Luis de Rojas y Borja

Luis de Rojas y Borja was the governor of Spanish Florida from October 28, 1624, to June 23, 1630.^[1]

Luis de Rojas y Borja
14th Governor of La Florida
In office October 28, 1624 – June 23, 1630
Preceded by	Juan de Salinas
Succeeded by	Andrés Rodríguez de Villegas
Personal details
Born	Unknown Valencia
Died	Unknown Unknown

Life

Luis de Rojas y Borja was born in Valencia, Spain, and was the son of Pedro de Rojas y Ladrón, born in Valencia and Francisca de Borja y Morello, born in Gandia. His great-grandfather was Juan de Rojas y Rojas, I Marquis of Poza. He became a knight of the Order of Santiago in 1605.^[2]

Career

During his administration, Governor Rojas y Borja dispatched an "entrada" of 10 soldiers and 60 Guale Native Americans in search of a group of "blond men on horseback" (probably groups of English settlers from the area that later became the Province of Carolina) who were exploring inland La Florida, territory claimed by the Spanish. This excursion followed two previous entradas dispatched in 1623 by his predecessor, Juan de Salinas, and led by a Timucuan chief for the same purpose. It is not known if they ever found the exploration party.^[3]

In the 1620s, there was war between the unchristianized Pohoy and Amacano Indian peoples. The Pohoy lived on the shores of Tampa Bay, and the Amacano probably occupied a territory southeast of Apalachee. Their warfare may have caused the Spanish to abandon the Cofa mission situated at the mouth of the Suwannee River,^[4] which was deserted sometime between 1616 and 1636. In 1628 or early 1629, Rojas ordered a detachment of soldiers to fetch the subchief of the Pohoy, second in rank to the cacique, so that he "might give him gifts and negotiate a peace" between the two combatants.^[5] Rojas y Borgas probably founded the mission of San Diego de Helaca around 1627,^[6][7] at the crossing on the east bank of the St. Johns river west of St. Augustine, to facilitate canoe traffic to the western provinces. Between 1624 and 1627, the place was devastated and then later repopulated by natives of Utiaca, in the Acuera province.^[6][7]

In 1627, Rojas y Borja sent two expeditions led by Pedro de Torres to reconnoiter Apalachee and the interior northward. The first consisted of twenty soldiers and sixty allied Indians who explored the Apalache region; in the second, Torres traveled to the northern interior of La Florida as far as Cofitachqui, first visited by the Hernando de Soto expedition in 1539.^[8][9]

In 1630, Inquisitor Agustin Ugarte y Saravia in Cartagena sent several blank commissions to Rojas y Borja for a commissioner and familiar, but apparently the governor never filled them.^[10]

Rojas y Borja was replaced by Andrés Rodríguez de Villegas as governor of Florida on 23 June 1630.^[1]

References

1. Ben Cahoon. U.S. States F-K.
2. "Rojas y Borja, Luis de".
3. Amy Turner Bushnell (1987). Situado and Sabana: Spain´s Support System for the Presidio and Mission Provinces of Florida. Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of American History. Vol. 68. University of Georgia Press. p. 70. ISBN 978-0-8203-1712-0.
4. Jerald T. Milanich (14 August 1996). Timucua. VNR AG. p. 103. ISBN 978-1-55786-488-8.
5. John E. Worth (1998). The Timucuan Chiefdoms of Spanish Florida: Resistance and destruction. University Press of Florida. p. 18. ISBN 978-0-8130-1575-0.
6. Worth 1998, p. 31
7. Jordi Gibert Arce (2011). . Cronología Histórica (in Spanish). Archived from the original on July 11, 2015.
8. John Logan Allen (1997). North American Exploration. University of Nebraska Press. p. 24. ISBN 0-8032-1023-X.
9. Chester B. DePratter (1994). "The Chiefdom of Cofitachequi". In Charles M. Hudson and Carmen Chaves Tesser (ed.). The Forgotten Centuries: Indians and Europeans in the American South, 1521-1704. University of Georgia Press. p. 204. ISBN 978-0-8203-1654-3.
10. Henry Charles Lea (10 June 2010). The Inquisition in the Spanish Dependencies: Sicily, Naples, Sardinia, Milan, the Canaries, Mexico, Peru, New Granada. Cambridge University Press. p. 458. ISBN 978-1-108-01458-8.