Santa Fé de Teleco

Santa Fé de Toloca
Location of Santa Fé de Toloca in Florida
Location	Alachua County, Florida, USA
Coordinates	29°55′50.8614″N 82°31′16.4202″W / 29.930794833°N 82.521227833°W / 29.930794833; -82.521227833
Type	Florida Historic Site

Santa Fé de Toloca (Teleco, Toloco or Señor Santo Tómas de Santa Fé) was a Spanish mission that existed near the Santa Fe River in the northwestern part of what is now Alachua County, Florida, United States during the 17th century. It became an important place on the camino real (royal road) connecting St. Augustine with Apalachee Province, which was centered on the site of present-day Tallahassee, Florida. The site that the Santa Fé mission occupied in the first half of the 17th century was partially excavated in the 1980s.

The mission of Santa Fé de Toloca was established around 1610 or 1612, as Franciscan missionaries prepared to expand into territory north and west of the Santa Fe River. The mission probably was founded by the Franciscan Father Martín Prieto, who had established the nearby San Francisco de Potano mission. Like other Spanish missions in Florida, Santa Fé de Toloca would have been established in or near an existing Timucua village, belonging either to the Potano or the Northern Utina tribe. A village site next to the mission archeological site may have been Cholupaha, visited by the de Soto Expedition in 1539.

As with other Timucua villages that became part of the Spanish mission system in Florida, the Indians of Santa Fé were greatly affected by epidemics, including bubonic plague in 1613-1617, yellow fever in 1649, smallpox in 1653 and measles in 1659. The Timucua Indians, which may have numbered 200,000 before their first contact with Europeans, were reduced from a population of 20,000 to 25,000 late in the 16th century to about 2,000 to 2,500 by the middle of the 17th century. After a rebellion by the Western Timucua in 1656, the Spanish hanged a number of the Indian leaders, including the village chief of Santa Fé. The original mission site was abandoned sometime around the middle of the 17th century, probably after the Timucuan rebellion, and the mission was moved to a new, currently unknown, location.