1763 - The War is Over
The resulting peace dramatically changed the political landscape of North America.
France and Britain both suffered financially because of the war, with significant long-term consequences.
The war changed economic, political, governmental, and social relations among the three European powers, their colonies, and the people who inhabited those territories.
These would soon lead to revolutions that would provide independence and freedoms to many and the guillotine to others.
The French and Indian War in North America, along with the global Seven Years War, officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris on the 10th of February 1763, by the kingdoms of Great Britain, France and Spain, with Portugal also in agreement.
The British offered France the choice of surrendering either its continental North American possessions east of the Mississippi or the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique, which had previously been occupied by the British.
France chose to cede its continental North American possessions in the east.
They viewed the economic value of the Caribbean islands' sugar cane to be greater and easier to defend than the furs from the continent.
The British, however, had ample places from which to obtain sugar and were happy to take New France, as defence of their North American colonies would no longer be an issue (though the absence of that threat eventually led many colonists to conclude that they no longer needed British protection and could become independent).
Britain gained control of French Canada and Acadia, colonies containing approximately 80,000 primarily French-speaking Roman Catholic residents. The deportation of Acadians beginning in 1755 made land available to immigrants from Europe and migrants from the colonies to the south. The British resettled many Acadians throughout its American provinces, but many went to France and some went to New Orleans, which they expected to remain French. The Louisiana population contributed to founding the Cajun population. The French word "Acadien" changed to "Cadien" then to "Cajun".
The Seven Years' War nearly doubled Great Britain's national debt.
The Crown sought sources of revenue to pay it off and attempted to impose new taxes on its colonies.
These attempts were met with increasingly stiff resistance, until troops were called in to enforce the Crown's authority, and they ultimately led to the start of the American Revolutionary War.
France attached comparatively little value to its American possessions, apart from the highly profitable sugar-producing Antilles islands which it retained.
Minister Choiseul considered that he had made a good deal at the Treaty of Paris, and Voltaire wrote that Louis XV had lost a few acres of snow.
However, the military defeat and the financial burden of the war weakened the French monarchy and would later be a main contributer to the start of the French Revolution in 1789.
France returned to America in 1778 with the establishment of a Franco-American alliance against Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War, in what historian Alfred A. Cave describes as French "revenge for Montcalm's death".
Spain also traded Florida to Britain in order to regain Havana, Cuba, but they also gained Louisiana from France, including New Orleans, in compensation for their losses.
The elimination of French power in America meant the disappearance of a strong ally for some Indian tribes.
The British takeover of Spanish Florida resulted in a rise in tensions between the Choctaw and the Creek, historic enemies who were competing for land.
Some of these tribes would later migrate south and join other tribes to become the Florida Seminoles.
Until the 1760s, Maroon colonies lined the shores downriver of French New Orleans to the Gulf.
However, France gifted New Orleans to the Spanish, after they had to trade La Florida for Havana, Cuba.
These Maroon colonies were eventually mostly eradicated by Spanish militia with the help of Free Negroes from Spanish-controlled New Orleans.
The Maroons also inhabited the marshlands of the Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia and North Carolina.
Although conditions were harsh, research suggests that thousands lived there between about 1700 and the 1860s.
In the late 1700s, Maroon communities began to disappear as forests were razed. Maroons who escaped and allied with Seminole Indians were one of the largest and most successful Maroon communities in what is now Florida due to more rights and freedoms extracted from the Spanish Empire. Some intermarried and were culturally Seminole, while most were banned from merging and maintained a more African culture while taken on some aspects of the Seminoles. Descendants of those who were removed with the Seminoles to Indian Territory in the 1830s are recognized today as Black Seminoles. Many were formerly part of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, but have been excluded since the late 1900s by new membership rules that require proving Native American descent.
U.S. Army Lieutenant George McCall recorded his impressions of a Seminole Maroon community in 1826:
"We found these negroes in possession of large fields of the finest land, producing large crops of corn, beans, melons, pumpkins, and other esculent vegetables....
