Pedro Menéndez de Avilés and the Conquest of Florida: A New Manuscript by Gonzalo Solís de Merás (review)

In 1565, the Spanish military leader Pedro Menéndez de Avilés forcibly ejected French colonists who, in the previous year, had constructed Fort Caroline near present-day Jacksonville. In the process, he established St. Augustine, the oldest continually occupied town in the United States. As adelantado of Florida, he followed this victory with the first systematic European settlement in the Southeastern region by establishing a series of forts, supporting missionary activity, and sponsoring explorations of the region. Though only St. Augustine survived into the seventeenth century, Menéndez's was the earliest serious attempt to incorporate parts of the current United States into the growing Spanish American empire. However, in US versions of American history, his accomplishments have received relatively little attention compared to the settlements made decades later by English Protestants further north.

Professor David Arbesú of the University of South Florida and the University Press of Florida have provided a new version of one of the most important historical sources concerning Menéndez's life and career. This is a biographical sketch written by the adelantado's brother-in-law, Gonzalo Solís de Merás, who accompanied Menéndez on his 1565 mission to Florida. Composed as a manuscript shortly after his subject's death, the intent of this work was to celebrate Menéndez's accomplishments while countering French and English accounts that portrayed him as a cruel fanatic after his executions of several hundred French prisoners following his capture of Ft. Caroline, near present-day Jacksonville. The section of narrative concerning the 1565 mission is largely, though not entirely, based on personal observation; however, many of the sources for other parts that concern earlier and later events are uncertain. Nevertheless, this work represents the longest and most detailed account of the adelantado's career, especially the events that took place in Florida in the fateful summer and early fall of 1565.

Until now, historians have had to rely on a single incomplete, flawed version of this work, one edited and published in 1893 by Spanish historian Eugenio Ruidíaz y Caravia prior to the loss of the manuscript source that he used. Titled La Florida: Its Conquest and Colonization by Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, Ruidíaz's version has been the source of all previous English translations of this work, starting with Jeannette Thurber Connors's 1923 translation. In 2012, Arbesú located a more complete manuscript version of the original, one that had been copied by a scribe in 1618 before finding a home in the library of the Marqués of Ferrera in Spain. The Ferrera version, which he presents here in both English and Spanish, corrects many of the flaws in the Ruidíaz version, supplying missing pages, righting content formerly out of order, and undoing distorting "corrections" added by a previous editor. In all, Arbesú gives us a more thorough, accurate, and credible edition of this important work.

This is not to say that we can now rely upon Solís de Merás's account without skepticism. It represents an unapologetic attempt to restore and enhance his brother-in-law's historical reputation, so it is therefore unsurprising that even this superior version contains inventions, exaggerations, and omissions. Some of these may be intentional while others are likely the consequence of relying on questionable second- or third-hand accounts. Nevertheless, this new edition corrects other inaccuracies in the previous work, such as details of Menéndez's background that Ruidíaz had inserted himself. One of the most helpful features of this new edition is the informative endnotes that explain the differences between the Ferrera and Ruidíaz versions as well as identifying many remaining inaccuracies.

This new edition is most welcome. It will be...