Seminole Wars - Part 3
ROAD TRIP
Ocala – Fort King
Bushnell – Dade City Battlefield
Osceola
The Indian Removal Act had given the Seminoles three years to move west of the Mississippi. A new Indian Removal agent named Wiley Thompson, had been appointed in 1834, and the task of persuading the Seminoles to move fell to him. He called the chiefs together at Fort King in October 1834 to talk to them about the removal to the west. The Seminoles informed Thompson that they had no intention of moving and that they did not feel bound by Removal Act. One of the Chiefs, Osceola was furious and when presented with a copy of the Act it’s reported that he stabbed it with a knife. Thompson then requested reinforcements for Fort King and Fort Brooke, reporting that, "the Indians after they had received the Annuity, purchased an unusually large quantity of Powder & Lead." Another General also warned Washington that the Seminoles did not intend to move and that more troops would be needed to force them to move. In March 1835, Thompson called the chiefs together to read a letter from Andrew Jackson to them. In his letter, Jackson said, "Should you ... refuse to move, I have then directed the Commanding officer to remove you by force." The chiefs asked for thirty days to respond. A month later, the Seminole chiefs told Thompson that they would not move west. Thompson and the chiefs began arguing, and another General had to intervene to prevent bloodshed. Eventually, eight of the chiefs agreed to move west but asked to delay the move until the end of the year, and Thompson agreed.
Five of the most important of the Seminole chiefs, including Micanopy had not agreed to the move. In retaliation, Thompson declared that those chiefs were removed from their positions. As relations with the Seminoles deteriorated, Thompson forbade the sale of guns and ammunition to the Seminoles. When Osceola was causing trouble, Thompson had him locked up at Fort King for a night. The next day, in order to secure his release, Osceola agreed to abide by Removal Act and to bring his followers in.
The situation grew worse. On June 19, 1835, a group of whites searching for lost cattle found a group of Indians sitting around a campfire cooking the remains of what they claimed was one of their herd. The whites disarmed and proceeded to whip the Indians, when two more arrived and opened fire on the whites. Three whites were wounded and one Indian was killed and one wounded, at what became known as the skirmish at Hickory Sink. After complaining to Indian Agent Thompson and not receiving a satisfactory response, the Seminoles became further convinced that they would not receive fair compensations for their complaints of hostile treatment by the settlers. Believed to be in response for the incident at Hickory Sink, in August 1835, Private Kinsley was killed by Seminoles as he was carrying the mail from Fort Brooke to Fort King.
In November 1835 Chief Charley, wanting no part of a war, agreed to removal and sold his cattle at Fort King in preparation for moving his people to Fort Brooke to emigrate to the west. This act was considered a betrayal by other Seminoles who months earlier declared in council that any Seminole chief who sold his cattle would be sentenced to death. Osceola met Charley Emathla on the trail back to his village and killed him, scattering the money from the cattle purchase across his body. In 1835, Osceola and his followers shot Wiley Thompson and shot six others outside Fort King.
The US government once again declared war on the Seminole Indians and sent troops to put the Indians back in their place.
Second Seminole War – (1835-1842)
Road Trip #1
Dade Battle
Two companies totaling 110 men under the command of Major Francis L. Dade were sent from Fort Brooke to reinforce Fort King in mid-December 1835. On the morning of December 28, the train of troops was ambushed by a group of Seminole warriors under the command of Alligator near modern-day Bushnell, Florida. The entire command and their small cannon was destroyed, with only two badly wounded soldiers surviving to return to Fort Brooke. Over the next few months Generals led large numbers of troops in futile pursuits of the Seminoles. In the meantime the Seminoles struck throughout the state, attacking isolated farms, settlements, plantations and Army forts, even burning the Cape Florida lighthouse. Supply problems and a high rate of illness during the summer caused the Army to abandon several forts.
Local planters took refuge with their slaves and the Bulow Plantation was later burned by the Seminoles. By February 1836 the Seminole and black allies had attacked 21 plantations along the river.
Major Ethan Allen Hitchcock was among those who found the remains of the Dade party in February. In his journal he wrote of the discovery and expressed his discontent:
“The government is in the wrong, and this is the chief cause of the persevering opposition of the Indians, who have nobly defended their country against our attempt to enforce a fraudulent treaty. The natives used every means to avoid a war, but were forced into it by the tyranny of our government.”
