Seminole Wars

Osceola, Seminole leader.

The Seminole Wars, also known as the Florida Wars, were three wars or conflicts in Florida between various groups of Native Americans collectively known as Seminoles and the United States. The First Seminole War was from 1817 to 1818; the Second Seminole War from 1835 to 1842; and the Third Seminole War from 1855 to 1858. The second clash is often referred to as the Seminole War.

Background

Colonial Florida

The original peoples of Florida had declined in numbers after the arrival of Europeans in the region. The Indians had little resistance to diseases introduced from Europe. Spanish suppression of native revolts further reduced the the population in northern Florida. A series of raids extending the full length of the Florida peninsula by soldiers from the Province of Carolina and their Indian allies had killed or carried off almost all the remaining native inhabitants by early in the 18th century. When Spain surrendered Florida to Britain in 1763, the Spanish took the few surviving Florida Indians to Cuba.

Bands from various tribes in the southeastern United States began moving into the unoccupied lands in Florida. In 1715 Yamassees moved into Florida as allies of the Spanish after conflicts with the English colonies. Creek people, at first primarily Lower Creeks but later including Upper Creeks, also started moving into Florida. One group of Hitchiti-speakers, the Mikasuki, settled around what is now Lake Miccosukee near Tallahassee. This group has maintained its separate identity as today's Miccosukee. Another group of Hitchiti-speakers led by "Cowkeeper" settled in what is now Alachua County, an area where the Spanish had maintained cattle ranches in the 17th century. One of the best known ranches had been called La Chua, and the area had become known as the Alachua Prairie. The Spanish in St. Augustine began calling the Alachua Creeks Cimarrones, which roughly meant "wild ones" or "runaways", and which is the probable origin of "Seminole". This name was eventually also applied to the other groups in Florida, although the Indians themselves still regarded themselves as members of different tribes.

Also moving into Florida in the 18th century were escaped slaves. Slaves who could reach Spanish Florida were essentially free. The Spanish authorities soon welcomed the escaped slaves, allowing them to settle in their own town, called Fort Mose, in close proximity to St. Augustine, and using them in a militia to help defend the city. Other escaped slaves joined various 'Seminole' bands, sometimes as slaves, and sometimes as free members of the tribe. In any case, the burden of slavery under the Florida Indians was considerably lighter than in the English colonies. Joshua Reed Giddings wrote in 1858 on the subject, They held their slaves in a state between that of servitude and freedom; the slave usually living with his own family and occupying his time as he pleased, paying his master annually a small stipend in corn and other vegetables. This class of slaves regarded servitude among the whites with the greatest degree of horror. While most of the former slaves at Fort Mose went to Cuba when the Spanish left Florida in 1763, others were still with various bands of Indians, and slaves continued to escape from the Carolinas and Georgia and make their way to Florida. The blacks that stayed with or later joined the Seminoles became integrated into the tribes, learning the languages, adopting the dress, and inter-marrying. Some of these Black Seminoles became important tribal leaders.

Early conflict

During the American Revolution the British, who controlled Florida, recruited Seminoles to raid frontier settlements in Georgia. The confusion of war also increased the number of slaves running away to Florida. These events made the Seminoles enemies of the new United States. In 1783, as part of the treaty ending the Revolutionary War, Florida was returned to Spain. Spain's grip on Florida was not very tight, with only small garrisons at St. Augustine, St. Marks and Pensacola. The border between Florida and the United States was not controlled, either. Mikasukis and other Seminole groups still occupied towns on the United States side of the border, while American squatters moved into Spanish Florida.

Florida had been divided into East Florida and West Florida by the British in 1763, and the Spanish retained the division when they regained Florida in 1783. West Florida extended from the Apalachicola River to the Mississippi River. Together with their possession of Louisiana, this gave the Spanish control of the lower reaches of all of the rivers draining the United States west of the Appalachian Mountains. In addition to the imperative to expand that became known as Manifest Destiny, the United States wanted to acquire Florida both to provide free commerce on western rivers, and to prevent Florida from being used a base for an invasion of the U.S. by a European country.

