Who Were the Heroes?

        This January, as every January, there will be a reenactment of the “Dade Massacre” near Bushnell, Florida, approximately 60 miles north and east of Tampa. The Villages Daily Sun will, as usual, run a page and a half with photos of fat old guys in vintage ca 1840s army uniforms commemorating the fallen "heroes" of this event in the Second Seminole war. It will spin events as if the brave patriots were, without provocation,  ambushed by the savages. It will do so without any background whatsoever. In this case background is essential to understanding the events which ensued.  

        In 1829, gold was discovered on Cherokee lands in Georgia. At the time, the Five “civilized” Tribes (Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Creek (also known as the Muskogee) and Seminoles) lived in portions of the South, most farming, some even owning slaves. Most of these indigenous peoples were descendants of what is now called the Mississippian culture. It was an agrarian culture that grew crops of corn and beans, with hereditary religious and political elites. (sound familiar?) Substitute “cotton and tobacco for corn and beans and it could have been any Southern state’s white population, except, it was far more egalitarian and generally peaceful.  

        The Mississippian Culture had flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from 800 to 1500. Before European contact these tribes were generally matrilineal societies, which mirrored the Six Nations Tribes of the Iroquois Confederation (Mohawk, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Seneca and Tuscarora) farther north. Agriculture was the primary economic pursuit. The bulk of the tribes lived in organized and planned towns, some of which were fairly large, covering hundreds of acres and populated with thousands of people. These communities regulated their space with planned streets, subdivided into residential and public areas. Their system of government was hereditary. Chiefdoms were of varying size and complexity, with high levels of military organization.

        When gold was discovered on Cherokee lands (and would later be also found in western North Carolina), white prospectors flooded over the border onto their lands, and the state of Georgia used this as a pretext for declaring all treaties with Indian nations to be null and void. This happened elsewhere, as well, but the Georgia cases would become the stuff of USSC/POTUS history.

  

       This, as other later state actions would be, was a unilateral abrogation of agreements entered into previously between State/Federal governments and the various tribal groups. While gold would trigger the events which led to the Seminole wars, there had been jealousy and envy of Indian lands by whites for decades, even though the Cherokee, and others had intermarried during that period as well. Famously, Sam Houston, named “Raven” by the Cherokee with whom he lived for several years, was married to Tiana Rogers, a young mixed-race Cherokee herself. Landless Scots/Irish  traders, unlike the English planter class who initially settled the flat lands and turned to the profitable market crops of tobacco and cotton, were far more likely to intermarry. In fact, at the time when the Cherokee “left’ North Carolina, Principal Tribal Chief John Ross (from 1828-1866), only about 1/8 Cherokee, was one of the wealthier men in the state, owning herds of cattle and farming with slave labor.  The story of the Cherokee alone is interesting, but too long for this forum.

       The culmination of tensions between the Cherokee and various states, including Georgia, led to the forced migration of Native Americans, later known as the Trail of Tears. This was the act of an autocratic President, directly contravening a USSC decision, and should sound familiar to many in the current xenophobic situation in which we find ourselves mired. The sole difference is that instead of attempting to keep “the others” from coming in, this was a case of forcing them out.

         President Andrew Jackson authorized the Indian Removal Act in 1830, which would allow a take-over of the gold mining areas among other places as well as Georgia. The Cherokee Nation, a nation of laws themselves, turned to the U.S. federal court system to avoid being forced off their ancestral lands. The Supreme Court first ruled in favor of the State of Georgia in the 1831 case Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, but the following year, in Worcester v. Georgia reversed this decision to recognize the Cherokee as a sovereign nation. Blatantly rejecting this decision and realizing that most Americans simply didn’t give a shit what happened to persons many of them had been taught to regard as social and racial inferiors, Jackson proceeded with removal of remaining Cherokee from the North Georgia gold fields, Supreme Court be damned.

       The Philadelphia Mint received over half a million dollars in gold from Georgia in 1832. The state of Georgia held what came to be known as the “Gold Lottery” of 1832 and awarded land, which had been owned by the Cherokee, to the winners in 40-acre tracts. The Philadelphia Mint received $1,098,900 in gold from Georgia between 1830 and 1837.    By 1838, the Dahlonega Mint had been established by Congress, as a branch of the United States Mint. This reflected the amount of gold being produced in Georgia. The establishment of the Dahlonega Mint seemed to validate (to whites) the state's actions in the early part of the century to seize Cherokee lands.

        The previously mentioned Indian Removal Act of 1830 authorized relocation, "by force if necessary" of all Indians east of the Mississippi (principally those five "civilized" tribes with large traditional tribal lands) to Oklahoma. In 1832, Andrew Jackson essentially ignoring the USSC decision in Worcester vs Georgia) ordered the act enforced regardless of the intervening court decision regarding Indian rights, and the forced exodus began in earnest. This is known historically as the Trail of Tears, not only for the loss of ancestral lands, but for the relatively high rate of death by starvation, illness and drownings on the way to Oklahoma, Some, primarily Florida’s Seminoles, actually had the nerve to object. The Army's purpose, then, became to find, round up and forcibly relocate them. 

