Welcome to the History of the Americans podcast, episode 28.

I am your host, Jack Heneman, and I'm recording this on June 30, 2021, in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Congratulations on making it through the first half of 2021.

The title of today's episode is Pedro Menendez, the founding of St. Augustine, and the slaughter

of the Huguenots, the other side of the story. If you listen to last week's episode, which would behoove you to do before you listen to this one,

you were probably thinking, wait, how could there be another side to that story?

That would be a fair question.

In this episode, which is longer than I prefer,

take a look at the Spanish account of those ugly days in September 1565,

layered like a fine lasagna with commentary and perhaps a little snark.

Even when one is speaking of Florida in the mid-1500s,

there is still new history.

One of the known chroniclers of the conquest of Florida by Pedro Menendez de Avilles,

was written by his son-in-law, Gonzalo Solis de Maras.

Unfortunately, historians had to rely on highly damaged excerpts.

No complete and legible virgin had been found, and the only surviving copy was missing big sections.

Until 2012, that is, when David Arbesu, professor of Spanish at the University of South Florida, found a complete and readable copy in the private archive of the Marquesta Ferreira. Professor Arbesu helpedfully translated

the Solis Chronicle and published it in 2017. Now, Solis did not criticize his own father-in-law in his chronicle.

It is to some extent hagiographic.

As you will see, that is what makes it so interesting.

Last week, we looked at the French Protestant settlement at Charles Fort in 1562 on Paris Island, South Carolina, and the much more substantial

effort at Fort Caroline in 1564, which was near the coast just east of Jacksonville, Florida.

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