"Concentrate them on the Apalachicola River"

Apalachicola River at Chattahoochee,
Florida.

Andrew Jackson's plan for a Seminole homeland on the Apalachicola River

by Dale Cox

Chattahoochee, Florida - The Seminole Tribe of Florida and Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida have survived generations of war and are today synonymous with the Big Cypress and Everglades regions of South Florida. 

Their greatest tribulation began when the United States assumed control of Florida in 1821. Battered from the opening years of the Seminole War, the Seminole and Miccosukee were scattered and unsettled. Large and long-settled towns including Ekanachatte, Holms' Town, Tallahassee Talofa, and Miccosukee were in ashes. Newer but important communities including Boleck's (Bowleg's) Town and the large maroon (self-liberated and free Black) settlement under Nero had been destroyed. Fields cleared through years of labor lay fallow or were already occupied by new American settlers. Orchards and fish weirs lay untended. [1]

The new "owners" of Florida did not intend to continue a treaty signed years earlier by the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and Spain. It declared that only lands so far inland as the tidal influence on the rivers and creeks (or such as were transferred by treaty) should be open for settlement. All the rest of the interior belonged to the Native Americans, with the restriction that they could not sell or otherwise dispose of these lands without the consent of the King of Spain.

Since the United States clearly did not plan to abide by this agreement, four new schools of thought grew among the whites over what should be done with the Indians. The first called for the complete relocation of all Native Americans from Florida to the Creek Nation in Alabama and Georgia, despite the fact that the Treaty of Fort Jackson had just reduced Creek lands by more than 22 million acres. It also ended any claims that the Muscogee had to Florida by cutting them off from it. [2]

Early 19th-century painting of American Indians
catching and smoking sturgeon in the Apalachicola
River across from Aspalaga Bluff.
University of West Florida

A second option called for the mass removal - at government expense - of all of the American Indians in Florida to new homes west of the Mississippi River. Actually proposed by Thomas Jefferson for all Native people east of the Mississippi, this idea seemed logical to white thinkers who could not conceive that the Seminole and Miccosukee would not readily give up their lands if offered the opportunity to do so. 

The third option, supported by a bevy of early Florida leaders, suggested the drawing of an imaginary line across the peninsula at some point well below areas coveted for white settlement. All of the Indians would voluntarily remove [i.e., be forced] below the line. Despite their claims that the new "reservation" included vast areas of good land, there is plenty of evidence that promoters of the scheme knew that the region was sickly, swampy, and sandy.

Andrew Jackson
(Later in life.)
Library of Congress

The fourth option, proposed by none other than Andrew Jackson himself, is perhaps the most intriguing of all. Since it is the only one of the four that proposed leaving a large area of their original homeland in Seminole and Miccosukee hands - not to mention a significant area of rich agricultural and timber land - you might be interested in learning more about it. [3]

Jackson was acting as military governor of Florida when he proposed the idea of creating a massive land-stake for the Seminole and Miccosukee on the Apalachicola River. He viewed them as distinctly separate from the Muscogee or Creek Red Sticks that had come down into Florida during and following the Creek War of 1813-1814. These latter individuals, Jackson felt, should be required to return to the Creek Nation in Alabama and Georgia. The Seminole and Miccosukee, he suggested, should be left with good lands:

...As to those who have been born and raised within the Floridas, it is absolutely necessary that they should be collected at one point, and secured in their settlements by act of Congress, in case they cannot be prevailed upon to unite with the Creek nation, to which they originally belonged: this latter course is very desirable for their own safety, as well as dictated to us by sound policy. [4]

The general turned governor proposed that Congress provide an annuity to assist in the survival of the Indians and that efforts be made to encourage them to "embrace an agricultural life." Of course, Miccosukee, Ekanachatte, and other towns were noted for their massive fields and herds of cattle, horses, and other livestock until Jackson and his forces destroyed them during the fighting of 1817-1818. 

...Should the Indians prefer continuing within the Floridas, it will be expedient, for the safety of our frontier on the seacoast, to concentrate them on the Appalachicola river, immediately adjoining the southern boundary of Georgia and Alabama, on both sides of the river, and downward, so as to include a sufficient area for them. By this means a sufficient white population may be interposed between them and the seaboard, and afford a settlement strong enough to cover and protect St. Augustine and Pensacola, as well as the peninsula of Florida. [5]

Unlike anyone else proposing options for where the Native inhabitants of Florida should go, Jackson surprisingly held one distinction - he actually discussed his idea with some of the people for whom recommended leaving lands on the Apalachicola River:

...[Y]ou will see that the difficulty of collecting the native Indians of the Floridas to the point on the Apalachicola will not be great. They are rejoiced to hear that a country will be allowed [them] to live in at all - such have been their apprehensions of their future fate since the transfer of their country to the United States, excited, no doubt, by mischievous advisers; and they will be still more so to find that they will be fostered and protected by the American Government. [6]

19th-century paddlewheel steamer preparing to head
down the Chattahoochee and Apalachicola Rivers.

