"By the Advice of the Indians"

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.

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]

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]

Rufus Ballard's 1844
Petition for Relief.
State Archives of Florida/
Memory Collection

From this document deep in the State Archives of Florida emerges a remarkable story. Econchattimico and his people knew that their days in the land of their ancestors were numbered. Despite the promises afforded them by the U.S. Government under the Treaty of Moultrie Creek and the amendment to the Treaty of Pope's Store, they would soon be forced to leave their Florida homes. Soldiers were coming with muskets and bayonets to enforce the will of the white people that they be driven west of the Mississippi.

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.

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.

A Battle at Blountstown, Florida

The Seminole War attack at Blunt's Town and Spanish Bluff

by Dale Cox

The Apalachicola River as seen from "Spanish Bluff," the site
of today's Neal Landing at Blountstown, Florida.

A battle on the banks of the Apalachicola River 202 years ago today marked the end of a remarkable Lower Creek chief.

The Prophet Josiah Francis and other Red Stick Creek, Seminole, Miccosukee, and Maroon (Black Seminole) leaders made clear their disavowal of an attempt by Atasi Mico, William Perryman, George Perryman, Johnson, and the white trader Edmund Doyle to open peace negotiations with U.S. Army officers at Fort Scott on the Georgia frontier. (Please see Earthquake shakes peace effort on the Apalachicola River).

They did so by attacking the Spanish Bluff home of William Hambly, where Doyle and others had taken shelter:

…On the 13th instant, Hambly and Doyle were made prisoners by this party, and, I presume, killed, and their property of every description taken possession of. The chief, William Perryman, who had gone down with a party to protect Hambly and Doyle, was killed, and his men forced to join the opposite party. All of the Indians on the Chattahoochee, below Fort Gaines, who are not disposed to go to war, I fear will be compelled to remove above for security.[i]

William Hambly's home and trading store overlooked the
Apalachicola River at Spanish Bluff. The site is now a
popular recreation spot in Calhoun County.

Spanish Bluff touched the river where Neal Landing Park is located today at Blountstown, Florida. The town of the Tuckabatchee chief John Blunt stood nearby, and it is from this community that Blountstown takes its name. The modern city was founded at Spanish Bluff but later relocated to the higher ground where it stands today.

The killing of William Perryman by the Prophet’s party marked the end of that chief’s remarkable career of leadership among the Lower Creeks and Seminoles. The leader of Tellmochesses, a Eufaula town on the west side of the Chattahoochee River near Parramore Landing in present-day Jackson County, Florida, he was the son of the well-known Lower Creek/Seminole leader Thomas Perryman and the grandson of the British trader Theophilus Perryman.

William Perryman came of age as a chief and warrior during the American Revolution when he led warriors from the Perryman towns to St. Augustine to fight alongside the British against the American Patriots in Georgia. He and his men were engaged in numerous skirmishes and battles across Northeast Florida and Southeast Georgia during the Revolution, and he was recognized with the rank of captain by the British Army.

William Perryman was the brother-in-law of the
adventurer and pirate William Augustus Bowles.

William Augustus Bowles married William Perryman’s sister during his first sojourn among the Lower Creeks. The two brothers-in-law got along well enough at first, and warriors from Tellmochesses were among the fighters who supported the adventurer. Some even crewed his “privateer” (i.e., pirate) ships.

This changed, however, when Bowles threatened the life of Thomas Perryman during a minor dispute. William responded to this action with uncharacteristic anger and signed an agreement with the Spanish at San Marcos de Apalache (Fort St. Marks) to help capture the adventurer. He remained on good terms with the Spanish after that, supplying them with beef from his extensive herds and providing them with intelligence about events in the Creek Nation.

William Perryman was called “Indian Will” by Col. Andrew Ellicott, the U.S. Commissioner of Limits, who arrived in the area in 1799 to survey the permanent boundary between Spanish Florida and the claimed territory of the United States. He warned Ellicott of a planned attack by Creek and Seminole warriors. Led by the chief of Tallassee, they were angry that the Americans and Spanish were dividing their lands.

William Perryman was one of the Lower Creek and Seminole chiefs who went to Pensacola in 1813 to plead for military support from Great Britain. A British warship was in port, and they sent a message by him to the governor in the Bahamas. The Creek War of 1813-1814 was underway, and the chiefs feared that the growing war would spread to them.

The battle took place in the area of today's Neal Landing Park
on the Apalachicola River at Blountstown, Florida.

This was the request that brought British forces to the Apalachicola River in 1814. They built forts at Prospect Bluff (the "Negro Fort") and just below the forks of the Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers. William and Thomas Perryman joined an alliance that supported Great Britain during the last days of the War of 1812.

William’s leadership role grew in 1815 with the death of his father. He and his followers stayed neutral when U.S. forces came down from Fort Gaines to build Fort Scott and attack and attack the Negro Fort during the summer of 1816. His brother – George Perryman – even served as caretaker at Fort Scott when the military withdrew that winter.

Perryman formed an alliance with the United States after the destruction of the Negro Fort. He provided intelligence to U.S. officers at Fort Gaines, and his name frequently appears in military reports from 1817.

The chief was involved in a plot to public flog Neamathla during a council at Fort Scott in August 1817. He believed that the Fowltown chief was endangering all of the towns of the area by confronting the army. Neamathla did not appear, and the plan was dashed.

Blountstown was founded at Spanish Bluff but later moved up
the hill to its present site. This historical marker notes the site
of the "old" courthouse which stood near Neal Landing.

In a last-ditch effort to restore peace after the U.S. raids on Fowltown and the Native American retaliation at the Scott Battle of 1817, William and George Perryman accompanied Edmund Doyle and the chief Johnston to Fort Scott on December 10, 1817. The negotiation failed.

The Prophet Francis and other principal leaders were not consulted about the Fort Scott council. This likely contributed to the attack that followed at Spanish Bluff on December 13, 1817.

Exactly what happened that day is not known. William Perryman and his warriors left their town near today's Parramore Landing in Jackson County, Florida, after the failed peace effort at Fort Scott and went down to Spanish Bluff. They planned to escort William Hambly and Edmund Doyle to safety, but the Prophet struck before they could complete their mission.

Hambly later described his experience: 

…[O]n the 13th of December last, when on my plantation on the Apalachicola, I was made a prisoner of by a party of Seminole Indians, and taken up to the Ocheesee Bluffs in company with Mr. Doyle, who was made a prisoner with me; they kept us here three days, during which time they were busily engaged with some transports which were then ascending the river to Fort Scott; from thence they took us to Mekosukee, where the Indians informed me that they had been told by the commandant of St. Marks, that war was declared between Spain and the United States. From this place we were carried to the Suwanee, when Kenhagee [i.e., Cappachimico], principal chief of the Seminoles, told me that we had been taken and robbed by order of Arbuthnott, and taken there to be tried by him. [ii]

The U.S. Army later executed the Bahamian trader Alexander Arbuthnot on charges that he conspired to kill Hambly and Doyle. The Maroon (Black Seminole) chief Nero intervened to save their lives, taking them to the Spanish fort of San Marcos de Apalache instead. 

The Fowltown war chief Chenubby led the attack on Hambly's home. He also took part in the Scott Battle on November 30, 1817. [iii]

The raid on Spanish Bluff provided the Prophet’s forces with a large quantity of food, which they used to sustain themselves during their coming attack on the U.S. supply ships on the Apalachicola. That siege – remembered today as the Battle of Ocheesee Bluff – began on December 15, 1817.

Editor's Note: Learn more about the battles on the Apalachicola River in 1817 from Dale Cox's books The Scott Battle of 1817 and Fort Scott, Fort Hughes & Camp Recovery. Just click the links for ordering information. 

