WYTS: Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Original post here.
(Painting is by Ken Hughes.)
You ever wonder how Florida became Florida? How American got these scars? Well, let's remember a battle in 1835 known only for a losing commander, the Dade Battle, or Dade Massacre, the opening shots of the Second Seminole War. One of my commenters on Defector asked "do the good guys ever win?". This is one of the rare cases where the answer is "yes".
We need to rewind back to the first Spanish explorers arriving in Florida in 1513. Guys like Ponce de Leon and de Soto did not find gold or the Fountain of Youth, so North America was not terribly interesting to the Empire. However, they did bring Eurasian diseases and most of the pre-contact Floridian cultures were wiped out by the 1700s. In that century, the peninsula was too swampy, too tropical (disease-y), and too depopulated to be very useful for Spanish. Plus, there was the problem of nearby British colonies, soon becoming Americans. Spanish missions were subject to raids from the Carolinas and Georgia, Florida kept flipping between colonial powers as a bargaining chip in the various treaties, and eventually Spanish Florida was down to just a handful of forts as a buffer against the Thirteen Colonies.
Into this vacuum began the creation of a new people. This is "ethnogenesis", where a group of people come together and recognize themselves as something new. This is how your Romans came to be, how your English came to be - nobody comes from a "pure" ethnicity except in racist mythologies. These guys called themselves “yat'siminoli”, which Anglicizes to “Seminoles”, a name meaning “free people”. Its etymology is similar to the Spanish word “cimarrones”, from where we get “maroon”, which in this context, refers to escaped slave communities. The Seminoles were a fusion of Muscogee Creeks moving south, surviving Floridian Natives, and quite a few escaped African slaves, the “Black Seminoles”. They were thriving under light Spanish rule, probably numbering somewhere around 10,000 by the time they came into conflict with the USA.
Also, you may have noticed, that, yes, this is yet another conflict with its routes in slavery. It is almost like the core of all evil in American history is this Peculiar Institution...
By the 1820s, it was hard to see how Spain would keep control of Florida. Most of Spain's great American empire had fallen through a series of fast revolutions. In the 1810s, Americans were raiding Florida to fight the natives. In 1816, a community of slaves in a former British fort in Pensacola had been destroyed by the US navy, the battle of the "Negro Fort". And in 1817, General Andrew Jackson invaded Florida in the First Seminole War, largely to protect Georgia’s slaves from any temptation to run off and go Seminole. Spain and the US made an agreement, the Adams-Onis Treaty, which traded Florida for all American claims to Texas. Spain gained nothing but the saving of face here, Texas was already lost to the newly independent Mexico... and not for long either, America got it all, baby! Woo, USA!
As far as the Seminoles were concerned, these geopolitical shifts were just part a wider sequence of conquest from the north. We break up the Seminole Wars into three phases, starting with Jackson’s attack. But from the Seminole point of view, this was one continuous battle for freedom from roughly 1811 to the Civil War. The climax being the years around today's events.
In 1823, the US and Seminole chiefs signed the Treaty of Moultrie Creek, with the Native Americans giving up North Florida in exchange for a reservation in the center of Florida to be left alone. The Americans built a series of forts, including Fort Brooke in a spot that would become the city of Tampa fifty years later. One of the Seminoles moving south was a half-British, half-Creek boy born "Billy Powell", who would later take on the Seminole name of “Osceola”. He'll be important.
Obviously the Americans were completely trustworthy and peace lasted forever and our story ends here-
-oh wait, no Andrew Jackson is president in 1829. Oh no, Indian Removal Act of 1830... Jackson is ignoring the Supreme Court on this one... full on ethnic cleansing of most tribal lands west of the Mississippi. The states of Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama need more land for plantations, guys, you understand. Even the "Civilized Tribes" have to go. Yeah, they were adopting Christianity and developing their own writing systems, some of them were going so far as to copy the chattel slavery system. Doesn't matter. The poor Cherokee tried so hard to be Southerners. Not to be. On to the Trail of Tears you go.
The Seminoles had a different relationship to slavery and also would not be as easy to dislodge. Florida's lakes and swamps made perfect Guerilla warfare ground. US troops would never get much better at this kind of warfare, as we’d see again in the Philippines and Vietnam, and might see again soon.
By 1835, everybody in Florida knew a big war was coming. But there were still attempts to settle this “peacefully”, as in, buying off the right people. A government agent named Wiley Thompson got a few dozen chiefs to sign on to removal. One of them was Osceola, who gritted his teeth and signed away. For this, Thompson gave him a beautiful silver-plated Spanish rifle, a sign of eternal friendship. Meanwhile, columns of American soldiers were already massing in places like Fort Brooke. Osceola and his allies realized somebody would strike first, might as well be them.
Two big actions begin this war. The first is that Osceola ambushed Wiley Thompson and murdered him with that very same silver rifle. I'm just choosing to believe that bit of folklore because it rules.
The second was the case of an unfortunate column led by Major Francis L. Dade, a veteran of Jackson's Indian Wars. His men were marching north to Ft. King at present-day Ocala on December 28th. Dade would give his name to the battle, though he did not get to fight in it long. He had 103 men, moving through an Un-Floridian-y cold day, with their rifles tucked away in their coats. They were passing through a grove of trees, perhaps whistling a jaunty tune when a shot rang out. Followed by more shots.
You can debate if this counts as a "riot", or a battle. Somebody write me a taxonomy of combat if you want. It was not exactly either because the Americans did not get much of a chance here. From complete surprise, the palmetto trees exploded with well-aimed fire and half the Americans were killed in seconds. Major Dade was one of the first ones gone. Command passed to Captain George W. Gardiner who organized a desperate defense, but his men were surrounded. He would die in the fighting too. Versus 180 Seminoles, the fifty or so surviving and terrified Americans had little hope. They also got little mercy. Only three Americans managed to survive, along with their Native guide. The Seminoles lost only three men.
That set a tone for the Second Seminole War to come, which would be seven years of unglamorous, difficult fighting. This was one of the most bloodiest wars the US ever fought against a Native adversary. About 1,600 Americans died in the fighting with 3,000 Seminole casualties in return. The inevitability of white victory was never much in doubt, even though the Americans lost nearly every set piece battle. Many Seminoles would be dragged off to new homes in Oklahoma. The Black Seminoles fled to places like the Bahamas or Mexico rather returning to slavery.
But at least the Seminoles could live happily in Oklahoma forever- oh Crap Baskets, the American government went back on that promise too and let white settlers take most of it in 1889.
Osceola, who did just miss the Dade Battle but would fight in others, would be led to a truce negotiation in 1837 and then captured in an act of cowardly treachery. He was in bad health from malaria and a tooth abscess, and he died soon after. Major Dade was avenged, I suppose. The warrior's head was cut off by a doctor and kept as a fun curiosity on a shelf for a few decades.
Major Dade would get honored with Dade County, now known as "Miami-Dade County", which we featured in the last Florida story. He also got a city named after him, Dade City. A few hundred German Afrika Korps prisoners were kept there during WWII.
You might notice that there was a Third Seminole War. Even though the US government could declare victory, they never did clear Florida of Seminoles. The Natives retreated into the Everglades and kept fighting. Eventually the federal and state governments got exhausted and had to recognize Seminole reservations in Florida. A population of about 4,400 people live on in the state to this day. They also own the Hard Casino chain, including one in Tampa. That's not the most dignified ending but what dignity is there to be had in Florida for anybody?
PS: Really not sure about naming a football team about them. That doesn't smell right to me.
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