A Rescue Mission to the Apalachicola River in 1772

Tamathli and the first days of the Seminoles

By Dale Cox

Tamathli, seen near the center of this section of the 1778

Purcell-Stuart Map was one of the early breakaway towns that

soon became known as the Seminoles of Florid

The Native Americans who lived along the Apalachicola River in today's Jackson, Gadsden, Liberty, and Calhoun Counties did not immediately like the English who took control of Florida in 1763. 

A party of warriors from Tomatley or Tamathli - a town near present-day Sneads - demonstrated this in 1771 by attacking an English settlement on the Pascagoula River in southern Mississippi (then part of Louisiana). They killed two people and carried away a family of slaves. It is seldom remembered that the English often took Native Americans as slaves in the early days of their colonization of America and in this case the slaves captured by the Lower Creek warriors from Tamathli were American Indians.

John Stuart, the British agent for Indian affairs, wrote to the principal chiefs of the Lower Creeks, asking that the surviving prisoners be returned:

A Party of the Tomautley People some time ago carried away a Family of Indians Slaves, who belong to a planter on Pascagaula River, the Man they Killed or Burnt, the Woman is still among them. (Y)ou have no right to keep this Woman and Children. They were poor defenceless Slaves, could not be your Enemies being brought from a Country far to the Westward of the Mississippi, where you never go to War. I wish to Know if you the Chiefs of the Nation suffer such proceedings. There is no honor in taking and Killing a poor Slave the property of your Friends. I hope you will send your Talk that the Woman and Children may be restored to their Master. [John Stuart, January 20, 1772]

Stuart's assistant David Taitt carried the message to the Lower Creek chiefs, but was unable to obtain a suitable response. He then decided to travel down the Chattahoochee River and visit Tamathli in person. 

The Chattahoochee River flows in from the left to join the

Flint River which flows in from the right to form the

Apalachicola in this 1940s photograph of the Forks. The site

is now covered by Lake Seminole.

Taitt purchased a canoe and prepared for his journey but found the chiefs greatly alarmed by his plans. They pleaded with him, telling him that they "desired me not to go down the River in a Canoe as they alledged there was some dangerous Whirlpools in the river which they said would sink the Canoe."

More likely the chiefs on the Chattahoochee in what is now Alabama and Georgia were concerned that the Tamathli warriors were kill Taitt. They continued to present reasons why he should not go and finally offered to send two of their own head warriors to the town, but refused to let the assistant agent go, "alledging the danger of the River and badness of the people there."

Without saying it, the principal Lower Creek chiefs were telling Taitt that the towns on the lower Chattahoochee and Apalachicola Rivers no longer listened to them. Tamathi was one of the founding communities of what would become the Seminoles. They broke away from the Muscogee or Creeks and resettled in Florida to live independently.

The only white person who had any real influence with them was a white trader named James Burges. He operated a trading post or "store" in Tamathli and another in the town of Pucknauhitla at present-day Bainbridge, Georgia. Burges married Native American women, the daughters of chiefs, and had families in each town.

Tamathli was on the western or right side of the

Apalachicola River downstream from today's US 90 

and the Jim Woodruff Dam. The actual town was on high

ground back away from the floodplain swamps.

Taitt sent him a letter on May 4, 1772, requesting his help in freeing the surviving slaves along with a captive white women. The letter was given to head warriors named Chimhuchi and Topahatkee for delivery.

On the same day, Taitt reported back to Stuart:

…The Eufalla people say that they have done no wrong as the house they burnt was on their own land but this I shall talk to them about…I intended to come down the River to Tamatley and had prepared a Canoe for that purpose by permission of the Indians here, since they have raised many objections aledging that there is several dangerous whirlpools in the rivers and the people there are a set of runagadoes from every Town in the Nation…I shall send two head men from this Town to Tomatley for the two Slaves which are alive, although the Boy is sold to a Trader there, the Man and Girl they murdered at the place where they took them. [David Taitt to John Stuart, May 4, 1772]

The two emissaries made it to Tamathli without major incident and returned to the Lower Creek towns on May 22, 1772. They brought with them the slave woman captured on the Pascagoula, but the trader John Mealy - who operated a store at Ocheesee Bluff - had sent him to the populated areas of Georgia, apparently for sale. The white captive living at Tamathli did not wish to be freed. She was married to a warrior of the town and fled into the woods to avoid being taken back by the two messengers.

The Tamathli would improve their relations with the British over the years that followed. The two were close allies by 1778 when warriors from the town went to help fight against U.S. forces in Georgia during the American Revolution.

The town was east of Sneads on the higher ground back from the Apalachicola River just north of the now-abandoned Gulf Power plant. 

Editor's note: You can learn more about the colonial-era history of Jackson County in Dale Cox's book The History Of Jackson County, Florida: The Early Years.