*In the 1700s and 1800s, as European and American settlers pushed into the Deep South, they fought with and displaced many native peoples, many of whom fled to Florida.  Among these were the Yamasee and the Lower Creek (mostly living in Georgia), who sought to escape Europeans, the Cherokee, and the Upper Creek (mostly living in Alabama), but also some Choctaw and many others.  Eventually these tribes (who had similar languages) and many runaway slaves merged into one large group that the Spanish called cimarrons (runaways, or wild men), which the Indians came to pronounce Seminole. 

*The War of 1812 and the Creek War forced more Creek to move to Florida, where the British (who had encouraged them to fight the US during the War of 1812) gave them protection at a fort in the Florida Panhandle that local whites called the Negro Fort because so many of their slaves ran away to join the Seminole there.  When the British left Spanish Florida after the War of 1812, they left the Negro Fort in the hands of runaway slaves and black veterans of the British Corps of Colonial Marines.

*The black and Indian leaders of the fort encouraged more slaves to run away and join them, and even raided local plantations for supplies and to free more slaves.  Eventually this was too much for the local planters, who called on the nation’s greatest hero, Andrew Jackson.  He built a fort called Fort Scott in Georgia that was deliberately re-supplied by ships that passed very near the Negro Fort.  On 17 July, 1816, the Negro Fort fired on an American flotilla and killed four Americans.  Ten days later, Jackson sent the Army (with Creek allies) and the Navy to attack the fort.  Hot shot from one of the gunboats hit the powder magazine, destroying the fort and killing 250-270 of 300-330 occupants.  Jackson’s Creek allies were allowed to scavenge from what was left, and took home over 2,500 muskets.  This began the First Seminole War (1816-1818).

*This increased hatred between local whites and Indians, each of whom made many small raids on the other, mostly to steal livestock, although white attacks often killed Indians as well.  Finally, the Seminole went too far, killing a woman named Mrs Garrett and her two children (one 3 years old and the other 2 months old) in February, 1817.  Not long afterwards another ship sailing to Fort Scott was attacked, and many of the people on board (including women, children, and sick soldiers) were killed in what was called the Fort Scott Massacre.  This was too much for the Untied States, who also blamed the British for this, saying that they encouraged (or at least did not restrain) Seminole attacks on the United States.

*In March of 1818, Andrew Jackson invaded Florida with 800 regulars, 1,000 Tennessee militiamen, 1,000 Georgia militiamen, and some Creek allies.   On 6 April, 1816 he seized the Spanish fort at St Mark’s.  He soon arrested Alexander George Arbuthnot, a Scottish trader accused of selling guns to the Indians, and Robert Ambrister, an ex-Royal Marine who admitted to being a British agent to the Indians.  Both were sentenced to death, although Arbuthnot insisted his trade was legal—he was hanged from the yardarm of his own ship (Ambrister was executed by a firing squad).  Jackson also hanged two Indian leaders who sought refuge on an American ship.

*Jackson then marched on Pensacola, and occupied it on 27 May, 1818.  The Spanish surrendered the fort outside of town (to which they had retreated) the next day.  Jackson then went home, leaving one of his officers in charge of Pensacola.

*The Spanish and the British were outraged, but neither wanted a war with the United States at the time (the US were too important to British trade, and Spain was busy fighting most of its American colonies’ efforts at independence).  Some members of Congress wanted to censure Jackson, but he was so widely-regarded as a hero that he was later made governor of Florida instead (although he only stayed for three months). 

*In 1819, John Quincy Adams and Luis de Onís Gonzalez Vara negotiated the Adams-Onis treaty, ratified by Spain in 1820 and the US in 1821.  This ceded Florida to the United States in exchange for American payment of Spanish debts to Americans up to $5 million.  It also fixed the border between New Spain and the United States, and when Mexico got its independence, it mostly agreed to the same border.

*The new US territory of Florida still had trouble with the Seminole.  In the Treaty of Moultrie Creek in 1823, some Seminole agreed to move onto a large reservation in central Florida in exchange for US protection, money, farming tools, and education.  However, many of them were reluctant to move, even after the United States began building forts to demonstrate that they had better do as they were told.  Furthermore, Seminole still tended to steal cattle from Florida farmers, who often responded with violence.

*The 1830 Indian Removal Act was meant to deal with this by removing the Indians beyond the Mississippi River.  In the 1832 Treaty of Payne’s Landing, seven Seminole chiefs sent to Indian Territory agreed to move there by 1834, but when they got home, they said they never signed the treaty, or were forced to do so.

