Ponce’s spring was the legendary Fountain of Youth. We’ve all heard the story of the young Spanish adventurer who sought a magic, youth-restoring fountain and found Florida instead. It was a romantic tale but hardly a new one. Legends of magical fountains, in countless iterations, had been told at campfires and council houses around the world for millennia.


Thirteen hundred years before de Leon and half a world away, Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang searched the known world for a fountain with the same reputed power of imbuing eternal life. When he didn’t find it in the known world, Qin expanded his search to the unknown. It was a historic quest that resulted in many discoveries, including the islands of Japan.


While scholars still debate what role the Fountain of Youth legend played in de Leon’s quest, there’s little doubt he knew about it. When chronicling the discovery of Florida, Antonio Herrera had de Leon’s own journal in hand (a journal long-since disappeared) when he wrote, “Juan Ponce…resolved, although against his will, to send someone to examine the island of Bimini, for he wished to do it himself, because of the account he had of the wealth of this island, and especially of that particular spring so the Indians said that restores men from aged men to youths, the which he had not been able to find…. He sent then, as Captain of the ship, Juan Perez de Ortubia, and as pilot, Anton de Alaminos….” They did not find it.


Alonso Cabale, on the other hand, dreamt of a spring that was quite real. We don’t have any actual accounts of his life or any writings he may have composed, so we can only speculate about what he may or may not have dreamed. But, it seems unlikely he could have lived his 60 years in St. Augustine without hearing about the wondrous, life-giving spring that had been a central feature in the lives of his parents and his ancestors before them. Nor do we know what name his Timucuan elders used when describing the spring. The Seminoles, who moved into central Florida around the time Alonso reached middle age, started calling the spring, Ichetucknee, the “place of beavers.”


Archaeological evidence tells of a long occupation on the banks of Ichetucknee Springs by the Timucuans and their predecessors, dating back nearly15,000 years. We can only imagine what went through their minds when, in 1513, they received reports that large ships carrying strange yellow-skinned men (the natives called them yellow, not white) had landed on the East Coast. They were still living by the spring 26 years later, when reports of more of these strange men swept through the villages of North Florida. This time, the rumors materialized in the form of Hernando de Soto and his army of Spanish conquistadores, who arrived at Ichetucknee Springs in August of 1539. While the Spaniards were undoubtedly grateful for the natural fountain of cool, clean water, they were not satisfied. For them, no water—magical or otherwise—held the power of the other great myth of that time—Florida gold.


Hungry and tired, de Soto’s army set camp by the village while some of his men returned to the Ocala area to retrieve some weapons and tools. For three and a half weeks, the Spaniards remained at the Ichetucknee, feasting on the natives’ food stores and forcing their will on their reluctant hosts. When the Timucuans expressed their displeasure, de Soto responded in that special way that is the hallmark of all conquerors; he kidnapped the chief, his daughter and several others. They were released only after the army struck camp and set off to continue their quest.


For the next century, as Spain slowly expanded its influence in Florida, the Timucua remained in their village at Ichetucknee. Around 1608, Franciscan monks established a mission at the spring, which they named San Martin de Timucua (sometimes referred to as Ayaocuto). As the decades passed, life at San Martin and the other mission villages grew increasingly fraught. The villagers were forced to supply food and labor to their Spanish overlords at St. Augustine while the missionaries slowly suppressed their long-held spiritual beliefs and replaced them with Christianity. In 1656, they rebelled. For several days, warriors from San Martin and other mission villages rampaged across North Florida, from the St. Johns River west beyond the Suwannee. The final death toll was seven people, including some at the huge La Chua Ranch at Paynes Prairie. The uprising ended predictably and those held responsible, including Chief Lucas Menendez at Ichetucknee, were executed.


In the years leading up to the Timucuan Rebellion, Alonso’s parents are thought to have lived in the mission village of Santa Fe, east of today’s O’Leno State Park, by the river that still carries its name. After the rebellion, the village was relocated several miles to the east.


In the early 1700s, raiders from the north—English colonists, Yamassee and Creek Indians mostly—overran Santa Fe and the other missions. The survivors, including Alonso Cabale’s parents, had no choice but to relocate to St. Augustine, where they lived in a handful of small villages, protected by the stone fortress they had helped build.


It was in one of these small villages, just seven years after his family fled the Springs Heartland, that Alonso was born. There, the man who would be the last full-blooded Timucua spent his life as a de facto exile from his ancestral homeland. Any Timucuan who ventured beyond the protection of St. Augustine risked being killed by their Yamassee and Creek (aka Seminole) enemies who now controlled the interior. We’ll never know if a daring young Alonso ever hazarded a pilgrimage to see the spring of his ancestors, before his family moved to Cuba in 1764. Chances are, Ichetucknee remained an unobtainable dream.


I don’t know what would be worse, looking in vain for a wondrous spring you think might exist or being kept from one you know exists. Stories like these make me forever grateful that my small place in the world is fed by a spring that, for so many, is the stuff of dreams.