Pre-Mission Era Settlements
1526 - 1565
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3. SANTA MARIA FILIPINA
A settlement created by Tristan de Luna y Arellana and his 1500 followers (1559-61) on a high point overlooking Pensacola Bay. They found only a few seasonal fishermen's huts on the bay and a few scattered groups of natives living along the Escambia River, but no villages in the nearby hinterland. There is no record of the construction effected by Luna beyond the mention of a church and the governor's house, nor of the fate of the small force left to hold the site when the majority of the settlers left in the spring of 1561. No natives seem to have visited the site during the Spanish presence there. Luna and most of the settlers were absent from the site from February to June of 1560, having moved inland toward the west to a village north of Mobile Bay known as Nanjpacana.
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REFERENCES Dr. John H. Hann
"Summary Guide to Spanish Florida Missions and Vistas with Churches in the
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries"
© Copyright. John P. Walsh. April 22, 2002