juan Ponce de León |
On February 20, 1521, Ponce de León left Puerto Rico with ships carrying 200 men including friars and priests, horses, cattle, pigs, tools and seeds. He planned to establish the first European settlement in what is now the United States.
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| Ponce de León in Florida (colorized) |
Ponce de León returned to Cuba five months later, providing an approximate timeline:
1521:
- February 20 - ships leave Puerto Rico to establish a colony in Florida.
- March 6 - the colonists land in Safety Harbor on Old Tampa Bay and unload cargo boxes. They are at constant risk in an unfamiliar land with harsh weather and hostile natives. For the next three to four months, the colony struggles to survive - cultivating the land, tending to livestock and attempting to Christianize the natives.
- July 1 - Ponce de León is seriously wounded during a skirmish with the natives. Some of the colonists are killed.
- July 8 - Ponce de León arrives in Cuba seeking treatment, but soon dies from his injuries.
- July 15 - a second ship with the remaining colonists returns to Veracruz, Mexico, after traversing the Gulf of Mexico.
Seven years later:
- In 1528, the Narváez expedition lands at the Jungle Prada Site seeking to establish a colony nearby. They embark on a land excursion across the Pinellas peninsula to Safety Harbor where they discover cargo containers from Castile, Spain. The only reasonable explanation is that the crates were left behind by the 1521 colonizers.
I have found no explanation as to why the ships returned to disparate ports, so I wonder what happened. One theory is that Ponce de León's wounds needed immediate attention so a ship left for Cuba where he could get medical care. Perhaps he expected the surviving colonists to soldier on through the hardships. After all, many colonists survived the attack. Instead, as soon as their leader was out of sight, they conspired to abandon the colony and return to a port that was outside of Ponce de León's influence.
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| Gulf of Mexico section of the Map of America by Diego Ribero, 1529 |
Many historians believe the Ponce de León and Narváez expeditions landed in the Charlotte Harbor area, south of Safety Harbor, but MacDougald finds details in the written eyewitness account of the Narváez land excursions that don't match the Charlotte Harbor terrain, but fit perfectly with a Jungle Prada landing.
As I wrote in a previous post, The Mysteries of the 1528 Narvaez Expedition:
"[In 1528] 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."
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| Possible route of the explorers in 1528 across the Pinellas peninsula superimposed on a current map. The first excursion with 45 explorers started at Jungle Prada (lower left on map) and ended north of the St. Pete-Clearwater International airport. A second excursion traveled further north (dotted red line) to Safety Harbor. |
Publisher's note: James MacDougald's two books about early Spanish exploration of Florida contain many details that are not included in this post. He presents a convincing argument for the location of the Narváez landing (at Jungle Prada) and the site of the first attempted European settlement in the United States (at Safety Harbor).
Books by James E. MacDougald:
- The Pánfilo de Narváez Expedition of 1528: Highlights of the Expedition and Determination of the Landing Place
- The Maps That Change Florida's History: Revisiting the Ponce de León and Narváez Settlement Expeditions