*Many other chiefs had never agreed to move at all.  Micanopy, a high chief of the Seminole said that he had not, and the young war leader Osceola said that to move would be to let the white man make him a slave.  He said, ‘The white man shall not make me black. I will make the white man red with blood; and then blacken him in the sun and rain... and the buzzard live upon his flesh.’

*Soon certain Seminole leaders declared that any Seminole who sold his land or cattle to a white man was a traitor who would be executed.  Osceola soon killed a Seminole chief named Charley Emathla for doing just that. 

*On 28 December, 1835, a party of soldiers led by Major Francis Dade left Fort Brooke (near Tampa) to bring supplies to Fort King (near modern Ocala), were ambushed by a Seminole war party led by Micanopy, and all but 3 of 110 men were killed (and one of those 3 was killed on the way back to Fort Brooke).  The Dade Massacre began the Second Seminole War (1835-1842).

*Winfield Scott, hero of the War of 1812 and the Black Hawk War was placed in charge of US operations against the Seminole.  The first attacks were led, however, by General Edmund Gaines, who soon found himself cut off by the Seminole and forced to wait for rescue by General Scott.

*For years the US Army and the Seminole hunted each other through the swamps of Florida, the army burning Seminole towns and the Seminole attacking the small forts that Army built in Florida and any settlements they could.  Sometimes Seminoles would surrender, then change their mind, or pretend to surrender and then attack soldiers caught off their guard. 

*Eventually Scott left Florida to handle Cherokee Removal (which he disapproved of but was ordered to oversee) and then to negotiate with Canada over the border between Maine and New Brunswick, and Thomas Jesup was placed in command.  He managed to capture of kill a number of Seminole, but often did so by pretending to offer a truce for negotiations, then capturing Seminole who came to speak with him.  This was how Osceola was captured in 1837.  Osceola died of malaria in Fort Moultrie in Charleston, South Carolina three months later.

*In open battle, Jesup’s forces were less successful.  On 25 December, 1837, a detachment of his army under Zachary Taylor attacked Seminole led by Billy Bowlegs in the Battle of Lake Okeechobee.  The Seminole had cut the swamp grass ahead of time to make a clear field of fire in an area of three-foot water and mud where horses would be useless.  Taylor thought that a direct charge against them would force them back, but his militia ran when their commander was killed, and the Seminole charged after them, killing and scalping many.  The regular army units that stood to face them lost almost all of their officers, who were specifically targeted. 

*Still, Taylor’s men eventually pushed the Seminole back, and despite taking far worse casualties than the Seminole (who they outnumbered 800 to 400), it was considered a victory for Taylor.

*As the Seminole retreated, Jesup pursued them and caught up with them on the banks of the Loxahatchee River.  There he and 1,500 American soldiers surrounded and defeated 300 Seminole on 24 January, 1838, in the last large battle of the Second Seminole War.

*Jesup was replaced by Zachary Taylor, known as Old Rough and Ready, and the closest thing the war had to a hero, although he later requested a transfer out of Florida himself.  He, and subsequent commanders, tried to create as many forts and roads as they could in Florida to make it easier to patrol, and tried to hunt down the Seminole in the swamps.  They tried to hunt the Seminole with bloodhounds, but the water washed away the Indians’ scent.

*Eventually, William Worth decided it was no longer worth fighting the Seminole if they would stay in the Everglades, and an informal end to the Second Seminole War was reached.  It was the longest war America fought between the Revolution and the Vietnam War.

*Despite the peace that followed the Second Seminole War (sometimes just called THE Seminole War), the leaders of Florida (which became a state in 1845) wanted all the Seminole removed, and the Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis, agreed.  He sent more soldiers to forts around the Seminole reservation and placed a trade embargo on them and threatened to use force if they did not leave Florida.  Soon, the Seminole attacked, beginning the Third Seminole War.

*On 20 December, 1855, Billy Bowlegs led an attack on an army patrol near Fort Meyers.  His 40 men killed and scalped four men and killed all the mules.  Soon more soldiers and civilians were killed. 

*For the next few years, the Army and the Florida militia failed to stop the Seminole, although they were able to reduce their attacks some, particularly once they began using long metal ‘alligator boats’ that did not leak or rot to hunt for Seminole in the swamps.  Eventually, though, many Seminole were paid to move to Indian Territory and the rest were allowed to remain in the Everglades.  Today their descendents refer to themselves as the Unconquered People.

*Although most Seminole live in Oklahoma today, there is still a large population in Florida, where they grow tobacco, operate casinos, and attract tourists.  They have also made an agreement with Florida State University allowing them to use their tribal name for their sports teams. 

---