There was an open invitation from the Spanish governor. I believe it was more on East Florida's agenda though. I need to do more reading on it but from what I remember it was sort of the old 'bait n switch' trick. Get em down here, use em and then enslave em again. The Spanish had no qualms about slavery at all. Not sure if that was one of the times there was some doorknocking by the English over in St Augustine or not. Anyway, slaves were easier to obtain and they could get them faster than a ship full of soldiers from Spain or Cuba. This is the main reason there were so many former slaves in the Seminole tribe. They ran away from the Spanish, again. Then years later more came in with the Creek and Cherokee who went south after Horseshoe Bend.

Pam