Fort Caroline was an attempted French colonial settlement in Florida, located on the banks of the St. Johns River in present-day Duval County. It was established under the leadership of René Goulaine de Laudonnière on 22 June 1564, following King Charles IX's enlisting of Jean Ribault and his Huguenot settlers to stake a claim in French Florida ahead of Spain. The French colony came into conflict with the Spanish, who established St. Augustine on 8 September 1565, and Fort Caroline was sacked by Spanish troops under Pedro Menéndez de Avilés on 20 September. The Spanish continued to occupy the site as San Mateo until 1569.

The exact site of the former fort is unknown. In 1953 the National Park Service established the Fort Caroline National Memorial along the southern bank of the St. John's River near the point that commemorates Laudonnière's first landing. This is generally accepted by scholars as being in the vicinity of the original fort, though probably not the exact location. The memorial is now managed as a part of the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve, but it is also a distinct unit under administration of the National Park Service.

==History==<!-- This section is linked from Huguenot -->

Charlesfort (1562–1563, 1577–1578)

A French expedition, organized by Protestant leader Admiral Gaspard de Coligny and led by the French Explorer Jean Ribault, had landed at the site on the May River (now the St. Johns River) in May 1562. Here Ribault encountered the Timucuans led by Chief Saturiwa. At the time of first contact with Europeans, the Timucuan people inhabited near 19,000 square miles across north Florida and south Georgia, with an estimated population of near 200,000. Ribault took some 28 troops north along the coast, where on present-day Parris Island, South Carolina they developed a settlement known as Charlesfort. Ribault returned to Europe to arrange supplies for the new colony. When he was captured and briefly imprisoned in England on suspicion of spying related to the French Wars of Religion, he was prevented from returning to Florida.

After a year without supplies or leadership, and beset by hostility from the native populations, all but one of the colonists left Charlesfort to sail back to Europe. During their voyage in an open boat, they were reduced to cannibalism before the survivors were rescued in English waters. Another French force reestablished a fort at the site in 1577–1578.

Fort Caroline (1564–1565)

thumb|right|Floride françoise ("French Florida"), by [[Pierre du Val, 17th century]]

Meanwhile, René Goulaine de Laudonnière, who had been Ribault's second-in-command on the 1562 expedition, led a contingent of around 200 new settlers back to Florida, where they founded Fort Caroline (or Fort de la Caroline) on 22 June, 1564; the site was on a small plain formed by the western slope of the high steep bank later called St. Johns Bluff.

The French colonists "had to rely heavily on the Indians" for both food and trade. Timucua chief Outina twice "coaxed the French into participating in attacks on villages of his rival, [the] Potano, to seize surplus corn." French soldiers who deserted from the fort raided Timucua settlements, souring relations with them. The ship and provisions gained from Hawkins enabled the French to survive and prepare to move back to France as soon as possible. As Laudonnière writes: "I may saye that wee receaved as manye courtesies of the Generall, as it was possible to receive of any man living. Wherein doubtlesse hee hath wonne the reputation of a good and charitable man, deserving to be esteemed as much of us all as if hee had saved all our lives." The French introduced Hawkins to tobacco, which they all were using, and in turn he introduced it to England upon his return.

In late August, Ribault, who had been released from English custody in June 1565 and sent by Coligny back to Florida, arrived at Fort Caroline with a large fleet and hundreds of soldiers and settlers, taking command of the colony. However, the recently appointed Spanish Governor of Florida, Don Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, had simultaneously been dispatched from Spain with orders to remove the French outpost, and arrived within days of Ribault's landing. After a brief skirmish between Ribault's ships and Menéndez's ships, the latter retreated southward, where they established the settlement of St. Augustine. Ribault pursued the Spanish with several of his ships and most of his troops, but he was surprised at sea by a violent storm lasting several days.

thumb|right|Founding of Fort Caroline depicted in Histoire de la Marine, de la voile à l'atome by Philippe Masson

As for Ribault's fleet, all of the ships either sank or ran aground south of St. Augustine during the storm, and many of the Frenchmen on board were lost at sea. as heretics at what is now known as the Matanzas Inlet. (Matanzas is Spanish for "slaughters".) The atrocity shocked Europeans even in that bloody era of religious strife. A fort built much later, Fort Matanzas, is in the vicinity of the site. This massacre ended France's attempts at colonization of the southeastern Atlantic coast of North America until 1577–1578 when Nicholas Strozzi and his crew built a fort after their ship, Le Prince, was wrecked at Port Royal Sound. The Spanish rebuilt, but permanently abandoned the fort the following year. The exact location of the fort is not known.

