Seminole War

Seminole War in U.S. history, armed conflict between the U.S. government and the Seminoles. In 1832 the U.S. government signed a treaty with the Seminoles, who lived in Florida, providing for their removal to Oklahoma in 1835 in exchange for a small sum of money. However, opposition to the treaty soon appeared among the Seminoles; under the leadership of the young chief, Osceola, the Seminoles organized small raiding parties that attacked the American troops. The U.S. army was rendered helpless by the raiding tactics of the Native Americans and suffered heavy casualties. Although Osceola was captured in 1837 and died in prison a few months later, resistance continued. When Gen. William J. Worth became (1841) commander of U.S. forces, a new strategy was adopted. The Seminole's crops were systematically burned and their villages destroyed. As winter approached and starvation was imminent, the Seminoles surrendered. A peace treaty was signed in 1842 and the Native Americans were removed westward. The war resulted in 1,500 U.S. soldiers killed, and cost more than $20 million.

Seminole Wars a series of campaigns in the early nineteenth century mounted by the U.S. Army against various groups of runaway slaves, native Indian marauders, and white bandits, collectively known as the Seminoles, occupying parts of the present state of Florida. The First Seminole War (1817–1818) began on November 27, 1817, when Maj. Gen. Edmund P. Gaines led a force of some 4,000 men in an invasion of Spanish Florida to suppress the Seminole border marauders. Gaines was replaced on December 26, 1817, by Maj. Gen. Andrew Jackson, who destroyed Seminole power west of the Suwanee River and took the towns of St. Marks and Pensacola thereby ending the war on May 30, 1818. In 1819, pursuant to the Adams-Onís Treaty, Spain transferred Florida to the United States, and the Seminoles were confined to a reservation. White encroachment on Seminole territory led to the Second Seminole War (1835–1842), remembered as the bloodiest Indian campaigns in U.S. history. The Second Seminole War began on December 28, 1835, when a band of Seminoles led by the part-white Osceola, massacred a force of 108 men under Army Maj. Francis L. Dade. Under a series of commanding officers—who included, among others, Winfield Scott and Zachary Taylor—some 10,000 U.S. Army troops and 30,000 volunteers gradually wore down the resistance of some 5,000 Seminole guerrillas with aggressive patrolling, the detention of key Seminole leaders, the destruction of Seminole villages and crops, and the removal of Seminoles from Florida to reservations elsewhere. The Second Seminole War ended in August 1842, but white settlers continued to press the Seminoles, and the Third Seminole War began on December 20, 1855, with a Seminole attack on an Army outpost. The Third Seminole War was fought largely by volunteers rather than Regular Army troops, and the final battle took place on March 5, 1857. One of the principal Seminole leaders, Billy Bowlegs, surrendered with his band, leaving only about 120 Seminoles active in Florida, and the U.S. Army declared the war over on May 8, 1858.