Question: Why was the Narvaez expedition important to Spanish Florida?

Context articles: Tomás Menéndez Márquez
West Florida
Gutierre de Miranda
Joseph Morton (governor)
Narváez expedition
East Florida
Jungle Prada Site
Cabeza de Vaca (film)
Santa Elena (Spanish Florida)
Spanish Florida

Tomás Menéndez Márquez y Pedroso (1643–1706) was an official in the government of Spanish Florida, and owner, with his brothers, of the largest ranch in Spanish Florida.
 He was captured by pirates in 1682 and held for ransom, but was rescued by the Timucua.
West Florida (Spanish: "Florida Occidental" ) was a region on the north shore of the Gulf of Mexico which underwent several boundary and sovereignty changes during its history.
 The province was established by the British in 1763 out of lands ceded from the Spanish and French.
 As its name suggests, it was formed out of the Western part of formerly Spanish Florida (East Florida formed the eastern part), along with lands taken from French Louisiana; West Florida's capital was Pensacola.
 The colony included most of what is now the Florida Panhandle, as well as parts of the modern U.S. states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.
Gutierre de Miranda was interim governor of Spanish Florida in the late 16th century.
 He was a brother of the previous governor of Spanish Florida, Hernando de Miranda, and brother-in-law of the next governor, Pedro Menéndez Márquez.
Joseph Morton (died September 1721) was an early colonist and governor of the Province of Carolina.
 Although he was not one of Carolina's Lords Proprietors, Morton was influential in the recruitment of religious dissenters to migrate to the new colony.
 In 1680 he led a group of dissenters to what is now South Carolina, settling Edisto Island.
 In 1682 he was appointed governor of the colony by the proprietors, but due to disagreements with the proprietors was replaced in 1684.
 A second appointment in 1686 lasted only one month before he was supplanted by James Colleton.
 Morton had been in the process of organizing an expedition against Spanish Florida, which the colonists believed was harboring pirates operating against the colony's coastal settlements.
 Colleton immediately put a stop to the expedition, since England and Spain were then at peace.
The Narváez expedition was a Spanish journey of exploration and colonization started in 1527 that intended to establish colonial settlements and garrisons in Florida.
 The expedition was initially led by Pánfilo de Narváez, who died in 1528.
 More men died as the expedition traveled west along the unexplored Gulf Coast of the present-day United States and into the American Southwest.
 Only four of the expedition's original members survived, reaching Mexico City in 1536.
 These survivors were the first known Europeans and Africans to see the Mississippi River, and to cross the Gulf of Mexico and Texas.
East Florida (Spanish: "Florida Oriental" ) was a colony of Great Britain from 1763 to 1783 and a province of Spanish Florida from 1783 to 1821.
 East Florida was established by the British colonial government in 1763; it consisted of peninsular Florida, with its western boundary at the Apalachicola River.
 Its capital was St. Augustine, which had been the capital of Spanish Florida.
The Jungle Prada Site (also known as Jungle Mound, Narvaez Site or Anderson Site) is an archaeological Tocobaga mounds and historical Narváez expedition site, and a city bayside park, in St. Petersburg of Pinellas County, western coastal Florida, in the Southern United States.
Cabeza de Vaca is a 1991 Mexican film about the adventures of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (c. 1490 – c. 1557), an early Spanish explorer, as he traversed what later became the American Southeast.
 He was one of four survivors of the Narvaez expedition and shipwreck.
 He became known as a shaman among the Native American tribes he encountered, which helped him survive.
 His journey of a number of years began in 1528.
 After his return to Spain, he published his journal in 1542.
 The screenplay by Guillermo Sheridan and Nicolás Echevarría is based on this journal.
Santa Elena, a Spanish settlement on what is now Parris Island, South Carolina, was the capital of Spanish Florida from 1566 to 1587.
 It was established under Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, the first governor of Spanish Florida.
 There had been a number of earlier attempts to establish colonies in the area by both the Spanish and the French, who had been inspired by earlier accounts of the plentiful land of Chicora.
 Menéndez's Santa Elena settlement was intended as the new capital of the Spanish colony of La Florida, shifting the focus of Spanish colonial efforts north from St. Augustine, which had been established in 1565 to oust the French from their colony of Fort Caroline.
 Santa Elena was ultimately built at the site of the abandoned French outpost of Charlesfort, founded in 1562 by Jean Ribault.
Spanish Florida refers to the Spanish territory of La Florida, which was the first major European land claim and attempted settlement in North America during the European Age of Discovery.
 "La Florida" formed part of the Captaincy General of Cuba, the Viceroyalty of New Spain, and the Spanish Empire during Spanish colonization of the Americas.
 While it had no clearly defined boundaries, the territory was much larger than the present-day state of Florida, extending over much of what is now the southeastern United States, including all of present-day Florida plus portions of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, and southeastern Louisiana.
 Spain's claim to this vast area was based on several wide-ranging expeditions mounted during the 16th century.
 However, Spain never exercised real control over "La Florida" much beyond several settlements and forts which were predominantly located in present-day Florida.