To Their New Homes : 173 



tion. The intention was to establish bases from which the French 

 could harass the treasure ships sailing from Mexico to Spain. 



The French kept control of this fort for exactly a year, then the 

 Spaniards under Menendez de Aviles took the fort and massacred 

 all the French settlers. They held the fort for two years and then the 

 French came back under Chevalier de Gourgues, took the fort back 

 and in turn put all the Spaniards to death. 



Despite the loss of Fort Caroline, Menendez, supported by Jesuits 

 and Franciscan missionaries, undertook widespread colonization that 

 ranged from Florida all the way up the east coast as far as Virginia. 

 All of the colonies established north of Florida either failed or were 

 captured by English settlers in the succession of colonial wars but 

 St. Augustine in Florida, which Menendez founded in 1565, and 

 many of the other posts and settlements in Florida had a continuing 

 existence and Spanish families continued to live in Florida and to 

 survive the whole succession of colonial wars. 



In the meantime, the Spaniards were also moving into western ter- 

 ritories of North America. From 1540 to 1542, while De Soto was mak- 

 ing his futile march through the southern states to the Mississippi River, 

 Francisco Vasquez de Coronado was making a march in the west. 

 He went through parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma 

 and Kansas before he turned back. One of his lieutenants, Garcia 

 Lopez de Cardenas reached the Grand Canyon of Colorado. While 

 Coronado was returning from his march, Juan Rodriguez de 

 Cabrillo sailed up the Pacific coast from Mexico to Oregon and back. 

 These were strictly exploring expeditions and no settlements resulted 

 from them. 



It was not until the closing years of the sixteenth century and the 

 opening years of the seventeenth that Juan de Oiiate succeeded in 

 establishing settlements in New Mexico and in re-examining a wide 

 belt of territory from Kansas to the Gulf of California. Santa Fe in 

 New Mexico was established a little later. The western settlements of 

 the Spaniards date from about this time though the settlers in New 

 Mexico suffered disastrously when the Indians revolted in 1680 and 

 the country was not reconquered and pacified until the last years of 

 the century. A serious attempt of the Spaniards to occupy and hold 

 Texas dated from about 1720 and the occupation of California from 

 San Diego to San Francisco came in the years from 1769 to 1776. 



In most of these territories the Spanish settlers remained. Their 

 descendants became an important part of the population of America 



