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.

Steamboat Attack on the Apalachicola River

The Story of a Forgotten Attack of the Second Seminole War

By Dale Cox

One of the more unusual incidents of the Second Seminole War took place in July of 1840 when a party of refugee Creek warriors attacked the steamboat Irwinton as it was churning its way up the Apalachicola River between Jackson and Gadsden Counties.

There were fifteen passengers on the boat at the time, several of them children, and the boat’s captain had become somewhat alarmed after having spotted smoke rising in several locations. According to an account that appeared in New Orleans newspapers a short time later, the captain quickly advised the passengers to retire to their cabins for their safety:

They had only done so when a volley was fired, killing a cabin boy, named John Gill, of Pittsburg. The Indians fired from both shores. Some of the bullets passed through the cabin, and the passengers threw themselves on the floor and escaped the shots. The pilots also cast themselves upon the deck and were unhurt. The captain was at this time below crowding the fires. An alarm was now given that the boat was crowded with Indians, and “we are lost.”

The Irwinton was towing a barge on her trip up the river and eleven of the attacking warriors paddled a canoe out to the barge and were trying to climb aboard when the canoe suddenly overturned, dumping most of the Indians into the river. Three, however, managed to climb onto the barge and make their way over to the steamboat itself:

Two of the Indians who got on board the Irwington, were killed by the engineer and mate, who knocked them down with their wrenches, and threw them into the wheel where they were torn to pieces. The third, who appeared to be the leader, and who supposed his men were with him, entered the cabin calling loudly to the others to follow him. Most of the passengers hid themselves, and the Indian posted himself at the head of the table, apparently waiting a moment for reinforcement. Mr. P. Hendricks seized a chair, as the only weapon of defence at hand, when the chief threw a chair at him across the table. Mr. Metchner, of Randolph county, Ga., a stout man of about fifty years of age, then clasped the Indian in his arms from behind, and endeavored to force him out of the cabin, but was not able. At this time the mate came in and stabbed him in the abdomen, and threw him also in the wheel.

The attack on the Irwinton was the last reported attack on a boat on the Apalachicola and Chattahoochee Rivers during the Seminole Wars. The steamboat continued on its way upstream.

To learn more about other Seminole War events in and around Jackson County, please consider The History of Jackson County, Florida: The Early Years. The book is available at www.amazon.com or in Marianna at Chipola River Book and Tea on Lafayette Street downtown.

Second Seminole War Attack in Jackson County

By Dale Cox

Fought in virtually every corner of Florida, the Second Seminole War was a bloody conflict that deteriorated into guerrilla raids by the forces of both sides. Jackson County became the target of such a raid in July of 1841 when a party of Creek warriors emerged from the swamps south of Marianna and attacked the home of Morris Simms.

According to a report carried by newspapers across the nation, the attack took place with around 30 warriors struck the Simms’ home, located near the Chipola River about 12 miles south of Marianna. Subsequent events indicate that the warriors responsible for the raid were part of a group that had eluded capture by hiding with their families deep in what was then a wilderness area surrounding St. Andrew Bay. Between 1840 and 1844 they carried out a series of raids against isolated farms and homes, primarily to obtain food and other supplies.

The attacks were usually swift and bloody. In the attack on the Simms’ settlement, for example, the warriors killed two of Morris Simms’ young daughters. “The little girls were found in the cowpen,” read a letter received in Tallahassee from Marianna, “pierced with spiked arrows, and their brains dashed out with lightwood knots.” The oldest of the girls was seven, while the youngest was only two.

The war party also carried away a large quantity of bacon from the smokehouse, a barrel of flour and any other provisions it could find, before killing two hogs and crippling Simms’ horses by shooting barbed arrows into their legs.

Such attacks, sadly, were commonplace during the war and were not limited to Indian warriors. A party of Jackson County militia had been accused four years earlier of killing a number of women and children in a brutal massacre in Walton County.

As soon as news of the raid was received in Marianna, a group of local men took up arms and formed into a volunteer company. Led by Major Bryan, the rode south to the Simms’ settlement. They reached the scene of the attack and managed to pick up the trail of the retreating warriors, “but they had made good their retreat, and their trail could be traced no further than a hammock some three or four miles from the scene of the outrage.”

News of the Simms’ attack prompted the U.S. Army to send regular troops into the region. In November of 1841, about four months after the raid, Lieutenant James W. Smith and a company of men from the 3rd U.S. Infantry established Fort Chipola south of Marianna. Located where the Federal Road crossed the Chipola River on the Jackson-Calhoun line, the fort served as a base for operations against scattered parties of Indians in the region for at least the next year.

Note: This article is excerpted from my 2008 book, The History of Jackson County, Florida: The Early Years. The book is available at Chipola River Book and Tea in Downtown Marianna or online at www.amazon.com.

An Indian Attack in Jackson County - 1841

From 1835 until 1842 (even later in some areas), Florida was the scene of a bloodbath remembered today as the Second Seminole War. The following article relates one incident of the war that took place in Jackson County about 12 miles south of Marianna. It appeared in the Augusta Chronicle on August 4, 1841.

Keep in mind as you read this, that neither side (white or Native American) fighting in this war particularly liked each other. The Jackson County Militia had been accused just a couple of years earlier of massacring a group of unarmed Indians in Walton County. Acts such as this were perpetrated by individuals on both sides:

We learn by a letter received by the last mail from Marianna, that a few days since, a part of Indians, supposed to number about 30 visited the settlement of Mr. Morris Simms, in Jackson county, about 12 miles below Mariana, near the Chipola river, murdered his two daughters, the one seven and the other two years of age, plundered his smoke house of a quantity of bacon, a barrel of flour, and what other provisioins they could find, killed several hogs and crippled two horses with spears or spiked arrows. The little girls were found in the cowpen, pierced with spiked arrows, and their brains dashed out with lightwood knots.

As soon as the news of the murder reached Mariana, a company of volunteers under the command of Maj. W.C. Bryant started off in pursuit of the skulking assassins. But they had made good their retreat, and their trail could be traced no further than a hammock some three or four miles from the scene of the outrage.