SEMINOLE WARS

The first Seminole War, which began in 1817, was a continuation of tensions stemming from conflicts with the Creek Confederacy during and after the American Revolution and from the presence of runaway and freed slaves in border settlements in Spanish Florida. The Seminoles were a group of Muskogee- and Hitchiti-speaking tribes

living in towns along the frontier. They incorporated within their population the militant Red Stick Creeks, refugees from the defeat of the Creeks by Andrew Jackson in 1814. These Creeks refused to acknowledge the stringent land cession terms of the Treaty of Fort Jackson (1814) and continued to occupy lands on both sides of the Spanish Florida–American border. Under the protection of the Spanish, and the British as well, the Seminoles took in not just Creeks, but slaves fleeing plantations, which infuriated their white owners.

From the American perspective, the situation was exacerbated by the continuing presence of British agents during the War of 1812 (1812–1815), notably Lieutenant Colonel Edward Nicholls of the Royal Marines. He armed the Red Stick Creeks and their African American allies but was prevented from using them by the British defeat at New Orleans and the Treaty of Ghent. Instead, Nicholls—recruiting two British expatriates and merchants, Alexander Arbuthnot and Robert Ambrister—kept up agitation amongst the Red Sticks regarding their ceded land and lands that part of the tribe had ceded to Forbes and Company and now wanted considered an illegal transaction. Many of the former slaves belonging to Nicholls's force left with the evacuating British, but some stayed, increasing American anxiety that their armed presence would encourage slaves in the United States to revolt or flee.

Open warfare began when Andrew Jackson, acting on petitions from slaveholders, ordered his subordinate, Major General Edmund Gaines, to destroy what was called Negro Fort, a Seminole and freed slave settlement fortified by the British and located over the border in Spanish Florida on the Apalachicola River. The attack, which occurred on 27 July 1816, destroyed the fort, with refugees fleeing to join other Seminole communities. In October and November 1817, American officers at Fort Scott ordered the arrest of Seminole leaders living at Fowl Town, a settlement just north of the Spanish border; they were accused of being banditti and of threatening the Americans when they attempted to harvest timber. When the Seminole leaders refused, Fowl Town was destroyed in a series of raids. Survivors retaliated with devastating force, ambushing a transport boat on the Apalachicola River and killing fifty-one Americans, four of them children. Meanwhile, raids continued to be made by both the Fort Scott soldiers against Seminole towns and Native Americans against Georgia plantations.

Jackson replaced Gaines on 9 March 1818 and proceeded to invade Spanish Florida, sacking the town of Suwanee on 16 April. Although the Seminoles did not suffer high casualties, they were driven out of settlements and lost substantial amounts of stored food to Jackson's deliberate policy of destruction. Arbuthnot and Ambrister were captured by Jackson, court-martialed for treason for their role in encouraging the tribes, and executed. The international controversy generated by the execution of these British subjects was compounded on 24 May 1818, when Jackson seized Pensacola, deposed the Spanish governor, and forced the surrender of all those Seminoles who had fled there to Spanish protection. En route to Pensacola, Jackson looted and destroyed British plantations, Seminole villages, and Spanish property, even though he faced virtually no opposition.

In 1821 Spain implemented the Transcontinental Treaty of 1819 by leaving its Florida possessions, which placed the Seminoles, Creeks, and the former slaves allied with them at the mercy of Jackson and the American government. The British, also not wanting conflict, overlooked the deaths of Arbuthnot and Ambrister. Some Seminole leaders, under pressure, accepted a series of treaties promising annuities and a reservation and agreed to return runaway slaves. However, these treaties, which specified that the Seminoles would join with the Creeks and also placed a limit on the annuities, proved impossible for the American governor to enforce. That only some tribal leaders had signed also gave rebellious Seminoles reason to feel themselves not bound by the agreements, which led to further conflicts beginning in 1835.

See alsoAmerican Indians; Florida; Transcontinental Treaty .

bibliography

Heidler, David S., and Jeanne T. Heidler. Old Hickory's War. Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole, 1996.

Knetsch, Joe. Florida's Seminole Wars, 1818–1858. Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia, 2003.

Porter, Kenneth Wiggins. "Negroes and the Seminole War 1817–1818." Journal of Negro History 36 (1951): 249–280.

Wright, J. Leitch. "A Note on the First Seminole War as Seen by the Indians, Negroes, and Their British Advisors." Journal of Southern History 34 (1968): 565–575.

Margaret Sankey