Visit the site of the battle and see a great view of the Apalachicola River at Neal Landing in Blountstown, Florida:

References:

[i] Lt. Col. Matthew Arbuckle to Major General Edmund P. Gaines (dated Fort Scott), December 20, 1817, American State Papers – Military Affairs, Vol. 1, pp. 689-690.

[ii] Certificate of William Hambly, July 24, 1818, National Archives.

[iii] William Hambly and Edmund Doyle to Maj. Gen. Andrew Jackson, May 2, 1818, National Archives.

More new details from 1814 British map of Apalachicola & Chattahoochee Rivers

Section of Woodbine's
Map of 1814.
National Archives of Great Britain
(Click to Enlarge)

I first showed you part of the newly discovered Woodbine Map of 1814 in a post earlier this week. If you missed it, just click here to read that part before continuing with this article.

Today we are focusing on the next part of the map, which covers the Apalachicola River from the confluence of the Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers to the Gulf of Mexico. In the next post, we will look at the section that covers the Chattahoochee River north from the Alabama state line to above Eufaula.

The more than 200 year old Woodbine Map was discovered in the National Archives of Great Britain. It reveals a great deal of new information about the location of Native American settlements and refugee camps along the Apalachicola and Chattahoochee Rivers in the days immediately following the Creek War of 1813-1814.

Red Stick Creek refugees were pouring south into Spanish West Florida following the defeat of their last army at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, Alabama. They were starving and fleeing for their lives. Not only were they being pursued by U.S. troops, but white-allied Creeks under William McIntosh and Choctaws under Pushmataha had joined the chase. Even William Weatherford, a former Red Stick fighter, was now guiding U.S. troops in pursuit of his former friends and allies.

 The Woodbine Map was drawn at a time when Red Stick families were establishing refugee camps along the Conecuh, Choctawhatchee, Chattahoochee, Apalachicola and other rivers of the region. So many of these refugees had died along the way that one old warrior told a British officer that he knew the trail to his enemy because it was marked by the graves of his children.

Capt. George Woodbine of the British Royal Marines arrived on the Apalachicola in May 1814. Ordered to recruit Creek and Seminole warriors to the cause of Great Britain in the ongoing War of 1812, Woodbine traveled as far upstream as Eufaula on the Chattahoochee River. His map appears to have been drawn during his journey and pinpoints the locations of both established towns and refugee camps.

It should be noted before continuing that the map was drawn at a time when large numbers of Native American men, women and children were still on the move. Many of the sites shown were transitory at best. Some were occupied for no more than a few weeks, which makes the document extremely valuable in understanding the movements of Red Stick groups as they entered Florida.

In our last article about the map, we discussed the massive number of towns and camps that had appeared along the relatively short section of the Chattahoochee River in Jackson County, Florida. Most Red Stick groups had not yet reached the Apalachicola River.

Looking at today's section of the map, we will move south down the Apalachicola from the forks of the Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers. The Tocktoethla towns of the Perryman family, shown just above the forks, were discussed in the last article.

The Apalachicola River as seen from River Landing Park in
Chattahoochee, Florida. Mosquito Creek enters from the left.

Moving downstream from the forks, the map shows Mosquito Creek flowing into the river from the east were the City of Chattahoochee stands today. The large island in the river below Chattahoochee is also shown.

The first Native American village below the confluence was the town of "Tomathleu" (also spelled "Tomatley" and "Tomathli") on the west bank in what is now Jackson County, Florida. This town had been established in the 1760s by a Creek band that moved down the river at the invitation of the British, who possessed Florida from 1763-1783.

Tomatley was one of the towns where the white trader James Burges had a home and operated a trading post. He also lived, had a family and operated a store on the bluff at today's Bainbridge, Georgia. Burges had died by 1814, but his children and grandchildren by his Tomatley wife still lived in the town.

The village was also the home of a man called Vaccapuchasse by the Spanish and the "Mulatto King" by the Americans. A maroon or escaped slave, he was the child of black and Native American parents and had become one of the principal chiefs of Tomatley. John Yellowhair was also an important leader in the town, which stood near the old Jackson County Port Authority complex.

