Acuera - Missions

Missions

The mission of San Blas de Habino had been established by 1612 to serve the towns of Avino, Tucuru and Utiaca, which were on the lower to middle Oklawaha River, at intervals of one-and-a-half to two leaques apart. The Spanish may have regarded this area as part of the Acuera province, or Avino may have been an alternate name for Acuera. The mission of San Blas de Habino probably was abandoned by the late 1620s. The mission of Santa Lucia de Acuera was established by 1627, when Father Pareja named one of the dialects of the Timucua language for the mission. The mission of San Luis de Eloquale appeared in a Spanish report in 1630. Both missions may have been established by 1616. No missions in Acuera province appear in Spanish records after 1655. In the late 1620s the Spanish resettled the people of Utiaca at the mission of San Diego de Helaca (or Laca) on the east side of the St. Johns River, where the route from St. Augustine to the western Timucuan missions crossed the river. They were probably needed there to service the river crossing, as the original inhabitants, the Agua Dulce people, were greatly reduced in numbers. Epidemics severely affected Timucua mission communities in the 1650s, and the Timucua rebellion of 1556 led the Spanish to consolidate missions closer to the road connecting St. Augustine to the Apalachee Province. Attempts to maintain missions in Acuera province probably stopped after 1656. Non-Christian Acuera communities are mentioned in Spanish records into the 1690s. A non-Christian Acuera man was tried by the Governor of Florida in 1678 for multiple murders (he was accused of six, and admitted in court to three). The Acuera last appeared in Spanish records in 1697, in a report that (non-Christian) Acueras living in a village with Ayapajas under a single chief had left the village to "live in the woods".

People living in mission villages along the road between St. Augustine and the western Timucuan provinces, and later, Apalachee Province, were subject to labor drafts, both to carry produce from the western Timucuam provinces and Apalachee to St. Augustine, and to work in St. Augustine. Residents of those villages, escaping those labor duties, fled southward into the Acuera, Agua Dulce and Mayaca provinces (by the 1640s the Spanish referred to those provinces as a group as the Diminiyuti or Ibiniyuti Province ). In 1648, the cacique of the Utiaca fled with part of his people from San Diege de Helaca and returned to Acuera Province.