A Second Seminole War attack on the Wakulla River

Creek warriors strike in the summer of 1839.

by Dale Cox

The Wakulla River was on the frontlines of war in 1839.

The summer of 1839 was the bloodiest of the Second Seminole War for families living in and on the borders of the Forbes Purchase in the Big Bend Region of Florida. Much of the Purchase area is recognizable today as the Apalachicola National Forest.

Native American warriors emerged from hiding places in the vast wilderness between the Apalachicola and Wakulla Rivers that year to strike against isolated homes and settlements. More than one dozen people, for example, were killed in a single attack at Estiffanulga Bluff in today's Liberty County. Others died in an attack on the Chaires' settlement within the fringes of the modern city of Tallahassee.

United States troops and Florida militia forces tried to strike back, carrying out raids deep into the swamps between the populated areas of Gadsden and Leon Counties and the coast. They generally failed, however, to bring the warriors to battle.

The American Indian warriors involved in these incidents were not Seminoles. They were members of Muscogee (Creek) bands that fled Alabama in 1837, hoping to escape atrocities being committed on their families at concentration or "emigration" camps. All of the remaining Muscogee people in Alabama were ordered into such camps in the fall of 1836 by U.S. officials intent on forcing them west on the Trail of Tears.

White outlaws raided some of the camps, however, killing elderly men and attacking girls and women. They even slit the noses and ears of Creek people to take their gold earrings and nose rings.

Leon County extended to the Gulf in 1839.

Determined to save their families from such outrages, several chiefs gathered their followers and broke from free from the concentration camps and broke for the swamps of the Pea River. Attacked by militia troops, they fought a slow retreat south across the border into the Walton, Okaloosa and Holmes County area of Florida where Florida troops joined the battle. Severe fighting took place in the Florida Panhandle during the spring and summer of 1837, as white soldiers and volunteers drove the desperate Creeks east to the Apalachicola River.

By the summer of 1839, several of the Muscogee (Creek) bands were in the Forbes Purchase, which for the most part was a vast, unsettled wilderness. They were desperate for food and other supplies, the necessity of which drove them to raid homes and settlements throughout the region.

One such raid took place 180-years ago this month in what is now Wakulla County, Florida:

On Friday the 27^th ultimo a party of Indians attacked the house of Mr. Bunch on the Wakulla, murdered Mrs. Bunch and one child and burned the house; also fired on, and wounded badly, Mrs. Whitaker living neighbour to Mr. Bunch. A detachment of the ‘Minute men,’ started on Monday morning in pursuit of the Indians; the sad news not having reached town until Sunday night at 1 o’clock from the circumstance of Mr. Bunch living distant from any settlement. - Tallahassee Star, October 2, 1839.

The Wakulla River, where the attack reportedly took place, is
a place of spectacular natural beauty. The head spring is the
centerpiece of Edward Ball Wakulla Springs State Park.

Census records show that John J. Bunch lived near Shell Point on the Wakulla County coast by 1850. It is unclear if the attack was in that vicinity or actually on the Wakulla River as reported by local newspapers.

The "Minute men" sent to pursue the warriors failed to come up with them. Having obtained necessary supplies, the Creeks withdrew into the swamps and could not be found.

The editor of the Tallahassee Star lamented the ability of the warriors to strike almost at will along the frontier, and the inability of Gov. Richard Keith Call to stop them:

How these vagabond Indians are to be caught and captured is more than we can tell. The country seems to be their own; no sooner does the Governor start for the Suwannee with a force of 250 men, than the Indians break out on the Wakulla, in quite an opposite direction! It would appear that the Indians are apprised of every movement by the whites! We hope the Governor may come across them, and whip them severely, and we are sure if the ‘Minute Men’ overhaul them they will soon cry for quarters. Florida is sorely harassed and deserves the pity of the nation. - Tallahassee Star, October 2, 1839.

Col. William Davenport of the U.S. Army led regular troops into today's Apalachicola National Forest during the winter of 1839-1840 but utterly failed to locate and kill or capture the Creek people clinging to life there.

In fact, it was 1843 before they finally "came in" and agreed to go west on the Trail of Tears. The chief Pascola led them in a fight that continued well after the technical end of the Second Seminole War. Lt. Col. Ethan Allen Hitchcock finally used diplomacy instead of bayonets to convince Pascofa of the futility of continuing the fight. 

Pascofa's band boarded the steamboat William Gaston at Hitchcock Landing on the Ochlockonee River in January 1843. Soldiers reported that tears filled their eyes as they caught their last view of the lands east of the Mississippi that had belonged to their nation for more than 1,000 years.

The survivors of Pascofa's group reached what is now Oklahoma after a long journey by boat and on foot. They are remembered today as the ancestors of the Thomas Palmer Band of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma.