The Guale People and the Spanish Mission
Near St. Simons Island, Georgia
Long before English colonists or Spanish soldiers, this island belonged to the Guale, a Native people who fished these creeks, farmed the high ground, and organized themselves into chiefdoms up and down the Georgia coast. After Spain founded Saint Augustine to the south, Franciscan friars pushed north into Guale country, building a chain of missions to convert the people to Catholicism. By the fifteen nineties a mission stood at a Guale town called Asao.
That effort met fierce resistance. In fifteen ninety seven the Guale rose in revolt, killing several friars in what became known as the Guale uprising. The Spanish rebuilt, and the mission was reestablished as San Domingo de Asao.
Sometime before sixteen seventy five it was relocated to the Saint Simons area. In sixteen eighty four, under pressure from pirate raids, the mission was burned and its people fled to the mainland, part of the collapse of the entire Georgia mission system. The Guale were scattered, but they were here first, and their presence is woven into the deepest layer of this island's past.
