The History of Florida (43 page)

in the border regions. The tensions culminated in what amounted to the

American invasion of Spanish Florida and the inevitable cession of Florida

to the United States. For the Seminoles, as we will see, this event was to have

cataclysmic results.

The prosperity of the Enterprise period has left an archaeological land-

scape strewn with an abundance of trade goods. Glass beads, glass bottle

sherds, transfer-print and shel -edged pearlware ceramics, iron and brass

proof

kettles, kaolin smoking pipes, gun hardware, metal belt buckles, and silver

earrings and brooches mark Seminole archaeological sites of this period.

Brushed and decorated aboriginal pottery found at these sites il ustrates

a basic continuity with the Creek tradition. Yet prosperity also brought a

break with Creek tradition. Inheritance may have passed less frequently

along matrilineal lines than was customary, instead passing from father to

son. By the first decades of the nineteenth century, major Seminole settle-

ments may have resembled more the typical southern plantation than the

traditional Creek squareground. Certainly elements of both were combined.

This seems to have been the case at Paynestown, the settlement of Payne,

successor to Cowkeeper, where the archaeological concentrations of arti-

facts are thought to represent numerous outbuildings associated with the

main house. A harbinger of things to come, Payne was wounded in an 1812

campaign against his town led by Col. Daniel Newnan of the Georgia mili-

tia, and died shortly thereafter.

Coming into history at this time are the bands of Seminole blacks, re-

ferred to as Black Seminoles or maroons. These were the descendents of

those who had fought for the Spanish at Fort Mose, above St. Augustine,

Florida’s Seminole and Miccosukee Peoples · 203

established in 1738, or more recent runaways from plantation slavery in

Carolina and Georgia. Locating themselves in separate vil ages near Semi-

nole towns, the blacks entered into a peculiar type of vassalage with the

Seminoles, supplying them with agricultural produce and expecting some

degree of protection in return. Having the blacks in Spanish Florida became

a major point of antagonism between the Seminoles and the Georgians,

while attempts to separate the blacks from their Seminole owners (as the

Indians felt themselves to be) by the Americans after 1821 became a contrib-

uting cause of the Second Seminole War.

Warfare and Revitalization

The next period of Seminole history is the time of the three Seminole wars,

covering the years between 1817 and 1858. Without question, these were the

years of great trauma and upheaval for the Seminole people. From death in

combat or deportation to Indian Territory, Seminole population decreased

from about 5,000 persons in the late pre-American period to perhaps fewer

than 200 by 1858. Yet this was the period that most strongly shaped the cul-

tural identity of the modern Seminoles. Through the adversity, indeed per-

haps because of it, a revival of traditional Creek religion and customs took

proof

place. Archaeological and documentary evidence suggests the presence of a

nativistic pulse during the early years of the Second Seminole War, driven,

perhaps, by influences from militant Red Stick Creeks who had unsuccess-

ful y resisted the increasing American presence in Alabama. Because there

was not any significant in-migration to swell Seminole ranks in the twen-

tieth century, the cultural repertoire of Florida’s contemporary Seminole

Indians—including the Green Corn Dance—must have been passed down

by those few Seminoles remaining in 1858. This is true also for the political y

distinct Miccosukee Tribe, whose members share a cultural, historical, and

linguistic past largely indistinguishable from that of the Seminoles.

The First Seminole War (1817–1818)

It is hard to isolate the so-called First Seminole War from the constant vio-

lence that characterized Florida during the opening decades of the nine-

teenth century. Incursions by the militia of Georgia and Tennessee at the

start of the War of 1812, besides resulting in the death of Payne, scattered

the Alachua Seminoles widely throughout the peninsula, some as far as

204 · Brent R. Weisman

present-day Miami. The weakness of Spain coupled with pressure by the

United States to acquire Florida contributed to the turmoil. White men and

non-Florida Indians raided into the peninsula to capture slaves, red and

black. Slaves from Georgia and Alabama escaped to mingle with the Semi-

noles, as was mentioned, in a form of servitude less onerous than the chattel

slavery from which they ran away. The institution of slavery determined

much that went on in troubled Spanish Florida. It was clear, too, that Native

Americans and Americans of European descent could not live in proximity

without friction, often violent.

In 1816 the United States established Fort Scott in the southwestern cor-

ner of Georgia just a few miles from the Spanish boundary. The adminis-

tration decided to supply the fort by boats sent up the Apalachicola River

through Spanish territory. Spain protested but not militarily. The major

military obstacle was the so-cal ed Negro Fort sixty miles south of Fort

Scott overlooking the river and garrisoned by 334 blacks armed with ample

military supplies left by the British after the War of 1812. If these blacks op-

posed the advance, they would give the United States the chance it sought

to eliminate them. They did attempt to block the passage upstream, but were

blown sky-high on 27 July 1816 when a lucky hotshot exploded the open

powder magazines. The blast killed 270 blacks and injured more, depriving

proof

the Seminoles of efficient black warriors and tons of military stores.

