high-road that led to Pensacola had faded away, overgrown by the rank
luxuriance of the semi-tropical forest. Throughout the interior the
painted savages roved at will, uncontrolled by Spaniard or Englishman,
owing allegiance only to the White Chief of Tallasotchee. St. Augustine,
with its British garrison and its Spanish and Minorcan townsfolk,[2] was
still a gathering place for a few Indian traders, and for the scattered
fishermen of the coast; elsewhere there were in all not more than a
hundred families.[3]

Beyond the Chattahooche and the Appalachicola, stretching thence to the
Mississippi and its delta, lay the more prosperous region of West
Florida.[4] Although taken by the English from Spain, there were few
Spaniards among the people, who were controlled by the scanty British
garrisons at Pensacola, Mobile, and Natchez. On the Gulf coast the
inhabitants were mainly French creoles. They were an indolent,
pleasure-loving race, fond of dancing and merriment, living at ease in
their low, square, roomy houses on the straggling, rudely farmed
plantations that lay along the river banks. Their black slaves worked
for them; they, themselves spent much of their time in fishing and
fowling. Their favorite arm was the light fowling-piece, for they were
expert wing shots;[5] unlike the American backwoodsmen, who knew nothing
of shooting on the wing, and looked down on smooth-bores, caring only
for the rifle, the true weapon of the freeman. In winter the creoles
took their negroes to the hills, where they made tar from the pitch
pine, and this they exported, as well as indigo, rice, tobacco, bear's
oil, peltry, oranges, and squared timber. Cotton was grown, but only for
home use. The British soldiers dwelt in stockaded forts, mounting light
cannon; the governor lived in the high stone castle built of old by the
Spaniards at Pensacola.[6]