CONVENT OF ST. ANN, POTANO Mission of Spanish La Florida

Second Mission Period 1587 - 1616

Home - Missions - History - Missionaries - Indians - Links

24. CONVENT OF ST. ANN, POTANO

The mission appears on Geiger's question able 1587 list and on another list for 1609 that he published, but there seems to be no other clear evidence for such a mission. If the mission ever existed in 1587, it was among the Fresh Water Timucua possibly, as Bishop Altamirano referred to that district as "Potano." It is worthy of note, however, that Santa Ana was the name of one of the Potano villages on the Alachua prairie in which Fray Prieto began his work in 1607 and that he mentioned the village as having a church and a cross already. But this Potano's Santa Ana seems an unlikely place for an early mission of any endurance. In 1607 Prieto reported its elderly chief as very hostile, claiming to have been held captive by de Soto as a boy. Geiger's establishment of 1609 did not reappear on still another list from about 1610 that Geiger presented. Lanning does not mention a Santa Ana mission, nor does any other source of which I am aware. However, the 1678 visitation of San Francisco Potano reveals that the Potano village of Santa Ana had survived into the early 1670s when its people were relocated to San Francisco because of San Francisco's depopulation.

< Previous - Next >

Mission List

REFERENCES Dr. John H. Hann
"Summary Guide to Spanish Florida Missions and Vistas with Churches in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries"

Home - Missions - History - Missionaries - Indians - Links