Late in 1836, Major General Thomas Jesup, US Quartermaster, was placed in command of the war. Jesup brought a new approach to the war. He concentrated on wearing the Seminoles down rather than sending out large groups who were more easily ambushed. He needed a large military presence in the state to control it, and he eventually brought a force of more than 9,000 men into the state under his command. In January 1837, the Army began to achieve more tangible successes, capturing or killing numerous Indians and blacks. At the end of January, some Seminole chiefs sent messengers to Jesup, and arranged a truce.
Did the US have the right to the Seminole Land?
Were the Indians justified in their violence?
First Presidential Assassination Attempt
Meanwhile, on January 30, 1835, Andrew Jackson becomes the first American president to experience an assassination attempt.
Richard Lawrence, an unemployed house painter, approached Jackson as he left a funeral held in the House chamber of the Capitol building and shot at him, but his gun misfired. A furious 67-year-old Jackson confronted his attacker, clubbing Lawrence several times with his walking cane. During the scuffle, Lawrence managed to pull out a second loaded pistol and pulled the trigger, but it also misfired. Jackson’s aides then wrestled Lawrence away from the president, leaving Jackson unharmed but angry and, as it turned out, paranoid. Lawrence was most likely a mentally unstable individual with no connections to Jackson’s political rivals, but Jackson was convinced that Lawrence had been hired by his Whig Party opponents to assassinate him. At the time, Jackson’s Democrats and the Whigs were locked in battle over Jackson’s attempt to dismantle the Bank of the United States. His vice president, Martin Van Buren, was also wary and thereafter carried two loaded pistols with him when visiting the Senate.
End of Jackson’s Presidency - 1837
Andrew Jackson’s Vice President, Martin Van Buren becomes President.
By the end of May, many chiefs, including Micanopy, had surrendered. Two important leaders, Osceola and Sam Jones had not surrendered, however, and were known to be vehemently opposed to relocation. On June 2 these two leaders with about 200 followers entered the poorly guarded holding camp at Fort Brooke and led away the 700 Seminoles who had surrendered. The war was on again.
In 1837, the US government were hugely frustrated by the persistent Seminole and the endless war. So one of the Generals had an idea and flew a white flag of truce to invite the Seminole Chiefs in for peace talks. Once they arrived the US troops encircled them and captured Osceola and 81 of his followers. They were thrown into jail at the St Augustine fort. A few of them managed to escape but Osceola stayed behind, probably because he was too sick.
Osceola
He was initially imprisoned at Fort Marion in St. Augustine, before being transferred to Fort Moultrie on Sullivans Island, outside Charleston, South Carolina. Osceola's capture by deceit caused a national uproar. The US Army’s treacherous act and the administration were condemned by many congressional leaders and vilified by international press. US Generals suffered a loss of reputation that lasted for the rest of their lives; and described as "one of the most disgraceful acts in American military history."
Osceola and other Seminole prisoners were visited by various townspeople. The portraitists George Catlin, W. M. Laning, and Robert John Curtis, the three artists known to have painted Osceola from life, persuaded the Seminole leader to allow his portrait to be painted despite his being gravely ill. Osceola and Curtis developed a close friendship, conversing at length during the painting sessions; Curtis painted two oil portraits of Osceola, one of which remains in the Charleston Museum. These paintings have inspired numerous widely distributed prints and engravings, and cigar store figures were also based on them.
Osceola, having suffered from chronic malaria since 1836, and having acute tonsillitis as well, developed an abscess and died on January 30, 1838, three months after his capture.
Road trip #2
Battle of Lake Okeechobee
The US Army organized a sweep down the peninsula with multiple columns, pushing the Seminoles further south. On Christmas Day 1837, Colonel Zachary Taylor's column of 800 men encountered a body of about 400 warriors on the north shore of Lake Okeechobee. The Seminole were led by Sam Jones, Alligator and the recently escaped Coacoochee; they were well positioned in a hammock surrounded by sawgrass with half a mile of swamp in front of it. On the far side of the hammock was Lake Okeechobee. Here the saw grass stood five feet high. The mud and water were three feet deep. Horses would be of no use. The Seminole had chosen their battleground. They had sliced the grass to provide an open field of fire and had notched the trees to steady their rifles. Their scouts were perched in the treetops to follow every movement of the troops coming up. As Taylor's army came up to this position, he decided to attack.
At about half past noon, with the sun shining directly overhead and the air still and quiet, Taylor moved his troops squarely into the center of the swamp. His plan was to attack directly rather than try to encircle the Indians. All his men were on foot. In the first line were the Missouri volunteers. As soon as they came within range, the Seminoles opened fire. The volunteers broke, and their commander Colonel Gentry, fatally wounded, was unable to rally them. They fled back across the swamp. The fighting in the saw grass was deadliest for five companies of the Sixth Infantry; every officer but one were killed or wounded. When those units retired a short distance to re-form, they found only four men of these companies unharmed. The US eventually drove the Seminoles from the hammock, but they escaped across the lake. Taylor lost 26 killed and 112 wounded, while the Seminoles casualties were eleven dead and fourteen wounded. The US claimed the Battle of Lake Okeechobee as a great victory.