Section of the Woodbine Map showing "Ocheesee Town" and
"Negro Settlements" in what is now Calhoun County, Florida.

The next village down the Apalachicola was Ocheesee Talofa, which stood on Ocheesee Bluff in what is now Calhoun County, Florida. This well-known town had also been established in the 1760s and was the one-time home of the white trader John Mealy. He had provided horses and other support to the British during the American Revolution. His son, Jack Mealy, was now the principal chief of Ocheesee.

Perhaps the biggest surprise from the Apalachicola River section of the newly discovered map is the large "Negro Settlements" that it shows running down the west side of the river below Ocheesee Bluff. This previously unknown settlement had been established by maroons (runaway slaves) who fled to the Apalachicola during and following the Creek War of 1813-1814. Some had been held by white plantation owners but others had been the slaves of Creek chiefs and principal men.

These individuals were now free and living in Spanish Florida. Woodbine undoubtedly spent considerable time with them as one of his assignments was to recruit a battalion of black soldiers for service in the British Colonial Marines. The maroon settlement below Ocheesee was not shown on later maps and its villagers probably moved downstream to Prospect Bluff at Woodbine's request. A number of the recruits who enlisted in the British service there gave their home town as "Ocheesee Talofa."

Prospect Bluff on the Apalachicola River.

The last Creek town shown on the river was Yawalla (Iola), the primary town of chief John Blunt. This village was at the site of today's Blountstown and not at Iola Landing lower down the river.

Blunt had fled with his people from the Creek Nation during the war and had suffered great losses in the process. White people sometimes called him Lafarka, but this must be a corruption of an Indian name or title as the Muscogee language includes neither the letter "r" nor its equivalent sound.

More Red Sticks would soon arrive on the Apalachicola as the bands of Prophet Josiah Francis, Homathlemico (Hoboithle Mico?) and others made their way east from the western Florida Panhandle. At the time of Woodbine's trip, however, these groups were still on the Choctawhatchee, Conecuh and other rivers to the west.

A noteworthy point of interest is Forbes Island just below Panton's Cliffs. This was not the Forbes Island today, but an upriver island formed by the confluence of the Apalachicola with the River Styx and other streams. It was also shown as Forbes Island on Spanish maps of this era.

Lower Apalachicola River as shown on the
Woodbine Map. Notice Prospect Bluff on the
east bank and the offshore anchorage of the
British warship HMS Orpheus.

Panton's Cliffs was Estiffanulga Bluff. It had been called Estiffanulga as late as 1804, but officers of John Forbes & Company renamed it in honor of William Panton. He had been a partner in Panton, Leslie & Company, the original name of the trading company. The name never stuck, however, and Estiffanulga remains in use today.

Further downstream can be seen the mouth of the Chipola River and Prospect Bluff. The bluff, called the Loma de Buena Vista by the Spanish, was the site of a Forbes & Company trading post and would soon be selected by the British as a location for one of two forts that they would build on the river.

Below Prospect Bluff, no settlements are shown as existing on the Apalachicola River. The map does show the anchorage of the HMS Orpheus off Cape St. George. The Orpheus was a British warship filled with arms and ammunition for the Creeks and Seminoles. She remained offshore while Woodbine made his trip up the Apalachicola and Chattahoochee Rivers. The war materials from the ship were being landed on St. Vincent Island where they were housed in temporary structures until they could be transported up to Prospect Bluff.

The next installment in this series will focus on the Chattahoochee River from the Alabama line north to Eufaula. If you would like to learn more about British activities on the Apalachicola and Chattahoochee Rivers during the War of 1812, please consider my books Nicolls' Outpost: A War of 1812 Fort at Chattahoochee, Florida and Milly Francis: The Life & Times of the Creek Pocahontas.

Both are available in either book or Amazon Kindle formats.