The Louisiana Purchase in 1803 put the mouth of the Mississippi River in American hands, but much of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee were drained by rivers that passed through East or West Florida to reach the Gulf of Mexico. The U.S. claimed that the Louisiana Purchase had included West Florida west of the Perdido River, while Spain claimed that West Florida extended to the Mississippi River. In 1810 residents of Baton Rouge formed a new government, seized the local Spanish fort, and requested protection by the United States. President James Madison authorized William C.C. Claiborne, Governor of the Orleans Territory, to seize East Florida from the Mississippi River to as far East as the Perdido River, although Claiborne only occupied the area west of the Pearl River (the current eastern boundary of Louisiana). Madison then sent George Mathews to deal with Florida. When an offer to turn the remainder of West Florida over to the U.S. was rescinded by the governor of West Florida, Mathews traveled to East Florida in an attempt to incite a rebelllion similar to what had occurred in Baton Rouge. The residents of East Florida were happy with the status quo, so a force of volunteers (who were promised free land) was raised in Georgia. In March 1812 this force of 'Patriots', with the aid of some United States Navy gunboats, seized Fernandina. The seizure of Fernandina had originally been authorized by President Madison, but he later disavowed it. The 'Patriots' were unable to take the Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine, however, and the approach of war with Britain led to an end of the American incursion into East Florida. In 1813 an American force did succeed in seizing Mobile from the Spanish.

Before the 'Patriot' army withdrew from Florida, Seminoles, as allies of the Spanish, began to attack them. These attacks reinforced the American view that the Seminoles were enemies. The presence of black Seminoles in the fighting also raised the old fear of a slave rebellion among the Georgians of the 'Patriot' army. In September 1812, a company of Georgia volunteers attacked the Seminoles living on the Alachua prairie, but did little damage. A larger force in early 1813 drove the Seminoles from their villages on the Alachua prairie, killing or driving off thousands of head of cattle.

The Creek War and the Negro Fort

The next big event to affect the 'Seminoles' of Florida was the Creek War of 1813-1814. Andrew Jackson become a national hero in 1814 after his victory over the Creek Red Sticks at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. After his victory, Jackson forced the Treaty of Fort Jackson on the Creeks, resulting in the loss of much Creek territory in southern Georgia and central and southern Alabama. As a result, many of the Creeks left Alabama and Georgia and moved to Florida.

Also in 1814, Britain, at war with the United States, landed forces in Pensacola and other places in West Florida, and began to recruit Indian allies. In May 1814, a British force entered the mouth of the Apalachicola River, handing out arms to Seminoles, Creeks and runaway slaves. The British moved upriver and began building a fort at Prospect Bluff. After the British and their Indian allies were beaten back from an attack on Mobile, an American force led by General Jackson drove the British out of Pensacola. Work on the Prospect Bluff fort continued, however. When the war ended, the British forces left West Florida, except for Major Edward Nicholls of the Royal Marines. He directed the provisioning of the fort with cannons, muskets and ammunition, and told the Indians that the Treaty of Ghent guaranteed the return of all Indian lands lost during the war, including the Creek lands in Georgia and Alabama. The Seminoles were not interested in holding a fort, however, and returned to their villages. Before he left in the summer of 1815, Major Nicholls invited the runaway slaves in the area to take possession of the fort. Word spread about the fort, and it was soon being called the Negro Fort by whites in the Southern United States, who saw it as a dangerous inspiration for their slaves to run away or revolt.

Andrew Jackson wanted to eliminate the Negro Fort, but it was in Spanish territory. In April 1816 he informed the governor of West Florida that if the Spanish did not eliminate the fort, he would. The governor replied that he did not have the means at his disposal to take the fort. Jackson assigned Brig. Gen. Edmund Pendleton Gaines to deal with the fort. Gaines directed Col. Duncan Lamont Clinch to build Fort Scott on the Flint River just north of the Florida border. Gaines then made known his intention to supply Fort Scott from New Orleans via the Apalachicola River, which would mean passing through Spanish territory and past the Negro Fort. Gaines told Jackson that using the Apalachicola to supply Fort Scott would allow the U.S. Army to keep an eye on the Seminoles and the Negro Fort, and if the fort fired on the supply boats, it would give the Americans an excuse for destroying the fort.

A supply fleet for Fort Scott reached the Apalachicola in July 1816. Clinch marched down the Apalachicola with a force of more than 100 American soldiers and about 150 friendly Creeks. The supply fleet met Clinch at the Negro Fort, and the two gunboats with the fleet took positions across the river from the fort. The blacks in the fort fired their cannon at the U.S. soldiers and their Creek allies, but had no training or experience in aiming the cannon. The Americans fired back, and the ninth shot fired by the gunboats, a hot shot (a cannon ball heated to a red glow), landed in the fort's powder magazine. The resulting explosion, which was heard more than 100 miles away in Pensacola, leveled the fort. Of about 320 people who had been in the fort, more than 250 died instantly, and many more died from their injuries soon after. After the destruction of the fort, the U.S. Army withdrew from Florida, but American squatters and outlaws carried out raids against the Seminoles, killing the Indians and stealing their slaves and cattle. Resentment over the killings and thefts committed by white Americans spread among the Seminoles. In February 1817, the Seminoles murdered a woman and her two small children on an isolated farm in southeastern Greorgia.

