The only major event of former governor of Carolina James Moore Sr.'s expedition was the Battle of Ayubale, which marked the only large-scale resistance to the raids by the Spanish and Apalachee.

Significant numbers of the Apalachee, unhappy with the conditions they lived in under in the Spanish missions, simply abandoned their towns and joined Moore's expedition.

[4] In 1700, the governor of Carolina, Joseph Blake, threatened the Spanish with assertions that English claims to the colonial settlement of Pensacola, established in 1698, would be enforced.

[5] Blake's death later that year interrupted these plans, and he was replaced in 1702 by James Moore Sr.[5] The Spanish population of Florida at the time was fairly small compared to that of the nearby English colonies.

Since its founding in the 16th century, the Spanish had set up a network of missions whose primary purpose was to pacify the local Indian population and convert them to Catholicism.

[6] By the early 18th century, the Apalachee Province had become a major source of food for the principal towns of St. Augustine and Pensacola, which were situated near lands not well suited for agriculture.

[8] The Indians were often forced to do work for the Spanish military garrisons and plantation owners, including the labor of hauling goods to St. Augustine, about 100 miles (160 km) away.

[13] After the expedition, Florida Governor José de Zúñiga y la Cerda ordered the remaining Spanish missions in Apalachee and Timucua Province to be moved closer together for defensive purposes.

[2] Moore considered launching an attack on the fort at San Luis, but his force had suffered a significant number of wounds, so he opted instead for an attempt at extortion.

[21] Despite the losses, they did not immediately abandon or consolidate the missions until further raiding took place, after which the demoralized surviving Apalachee insisted they would either retreat to Pensacola or go over to the English.

In the spring of 1706, the Muscogee besieged San Francisco de Potano and attacked the La Chua ranch near Abosaya; both of these were abandoned, and Timucua was virtually depopulated by May 1706.

[29] The French governor of Mobile, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, wrote that raiding the Florida area resulted in the killing of 2,000 Apalachees and the capture of 32 Spaniards, 17 of whom were burned alive.

[32] The free Apalachee refugees that settled these areas were frequently harassed by slavers; in some cases Indians taken as slaves were freed after protests were made to Carolina authorities.

[35] Due in part to the somewhat fragmentary, unclear, and contradictory primary materials about these raids, historians have at times written widely varying accounts of the number of Indians that were enslaved.

Vernon Crane, in The Southern Frontier, 1670–1732 (originally published in 1929), uncritically accepts Moore's numbers,[31] and 19th century South Carolina historian Edward McCrady only mentions 1,400 Apalachees being taken, of whom only 100 were slaves.

[30] James Covington believes that a combination of factors was to blame: in addition to active slaving against those settlements, disease, starvation, intermarriage with other tribes, and migration to other communities account for the difference.