It has long been known that the Cuban fishermen of Useppa Island’s well-known fishing rancho lived with and in some cases intermarried with a little-known group of Native Americans known as “Spanish Indians” during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Many of these Indians not only spoke Spanish, but were also transported back to Cuba for baptisms and perhaps other Catholic sacraments.

In recent years my own archival research into the Cuban fishing period of Southwest Florida has provided voluminous new information regarding not only the origin and ethnic identity of these “Spanish Indians” (predominantly of Creek/Muskogee extraction), but also their routine interactions with Cuban fishermen, both here along the Gulf coast and during regular visits to Havana on board Cuban sailing vessels.

The amount of information alone is a daunting task, increasing in volume from the American Revolution era through the transfer of Florida to United States control in 1821.

What has only recently come to light are remarkable personal details contained in parish registries for the church of Nuestra Señora de Regla in the harborside community of Regla, Cuba, the base for the South Florida fishing fleet in Cuba at that time. Thanks to recent digitization of many of these records through a project entitled “Ecclesiastical Sources and Historical Research on the African Diaspora in Brazil and Cuba” administered by Dr. Jane Landers of Vanderbilt University, I have been able to review records of non-white baptisms in the Regla church, revealing a number of these “Spanish Indian” baptisms during the early 19th century. Details and patterns are only beginning to emerge, but among the finds are several infants and toddlers born on Useppa Island right here in Pine Island Sound, including the three-year-old Fernando Gonzalez, son of Asturias (Spain) native Fernando Gonzalez and an Indian woman named Manuela, also a Useppa native, and an infant girl named Ana Masearreño, born May 7, 1820 on Useppa Island, daughter of Canary Island (Spain) native José Masearreño and another Indian woman native to Useppa named Fabla. Both of these half-Spanish, half- Indian children were trans- ported to Cuba by Captain José María Caldéz among a total of 133 Indians who arrived on his ship Nuestra Señora del Rosario on January 13, 1821. Their baptisms were performed a week later.

Ironically, as teenagers these two multi-ethnic children would ultimately witness the destruction of the Cuban fishing ranchos and the forced removal of the “Spanish Indians” to the American west after 1836. Now, almost two centuries later, their stories are finally coming to light


This article was taken from the Friends of the Randell Research Center Newsletter Vol 5, No. 2 June 2006.