First Seminole War

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Andrew Jackson led an invasion of Florida during the First Seminole War.

The beginning and ending dates for the First Seminole War are not firmly established. The U.S. Army Infantry Homepage indicates that it lasted from 1814 until 1819. The U.S. Navy Naval Historical Center gives dates of 1816-1818. Another Army site dates the war as 1817-1818. Finally, the unit history of the 1st Battalion, 5th Field Artillery describes the war as occurring solely in 1818.

Fowltown was a Mikasuki village in southwestern Georgia, about 15 miles from Fort Scott. Chief Neamathla of Fowltown got into a dispute with the commander of Fort Scott over the use of land on the eastern side of the Flint River. The land in southern Georgia had been ceded by the Creeks in the Treaty of Fort Jackson, but the Mikasukis did not consider themselves Creek, did not feel bound by the treaty, and felt that the Creeks had not had any right to cede Mikasuki land. In November 1817 General Gaines sent a force of 250 men to seize Neamathla. The first attempt was beaten off by the Mikasukis. The next day, November 22, 1817, the Mikasukis were driven from their village. David Brydie Mitchell, former governor of Georgia and Creek indian agent at the time, stated in a report to Congress that the attack on Fowltown was the start of the First Seminole War.

A week later a boat carrying supplies for Fort Scott, under the command of Lt. R. W. Scott, was attacked on the Apalachicola River. There were close to fifty people on the boat, including twenty sick soldiers, seven wives of soldiers, and possibly some children. Most of the boat's passengers were killed by the Indians. One woman was taken prisoner, and only six survivors made it to the fort.

General Gaines had been under orders not to invade Florida, amended to allow short intrusions into Florida. When news of the Scott Massacre on the Apalachicola reached Washington, Gaines was ordered to invade Florida and pursue the Indians, but not to attack any Spanish installation. However, Gaines had left for East Florida to deal with pirates who had occupied Fernandina. Secretary of War John C. Calhoun then ordered Andrew Jackson to lead the invasion of Florida.

Jackson gathered his forces at Fort Scott in March 1818, including 800 U.S. Army regulars, about 1,000 Tennessee volunteers, a number of Georgia Militia, and about 1,400 Lower Creek warriors. On March 13 Jackson's army entered Florida, marching down the Apalachicola River. When they reached the site of the Negro Fort, Jackson had his men construct a new fort, Fort Gadsden. The army then set out for the Mikasuki villages around Lake Miccosukee. The Indian town of Tallahassee was burned on March 31, and the town of Miccosukee was taken the next day. More than 300 Indian homes were destroyed. Jackson then turned south, reaching St. Marks on April 6.

The First Seminole War was started with the invasion of East Florida by U.S. Army forces under the command of General Andrew Jackson. White settlers had previously been attacked and had retaliated. The presence of runaway slaves and Maroons living among the Seminoles, a community known to historians today as the Black Seminoles, was another sore point among whites. Some historians date the commencement of the war to an attack on the Black Seminoles at Apalachicola, at the so-called Negro Fort, which was razed in July 1816. More conventionally, the war is dated from the arrival of Jackson in December 1817. Jackson's forces captured St. Mark's on April 7 and Pensacola on May 24, 1818. During this campaign, Andrew Jackson seized two British traders who were supplying the Seminoles with weapons. One of them was Alexander George Arbuthnot, a seventy-year-old Scottish trader that had told the Seminoles a false story telling them that the Treaty of Ghent gave them Florida. The other man was Robert Ambrister, a former British naval officer. Arbuthnot was shot, while Ambrister was hanged. The largest battle of the war, an engagement on the Suwannee River, was primarily between U.S. and black warriors. Jackson's overall campaign scattered, but did not destroy, the Black Seminole Maroon settlements of Florida, led to the confinement of the Seminole Indians within a constricted area of the interior, and secured American control of East Florida, still nominally claimed by Spain.

In 1818, James Monroe's Secretary of State John Quincy Adams defined the American position on this issue. Adams accused Spain of breaking Pinckney's Treaty by failing to control the Seminoles, and refused to apologize for Jackson's actions.