        The Seminole nation came into existence in the 18th century as a sort of conglomerate of others of the Five Tribes and was composed of renegade and outcast Native Americans from Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama, most significantly the Creek Nation, as well as African Americans who escaped from slavery in South Carolina and Georgia. While roughly 3,000 Seminoles were forced west of the Mississippi River, approximately 300 to 500 Seminoles stayed and fought in and around the Everglades of South Florida.

         Jackson and later presidents, having decided that this resistance and small presence in Florida could not be tolerated, engaged the US Army as well as various militias in what came to be known as the Seminole Wars, of which there were three, although skirmishes occurred throughout the period of 1816 to 1858. The earliest Seminole US conflict stems from the hubris and Indian hatred of Jackson, then a militia Colonel, in the War of 1812. The Creeks had sided with the British, principally because, in their estimation, the British were far less likely to seize their (Creeks’) lands, should they defeat the Americans.

        During the Creek War (1813–1814), Jackson became a national hero 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, seized much formerly Creek territory in what is today southern Georgia and central and southern Alabama. As a result, many Creek left Alabama and Georgia, and moved to Spanish West Florida. The Creek refugees joined the Seminole of Florida.

        In 1814, Britain was still at war with the United States, and began recruiting Indian allies. In May 1814, a British force entered the mouth of the Apalachicola River, and distributed arms to the Seminole and Creek warriors, and fugitive slaves. Again, the Indians were faced with choosing the lesser of two evils – The British who had shown little interest in occupying or taking Indian lands, or the United States which had made the opposite aims apparent. Two months later, the British and their Indian allies were beaten back from an attack on Fort Bowyer near Mobile, and a US force led by General Jackson drove the British out of Pensacola, and back to the Apalachicola River.

       When the War of 1812 ended, all British forces left the Gulf of Mexico except for a token force in (neutral) Spanish West Florida. The word “neutral need be remembered here. A small fort was provisioned at Prospect Bluff with several cannon, muskets, and ammunition. The British commander told the Indians that the Treaty of Ghent (the British /US treaty which ended the War of 1812) “guaranteed the return of all Indian lands lost during the War of 1812, including the Creek lands in Georgia and Alabama.” As the Seminole were unconcerned with in holding a fort, they returned to their villages.

       Before the British command staff left in the spring of 1815, they turned the fort over to the fugitive slaves and Seminoles who had been originally recruited for possible incursions into U.S. territory during the war. As word spread in the American Southeast about the fort, whites called it the "Negro Fort." The Americans worried that it would inspire their slaves to escape to Florida or revolt.

       Typical of the semi-literate but headstrong Jackson, and without the orders or permission of President Monroe or Secretary of War Calhoun, Jackson went rogue. While acknowledging that it was in Spanish territory, in April 1816, Jackson informed the Spanish Governor of West Florida that if the Spanish did not eliminate the fort, he would. The governor replied that he did not have the forces to take the fort.

        Without orders (or permission) from Washington, Jackson assigned Brigadier General Edmund Pendleton Gaines to take control of the fort. Gaines directed Colonel Duncan Lamont Clinch to build a fort on the Flint River just north of the Florida border. Gaines then announced that he intended to supply Fort Scott from New Orleans via the Apalachicola River. Since this would necessitate passing through Spanish territory and past the Negro Fort, it would allow the U.S. Army to keep an eye on the Seminole and the Negro Fort. If the fort fired on the supply boats, the Americans would have an excuse to destroy it.

       In July 1816, a small supply squadron of relatively lightly armed vessels directed to supply Fort Scott reached the Apalachicola River. In an overland march, Clinch took a force of more than 100 American soldiers and about 150 (friendly) Lower Creek warriors, to protect their passage. The supply fleet met Clinch at the Negro Fort, and its two gunboats took positions across the river from the fort. The African Americans in the fort fired their cannon at the white U.S. soldiers and the Creek but had no training in aiming the weapon. The white Americans fired back. The gunboats' ninth shot, a "hot shot" (a cannonball heated to a red glow), landed in the fort's powder magazine. The huge explosion leveled the fort and was allegedly heard more than 100 miles away in Pensacola! (overkill?) It has been called "the single deadliest cannon shot in American history." Of 320 persons known to be in the fort, including women and children, more than 250 died instantly, and many more died from their injuries soon after. Once the US Army destroyed the fort, it withdrew from Spanish Florida.

        With the Army gone, however, American squatters and outlaws began raiding the Seminole, killing villagers and stealing their cattle. Seminole resentment grew, and they retaliated by “stealing back” their own cattle. Some of these retaliatory raids, met with White resistance resulted in the deaths of Americans squatting in Spanish Florida. As raids back and forth across the Georgia and Alabama borders increased in frequency, The US began negotiations with Spain for the purchase of Florida, while also sending Jackson, the Indian hater into the Spanish territory. In a series of actions which involved both Seminole and American deaths, but, notably, a significant number of Indian women and children, Jackson eventually seized Florida and hanged two British citizens, a trader and a military attaché to the Spanish governor, as spies. While most Americans supported Jackson, some worried that Jackson could become a "man on horseback", a Napoleon, and transform the United States into a military dictatorship. In December 1818, resolutions were introduced in Congress condemning Jackson's actions. Jackson was too popular, however, and the resolutions failed, but the hot headed and definitely extra-legal execution of British citizens on Spanish soil left a stain on his reputation for the rest of his life, although not enough to keep him from becoming President.

