1812 - The War of 1812
During the War of 1812, Spain allied with Great Britain, while the U.S. annexed the Mobile District of West Florida into the Mississippi Territory in May 1812.
In April 1813, the surrender of Spanish forces at Mobile officially established American control over the area, which was later divided between the states of Alabama and Mississippi.
The Florida Parishes in the modern state of Louisiana include most of the territory that was claimed by the short-lived Republic of West Florida.
1812-1813 - The Spanish Surrender East Florida
... Sort Of
Meanwhile, in East Florida:
General George Matthews, of the U.S. Army, had been authorized by the U.S. government to secretly negotiate with the Spanish governor for American acquisition of East Florida.
Instead, in March of 1812, General Matthews organized a group of frontiersmen from Georgia, who arrived at the Spanish town of Fernandina and demanded the surrender of all of Amelia Island.
They took control of Amelia Island on the Atlantic coast and declared themselves a republic free from Spanish rule.
After declaring the island a free republic, he led his rag tag group, along with a contingent of U.S. army troops, south towards the Spanish controlled city of St. Augustine.
Upon receiveing word of Matthews' actions, Congress became alarmed that he would provoke war with Spain.
Then Secretary of State James Monroe quickly ordered Matthews to return all captured territory to Spanish authorities.
After several months of negotiations on the withdrawal of the American forces and compensation for their foraging through the countryside, the countries finally came to an agreement and Amelia Island was returned to the Spanish in May 1813.
1812 - The War of 1812
During the War of 1812, Spain allied with Great Britain, while the U.S. annexed the Mobile District of West Florida into the Mississippi Territory in May 1812.
In April 1813, the surrender of Spanish forces at Mobile officially established American control over the area, which was later divided between the states of Alabama and Mississippi.
The Florida Parishes in the modern state of Louisiana include most of the territory that was claimed by the short-lived Republic of West Florida.
1812-1813 - The Spanish Surrender East Florida
... Sort Of
Meanwhile, in East Florida:
General George Matthews, of the U.S. Army, had been authorized by the U.S. government to secretly negotiate with the Spanish governor for American acquisition of East Florida.
Instead, in March of 1812, General Matthews organized a group of frontiersmen from Georgia, who arrived at the Spanish town of Fernandina and demanded the surrender of all of Amelia Island.
They took control of Amelia Island on the Atlantic coast and declared themselves a republic free from Spanish rule.
After declaring the island a free republic, he led his rag tag group, along with a contingent of U.S. army troops, south towards the Spanish controlled city of St. Augustine.
Upon receiveing word of Matthews' actions, Congress became alarmed that he would provoke war with Spain.
Then Secretary of State James Monroe quickly ordered Matthews to return all captured territory to Spanish authorities.
After several months of negotiations on the withdrawal of the American forces and compensation for their foraging through the countryside, the countries finally came to an agreement and Amelia Island was returned to the Spanish in May 1813.
1813-1814 - The Creek War and The Seminoles
Later, the Maskókî tribes in Alabama (whom English speakers erroneously called "Creeks") rose up against their former allies, the British settlers, in the Creek War of 1813-14.
The Creek Indians were defeated in 1814, when Major General Andrew Jackson led an expedition against the Creek Indians climaxing in the Battle of Horse Shoe Bend (near the present day Alabama/Georgia border).
Jackson’s force soundly defeated the Creeks and destroyed their military power.
This was followed by the brutal repression and disastrous treaty forced upon them by General Andrew Jackson.
The appetite of the settlers for Southern lands would not abate, so the Indians adopted a strategy of appeasement.
They hoped that if they gave up a good deal of their land, they could keep at least some a part of it.
The remaining Creek chiefs signed away about half their lands, comprising 23,000,000 acres, covering much of southern Georgia and two-thirds of modern Alabama.
Over the next decade, Jackson led the way in the Indian removal campaign, helping to negotiate nine of the eleven major treaties to remove Indians.
Under this kind of pressure, Native American tribes—specifically the Creek, Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Choctaw—realized that they could not defeat the Americans in war.
This caused thousands of the most determined warriors and their families to migrate southward and take refuge in Spanish Florida.