Jackson proposed that Congress immediately designate the large area for the Seminole and Miccosukee, instead of waiting for a treaty to be negotiated. He felt it made more sense to reserve these lands in Florida from the beginning before they could be settled, also pointing out that if the Indians concentrated on lands of their own, surveying the rest of the new territory would be easier. [7]

Jackson did not mention that he was personally familiar with the lands along the upper Apalachicola River because he had seen them himself during the spring of 1818. They were some of the richest in Florida and the area that he envisioned as a permanent home for the Seminole and Miccosukee included today's Jackson, Gadsden, and at least the northern halves of Calhoun and Liberty Counties.

By 1860, Jackson and Gadsden would prove to be among the most agriculturally productive counties in the state. According to census data collected that year, the two counties were among the seven most productive in Florida, with farms valued at more than $2.7 million dollars ($101.6 billion today). [8]

History, of course, shows that Andrew Jackson's recommendation for a Seminole and Miccosukee nation on the upper Apalachicola River was not accepted. The Treaty of Moultrie Creek (1823) instead condemned the vast majority of Native Americans in Florida to difficult lives on new lands in the central and southern reaches of the territory. Desperation for game and resentment at seeing white settlers occupying better lands nearby led to cattle raids and confrontations. Tensions rose.

Fort Gibson, Oklahoma
Where army officers tricked the
Seminole exploring party.

Trickery followed as an exploring party of Seminoles went west to look at proposed new lands in what is now Oklahoma. Before their leaders and warriors in Florida could even consider the matter, the U.S. Government claimed that these explorers had agreed for the entire tribe to go west. They said that they had not and the Seminole and Miccosukee people in Florida told U.S. officials that the explorers lacked such authority in the first place. The United States turned deaf ears to this position and fighting exploded. Men, women, and children died by the thousands. 

The U.S. Government likewise moved against the Muscogee (Creek) people in Alabama. Claiming that its powerful army could not protect them from settlers intruding on Creek lands and unscrupulous land speculators determined to swindle them at every turn, officials told the Creeks that they could either go west at federal expense or remain behind and live on under the laws of the states on small individual plots as required by the Indian Removal Act of of 1830.  That act, championed by Andrew Jackson himself, led to the forced removal of most Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Muscogee (Creek) by 1837. Only the Seminole and Miccosukee held out in significant numbers.

What might have happened had the U.S. Government accepted Andrew Jackson's 1821 recommendation that a large area of land be titled to the Florida tribes on the upper Apalachicola River? 

Sylvania Marker in Jackson County
The lands proposed for the Seminole
and Miccosukee instead became
home to some of the largest bastions
of slavery in Antebellum Florida.

It is an interesting thought to ponder. They still would have received annual payments from the U.S. Government as they did on the much poorer lands later assigned them in Central and South Florida under the Treaty of Moultrie Creek, but they would have owned by legal title - not just moral right and treaty - most if not all of four agriculturally or timber rich North Florida counties. 

The most important navigable waterway connecting a vast agricultural region of Alabama and Georgia to the Gulf of Mexico passed right through the center of these lands. In fact, the City of Apalachicola which soon developed at the mouth of the Apalachicola River was one of the three busiest ports anywhere on the Gulf prior to the Civil War.

With richer farms and some of Florida's top timberlands, the story of the Seminole and Miccosukee people from 1821 to 1835 might have developed in a much different way. Jackson likely would have regretted giving legal title to so much prime Florida real estate (prime in the 19th-century, that is) to them. Land given by treaty, as all Native Americans know, is easy to take away. Land given by legal title, however, is not so easy to take.

From his expansionist perspective, Andrew Jackson clearly rethought the wisdom of giving legal title for large areas of land to Indian nations before he pushed the Indian Removal Act of 1830. By then the concept was to title small pieces of land to individual Native American heads of households. These could more readily be swept up by land speculators and swindlers. Not so when an entire tribe owns all of its land by title in one giant block.

Andrew Jackson was no longer a powerful general in 1821, however, and had not started his rise to the Presidency. The country's political leaders found it easy to ignore his suggestion. His proposed home for the Seminole and Miccosukee people instead became part of the Territory of Florida's third county when Jackson County was created and named for him on August 12, 1822. At that time Jackson County extended from the Choctawhatchee River to the Suwannee.

One can only wonder whether he remembered his idea for a Seminole and Miccosukee homeland on the Apalachicola at all nine years later when the Indian Removal Act of 1830 became law.

To learn more about the years before and immediately after Jackson County was established, please consider my book: The History of Jackson County, Florida: The Early Years.

References

[1] For a history of the beginning of the Seminole War era, please see Fowltown: Neamathla, Tutalosi Talofa & the first battle of the Seminole Wars by this writer.

[2] These various options are discussed in numerous letters of time.