Across the Flint River from Fort Scott was the Mikasuki vil age of Fowl-

town. The spelling “Mikasuki” is used intentional y here to reflect the his-

torical y accurate usage in identifying a specific band of Seminoles and to

avoid confusion with the modern Miccosukee Tribe. The chief of Fowltown,

Neamathla, warned Colonel Edmund P. Gaines not to cross the river. Ir-

ritated by so blunt a threat, Gaines moved with 250 men to attack the town

on 21 November 1817, kil ing five Indians and later burning the place. In

retaliation, the Indians opened fire on a boat coming up the river and killed

thirty-seven of the forty soldiers aboard, six women and four children. This,

with other retaliatory acts, caused Secretary of War John C. Calhoun to

order Major General Andrew Jackson to Fort Scott with power to wage war

as he judged best. Jackson reached the fort on 9 March 1818. His force of

4,800, 1,500 of whom were Creek Indians, facing 1,000 Seminoles and 300

blacks, easily advanced southwestward, destroying Indian settlements and

crops. Late in March he obliterated Kenache’s (or Kinhajo) town (close to

Lake Miccosukee), the largest in Florida. His next conquest was not Indian,

but the Spanish town of St. Marks. Then he wiped out the town of Bowlegs,

Florida’s Seminole and Miccosukee Peoples · 205

brother of Payne, on the Suwannee River in April 1818. Bowlegs’s band, dis-

placed from the Alachua area by the Georgians in 1813, this time moved far

south to the vicinity of Lake Harris (Lake County). Jackson had eliminated

the fighting power of the Indians west of the Suwannee River, and dispersed

the bands there. He had cleared the Indians from the Georgia border and

closed one route into Florida to escaping slaves.

Jackson wrote to the secretary of war, “Let it be signified to me through

any channel that the possession of Florida would be desirable . . . and in

sixty days it will be accomplished.” Convinced that he had government ap-

proval, he turned back westward to capture Pensacola. Late in May 1818,

he retook the city which he had occupied once before in 1814. Only St. Au-

gustine remained under effective Spanish control. But the general looked

beyond that. Given permission, some shipping, and a few more troops, he

wrote, “I will assure you that Cuba will be ours in a few days.”

President Monroe, in justifying the First Seminole War to Congress, said

that the Seminoles had provoked the United States into punitive action.

The latter had been purely defensive. According to Jackson, his campaign

had been “to chastise a savage foe, combined with a lawless band of negro

brigands” carrying on a “cruel and unprovoked war against the citizens of

the United States.” One result of the American invasions of Florida was the

proof

transfer in 1821 of the peninsula and Panhandle to the United States.

For a half century before this transfer, the Florida Seminoles had pros-

pered and increased their numbers tenfold. They carried on a profitable

trade with British suppliers even during the Second Spanish Period. The

trading system in that fifty years had the effect of diminishing the power

of chiefs and increasing the power of autonomous bands, as has been men-

tioned. When the United States acquired Florida, there was no longer any

strong central leadership among the Seminoles.

The prosperity of the Seminoles, described in the discussion of the En-

terprise period, was their undoing. Florida had become economical y de-

sirable. Therefore the policy of the United States was first to restrict the

Seminoles within a limited area, then remove them altogether to the west.

Removal would end their threat to the institution of slavery. In a series of

treaties, the government undertook to carry out its policy but was hampered

by the lack of central Indian command to deal with. It could always find

Indians to sign treaties, but the signers were usual y not acknowledged by

the bands to have the authority to commit them to crowd into a reservation

or to leave Florida.

206 · Brent R. Weisman

Second Seminole War (1835–1842)

During the 1820s and early 1830s, white encroachments drove the Florida

Indians toward war. Slave raiders harassed them and their black associates.

The United States, by the Treaty of Moultrie Creek (1823), confined them

to a reservation. They became dependent on the government for food, but

were usual y hungry, with some actual y starving. In 1835 there were be-

tween 800 and 1,400 warriors fragmented into numerous bands. These war-

riors had 400 black men as allies, rated by whites as better fighters than the

Indians. Each band had a hereditary chief, but there was still no principal

chief over them al . Closest to a head chief was Micanopy, a descendant of

Cowkeeper (possibly nephew to Payne and Bowlegs), but he did not take

the initiative against white encroachment.

The man who did was Osceola, son of the Englishman William Powell

and a Creek Indian woman named Pol y Coppinger. White men often re-

ferred to him simply as Powel . He came to Florida with the Red Stick Creeks

as a boy of ten. Lacking any claim to hereditary leadership, he nevertheless

personified the determination of the Seminoles to keep their homeland. It

was he who planned the destruction of Major Francis Dade’s detachment

of 108 soldiers and the murder of agent Wiley Thompson with four other

proof

men on 28 December 1835. Three days later he led the Indian force that

prevented a small army under Brevet Brigadier General Duncan L. Clinch

from penetrating the Seminole refuge, about 100 square miles, known as the

Cove of the Withlacoochee (in present-day Citrus County). Simultaneously

with Osceola’s offensive, Phillip, a hereditary chief, perhaps in coordination

with Osceola, ravaged plantations along the St. Johns River.

The United States force in Florida had one commander, but he was ro-

tated until seven had served. Clinch gave way to Brevet Major General

Winfield Scott. Like all of his successors, Scott had to mix disparate types—

regular army, volunteers, militia, and Indians hostile to the Seminoles—to

make a fighting force. This mixture was an uneasy one throughout the seven

years of war. In March 1836, Scott conducted his campaign in the European

tactical tradition. He, too, aimed at the Cove, but by the time his three heavy

columns converged on it, the Indians had already split into their basic bands

and left.

Brevet Major General Edmund Pendleton Gaines, in New Orleans, hear-

ing of the fighting, assembled 1,000 men and landed them in Florida with-

out orders. After some marching and countermarching, he was entrapped

and besieged 26 February to 5 March 1836, until relieved by troops sent by