Once there, they joined their earlier rivals, the last remaining tribes of Seminoles.
The Indians who constituted the nucleus of this Florida group thought of themselves as yat'siminoli or "free people," because for centuries their ancestors had resisted the attempts of the Spaniards to conquer and convert them, as well as the attempts of the English to take their lands and use them as military pawns.
Soon, the European Americans would begin to call all of the Natives in Florida as "Seminoles".
The northern lands of Florida continued to be the home of the newly amalgamated Black and Native American Seminole culture.
It had also become a haven for people escaping slavery in the southern states and territories.
Unlike the other tribes, the Seminole tribe in Florida resisted the U.S. land grabs, resulting in the Second Seminole War (1835–1842) and the Third Seminole War (1855–1858).
Neither the Native attempts of appeasement nor resistance worked.
Settlers in the Georgia Territory demanded that Spain control the Seminole population and capture any runaway slaves.
Spain, not having the manpower nor likely the desire to handle such operations, responded that the slave owners were welcome to come recapture the runaways themselves.
And the conflicts did not end there; they only escalated.
Through the Treaty of Moultrie Creek (1823), the Treaty of Payne's Landing (1832), and numerous "talks" and meetings, US Indian Agents sought to convince the Florida Indians to sell their cattle and pigs to the US government, return runaway slaves to their "rightful owners," leave their ancient homelands in Florida, and move west of the Mississippi River to Arkansas Territory.
1816-1819 - The First Seminole War
While there were threeSeminole Wars only the first occurred during Spanish rule.
The War of 1812 indirectly brought about the U.S. acquisition of Florida.
The First Seminole War began, in 1816, as a result of General Andrew Jackson's excursions into Spanish Florida to fight the Native warriors who fled south after The Creek War.
When the military and political opportunist, General Andrew Jackson, brazenly marched across Florida's international boundaries to settle the "Indian problem," he created an international furor.
Over a period of several tumultuous years, he burned Indian towns, captured Africans, and hanged one Maskókî medicine man, Francis, as well as two Englishmen whom he suspected of inciting the Indians.
This series of events is known as the First Seminole War.
Great Britain and Spain both expressed outrage over the invasion by the United States.
However, as several local uprisings and rebellions by American and british settlers had been occurring, in Spanish controlled Florida, Spain was no longer able to defend or control the territory.
During the First Seminole Indian War, the Seminoles attacked the early settlements.
Forts were built throughout East Florida to defend the settlers against the Seminoles.
Jackson's invasion into Florida (then part of New Spain), demonstrated to Spain that it could no longer control that colonial territory with their small force. In 1819, Spain agreed to cede Florida to the United States with the signing of the Adams–Onís Treaty. However, the official transfers took place in 1821.
1819 - Moses Levy and David Yulee
In 1782, when Spain had re-occupied Florida, they began awarding large tracts of land to those who granted favors.
In 1819, Moses Levy received one of these land grants from the Spanish.
He established a plantation along the St. Johns River, which was to be a settlement for oppressed European Jews.
Moses was the father of David Levy, who later changed his name to "Yulee."
David Yulee was Florida's first senator after aquiring statehood.
However, the lack of defined boundaries led to a series of border disputes between Spanish West Florida and the fledgling United States known as the West Florida Controversy.
Because of disagreements with the Spanish government, American and English settlers between the Mississippi and Perdido rivers declared that area as the independent Republic of West Florida in 1810.
However, no part of that short-lived republic lay within the borders of the modern U.S. state of Florida; rather, it comprised the Florida parishes of today's Louisiana.
Within months it was annexed by the United States, which claimed the region as part of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.
In 1819, the United States negotiated the purchase of the remainder of West Florida and all of East Florida in the Adams–Onís Treaty, and in 1822 both were merged into the Florida Territory.
During the War of 1812, the Seminole communities sided with the British against the U.S. in the hopes of repelling American settlers. They strengthened their internal ties and earned the enmity of American general, and future President, Andrew Jackson.
By the time of the Creek War (1813–1814), the Lower Creeks, coming from Georgia, now numbered about 4,000 in Florida.
