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but would eventually become known as Puerto Rico. Juan Ponce de León became Governor of Puerto Rico.
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advice of the supportive King Ferdinand and explore more of the Caribbean Sea.
In 1513, Ponce de León led the first known European expedition to “La Florida”, which he named during his first voyage to the area. He landed somewhere along Florida's east coast, then charted the Atlantic coast down to the Florida Keys and north along the Gulf coast, perhaps as far as Charlotte Harbor.
Ponce de León returned to Spain in 1514 and was knighted by King Ferdinand, who also re-instated him as the governor of Puerto Rico and authorized him to settle Florida. He returned to the Caribbean in 1515, but plans to organize an expedition to Florida were delayed by the death of King Ferdinand in 1516, after which Ponce de León again traveled to Spain to defend his grants and titles. He would not return to Puerto Rico for two years.
In 1521, Ponce de León finally returned to southwest Florida with the first large-scale attempt to establish a Spanish colony in what is now the continental United States. However, the native Calusa people fiercely resisted the incursion, and he was seriously wounded in a skirmish. The colonization attempt was abandoned, and its leader died from his wounds soon after returning to Cuba.
The largely uncharted Florida peninsula became the hiding place for runaway slaves and Creek Indians displaced from Georgia and lower Alabama as a result of increasing pressure from the British in the early 1700s.
The Seminole and the Wars of Indian Removal
By the early 1500s, Ponce de León was a top military official in the colonial government of Hispaniola. He was authorized to explore the neighboring island of Puerto Rico in 1508 became the first Governor of Puerto Rico by appointment of the Spanish crown in 1509. While Ponce de León grew quite wealthy from his plantations and mines, he faced an ongoing legal conflict with Diego Columbus, the late Christopher Columbus's son, over the right to govern Puerto Rico. After a long court battle, Columbus replaced Ponce de León as governor in 1511. Ponce de León decided to follow the
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