Second Seminole War

U.S. gained formal control of Florida in 1821 through the Adams-Onís Treaty, which had taken weeks for Luis de Onís (Spain's representative in Washington) and Adams to work out. The American government immediately started efforts to displace the Seminoles, encouraging them to join other tribes in the Indian Territories (around modern Oklahoma). Following the passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830, some of the tribal people signed the Treaty of Payne's Landing in May 1832 and began the move, but others retreated into the Everglades. The treaty (to which the Seminoles were not a party) required all Seminole to move out of Florida by May 1835; the U.S. Army arrived in the territory in early 1835 to enforce the treaty.

The Second Seminole War was fought by the Seminole as guerrillas and Spanish soldiers. Drawing from a population of about 4,000 Seminole Indians and 800 Black Seminole allies, there were at most 1,400 allied Seminole warriors commanded by head chief Micanopy, but led and inspired by Osceola. A major battle fought between the Seminole and U.S. was the Battle of Lake Okeechobee in which Colonel Zachary Taylor won despite heavy U.S. casualties. Eventually over 10,000 regulars and 30,000 militia served in Florida during the conflict. The U.S. government managed to defeat large guerilla groups in the area heavily funded by Spain. Osceola was captured at peace negotiations during a truce after being betrayed by the Spanish leadership, and died in prison at Fort Moultrie, South Carolina in 1838. The American forces began to successfully combat the Seminole tactics under William J. Worth from 1841. Seminole villages were destroyed and their crops burned. Threatened with starvation, the conflict came to an untidy end on August 14, 1842, although no peace treaty was ever signed. Around 1,500 U.S. soldiers had died during the conflict, mostly from disease.

The U.S. government is estimated to have spent at least $20,000,000 on the war, at the time an astronomical sum. Spain also invested heavily, though they preferred to fund and reward slaughter and uprising rather than send the army of Spain to openly march against the United States. Finally, however, the Spanish crown reached an agreement with the United States, and Spain abandoned their former allies. Many Indians were forcibly exiled to Creek lands west of the Mississippi; others retreated into the deepEverglades where they became known as the Miccosukee. About 500 Black Seminoles emigrated west with the Seminole Indians, with 250 of the blacks receiving promises of freedom in exchange for their surrender. In the end, the U.S. government gave up trying to subjugate the Seminole in their Everglades redoubts and left the remaining Seminoles in peace.

Third Seminole War

The Third Seminole War began in late 1855 with an attack on a group of U.S. soldiers by Seminoles led by Billy Bowlegs, in response to the continued white expansion into Seminole land in southern Florida. The third Seminole War was the final clash over land between the Seminoles and white settlers. By the time the conflict ended following Bowlegs' surrender on May 8 1858, there were as few as 200 Seminoles remaining in Florida, almost exclusively in the Everglades.

Sources

• "American Military Strategy In The Second Seminole War", by Major John C. White, Jr. "The greatest lesson of the Second Seminole War shows how a government can lose public support for a war that has simply lasted for too long. As the Army became more deeply involved in the conflict, as the government sent more troops into the theater, and as the public saw more money appropriated for the war, people began to lose their interest. Jesup’s capture of Osceola, and the treachery he used to get him, turned public sentiment against the Army. The use of blood hounds only created more hostility in the halls of Congress. It did not matter to the American people that some of Jesup’s deceptive practices helped him achieve success militarily. The public viewed his actions so negatively that he had undermined the political goals of the government."
• Letter Concerning the Outbreak of Hostilities in the Third Seminole War, 1856, from the State Library and Archives of Florida.
• "Tour of the Florida Territory during the Seminole (Florida) Wars, 1792-1859" by Chris Kimball "The Florida war consisted in the killing of Indians, because they refused to leave their native home -- to hunt them amid the forests and swamps, from which they frequently issued to attack the intruders. To go or not to go, that was the question. Many a brave man lost his life and now sleeps beneath the sod of Florida. And yet neither these nor the heroes who exposed themselves there to so many dangers and suffer[ings, could acquire any military glory in such a war. (From "The Army and Navy of America," by Jacob K. Neff, Philadelphia, J.H. Pearsol and Co., 1845.)"
• US History.com - Third Seminole War
• Tampa Bay History Center - Seminole Wars

See also

• Black Seminoles
• Ethnic cleansing
• History of Florida
• Indian Campaign Medal
• Population transfer
• Seminole (tribe)

External links

• Black Seminoles and the Second Seminole War: 1832-1838