At the end of January, US troops caught up with a large body of Seminoles to the east of Lake Okeechobee. Originally positioned in a hammock, the Seminoles were driven across a wide stream by cannon and rocket fire, and made another stand. They faded away, having inflicted more casualties than they suffered, and the battle was over. In February 1838, the Seminole chiefs approached the US Government with the negotiation to stop fighting if they could stay in the area south of Lake Okeechobee, rather than relocating west. The chiefs and their followers camped near the Army while awaiting the reply. When the secretary of war rejected the idea, The US seized the 500 Indians in the camp, and had them transported to the Indian Territory.
Taylor concentrated on keeping the Seminole out of northern Florida by building many small posts at twenty-mile intervals across the peninsula, connected by a grid of roads. The winter season was fairly quiet, without major actions. In Washington and around the country, support for the war was eroding. Many people began to think the Seminoles had earned the right to stay in Florida. Far from being over, the war had become very costly. Van Buren was getting heavily criticized by the public and nicknamed, “Van Ruin”. President Martin Van Buren sent the Commanding General of the Army to negotiate a new treaty with the Seminoles. On May 19, 1839, Macomb announced an agreement. In exchange for a reservation in southern Florida (Everglades), the Seminoles would stop fighting.
Eye for an Eye
As the summer passed, the agreement seemed to be holding. However, on July 23, some 150 Indians attacked a trading post. It was guarded by a detachment of only 23 soldiers. Some soldiers escaped by the river, but the Seminoles killed most of the garrison, as well as several civilians at the post. Many blamed the "Spanish" Indians, led by Chakaika, for the attack, but others suspected Sam Jones. Jones, when questioned, promised to turn the men responsible for the attack over to Harney in 33 days.
In response, the Army turned to bloodhounds to track the Indians, with poor results. Taylor's blockhouse and patrol system in northern Florida kept the Seminoles on the move but could not clear them out. In May 1839, Taylor, having served longer than any preceding commander in the Florida war, was granted his request for a transfer and was replaced. The United States continued seeking hidden camps, the Army also burned fields and drove off livestock: horses, cattle and pigs. By the middle of the summer, the Army had destroyed 500 acres of Seminole crops.
In response to the US attacks on their camps, a large party of Indians snuck onto Indian Key. Of about fifty people living on the island, forty were able to escape.
In response, ninety men from the US Army found an Indian camp deep in the Everglades. His force killed the chief and hanged some of the men in his band without trail or proof that they did it.
The Army's actions became a war of attrition; some Seminole surrendered to avoid starvation. After Colonel Worth recommended early in 1842 that the remaining Seminoles be left in peace, he received authorization to leave the remaining Seminoles on an informal reservation in southwestern Florida and to declare an end to the war.
In the same month, Congress passed the Armed Occupation Act, which provided free land to white settlers who improved the land and were prepared to defend themselves from Indians. It was reported that only about 95 Seminole men and some 200 women and children living on the reservation were left, and that they were no longer a threat.
Second Interbellum
Peace had come to Florida. In March, 1845 Florida became a US State. The Indians were mostly staying on the reservation. Groups of ten or so men would visit Tampa to trade. Squatters were moving closer to the reservation, however, and in 1845 President James Polk established a 20-mile (32 km) wide buffer zone around the reservation. No land could be claimed within the buffer zone, no title would be issued for land there, and the U.S. Marshal would remove squatters from the buffer zone upon request. The Florida authorities continued to press for removal of all Indians from Florida. The Indians for their part tried to limit their contacts with whites as much as possible. In 1846, Captain John T. Sprague was placed in charge of Indian affairs in Florida. He had great difficulty in getting the chiefs to meet with him. They were very distrustful of the Army since it had often seized chiefs while under a flag of truce. He did manage to meet with all of the chiefs in 1847, while investigating a report of a raid on a farm. He reported that the Indians in Florida then consisted of 120 warriors, including seventy Seminoles in Billy Bowlegs' band and thirty Miccosukee in Sam Jones' band. He also estimated that there were 100 women and 140 children.
