Mission Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de Tolomato

Continuing in the topic of early Spanish missions in the American Southeast and following my blogpost on Mission Santa Catalina de Guale, perhaps another very prominent and important Franciscan mission that also once stood in both Georgia and Florida was the Tolomato Mission whose original Georgia location, unlike Mission Santa Catalina, remains unknown to this day. The mission was site of a brutal massacre in 1597 which resulted in the death of its pastor and it too was re-established multiple times at several locations south of its original Georgia site. Its name however lives on in its last two locations - both in northeast Florida which will be further discussed in this blogpost. While its original Georgia location is speculated to have likely been in the area where Sutherland Bluff and Harris Neck National Wildlife Refuge are located and remains unknown as to where specifically it was located, the name lives on in a historic St. Augustine cemetery that served as its last location as well as in a Florida estuarine reserve called Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve which was also a previous location for the mission.

The mission’s origins are not entirely known, however it appears that there was possibly some earliest Franciscan missionary work in the area sometime between 1573-1574 following the arrival of Franciscan friars in Spanish La Florida. Sometime between that period and 1595, the mission was established and christened as Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de Tolomato named after the famous apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary that appeared in December 1531 to a New Spanish peasant named Juan Diego in what is today Mexico. By 1595, the mission would be pastored by a Spanish priest named Pedro de Corpa. Fray de Corpa was originally from the region of Villalbilla near Madrid where he joined the Franciscans around 1577, was ordained a priest by 1584, and began his sacerdotal career by serving in positions as a preacher and confessor in his native Spain. By 1587, he was selected as part of a group of friars under Fray Alonso de Reinoso who were to go with him to Spanish Florida. From the port of Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Fray de Reinoso and his companions sailed on July 21, 1587 for La Florida. They first stopped in Havana, Cuba around September 1587 and then on September 29, 1587, Fray de Reinoso and his companions then sailed northwards arriving in St. Augustine on October 5, 1587. There, in St. Augustine, Fray Pedro de Corpa began serving in some of the local missions until he was then assigned to minister to the Guale mission of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de Tolomato further north. Initially, Fray de Corpa was said to have been quite successful in evangelizing many of the local Guale to Christianity and he was also said to have had a good command of the Guale language. The Tolomato Mission, like many other Spanish missions of its time, had its own council house where the royal arms of Spain were said to have been displayed, its mission church, friary as well as attached Guale pueblo where the mission’s native inhabitants resided.

An Illustration by Willis Physioc of the well at Mission Tolomato - taken from John Tate Lanning's book, The Spanish Missions of Georgia.

Recreation of what the Sanctuary of an early Spanish mission church probably looked like - taken at the Museum of Science and History in Jacksonville, Florida. © Christian G. Martinez, 2025.

Despite the successes, there were tensions between Fray de Corpa and the Guale with the Guale not only largely being forced into a life of labor, they were also told by the missionaries to give up their many native customs, traditions and religious beliefs. These tensions would come to a boiling point in the year 1597 involving a young Guale Prince named Juanillo, who was the heir of the Mico Mayor Don Francisco who lived at Tolomato. Apparently, Juanillo, who was a baptized Christian, wanted to take a second wife (which was seen as a symbol of status in his culture) which obviously went against the Christian teachings on marriage. When Fray Pedro de Corpa heard of this, he traveled to the nearby mission of Santa Clara de Tupiqui, pastored by Fray Blas Rodriguez, and discussed the matter with him. Following that conversation, Fray de Corpa called out Juanillo on his request and told him that all Christian men must adhere strictly to the biblical teaching on marriage which defines marriage as being solely between one man and one woman. When Juanillo refused, both Fray de Corpa and Fray Rodriguez are then said to have voiced their opposition to his succession as the Guale mico which angered him. Very angry with what he took to be a gross humiliation, Juanillo decided to take vengeful action against the friars by gathering others who were not only engaged in the same vice of having more than 1 wife but who were also resentful of the friars and their Christian Gospel. They then began to prepare to launch a retaliatory attack against the friars in Spanish Guale. Not too long after this ordeal, Juanillo and his men made their way towards Mission Tolomato during the early morning hours of September 14, 1597.

