Ponce's Lost Days

It’s been five days (and 500 years) since our man Ponce de Leon set off into the Florida wilderness, and still no word. According to the best record of the conquistador's historic voyage—a second-hand account written by Antonio de Herrera who presumably read de Leon’s now-lost journal—the explorer “went ashore to take possession and get information.” That’s it; that’s all he wrote. The first five days of one of the most significant events in the history of the Western Hemisphere, summarized in a comment so brief it could have been sent in a Tweet with enough extra spaces to add, ”The weathers great, wish you were here! Please send money!”

Knowing what we do about the conquistadores, I worry for the Timucuas. I imagine that undocumented excursion with the dread of a parent whose kid is in Florida for spring break and hasn’t called in five days. Only in this scenario, my kid is a resident of the host town and the visiting spring-breakers are known murderers who bring home slaves the way kids bring home T-shirts from the places they visit.

Lacking documentation, we have only our imaginations to guide our speculation about those lost five days. Two possibilities are that they either stayed on the boat or stayed at the local Timucuan village the whole time. Neither of these seem very likely. These were men of action on a desperate hunt for riches. While they probably spent some time asking the natives if there was any gold in the region, it is likely they set out to look for themselves.

Since they didn’t have horses with them, any overland explorations would have been by foot. The main trail into the interior was the one  that would later be known as the Mission Trail and eventually the famous Bellamy Road (famous because it was Florida's first Federal Road). If he went inland, de leon would likely have used this trail. An added incentive for using this trail would have been Paynes Prairie, home of the Potano tribe. Half a century after de Leon, French soldiers misunderstood the coastal Indians when they were describing the riches of the interior. When the natives told the Frenchmen that valuable rocks were found in Potano territory, the greedy soldiers assumed they meant gold. In reality the natives were talking about flint. This form of limestone was a valuable material for making weapons and tools. If de Leon’s men made the same misinterpretation, they might have taken the trail west. However, five days would not have allowed enough time to get to the Prairie, explore it and return in five days. Even if they tried, it’s very unlikely they could have made it.

The other way de Leon could have explored inland would have been by boat. If there was any curiosity in the back of de Leon’s mind about the presence of a magical Fountain of Youth, he would likely have queried the natives. And,if they were in a sharing mood, they might have told the explorer about two of Florida’s greatest natural wonders—Silver and Blue Springs in the upper St. Johns watershed. But here again, these two giant springs were out of range. No matter how hard they paddled, there’s no way the Spaniards could have reached either of these springs and returned in five days.

For the time being, some of Florida’s greatest natural treasures were spared a visit from the first invasive exotic species to invade Florida in thousands of years.

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