According to the website of the shrine that marks this momentous date in history:

 ”Mass was said to hallow the land and draw down the blessing of heaven before the first step was taken to rear a human habitation.”

The Spanish colonists were led by Admiral Pedro Menéndez de Aviles. But just what were Menéndez and his 800-strong group doing in Florida?

In brief, it was a search-and-destroy mission and St. Augustine was established to mount a murderous offensive against the small, struggling French colony at Fort Caroline, near modern-day Jacksonville.

Menéndez had been dispatched by Spain’s King Philip II to wipe out the French colony, established about a year earlier. These French settlers had come to America, as the Mayflower Pilgrims would more than 50 years later, in search of a religious refuge. Huguenots, or French Protestants, they had been given permission by France’s King Charles to establish a colony in America.

Admiral Menéndez was sent to Florida with clear orders–wipe out the “heretic” French colony. After killing most of the inhabitants of Fort Caroline, Menéndez captured and put to the sword several hundred French sailors who had been shipwrecked in a hurricane and came ashore just south of St. Augustine before straggling north towards the Spanish outpost.

The spot where Menéndez did his “pious” work with such ruthless efficiency was known as Matanzas, Spanish for “slaughters.”

The site of these killings, Fort Matanzas, is now an off-the-beaten path national monument just south of St. Augustine:

I told the story of Fort Caroline, St. Augustine, and the fate of America’s true first pilgrims in “The French Connection,” an Op-ed in the New York Times

You can also read a more complete story of the bloody history of America’s true “first pilgrims” in a chapter called “Isabella’s Pigs” in America’s Hidden History.

People ask me two questions all the time: Why don’t we know much about History?
And why is so much of America’s History Hidden?
To the first the answer is simple. It was boring.
And to the second, we lie.
Sometimes these lies are little white lies –like Washington and the Cherry Tree. But sometimes they are Big Lies.
Let me give you an example of a BIG LIE. I was in a wonderful historical village in Florida, doing some research. A Spanish mission, with a neighboring Indian village, it featured an enthusiastic, well-versed staff in period costume. It was exactly the kind of place I like to suggest to parents and teachers to take their kids to get them excited about history.
Then I went into their “educational center.” On the wall was a time chart of Florida’s history and under the date 1565, I saw this legend: “The French are banished from Florida.”

Not so fast… The French Protestants, or Huguenots who were America’s real first pilgrims, were not “banished.” They were massacred by the Spanish. And not because they were French but because they were Protestants–”heretics.” It happened in September and October 1565.

October is also the month in which those folks who brought you the Salem Witch Trials executed a couple of Quakers –who had been banned from Boston and the Bay Colony in October 1656. A year later, another Quaker named Mary Dyer was executed and a fourth was hung in 1661 –simply for the crime of being a Quaker.
They left that part out of the Thanksgiving Story, didn’t they? These are some of the “hidden history” moments that we don’t talk about when we discuss America as a so-called “Christian nation” and the Puritans coming for freedom of religion. That meant their religion not anyone else’s.
We hide our history when the truth is ugly. We like to paint a picture of that that makes history tidy and acceptable. But our history isn’t tidy or bloodless. And it certainly isn’t boring as these stories prove.

You can read more about the French Pilgrims and the Quakers in America’s Hidden History

Here is a link the national monument at Fort Matanzas, site of the Massacre:
http://www.nps.gov/foma/index.htm
This is a brief biography of Mary Dyer from the Massachusetts state website:
http://www.mass.gov/?pageID=mg2terminal&L=6&L0=Home&L1=State+Government&L2=About+Massachusetts&L3=Interactive+State+House&L4=Inside+the+State+House&L5=Statues+in+Bronze&sid=massgov2&b=terminalcontent&f=interactive_statehouse_statue_dyer&csid=massgov2