Most likely, this is new and surprising information. For various historical reasons, these martyrs’ stories have been largely forgotten. But at the beginning of the twenty-first century, a group of laypeople resumed efforts to gather the history of those we now know as “the Martyrs of La Florida.” Their goals: to make them known, to spread devotion to them, and to seek their beatification by the Church.

New World Missions. When Juan Ponce de León landed on the Florida peninsula in 1513, he called the land “Florida” because it was Easter, a season known back then as Pascua Florida (“Flowery Easter”) in Spanish. It may also have been due to the abundant and blooming vegetation that he discovered there. Several other Spanish explorers arrived later all along the coast of the American Southeast, from modern-day Florida all the way north to Virginia. All that land, then known by the name “La Florida,” was initially claimed by the Spanish crown as part of its possessions in the New World.

It is well known that some of these explorers—both soldiers and political authorities—treated the Indigenous population with a great deal of violence. This was especially true during the first few years of their expeditions, and it happened mainly in the Caribbean islands of Hispaniola, Cuba, and Puerto Rico.

In addition to these explorers, however, missionaries started arriving, zealous in their desire to announce the gospel to the Indigenous people. Several of them (most famously the Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas) demanded that the king of Spain ensure their fair treatment. Their pleas led King Charles I to enact the “New Laws” in 1542. These laws recognized the basic rights of the Indigenous poeple and forbade enslaving them or robbing them of their lands.

This was a big achievement. The missionaries were keen on ensuring justice for the Native Americans, many of whom eagerly accepted the gospel message they heard. It also allowed the missionaries to set up mission centers near their towns. In these centers (called doctrinas or misiones, depending on the availability of missionaries), the Indigenous people were catechized and received the sacraments. Thus began a new experiment: the establishment of Christian communities that respected the culture and traditions of Native Americans. They lived as free men and women. They owned land, chose their local leaders, spoke their own languages, and participated in the life of the Church.

The First Martyrs. Although the New Laws were already in force when the Spaniards started settling in La Florida, many of the Indigenous inhabitants there had already learned about the outrages that some Spanish explorers had committed in other places. They also heard about the missionaries who, while advocating for their rights, represented a new religion that could be disruptive to their ways. This caused great hostility toward all Spaniards.

To assuage these fears, Fr. Luis de Cáncer, a Dominican, led a deliberately peaceful expedition from Cuba to the Tampa area in 1549. The Tocobaga natives of that region first welcomed the missionaries but soon turned on them. They killed two of them, Fr. Diego de Tolosa and a lay brother called Fuentes, out of sight of the Spanish vessel. A few weeks later, realizing his companions were likely dead, Cáncer disembarked at a different place in Tocobaga territory. He waded ashore alone as a sign of his peaceful intentions and was greeted with a hug, then clubbed to death. These three men are known as the “protomartyrs” (first martyrs) of La Florida.

In the decades that followed, several other martyrdoms took place. In 1566, one Jesuit priest was killed near present-day Jacksonville. Then, eight other Jesuits were killed in 1571 in what is now Virginia, in an apparent response to their moral teachings.

Around the same time, Franciscan missionaries established several misiones in parts of La Florida, with the main misión located in St. Augustine. These regions were inhabited by the Apalachee and Timucua nations, many of whom accepted the Christian faith, received Baptism, and began to live near the missionaries’ small churches and schools. Thus, a large area of Florida was won for the Christian faith.

Incursions and Upheavals. But not all the Apalachees responded positively. Some leaders allied themselves with the neighboring Chisca nation to actively oppose the presence of the missions. One of their raids took place in 1647 at the town of San Antonio de Bacuqua, near modern Tallahassee. The Catholic Indigenous people who lived there were preparing for a major religious festival. Even the lieutenant governor, Claudio Luis de Florencia, had come with his family to join the celebration.

Suddenly, a band of non-Christian Apalachee and Chisca attacked the mission and destroyed the church. They tortured and killed three Franciscan priests and the Florencia family: the governor and his wife, their daughters, Antonia and María, and María’s two children—one of them an unborn baby who was ripped from his mother’s womb. Because Antonia, the teenage girl, refused to stop preaching Christ in the midst of their abuse, they subjected her to especially dreadful tortures before killing her. These nine have been remembered as martyrs.

Almost fifty years later, a smaller revolt took place in the province of Jororo, south of present-day Orlando. A native chief was pressured to renounce his faith and kill a Franciscan priest. He refused and was killed, as were the friar and another tribesman. The two Indigenous people, whose names remain unknown, are the first known Native Americans who died for their faith. Two others, both of them sacristans, were martyred in another attack that same year.

The Battle at Ayubale. Around the same time, Protestants from England began settling the territories of the Carolinas and Virginia and claimed them for the British crown. By the early eighteenth century, one of the English leaders from Carolina, Col. James Moore, allied himself with Creek Indians and carried out raids against other Indigenous nations. He focused especially on the Catholic Apalachees, whom he sought to capture and return to the English colony as slaves. These raids became the setting of the martyrdom of numerous Catholics, both Spanish and Native American.

In early 1704, Col. Moore, together with the Creeks, attacked the peaceful Apalachee mission of Concepción de Ayubale, not far from modern-day Tallahassee. When the residents of the nearby San Luis mission heard about the assault on Ayubale, they joined the Spanish troops and went to their aid.

On their way, they stopped at the Patale mission, where a Franciscan priest, Juan de Parga, ministered to them by preaching a sermon in the Apalachee language and administering the sacraments. Anticipating their martyrdom, Fr. Parga insisted on going with them. “I must go and die with my children,” he said. Parga was decapitated as he approached the mission, and his head was displayed at the council house of Ayubale as a trophy.

We Go to God as Christians. At Ayubale on January 26, the Creeks captured more than forty Apalachee. They tied them to the rough-hewn crosses making up the Stations of the Cross in the town square and tortured them with fire throughout the day until they died.

One of the three recorded Indigenous martyrs of that day is Antonio Inija, who held an important position in San Luis. (The Apalachee title “inija” designates the second in authority in the town.) All day long, Antonio kept encouraging the others to stand firm and resist the temptation to deny their faith. He warned the executioners that they needed to turn to God and said to them, “Throw in more fire so that our hearts will suffer no more and our souls may go to enjoy God as Christians.” Shortly before dying, he testified that the Virgin Mary was standing next to him, comforting and encouraging him. Antonio Inija is the lead martyr in this whole group whose beatification is being requested from the Church.

Several other martyrdoms took place that year and in the years that followed, involving both Apalachee and Timucua, throughout the region. By the time the last recorded martyrdom took place in 1715, all the mission villages established in Apalachee territory had been destroyed. And with their destruction came the almost complete erasure of the Catholic presence in La Florida.

The “Purest Blood” of Martyrs. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, and after several years of preparation, the lay initiative known as The Martyrs of La Florida Missions was officially recognized by the diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee. In 2015, the diocesan phase of the cause of “The Beatification of the Servants of God Antonio Inija and Fifty-Seven Companions” began. This group includes thirty-six laypeople, twenty-eight of whom are Native Americans. The diocesan phase formally concluded in October 2023, and the cause is currently in the hands of the Holy See.

With their death, these martyrs have glorified Christ. As Bishop Jean Pierre Verot, the first bishop of St. Augustine, wrote in his pastoral letter of 1858: “Florida . . . has been bedewed in the East and in the West, in the North and in the South, with the purest blood of martyrs!”

Carlos Alonso Vargas, from Costa Rica, has served as translator for the postulators of the Florida Martyrs’ cause for canonization. For more information on the Martyrs of La Florida, visit martyrsoflafloridamissions.org.