Free Black population at Fort Caroline

When the Spanish conquistador Pedro Menéndez, who had black crew members in his fleet, founded St. Augustine in 1565, he wrote that his settlers had been preceded by free Africans in the French settlement at Fort Caroline. The fort also employed Black slave labor. Together, Fort Caroline and the St. Augustine area represent some of the earliest points of history for the Black (and Black Catholic) community of what would become the United States.

The Timucua People

The term Timucua refers to the language and culture of a large group rather than a single tribe. Timucua peoples are split into different independent chiefdoms based from south Georgia to north Florida. Regional diversity is very important to the different Timucua groups. Each group has different regional factor that affect strategy and lifestyle. Even with these factors, the hierarchy of these chiefdom's remained the same

Mocama and Saturiwa’s Group

A major group of the Timucua people were the Mocama, who were mostly along the northeastern Florida coast. The Mocama were one of the first groups to have contact with the Europeans. Chief Saturiwa was the leading figure of the Mocama group. When French Hugueonot settlers arrived at Fort Caroline in 1564, Saturiwa and his group formed an alliance with them. They bonded over the ideal of mutual benefit. The French would get support against other indigenous groups and the Spanish. The Mocama would get more power in their region. The Saturiwa's interaction with the French is one of the first documented alliances in the southeast United States

French Settlement Interactions

The French coming into Florida in the region, as the Spanish also wanted to claim the land. This conflict is what led to the Spanish attack on Fort Caroline in 1565. Timucua groups had different alliances during this conflict. Depending on how it can help the group some would fight with the French and others with the Spanish.

Impact of European Contact

The impact of European contact for the Timucua was detrimental. Warfare, forced labor, and European spread diseases led to the decline of Timucua population. Many colonist ignored Timucua culture and just used them for missions. By the end, almost all surviving members of the Timucua people had either joined other indigenous groups or colonials. Now there is almost just historical records to show the groups existence. Today, the second replica, a near full-scale "interpretive model" of the original Fort de la Caroline, also constructed and maintained by the National Park Service, illustrates the modest defenses upon which the 16th-century French colonists depended.

Proposed alternative location

On 21 February 2014, researchers Fletcher Crowe and Anita Spring presented claims at a conference hosted by Florida State University that Fort Caroline was located not on the St. Johns River, but on the Altamaha River in southeast Georgia. The scholars proposed that period French maps, particularly a 1685 map of "French Florida" from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, support the more northern location. They further argued that the Native Americans living near the fort spoke Guale, the language spoken in what is now Coastal Georgia, rather than Timucua, the language of northeast Florida. Other scholars have been skeptical of the hypothesis. University of North Florida archaeologist Robert Thunen considers the documentary evidence weak and believes the location is implausibly far from St. Augustine, considering the Spanish were able to march overland to Fort Caroline in two days amid a hurricane.

<gallery>

File:Ft. Caroline, Jacksonville, NC.jpg|alt=|Fort Caroline Entrance 2021

File:Jean Ribault Monument.jpg|alt=|Jean Ribault Monument 2019

File:Fort Caroline Trails.jpg|alt=Reproductions of chickee huts along the Fort Caroline trails. |Reproductions of chickee huts along the Fort Caroline trails, 2023

</gallery>

See also

  • Fort George Island
  • List of French possessions and colonies
  • List of national memorials of the United States

References

; Sources

  • Short film entitled French in Florida: 1562–1566: [http://ufdcimages.uflib.ufl.edu/IR/00/00/11/14/00001/FiF_Medium.mp4]
  • University of Florida online finding aid for Fort Caroline: [http://guides.uflib.ufl.edu/frenchinflorida]
  • The Fort Caroline Archeology Project – Official website
  • Fort Matanzas National Monument
  • Fort Caroline shown on an engraving by Jacques Le Moyne
  • Les expéditions françaises en Floride (1562–1568) – in French by Hélène LHOUMEAU
  • Robert Viking O'Brien's article on the French Florida colony from The Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Journal of Florida Literature
  • "Le Moyne's Florida Indians" – eyewitness written accounts and artwork of French artist Le Moyne while at Fort Caroline
  • "FOURTH EXPEDITION TO FLORIDA IN 1567, COMMANDED BY THE CHEVALIER DE GOURGUES." – written account of the de Gourgues revenge attack on Fort Caroline/San Mateo in 1567.