A Spanish mission was established near here within sight of the Santa Fe River about A.D. 1606 by Franciscan missionaries, and the river and the modern town of Santa Fe took their names from it. Santa Fe de Toloca was said at one time to be the principal Timucuan Indian mission in a chain stretching across the interior of la Florida from St. Augustine on the east coast. During the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, la Florida was a battleground where England, France, and Spain fought for control of the New World in a larger conflict between Old and New World cultures that began with Christopher Columbus's arrival in 1492. Archaeological investigations between 1986 and 1989 by the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida revealed traces of a Spanish-style church, a cemetery with Indian burial in Christian fashion, traces of Indian village life, and fragments of seventeenth century Spanish and Indian pottery. The Indians at Santa Fe provisioned the Castillo de San Marcos and the town of St. Augustine with crops of corn, wheat, and probably peaches, carried in baskets strapped to their backs along the Old Spanish Trail, while produce and cattle were also boated down the Santa Fe and Suwannee Rivers to Cuba. Several generations of Timucuans were born and died at this site, where everyday life centered on tending gardens and studying Roman Catholic doctrine, though their routines were broken by visitations by the Bishop of Cuba, the Indian Rebellion of 1656, epidemics of disease introduced by Europeans, and the influx of other Indian groups. The mission church and village were attacked and burned in 1702 by invading English soldiers and their Indian allies from the Carolinas. The destruction of Santa Fe de Toloca and the other missions of la Florida weakened Spain's control and ultimately contributed to Florida becoming a United States possession in 1821. Santa Fe de Toloca stood at an existing Indian village that may have been the same village, called Cholupaha, visited by Hernando de Soto's army in 1539. This area was later called Bland by its first and only postmaster, J.L. Matthews, who named it for his son in 1903.