The Battle of St. Augustine was a battle fought between the Cherokee Indians and the Spanish Army at the colonial capital of St. Augustine in Spanish Florida.
Following a series of raids in the Florida Panhandle, the Cherokee chief Ishtakhaba led his warband southeast to attack the Spanish colonial settlement of St. Augustine, which was garrisoned by only 207 militiamen under Celio Rivera y Moncada. The Cherokee warriors scaled the walls of the fort and cut down the Spanish militiamen, whose attempts to use the butts of their muskets against the tomahawks of the Cherokee warriors proved futile. After the Cherokee captured the gatehouse, the rest of the Cherokee war party flooded into the settlement, and the Spanish cavalry failed to defend the entrance, instead being overwhelmed and cut down in melee combat. The Spanish garrison was quickly overrun once the gates were open, and all 207 defenders were killed; 248 Cherokee were killed during the assault. Once in control of Florida, the Cherokee razed every Spanish plantation across the colony. Within a few months, the American settler Archibald Monroe and 720 other white settlers took up arms against the Indians in North Florida, south of the Georgia border, challenging the Indian recapture of Florida.