Later, the Maskókî tribes in Alabama (whom English speakers erroneously called "Creeks") rose up against their former allies, the British settlers, in the Creek War of 1813-14.
This was followed by the brutal repression and disastrous treaty forced upon them by General Andrew Jackson.
This caused thousands more of the most determined warriors and their families to migrate southward and take refuge in Spanish Florida.
Once there, they joined their earlier rivals, the Seminoles.
Soon, the European Americans would begin to call all of the Natives in Florida "Seminoles".
A series of threeSeminole Wars with the United States resulted in the removal of most of these Natives to what is now Oklahoma and the remainder merged, by ethnogenesis, into the currentSeminole and Miccosukee tribes of Florida.
During the First Seminole Indian War, the Seminoles attacked the early pioneer settlements. The U.S. military built new forts throughout East Florida to defend the settlers against the Seminoles.
Wanting to disrupt Florida's maroon communities after the War of 1812, General Andrew Jackson attacked the Negro Fort, which had become a Black Seminole stronghold after the British had allowed them to occupy it when they evacuated Florida.
Breaking up the maroon communities was one of Jackson's major objectives in the soon to be First Seminole War (1817–18).
Andrew Jackson directed Edmund P. Gaines to destroy Negro Fort, a haven for escaped slaves and their Seminole allies.
However, Gaines delegated the mission to Duncan L. Clinch, whose troops destroyed the fort on July 27, 1816, resulting in 270 deaths.
The US military focused on eliminating the fort because white Americans worried about a growing community of Black and Native resistance.
The survivors of Negro Fort settled in other Maroon communities in the Florida peninsula.
The Seminole population had also been growing significantly.
American general Andrew Jackson's 1817–1818 campaign against the Seminoles became known as the First Seminole War.
Though Spain decried the incursions into its territory, the United States effectively controlled the Florida panhandle after the war.
During the Seminole Wars, the previusly united Seminole peoples began to divide among themselves due to the conflict and differences in ideology.
With the division of the Seminole population between Indian Territory (Oklahoma) and Florida, they still maintained some common traditions, such as powwow trails and ceremonies.
In general, the cultures grew apart in their markedly different circumstances, and had little contact for a century.
On April 16, 1818, at the town of Seminole leader Bolek (aka Bowlegs) on the Suwannee River, Andrew Jackson and his troops burned 400 Maroon and Seminole homes, destroyed their food supplies, and took several horses and cattle. Under the pressure from the U.S. Army, more of the Seminole communities moved deeper into south and central Florida.
In 1819, the United States and Spain signed the Adams-Onís Treaty, which took effect in 1821.
According to its terms, the United States acquired Florida and, in exchange, renounced all claims to Texas.
The Seminole population appeared to be increasing during the early 1800s.
It was estimated at 5,000 people in 1820, 4,883 people in 1821, and 6,385 people in 1822 .
As European American colonization increased after the treaty, colonists pressured the federal government to remove Natives from Florida.
Slaveholders resented that tribes harbored runaway slaves, and more colonists wanted access to desirable lands held by Native Americans.
Georgian slaveholders wanted the "maroons" and fugitive slaves living among the Seminoles, known today as Black Seminoles, returned to slavery.
After acquisition by the U.S. of Florida from Spain in 1821, many American slaves and Black Seminoles frequently migrated down the peninsula to escape from Cape Florida to the British colony of the Bahamas, settling mostly on Andros Island.
Their concern about living under American rule was not unwarranted.
In 1821, President James Monroe appointed Andrew Jackson as military governor of the Florida Territory.
Andrew Jackson quickly ordered an attack on Black Seminoles and other free Negro settlements near Tampa Bay.
Contemporary accounts noted a group of 120 migrating in 1821, and a much larger group of 300 enslaved African Americans escaping in 1823.
The latter were picked up by Bahamians in 27 sloops and also by travelers in canoes.
Under pressure from colonists seeking more fertile lands, the U.S. government made the 1823 Treaty of Camp Moultrie with the Seminoles, seizing 24 million acres in northern Florida.
They offered the Seminoles a much smaller reservation, of about 100,000 acres (400 km2,)including the wild interior of Florida and the Everglades.