On January 18, 1849, Tampa was officially incorporated as the "Village of Tampa." It was home to 185 civilians, or 974 total residents including military personnel, in 1850. The new Fort Myers was built on the burned ruins of Fort Harvie. The fort was named for Colonel Abraham Charles Myers, quartermaster for the Army's Department of Florida. The 1800s is when the area saw the first wave of settlers. Venice was first known as Horse and Chaise because of a carriage-like tree formation that marked the spot for fisherman.
Orlando: The first settler, Mr. Aaron Jernigan of Camden County, Georgia, arrived in 1843. Mosquito County was renamed Orange County in 1845. The new town of Orlando, laid out in 1857, consisted of four streets surrounding a courthouse square.
The area known today as Sarasota first appeared on a sheepskin Spanish map from 1763 with the word Zarazote over present day Sarasota and Bradenton. In 1842, William Whitaker was the first documented pioneer of European descent to settle permanently in what became the village of Sarasota. Taking advantage of the Armed Occupation Act, Whitaker was given six months of provisions and the right to 160 acres (Equivalent to 121 football fields). He provided he built a home there and defended it for five years.After time spent along the Manatee River at the village of Manatee, Whitaker built upon Yellow Bluffs, just north of present-day Eleventh Street. He sold dried fish and roe to Cuban traders working the coast and in 1847, he began a cattle business. In 1851, Whitaker married Mary Jane Wyatt, a member of a pioneer family who had settled the village of Manatee, that was about 13 mi to the northeast along the river of the same name.
Run up to Third War
One band of Indians was living outside the reservation at this time and separated from an tribe. Called "outsiders", it consisted of twenty warriors under the leadership of Chipco, and included five Muscogees, seven Miccosukee, six Seminoles, one Creek and one Yuchi. On July 12, 1849 four members of this band attacked a farm on the Indian River just north of Fort Pierce, killing one man and wounding another man and a woman. The news of this raid caused much of the population of the east coast of Florida to flee to St. Augustine. On July 17, four of the "outsiders" who had attacked the farm on the Indian River, plus a fifth man who had not been at Indian River, attacked the Kennedy and Darling store. Two workers at the store, including a Captain Payne, were killed, and another worker and his wife were wounded as they escorted their child into hiding. The War Department began a new buildup in Florida and the state called up two companies of mounted volunteers to guard settlements.
At that meeting, Billy Bowlegs promised, with the approval of other leaders, to deliver the five men responsible for the attacks to the Army within thirty days. On October 18, Bowlegs delivered three of the men to Twiggs, along with the severed hand of another who had been killed while trying to escape. The fifth man had been captured but had escaped. After Bowlegs had delivered the three murderers, General Twiggs told the Indians, much to their dismay, that he had been ordered to remove them from Florida. Pressure from Florida officials pushed the federal government to take action. Captain Casey continued to try to persuade the Seminole to move west without success. He sent Billy Bowlegs and others to Washington again, but the chiefs refused to agree to move. In August 1854, Secretary of War Jefferson Davis initiated a program to force the Seminole into a final conflict. The plan included a trade embargo against them, the survey and sale of land in southern Florida to European-American settlers, and a stronger Army presence to protect the new settlers. Davis said that if the Seminole did not agree to leave, the Army would use force.
The Third Seminole War (1855–1858)
In 1856, there were more than 700 Army troops stationed on the Florida peninsula. Around that time the Seminoles decided that they would strike back at the increasing pressure being put on them and attack when an opportunity presented itself. Sam Jones may have been the instigator of this decision; Chipco was said to have been against it. First Lieutenant George Hartsuff left Fort Myers with ten men and two wagons. They found no Seminoles but did pass corn fields and three deserted villages, including Billy Bowlegs' village. That evening, Hartsuff told his men that they would be returning to Fort Myers the next day. As the men were loading the wagons and saddling their horses the next morning forty Seminoles led by Billy Bowlegs attacked the camp. Several soldiers were shot, including Lieutenant Hartsuff, who managed to hide himself. The Seminoles killed and scalped four men in the camp, killed the wagon mules, looted and burned the wagons and took several horses. Seven men, four of them wounded, made it back to Fort Myers.
When the news of the attack reached Tampa, the men of the city elected militia officers and organized companies. The newly formed militia marched to the Peace River valley, recruited more men, and manned some forts along the river.
