Opinion: Ponce de Leon started lengthy Indian war in Florida

This week is the celebration of the 500th anniversary of Juan Ponce de León’s purported discovery of Florida. Commemorations include the unveiling of “The First Landing,” a larger-than-life statue of Ponce in Melbourne Beach, as well as the introduction by the Postal Service of “La Florida,” a four-stamp series timed to honor what is being presented as the founding moment in our country’s history.

On that second voyage he achieved one real Florida first, albeit an inglorious one. In a skirmish with native inhabitants, Ponce fired the first shots in what would turn into a 300-year war of ethnic cleansing. More American soldiers would die trying to subdue Florida than in all the Indian battles in the West.

Ponce himself was struck by an arrow. The wound wasn’t serious, but the Spaniards were as indifferent to sepsis as they were alert to heresy. What if Ponce had returned to Spain with little vials that he claimed contained the elixir of immortality? He would have been transferred expeditiously into the hands of the Inquisition. Instead, he died of fever in Havana, having discovered nothing, founded nothing and achieved nothing.