They, along with the Black Seminoles moved south into central and southern Florida.
1825 - Chief Micanopy
Beginning in 1825, Micanopy was the principal chief of the unified Seminole nation.
This chiefly dynasty continued, even when the U.S. forced the majority of the Seminoles to move from Florida to the Indian Territory, in modern Oklahoma, after the Second Seminole War.
Micanopy continued as chief until his death in 1849.
Micanopy's sister's son, John Jumper, succeeded him in 1849 and, after his death in 1853, his brother Jim Jumper became principal chief.
He was in power through the American Civil War, after which the U.S. government began to interfere with tribal government, supporting its own candidate for chief.
In 1832, the U.S. government signed the Treaty of Payne's Landing with a few of the Seminole chiefs.
They promised lands west of the Mississippi River to the chiefs who agreed to leave Florida voluntarily with their people.
The Seminoles who remained prepared for war, as American colonists continued to press for their removal.
Anticipating attempts to re-enslave more members of their community, the Black Seminoles opposed removal to the West.
In councils before the war, they threw their support behind the most militant Seminole faction, led by Osceola.
After war broke out, individual Black leaders, such as John Caesar, Abraham, and John Horse, played key roles.
In addition, the Black Seminoles incited plantation slaves into rebellion at the start of the war and recruited them into their own ranks.
The slaves joined in the destruction of 21 sugar plantations from Christmas Day, December 25, 1835, through the summer of 1836.
Historians generally agree that these attacks on the sugar plantations should be considered as part of the Seminole War and not as a separate slave rebellion.
In 1835, the U.S. Army arrived to enforce the treaty.
The Seminole leader Osceola led the vastly outnumbered resistance during what became the Second Seminole War.
Drawing on a population of about 4,000 Seminoles and 800 allied Black Seminoles, he mustered at most 1,400 warriors, though President Andrew Jackson estimated they had only 900.
They countered combined U.S. Army and militia forces that ranged from 6,000 troops at the outset to 9,000 at the peak of deployment in 1837.
The Seminoles employed tradition "guerrilla" tactics with devastating effect against U.S. forces, who still practiced European open field marching formations that proved ineffecive in the thick Florida swamps.
Here the Seminoles could overpower them, as they knew how to move within the Florida swamps and dense pine forests and use these areas for their protection.
However, Osceola was eventually arrested, in a breach of honor, when he came under a flag of truce to negotiations with the US in 1837.
He died in jail less than a year later.
After a full decade of fighting, the war ended in 1842.
As a result of the Second Seminole War (1835–1842), an estimated 3,000 Seminoles and 800 Black Seminoles were forcibly exiled to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi (in the modern state of Oklahoma), where they were settled on the Creek reservation.
Their trek became known as "The Trail of Tear", as many died along the way, due to the hazards and starvation.
After later skirmishes by the few remaining Seminoles, in what was considered the Third Seminole War (1855–1858), perhaps 200 survivors retreated deeper into the Everglades to land that was not desired by settlers.
They were finally left alone and they never surrendered.
While several treaties, including the Treaty of Moultrie Creek and the Treaty of Payne's Landing, bear the mark of representatives of the Seminole tribes that left to Oklahoma, the Florida Seminoles consider themselves a seperate group and claim that they are the only tribe in America never to have signed a peace treaty with the U.S. government.
During the American Civil War, the members and leaders split over their loyalties, with John Chupco refusing to sign a treaty with the Confederacy. From 1861 to 1866, he led as chief of the Seminole who supported the Union and fought in the Indian Brigade. The split among the Seminoles lasted until 1872. After the war, the United States government negotiated only with the loyal Seminole, requiring the tribe to make a new peace treaty to cover those who allied with the Confederacy, to emancipate the slaves, and to extend tribal citizenship to those Freedmen who chose to stay in Seminole territory.
In 1880, after less than 200 years of the tribe being formed, it is reported that only 208 Seminoles remained.
Today
Why did Florida become a safe haven
for Runaway Slaves and Britihs Loyalists?
What was Florida's part
in the American Revolution?
Keep reading to find out!
Next Article: 1816-1819 - The First Seminole War