A party of some twenty Seminoles attacked a wood-cutting patrol killing five of the six men. Despite the positioning of militia units to defend the area, the Seminoles also raided along the coast south of Tampa Bay. They killed one man and burned a house in what is now Sarasota, and they tried to attack the "Braden Castle", the plantation home of Dr. Joseph Braden, in what is now Bradenton. The "Castle" was too strong for them, but they led away seven slaves and three mules. Burdened with prisoners and loot, the Seminoles did not move fast. While they were stopped at Big Charley Apopka Creek eating barbecued beef from a cow they had found and slaughtered, the militia caught up with them. The militiamen killed two of the Seminoles and recaptured the slaves and mules taken from Dr. Braden's plantation. The scalp of one of the dead Seminoles was displayed in Tampa, the other in Manatee. The surviving Seminole were taken to Egmont Key before shipping to Indian Territory.
The Seminoles continued to carry out small raids around the state. Mail and stagecoach service in and out of Tampa was suspended until the military could provide protection. The citizens of Florida were becoming disenchanted with the militia. There were complaints that the militiamen would pretend to patrol for a day or two and then go home to work their fields, and that they were given to idleness, drunkenness, and thievery. The officers were reported to be unwilling to submit required paperwork. Most importantly, the militia had failed to prevent attacks against settlers.
In 1857, ten companies of Florida militia were taken into federal service, totaling almost 800 men by September. In November these troops captured eighteen women and children from Billy Bowlegs' band. The troops stood down while the attempt was made, and Bowlegs was contacted. The previous year the Seminoles had finally been given their own reservation in Indian Territory separate from the Creeks. Cash payments of US$500 to each warrior (more to the chiefs) and $100 to each woman were promised. On March 15, Bowlegs' and Assinwar's bands accepted the offer and agreed to go west. On May 4, a total of 163 Seminoles (including some captured earlier) were shipped to New Orleans. On May 8, 1858, Colonel Loomis declared the war to be over.
When Colonel Loomis declared an end to the Third Seminole War, the government believed that only about 100 Seminoles were left in Florida, though there were probably more than that. Sam Jones' band was living in southeast Florida, inland from Miami and Fort Lauderdale. Chipco's band was living north of Lake Okeechobee, although the Army and militia had failed to locate it.
Modern times
A small number of Seminoles continued to live in relative isolation in the Lake Okeechobee and Everglades region into the 20th Century. With the completion of the Tamiami Trail which bisected the Everglades in 1928, simultaneously ended old ways of life and introduced new opportunities. A steady stream of white developers and tourists came to the area, and the Seminoles began to work in local farms, ranches, and souvenir stands.
In 1957, most Seminoles established formal relations with the US government as the Seminole Tribe of Florida, which is headquartered in Hollywood, Florida and control the Big Cypress Indian Reservation, Brighton Reservation, Fort Pierce Reservation, Hollywood Reservation, Immokalee Reservation, and Tampa Reservation.
The Miccosukee branch of the Seminoles held to a more traditional lifestyle in the Everglades region, simultaneously seeking privacy and serving as a tourist attraction, wrestling alligators, selling crafts, and giving eco-tours of their land. They received federal recognition as a separate nation in 1962 and received their own reservation lands, collectively known as the Miccosukee Indian Reservation, including a reservation on the northern border of Everglades National Park, about 45 miles west of Miami.
Meanwhile, by 1880 the Indian Territories out west were being settled on Illegally by cowboys and ranchers. In 1887 the US government took away a chunk of the Indian Territory and gave it to the railroad companies. In 1907, the US took control of the entire Indian Territory and called it Oklahoma. Even the states nickname, The Sooner State is a reference to white European’s turning up early on the day Indian territory was being given away.
Native Americans live on today, living in modern homes with cars, modern clothes, glasses and television. They live lives similar to other Americans but on their ancestral homes. Many other native Americans live on through black and white people. Many people who don’t look native American, do have native American ancestors. Jimi Hendrix, Angelina Jolie, Elvis Presley, Channing Tatum, Johnny Depp, Taylor Lautner, and many others. You likely know someone of Native American decent and not even know it.
Legacy of Andrew Jackson
Meanwhile, Andrew Jackson is remembered today as the man on the $20 bill. The placement of Jackson on the $20 bill may be a historical irony; as president, he vehemently opposed both the National Bank and paper money and made the goal of his administration the destruction of the National Bank. In his farewell address to the nation, he cautioned the public about paper money.
As one historian said, “Andrew Jackson, I am given to understand, was a patriot and a traitor. He was one of the greatest generals, and wholly ignorant of the art of war. A brilliant writer, elegant, eloquent, without being able to compose a correct sentence or spell words of four syllables. The first of statesmen, he never devised, he never framed, a measure. He was the most candid of men, and was capable of the most profound dissimulation. A most law-defying law-obeying citizen. A stickler for discipline, he never hesitated to disobey his superior. A democratic autocrat. An urbane savage. An atrocious saint.”
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