It was on that morning when Fray Pedro de Corpa awoke to noises outside of the friary, likely the sound of shuffling feet, where he slept. As he got up out of bed, he lit a few candles in his room and proceeded to begin his morning prayers. Within a few minutes into his prayers, however, he noted a very ominous and terrifying silence outside of his friary which would usually be accompanied by noises of hungry children, crackling fires and the smell of maize tortillas and roasted fish. It was then that Fray Pedro de Corpa likely realized that he would not be on this earth for much longer. Then, suddenly, Juanillo and his men broke open the friary door whereby they surrounded the priest. Once surrounded, Juanillo was possessed by a fit of vengeful rage and angrily ordered his men to kill Fray de Corpa. As he issued the order, Fray Pedro de Corpa looked at Juanillo with disbelief and immediately out of nowhere a warrior dressed in native military regalia and covered in red paint charged towards the priest and then clubbed him with a stone hatchet called a macana instantly killing him. Upon confirmation that the Fray de Corpa was dead, Juanillo then told his men to cut off the friar’s head and in an act of barbarity placed it on a spike at the water’s edge in front of the Tolomato boat launch. The rest of his body would then be buried deep in the surrounding woods never to be found. Once they had finished at Mission Tolomato, Juanillo and his men then proceeded to gather all of the other Guale chiefs and their men to plan more retaliatory attacks on all of the other missions in Spanish Guale. When news of the massacre at Tolomato reached the office of Governor Gonzalo Mendez de Canco, the governor ordered Captain Vicente Gonzalez and a small force of 22 soldiers to travel to the ruins of the mission and investigate what had happened.

During their journey towards Tolomato, Gonzalez and his men captured a Guale man who they interrogated and during the interrogation revealed that all of the friars were killed prompting the Spanish force to head instead to Mission San Pedro de Mocama on Cumberland Island where the governor would be updated as to what they found out. Governor Mendez de Canco then decided to go himself to the Guale missions in order to proceed with the investigation. When he arrived on the shores of what was once Mission Tolomato on November 2, 1597, he and his men were all greeted to a sorry sight with the mission’s former church, friary, council house and Guale pueblo all in ruins. During their 2 day stay in the former village, they waited for an attack from Juanillo, and they even went so far as to yell out into the woods offering a meeting with the governor himself. However, 2 days had passed and none of the rebels showed up. Once their stay was over, Governor Mendez de Canco ordered his men to set the ruins of the former Tolomato pueblo on fire prior to their departure. As for Juanillo, he and his men were eventually discovered and killed by October 1601 when Don Domingo, a Guale mico of Asao struck a deal with the Spanish resulting in him and 500 of his men invading their town. As to the former Tolomato mission, the historical record is not too clear as to what immediately happened in the years following Juanillo’s rebellion. Some sources suggest that the mission reappeared in a Native American village called Espogache, however, this claim is disputed among scholars. What is known is that by the 1620s, the Tolomato mission reappears in a new location in what is today Northeast Florida in a Timucua region called Guana, a few miles north of the city of St. Augustine.

A look at the grounds of the Tolomato Cemetery in St. Augustine, Florida - the mission's last location prior to the end of the Spanish Mission Period. © Christian G. Martinez, 2024.

This new Tolomato mission appears on a 1655 mission list under the name “La Natividad de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de Tolomato” (or The Nativity of Our Lady of Guadalupe) and it also served a practical purpose as a way station providing ferry service to the nearby mission of Mission San Juan del Puerto (on Fort George Island) and other northern towns. A lector and theologian named Alonso Mejia is also documented as serving at this mission in 1690. The new mission Tolomato, however, was not meant to last as in November 1702, following Col. Moore’s invasion of Amelia Island and the subsequent invasion of another Guale mission on the island, Santa Catalina de Guale, at Harrison Creek, Mission Tolomato at Guana was also attacked by the Carolinians prompting Governor Zuniga y la Cerda to order all Native American villages to the north of St. Augustine to be brought closer to St. Augustine for safety. These refugees from Mission Tolomato, upon arriving in St. Augustine, were then organized into new mission villages around the city. By 1717, these Guale refugees had established themselves near the city and rebuilt their mission village of Tolomato under the name “Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de Tolomato”. In this new village, they built a wooden chapel along with a four-story coquina bell tower. A 1717 census recorded the mission that year having 64 Guale residents. It appears on subsequent mission lists in 1736, 1738, 1739 and 1752 and it is also documented as surviving both a 1727 plague and the 1740 Siege of St. Augustine by the forces of British Governor James Oglethorpe. By 1752, as the mission villages around St. Augustine consolidated, Mission Tolomato became one of the few surviving mission villages in the vicinity of St. Augustine. In 1752, it is documented having a population of around 26-30 people of various ethnicities - including Yamassee, Chickasaw, Creek and Yuchi. By 1759, its population rose to 32 people of Chiluque, Guale, Yamassee, Chaschis and Yuchi ethnicities.

A 1763 map of St. Augustine showing the "ermita de piedra" of Mission Tolomato as a lone structure outside of the city walls.