[3] Gov. Andrew Jackson to Sec. of State John Quincy Adams, Oct. 16, 1821, H. Doc. No. 513, 17th Congress, 1st Session.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Census of Agriculture, Florida 1860, USDA Census of Agriculture Historical Archive.

Bigfoot Attack in the Okefenokee Swamp!

A 19th century Sasquatch attack in Georgia?

by Dale Cox

The Okefenokee Swamp is a vast wetland that covers more
than 680,000 square miles in Georgia and Florida.

The Okefenokee Swamp has been the focus of stories about giants and other strange creatures for as long as anyone can remember. Is it possible that a Bigfoot or some similar monster actually attacked a party of hunters there in 1829?

Early Muscogee (Creek) Indians regarded the swamp with both reverence and wariness. They told naturalist William Bartrum that in its center was an island of high ground inhabited by a race of incredibly beautiful women called the "daughters of the sun." Their husbands were "fierce men, and cruel to strangers." [1]

Glimpsing this mysterious island from afar, a group of Creek hunters tried to reach it but found that it was protected by strange magic:

...[I]n their endeavors to approach it, they were involved in perpetual labyrinths, and, like enchanted land, still, as they imagined they had gained it, it seemed to fly before them, alternately appearing and disappearing. They resolved, at length to leave the delusive pursuit, and to return; which, after a number of inexpressible difficulties, they effected. When they reported their adventures to their country-men, their young warriors were inflamed with an irresistible desire to invade, and make a conquest of, so charming a country; but all their attempts have hitherto proved abortive, never having been able again to find that enchanting spot, nor any road or pathway to it, yet they say that they frequently meet with certain signs of its being inhabited, as the buildings of canoes, footsteps of men, &c. [2]

A massive old-growth cypress in the
Okefenokee Swamp.

Legends grew that the husbands of the "daughters of the sun" were men of gigantic stature who would kill any outsider who dared to enter the swamp. The Creeks called it Ekana Finaca or "Trembling Earth." 

Frontier settlers cleared farms along the margins of the great swamp by the late 1700s but generally avoided the hundreds of square miles of wetland that made up its interior. The winter of 1828-1829, however, was a time of extraordinary drought, and two men decided to explore as deep into the swamp as possible. 

Taking their flintlock rifles, they headed into the Okefenokee and for two weeks, explored a large area of it. The two men - and one of their young sons - were nearing the center of the swamp when they discovered gigantic footprints:

...The length of the foot was eighteen, and the breadth nine inches. The monster, from every appearance, must have moved forward in an easy or hesitating gait, his stride, from heel to toe, being a trifle over six feet. [3] 

The men decided that they "had seen enough" and started a long retreat from the swamp. Reaching their homes after nearly a four-week absence, they told friends and neighbors what they had seen. A bigger party of hunters from just across the Florida line decided to see for themselves, and one of the men from the first group agreed to guide them. 

...Following, for some days, the direction of their guide, they came at length upon the track first discovered, some vestiges of which were still remaining; pursuing these traces several days longer, they came to a halt on a little eminence, and determined to pitch their camp, and refresh themselves for the day. [4]

Many of the swamp's trees are rooted in peat and will actually
shake or tremble as you walk past them.

The party of nine men started firing off their rifles to clear them of damp powder, planning to reload them for the night. At this point, though, a strange creature suddenly charged their camp:

...[T]he next minute he was full in their view, advancing upon them with a terrible look and ferocious mien. Our little band instinctively gathered close in a body and presented their rifles. The huge being, nothing daunted, bounded upon his victims, and in the same instant received the contents of seven rifles. [5]

The wounded creature reacted by killing five of the explorers, "which he effected by wringing the head from the body." The survivors continued to fight until "writhing and exhausted," the monster collapsed. The last four men gathered around the creature for a closer inspection. They found it to be 13-feet tall from head to toe, with "his breadth and volume of just proportions." [6]

Terrified that the dying monster's howls and cries might attract others of its kind, the hunters fled their camp. They eventually emerged from the Okefenokee to repeat their tale. Their five companions were left where they had fallen, but no one was brave enough to venture back into the swamp to locate and bury them.

The 1829 account is one of the first to describe the creature known today as Bigfoot, Sasquatch, or the Skunk Ape. People in the area continue to report the discoveries of giant footprints, and some even claim to have seen an enormous hair-covered creature deep in the wetlands and prairies of the Okefenokee Swamp.

If you are interested in learning more about the Okefenokee, please visit Okefenokee Swamp National Wildlife Refuge.

To see stunning views of the swamp, please click play for a great free video:

We also have more links to help you explore some of its great places to visit:

Stephen C. Foster State Park

Suwanee River Sill Recreation Area

Okefenokee Swamp Park

Visit the Swamp: Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge

References

[1] William Bartram, Travels of William Bartram, 1790.

[2] Ibid. 

[3] Milledgeville Statesman, January 1829, republished by the Connecticut Sentinel, February 9, 1829.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

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.