        Following US acquisition of Florida (Adams-Onis treaty 1819, if you’re keeping score) and its eventual statehood the “Seminole question” lingered. As in Georgia, most whites saw the Indians as simply in the way of progress, which meant the illegal seizing of their lands by whites. The Seminole saw it differently. The Seminoles were also still an administrative problem for the new government. In early 1822, an estimate was prepared of the number of Indians in Florida. The report cited about 22,000 Indians, and 5,000 slaves held by Indians. The estimate described about two-thirds of them as “refugees” from the Creek War, with no valid claim (in the U.S. view) to Florida. These refugees had fled to Florida while it was yet Spanish soil. Indian settlements were in the areas around the Apalachicola River, along the Suwannee River, in Northwest Florida from there south-eastwards to the Alachua Prairie, near present day Gainesville and then south-westward to a little north of Tampa Bay.

        Officials in Florida were concerned from the beginning about the situation with the Seminoles. Until a treaty was signed establishing a reservation, the Indians were not sure of where they could plant crops and expect to be able to harvest them, and they had to contend with white squatters moving into land they occupied. Additionally, there was no system for licensing traders, and unlicensed traders were supplying the Seminoles with liquor. Because of the limited presence and frequent turnover of territorial officials, meetings with the Seminoles were canceled, postponed, or sometimes held merely to set a time and place for a new meeting. Meanwhile white encroachment and land appropriation escalated.

        This then is the background for the second and third Seminole wars, as the US and State governments attempted to reservate the tribe and it resisted, being pushed, in the process, ever southward and away from the best arable lands. The only relatively safe haven eventually was the Everglades, mainly because whites couldn’t live there easily.  A series of military actions were taken as the Army pushed in response to Seminole raids against the appropriators of their former lands and the Seminole pushed back.

        The “Dade Massacre,” mention of which opened this post was simply one of many skirmishes along the way, but it resulted in a major Seminole victory, due to the relative ineptitude of the US commander. On December 23, 1835, two U.S. companies of 110 under Major Francis Dade departed from Fort Brooke near present-day Tampa, heading up the military road just inland from the coast, on a resupply and reinforce mission to Fort King near present-day Ocala. The Seminoles had grown increasingly furious at U.S. Army efforts to forcefully relocate them out of the state (and their homes) to Indian Territory (Oklahoma).  

       Major Dade knew the Seminoles were shadowing his men, but believed that if an attack were to occur, it would occur during one of the river crossings or in the thicker woods to the south. Like Custer in 1876, his hubris was to be his downfall. Having passed the denser woods and in order that the command could move faster, Dade recalled his flanking scouts. Bad idea! Several Seminole chiefs with their warriors assembled secretly at points along the march. Scouts were easily able to watch and track the troops in their sky-blue uniforms at every foot of the route and sent reports back to chiefs. The troops marched for five quiet days until December 28, when they were just south of the present-day city of Bushnell.

        The Seminoles did not refrain from attacking in the other places because they thought they could achieve better surprise later, but because they were waiting for Osceola to join them, although his presence was not essential, as we shall see. They finally gave up waiting and attacked without him. The "ambush," as whites called it, was an attack carefully planned by Chief Micanopy, whose first shot killed Major Dade. This first Seminole fusillade brought down not only Major Dade but also half his men. As it turned out, in the late afternoon on that day, 180 Seminoles had lain wait approximately 25 miles south of Fort King (Present day Ocala). The Seminoles had terrain and the element of surprise in their favor. Major Dade, who was on horseback, was killed by the Seminoles' very first shot fired personally by Chief Micanopy, which by pre-arranged plan began the attack. Many of the soldiers, in two single file lines, were also quickly killed. Only a few managed to even get their flintlock muskets from underneath their heavy winter coats.

       Two years later, Osceola, deceitfully captured under a flag of truce, died at Fort Marion. There would be another 4 years of fighting. After a third Seminole War ended in 1858 about 200 Seminole survived in the far south of Florida. In a series of United States wars against the Seminoles in Florida, about 1,500 U.S. soldiers died. The Seminoles never surrendered to the US government, and consequently the Seminole of Florida call themselves the "Unconquered People".   Truth told, American forces in 1836 Florida were in about the same situation as German soldiers in 1939, rounding up Czech Jews for deportation. Making fallen heroes of Dade and his men simply doesn’t pass the “smell test” from my point of view. The heroes here were the Seminole, fighting for their homes.

      Another "takeaway" here is that the story of American southeastern Indians is, to great extent  a large part of the semi-mythical story of Andrew Jackson, a crude racist who, earlier while a General, ignored his president and secretary of state and would later ignore a Supreme Court decision to do as he damned well pleased. Sound a bit familiar?