Although not directly involved in the revolt, Altamahas were never far from the minds of those who were. In the spring of 1598, Governor Méndez met with Guale leaders to ransom the captive Franciscan, offering axes, hoes, and blankets for the return of the priest. When the Guale leaders demurred, insisting on the return of some of their own sons who had been living in St. Augustine for several years, the governor became enraged and threatened to send for three hundred soldiers, “and put them to the sword, and cut down all their maize and food, and follow them as far as La Tama.”34 Guales promptly returned the missionary. Spaniards and Guales both recognized that the Oconee Valley’s residents, however distant, played a pivotal role; they could be the refuge to which Guales might flee or the anvil against which Spaniards could crush them. Although they were not the only peoples that Spaniards courted, Oconee peoples’ potentially pivotal role encouraged Spaniards to remain in indirect contact with them. This contact, coupled with gifts, enabled Altamahas to challenge Ocute’s primacy in the valley. Indeed, Spanish gifts in the hands of Indian emissaries altered the valley far more thoroughly than de Soto or Chozas did with swords or crosses.
Altamaha’s opportunity and Ocute’s problems appear only fleetingly, but they were tied inextricably to Floridanos’ experiments with gifts as diplomatic tools. These experiments began with Méndez’s decision to pacify Guale with a new round of gift giving. The governor contented himself with this imperfect strategy because he had little choice. Despite his earlier threats of scorched-earth campaign, he acknowledged to the king that because the rebels had retreated so far inland, “there was no way that one could punish them there unless it were by the hand and order of the same Indians.” Méndez’s generosity, though, did enjoy some success. Raids from Spaniards and their Indian allies convinced many Guales to make peace by early 1600, and newly conciliatory Guale leaders offered to bring some of their followers to St. Augustine to work in the agricultural fields that supported the presidio and private citizens. Despite the advantages of the new labor draft—also called the repartimiento—for securing food supplies for St. Augustine, the new friendship had its shortcomings. Guale’s nominally pacified towns continued to defy Spanish authority by welcoming French traders, and they would continue to do so for another three years. Before 1602, no Spaniard was foolish enough to think that Guales were ready to welcome new missionaries.35 The Oconee Valley loomed increasingly large as one remedy to this persistent instability in Guale. These initial successes confirmed the value of generosity, but Floridanos were also learning that the meaning of gifts depended in part on the power of those who gave them away. If offerings were to appear as gifts rather than tribute, the colonists had to show themselves to be a formidable chiefdom in their own right. The expansion and organization of the missions served as one indicator of Spanish strength, and in 1598 one royal official believed that the governor favorably impressed “inland Indians” when he raised tribute payments among those Indians still loyal to St. Augustine.36 And yet, two months later, as the governor sent sixteen soldiers to help defend the Mocama mission of San Pedro, the same official noted that the governor needed to send rations with these soldiers instead of expecting the Mocamas to feed them because “the inland Indians are watching to see how we aid our friends.”37 By exacting appropriate tribute from subordinate polities and providing necessary support for these same dependents, Spaniards could demonstrate their power—and the power of their goods—to observant Oconee peoples.
Although Méndez probably did not decide to provision the San Pedro garrison, he was doing his best to convince inland peoples like the Altamahas that his friendship could be of great service to them. Not surprisingly, he also had need of their friendship. As he had already acknowledged to the king, Indians would be crucial to suppressing the last of the insurgents, and Altamaha assistance would prevent the insurgents from fleeing further inland. The Spaniards knew that gifts would make this alliance possible, but to distribute these gifts Governor Méndez enlisted the help of two Christian chiefs from Mocama, Cacica María of the mission town of Nombre de Dios and Cacique Juan of San Pedro. Each cacique received gifts valued at 350 ducats—roughly equivalent to three years’ pay for a common soldier—to take “into the interior land to the caciques with whom they have contact.” Offering such gifts to their friends, the Christian leaders could also explain that all who joined the Spaniards could expect similar generosity from His Most Catholic Majesty.38 Such generosity might encourage recalcitrant Guales to reciprocate with allegiance rather than continued hostility. If not, then perhaps by attracting inland peoples the governor could expand the mission system and simultaneously pressure Guales from the south and the interior.39
It is difficult to say with certainty what impact Governor Méndez’s initiative had because he could not document it any more than he could control it. No longer orchestrating the ceremonies of “rendering obedience” in the course of presenting their gifts, Spaniards were supplying Native leaders with valuable items that they then introduced to the southeastern political economy on their terms. Cacique Juan clearly molded Spanish interests to fit his own. Two years earlier, in 1598, Governor Méndez had noted approvingly that “he spends himself into poverty giving gifts to other caciques to bring them to our obedience.”40 While Spaniards doubtless approved of such generosity in the service of their temporal and divine monarchs, Juan also had more personal interests in mind. Sometime before receiving the governor’s gifts in 1600, he asked Méndez to appoint him head cacique of Guale. Perhaps the Mocama leader hoped that his growing influence among Spaniards and Indians would enable him to capitalize on the apostacy of Guale’s most recent head cacique. Not surprisingly, the governor balked at the request. Juan apparently did not respond to the rejection before he died later that year, perhaps from disease.41 Cacica María also harbored ambitions of her own: within six years of Juan’s death, this cacica of Nombre de Dios included the deceased Juan’s town of San Pedro in her “chiefdom” and appointed her son there as its cacique.42 Juan’s and María’s fates varied, but what is significant is that Spaniards were placing gifts in the hands of Native intermediaries who were free to introduce them into older networks of exchange and influence.
Altamahas—especially their chief Altamaha—used this influx of gifts to challenge Ocute’s prominence. Although there is no documentation of these gift exchanges, evidence of their consequences appears in the shifting political fortunes of Altamaha in the Oconee Valley. In 1540, when Zamumo met de Soto, Altamahas owed some allegiance to Ocute’s chief. When Chozas fled the Oconee Valley in 1597, it was probably the result of Ocute’s influence over the actions of its downriver tributary. Despite this long-standing relationship, Altamahas had evidently severed ties with Ocute by 1601, when they joined Guales and a number of other peoples in a final decisive attack on the remaining Guale recalcitrants. In 1602, a year after the final defeat of the Guales, another Spanish visitor noted Altamaha’s independence and perhaps rising prominence when he referred to it as “the capital of the province.” Such success, though, came at the expense of hostility with Ocute: when the visitor expressed interest in continuing northward toward Ocute, his hosts urged him to reconsider “so that they might not kill him.”43 With a warning that echoed the one Ocute issued to Chozas and his companions, Altamahas proclaimed a new line of independence and even hostility in the Oconee Valley. As had happened many times in previous centuries, an upstart chiefdom was moving out from the shadow of its superior. The difference was that Floridian rather than Mississippian goods had helped make this possible.
When they cautioned their Spanish visitor against traveling inland to Ocute, Altamahas made clear how much they recognized the significance of this change for their own political stability, and stability remained a precious commodity for the chiefdoms. The struggles among elites masked more fundamental shifts among the general population of the Oconee Valley. The fact that Spaniards placed these goods in the hands of leaders probably encouraged southeastern elites to draw