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An understandably defeatist attitude permeates many scholarly discussions of Ajacan. This stems from a variety of factors, but it is primarily due to the paucity of historical records that exist regarding this attempted settlement and the questionable details within them. To begin with, the Jesuits resided at Ajacan for less than six months, which included a period of isolation for nearly half of that time. Thus, the amount of interaction with local Algonquians and the window of opportunity to record this interaction were limited. Apart from the brief duration of the failed mission, scholars also encounter a challenge regarding the historical accuracy of the Ajacan narratives. The lone European eyewitness testimony regarding Father Segura’s demise at the hands of ex-neophyte Don Luis is questionable. It came from Alonso de Olmos, the traumatized youth who had forgotten most of his Spanish by the time natives returned him to his people 18 months after the Algonquian attack. Scholars also struggle with rampant revisions of Ajacan’s history by those who documented it. Subsequent accounts from contemporaneous Floridian authorities dwelled more on establishing the martyrdom of Father Segura and his brethren than piecing together the sequence of actual events (Quinn 1977:283; Mallios 2005b, 2007). Archaeological endeavors have added little insight to the story; the exact location of Ajacan remains a mystery. The present analysis of con®icting cultural exchange systems revitalizes otherwise sti®ed investigations of these historical records. With it, seemingly innocuous economic details spring to life and form a meaningful pattern. They identify an additional potential factor in determining why the Chesapeake Algonquians murdered the eight Spanish Jesuits. The violence can be seen as culturally justi¤ed and symbolically meaningful punishment for successive missionary violations of the indigenous gift economy. 3 Ajacan The History Spanish/Chesapeake Algonquian interaction can be grouped into the following¤ve periods: (1) Prelude to Ajacan, (2) Initial amicability at Ajacan, (3) Indigenous abandonment of the clerics, (4) Algonquian hostility, and (5) Spanish retribution. Period I: Prelude to Ajacan During the late 15th century, Pope Alexander VI granted King Ferdinand V and Queen Isabella I of Spain economic claim to American territories and goods (Fernández-Armesto 1991:137). In the Bull of 1496, he required that the Spanish monarchs take spiritual responsibility for the indigenous inhabitants of these lands as well (Fernández-Armesto 1991:137; Codignola 1995:195; Headley 1995: 252). As a result, both material and religious considerations fueled Spain’s plans for the Americas. Although the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria did not carry a clergy member on their joint voyage in 1492, Christopher Columbus brought priests on his second transatlantic journey (Bannon 1967:39). Following these¤rst Spanish ecclesiastics in the Americas in November of 1493, almost every subsequent ship that sailed from Europe to the Western Hemisphere over the next century had a missionary as part of its crew (Bannon 1967:39). Spanish exploration included parts of southern North America during the¤rst half of the 16th century (Hoffman 1980, 1986, 1990; Milanich 1990:7; Ewen 1990:83–91; Hudson et. al 1990:107–119; Dye 1990:211–222). Inland voyages by Francisco Vazquez de Coronado and Hernando de Soto broadened Spain’s colonial horizons (Quinn 1977:262). Even 50 years after Ponce de Leon’s initial 1513 Spanish landing in La Florida, however, Spain was still without a settlement in the North American Southeast (Milanich 1999:78). In the middle 1560s, Admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, serving as the ¤rst Governor of Spanish Florida, annihilated a small French colony in northern Florida. He further secured the territory for Spain by establishing a series of military outposts in the area (Milanich 1999:78). The Bahia de Santa Maria,later named the Chesapeake Bay, held many potential riches for European colonizers. Hopes of ¤nding an accessible waterway to the Far East through North America, establishing easily defended ports for frequently pirated ships, and obtaining valuable native goods kept Menéndez eager to expand the Spanish empire northward past the entrance of the Chesapeake Bay (Lewis and Loomie 1953:5). 38 / Ajacan Only the secular colonist Martinez described the earliest historically recorded encounter between Spanish explorers and the Chesapeake’s indigenous population. Referring to an event that occurred in 1561,he reported that,“Pedro Menéndez [de Avilés] . . . discovered on the coast a large bay [the Chesapeake]. He entered further into the harbor and sailed up into it. When the Indians saw the boats, they came alongside...

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