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| A sketch of Econchattimico's town drawn in 1838. |
Rufus Ballard's farm at Econchattimico's Reserve
by Dale Cox
Jackson County, Florida - American Indians and white settlers were not on the best of terms in Florida in the spring of 1838. U.S. soldiers and state troops fought bloody battles against Seminole and Miccosukee warriors in Central and South Florida, while Creek bands from Alabama proved equally elusive and deadly for white forces west of the Suwannee.
Caught in the middle were the Apalachicolas. Called Seminoles by some historians and Lower Creeks by others, these Indians had lived along the lower Chattahoochee and Apalachicola Rivers since at least the 1760s. Treated with by the United States Government as a separate tribe at this stage of their history, they were concentrated by 1838 on two reservations in today's Jackson County. The two tracts were all that remained of four reserves established for the followers of the chiefs Econchattimico, Yellow Hair, Vacapachasse, John Blunt, Davey, Cochrane, and Neamathla under the terms of an amendment to the Treaty of Moultrie Creek in 1823.
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| Signature page of the Treaty of Pope's Store (near today's Sneads). National Archives |
Blunt and his followers along with those of Davey and Cochrane gave up their lands by signing the Pope's Store Treaty in 1833 ahead of their voluntary relocation to Texas. Some of Yellow Hair's and Vacapachasse's people went with them.
Econchattimico and John Walker - the latter chief replacing the deceased Yellow Hair - traded some of their lands for peace with their white neighbors before major fighting erupted in Florida in December 1835. It did not do them much good.
As tensions increased, slavecatchers and land speculators prowled around the edges of the two remaining reserves. The former hoped to drag away Black Apalachicolas to sell into slavery. The latter looked for opportunities to convince white neighbors that Econchattimico and John Walker intended violence. The presence of these interlopers caused real problems.
Even as white neighbors of the reservations marched onto Indian lands and disarmed Econchattimico while slavecatchers dragged away free Black Apalachicolas to sell into slavery, the Native people living on the reserves engaged in a remarkable act of mercy. They extended a helping hand to a white man who was being treated horribly by his own people. [1]
The individual's name was Rufus Ballard. He was not a wealthy man and he was getting along in years - at least for that day and age - and after living in Florida for more than one decade he had been stiffed by the powerful Apalachicola Land Company. If you are not familiar with the Apalachicola Land Company, it owned the lands previously known as the Forbes Purchase. Those same lands comprise much of today's Apalachicola National Forest:
[Y]our memorialist came to this Territory in the year 1828, with a view to amend his fortunes, and provide a competency for old age, availing himself of the liberal laws of the liberal laws of the United States in regard to frontier settlers; and. . . it was a proceeding attending with much privation and hardship, in consequence partly of the wildness of the country, being far remote from civilization, and its occupancy by several tribes of Indians. [2]
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| American Indian chief as seen on the Apalachicola River during the early 1800s. University of West Florida |
Among those "tribes of Indians" was the band of Pascofv (Pascofa), a Creek war chief who came with his people from Alabama to Florida in 1836-1837 after they were attacked by a band of white allows while waiting in a concentration camp to travel the "Trail of Tears" to what is now Oklahoma. Attacked again at the Battle of Hobdy's Bridge as they made their way south to Florida, Pascofv's followers now occupied hidden camps between the Apalachicola and Ochlockonee Rivers from which they carried on a bloody war for survival with white troops.
Ballard, however, had a worse enemy - the Apalachicola Land Company:
And your memorialist would further respectfully represent that that not knowing of any adverse claim, he originally settled on the Forbes' Purchase, the lines then not being run out: and that by the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, he found that after years of hard labor he was compelled again to enter the wilderness and make unto himself a new home. [3]
The home and small farm that Rufus Ballard lost to the Apalachicola Land Company was not a big one. He had hacked a clearing from the wilderness and built a little cabin by his own labor and it was there that he and his wife, Emily, started raising a family of six children. The company did not care and he could not afford the elevated price that it asked for the land that he had improved with his own sweat and blood.
Homeless and unsure of where to go or what to do with his family, Ballard received an unexpected invitation. Econchattimico and his people wanted these poor white people to come and make their home on their reserve:
...[B]eing thus ousted, by the advice and invitation of those who had known him many years, he was induced, in May 1838, to settle on the reserve of lands provided for the Indian Chief Econchattomico, and his tribe, beleiving that it would soon be abandoned by them, as, in fact, it was in the Fall of that year: Your Memorialist made this settlement by the advice of the Indians, and no objection has ever been made on that account. [4]
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| Rufus Ballard's 1844 Petition for Relief. State Archives of Florida/ Memory Collection |
And yet, as their greatest tribulation loomed before them, the Red Ground chief and his followers invited a poverty-stricken family of homeless white friends to come and live with them.
The Apalachicolas of Econchattimico and John Walker were "removed" from their own land by future U.S. President Zachary Taylor's troops a few months later. The Ballard family watched as their American Indian friends were driven aboard the steamboat Rodney to begin the long Trail of Tears to what is now Oklahoma.
The family continued to farm the 12-acres given it by Econchattimico and slowly reestablished itself. One more crisis developed when the former chief's lands were surveyed prior to being opened for public sale and it was found that the tiny Ballard farm lay in fractional section 16. Under the U.S. Government's surveying system, the 16th section of each township was to be reserved for sales to benefit educational purposes. Ballard and his family once again were found to be living illegally on lands they could not claim.
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| Section 16, Township 5 North, Range 7 West in Econchattimico's Reserve showing the site of Ballard's Farm (labeled here as (Fryday's Field) on a land plat from 1844. |
This time, Rufus Ballard was frustrated beyond reason. The lands did not even belong to the United States but to the Native American chief Econchattimico when he settled on them. Why should he be driven from his home and cast out into the wilderness once more? He was given the little farm he now possessed by its original owners and he felt entitled to keep it, no matter what a surveyor said.
Ballard petitioned Florida's Territorial Legislative Council in 1844 and this time reason prevailed. One year before Florida became a state, the Council agreed that the family could keep their 12-acres so long as they paid a preemptive fee of $1.25 per acre. After all, the government must have its due. [5]
The site of the Ballard farm is now under the waters of Lake Seminole.
References:
[1] For a history of Econchattimico's Reserve, please see Cox, Dale, The History of Jackson County, Florida: The Early Years, Bascom: Old Kitchen Books, 2008.
[2] Ballard, Rufus. Petition of Rufus Ballard Requesting Pre-Emption Rights on Land that He Settled, circa 1844. 1844 (circa). State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory. <https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/348856>, accessed 8 April 2024.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Draft of an Act for the Relief of Rufus Ballard, 1844. 1844. State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory. <https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/348748>, accessed 8 April 2024.