I saw, while riding along the borders of the ponds, fine rice growing; and in the village large corn-cribs were filled, while the houses were larger and more comfortable than those of the Native Americans themselves."
The British made the Florida Territory into two colonies: West Florida and East Florida.
As the newly acquired territory was too large to govern from one administrative center, the British divided it into two new colonies separated by the Apalachicola River. British West Florida included the part of former Spanish Florida, which lay west of the Apalachicola River to the Mississippi River, as well as a small part of former French Louisiana. Its government was based in Pensacola. It had a northern boundary which shifted several times over the subsequent years. The colony included about two thirds of what is now the Florida panhandle, as well as parts of the modern U.S. states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.
East Florida thus formed the remainder of the state east of the Apalachicola River, along with some land taken from French Louisiana.
It is said that no one did more to increase the European population of Florida than James Grant, the first Governor of British East Florida from 1764 to 1771.
Grant saw the importance of peaceful relations and reciprocal trade with the Natives.
During his administration, the Timucuan tribes signed the Treaty of Fort Picolata, which set boundaries between the British and the Timucuan peoples.
This time of peace helped to lure settlers to East Florida.
The last major Native exodus from La FLorida occurred after the Spanish traded Florida to England.
[1763 - North America Territories]
The change of control in Florida prompted most of its Spanish Catholic population to leave.
They took with them an estimated 100 Timucua and other natives who were still loyal to them.
Most went to Cuba, although some Christianized Yamasee were resettled to the coast of New Spain (Mexico).
The Spanish population had diminished greatly, due to earlier Native conflicts.
Bernard Romans documented that 80 Native families had fled from the Keys on a ship bound for Havana.
The ship may have sailed from the port at St. Augustine.
Some of these refugees may have returned to Florida later to form the "Spanish Indians."
Research is underway in Cuba to discover if any Timucua descendants still exist there.
Also, in 1763, James Spalding established a trading post along the St. Johns River, in modern day Astor, Lake County, where there were few Natives remaining in the area. It is likely the oldest European settlement in modern Lake County. It later became the site of Moses Levy's sugar cane plantation and orange grove. However, it did not become a town until, in 1874, it was named Manhatten by developer William Backhouse Astor, Jr..
It was during this evacuation, with now little resistance, that the Creek and Seminoles began to move deeper into Florida and take over the now vacant lands of the Timucua and other Florida tribes.
By the late 1700s, it is thought that all of the indigenous peoples of Florida were gone, having been replaced by the immigrating Seminole tribe, which was already forming as a new North Florida tribe in the early 1700s.
At this point, the Timucua disappear from history.
population.
Some historians believe a small group of Timucua may have stayed behind in Florida or Georgia and possibly assimilated into the Seminoles.
[Creek and Later Seminole Territories]
France and Britain both suffered financially because of the war, with significant long-term consequences.
The elimination of French power in North America meant the disappearance of a strong ally for many Native tribes.
However, due to Governor James Grant, the Seminoles developed a thriving trade network by the time of the British and second Spanish periods, roughly 1767–1821.
The tribe expanded considerably during this time, and was further supplemented by Maroons, escaped slaves from Southern plantations, who settled nearby and were forced to pay tribute to the Seminole towns.
The Marrons became known as Seminole Maroons by the the Seminoles or Black Seminoles by the Europeans, although they kept many facets of their own Gullah culture.
The Seminoles shared the Florida Keys with the Creeks until around 1770, when the Florida Creeks also began to be referred to as Seminoles.
The opening up of Florida and early peaceful relations with the Seminoles allowed for the British to openly travel through Florida.
In 1774, William Bartram, a British Royal botanist, came to the area of present day Lake County, in order to study the local flora and fauna.
During his travels in the future Lake County, he made the first documented sighting of a royal palm tree in North America.
The land was also opened up to British settlers who came to tame the frontier.
By the start of the Revolutionary War, all of Florida belonged to the British and those residing there were loyal to the crown.