In 1762, the British seized the city of Havana from the Spanish and this prompted Spain to go into negotiations with the British. In 1763, the Treaty of Paris was signed wherein Florida was ceded to Great Britain in return for the devolution of Havana, and following the passage of this treaty, more than 80 residents of the surviving St. Augustine missions, including Tolomato, had migrated with the Spanish to Cuba and other parts of New Spain by 1764. A 1763 map of the city of St. Augustine clearly shows the existence of an “ermita de piedra” or “stone hermitage” used for religious purposes and served by a Franciscan friar from St. Augustine. When the British took over the city of St. Augustine, it is said that they tore apart the old wooden chapel in order to utilize its wooden material for firewood. The coquina bell tower, however, remained intact. In 1768, a Scottish physician named Andrew Turnbull established an indigo plantation in what is today New Smyrna Beach and he had it manned by indentured servants from Minorca and other parts of the Mediterranean including Greece. At New Smyrna, they were mistreated and after several years, several Minorcans came to St. Augustine by 1777 along with their spiritual leader, a Catholic priest named Fray Pedro Camps. While in St. Augustine, Fray Pedro Camps is said to have asked British East Florida governor Patrick Tonyn for permission to bury his deceased parishioners on the grounds of the former Spanish mission of Tolomato. Tonyn, despite being a British Protestant, agreed to the priest’s request and since then, the former grounds of the Tolomato mission returned to use as a Catholic site - this time a cemetery rather than a Franciscan mission. Following Florida’s return to Spain in 1784, the site continued to be used as a Catholic cemetery and became home to the final resting places of figures from Haiti, Cuba, Spain, Ireland, Minorca, France and the United States. It was briefly the final resting place of Félix Varela Morales, a Cuban priest and figure in the Cuban Independence Movement who died in St. Augustine in 1853.

Statue of Fray Pedro Camps located on the grounds of the Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine. © Christian G. Martinez, 2024.

His final resting place was eventually moved to Havana in his native Cuba. This cemetery still exists today as the “Tolomato Cemetery” which memorializes its former use as the last location of the mission of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de Tolomato. “Tolomato” is also memorialized as well in the name of the Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve which includes the site of the mission’s location in Guana. The old ermita de piedra and/or coquina bell tower are long gone today, although the site continues to stand as a vestige of the Spanish Mission Period. One can visit the Tolomato Cemetery, albeit you will not recognize it as a Spanish mission but rather as simply an old Catholic cemetery. My wife and I spent our own honeymoon in St. Augustine in January 2024 and during our trip there, we briefly stopped at the gates of the Tolomato Cemetery. We tried to schedule a tour but were unable to do so but nevertheless we were able to gaze at the cemetery from the outside. The mission’s original specific Georgia location remains unknown to this day. Historian John Tate Lanning’s 1935 book, The Spanish Missions of Georgia, which I have in my library, claimed to have identified some ruins in an area known as “The Thicket” just north of Darien as the ruins of the Tolomato mission, however this has long since been debunked with the ruins being identified instead as Sugar Mill and Rum Distillery ruins from the 1800s - long after the Spanish Mission period. His book’s claims on the sites of some of the Guale missions have also been questioned since then but nevertheless it is a fascinating read for those who are fascinated by this period.

For further reading, I recommend the following which were also used as sources for the above:

Francis, J.M. and Kole, K.M. (2011, Aug. 3) Murder and Martyrdom in Spanish Florida: Don Juan and the Guale Uprising of 1597. American Museum of Natural History, Anthropological Papers. Number 95. American Museum of Natural History.

Worth, J.E. (1995, May 18). The Struggle for the Georgia Coast - An Eighteenth-Century Spanish Retrospective on Guale and Mocama. American Museum of Natural History, Anthropological Papers. Number 75. University of Georgia Press.

Milanich, J.T. (2006) Laboring in the Fields of the Lord: Spanish Missions and Southeastern Indians. University Press of Florida.

Lanning, J.T. (1935). The Spanish Missions of Georgia. The University of North Carolina Press.

McEwan, B. (1993). The Spanish Missions of La Florida. University Press of Florida.

Geiger, M., O.F.M, Ph.D. (1940). Biographical Dictionary of the Franciscans in Spanish Florida and Cuba (1528-1841). St. Anthony Guild Press.

Geiger, M., O.F.M., Ph.D. (1936, July). The Martyrs of Florida (1513-1616) by Luis Gerónimo de Oré - Translated, with Biographical Introduction and Notes by. Franciscan Studies. No. 18. Joseph F. Wagner, Inc. Publishing. New York City.