Gonzalo Méndez de Canço
He served under the command of Alonso de Bazán, being commissioned three times to make levies for seamen to man the ships of the Spanish Royal Navy in Galicia and Asturias.
In 1592, for his accomplishments as a mariner and his services to the Crown, King Charles I made him a capitán de mar y guerra with an annual salary of thirty thousand maravedís.
[7] The Indies fleet, commanded by General Sancho Pardo Osorio and escorted by Francisco Coloma's armada, left Havana for Seville on March 10, 1595, its ships loaded with gold and silver.
[8] Even though the flagship, which carried three hundred men and two million ducados in gold and silver, was left with no mainmast, had a broken tiller, and was taking on water, Pardo made it back to Havana.
[15] Alarmed by this revelation, de Canço fired four cannon shots to alert one of his boats, which was in pursuit of another English ship, to go as soon as possible to warn Puerto Rico of the danger.
Wasting no time, the governor organized the defense of the island, although he had only 400 regular soldiers, 300 seamen on Sancho Pardo's flagship and 500 with de Canço and Guzman, as well as 300 militiamen from the city.
De Canço was responsible for the El Morro, Santa Elena and Morrill forts, while General Pardo scuttled the damaged galleon at the entrance to the harbor and blocked the channel.
[19][20][21] Francis Drake was now the sole head of the English fleet, and ordered his ships to take shelter near Isla de Cabras to avoid the Spanish bombardment.
Now that there was no threat of attack, Guzman and de Canço sailed on December 20 with the four frigates, the surviving crewmen, and the two million ducats in gold and silver, and after crossing the Atlantic without incident landed safely in Spain.
De Canço, regarded as a person of strong character and ambitious projects, thought it prudent to establish another settlement where the land was more suitable for farming to supply St. Augustine with foodstuffs.
He gathered from the information he received that the best place to start a new colony was Tama, a region located on the banks of the confluence of the Altamaha and Ocumulgee rivers in what is now the state of Georgia.
He believed he could establish a colony in Tama with three hundred married soldiers, and use it as a base to send exploratory expeditions in search of a coveted trail to the ports of Mexico in New Spain.
While de Canço was making plans for the colonization of Tama, a Native American chief named Juanillo led an uprising against the Spanish in September 1597.
Their grievances under the administration of governor de Canço included the Franciscan missionaries forbidding the Indian practices of polygamy, divorce, dancing, games and intertribal wars.
In May 1598, de Canço rescued the only missionary survivor of the Juanillo massacre, Friar Francisco Dávila, who had been enslaved by the Indians in the town of Tulufina,[31] not far from Tolomato.
[7] De Canço's troops suppressed the rebellion, which ended decisively when an expedition of Indian allies of the Spanish, led by the mico (chief) of Asao, attacked Juanillo's stronghold in the stockaded town of Yfusinique, killing him with 24 of his main supporters.
On the other hand, de Canço promoted the intensive cultivation of corn, providing tools and seeds to settlers and Indians and building a mill to grind the grain, as well as fostering the establishment of farms and plantations.
[37] In February 1603 (or 20 Oct 1603),[23] Philip III appointed a new governor of Florida, Pedro de Ibarra, a development that prevented Canço from implementing his ambitious projects in Tama.
