The Exiles of Florida Part 23

As an ill.u.s.tration of the manner in which it was carried on, we quote the following:

"a.s.sISTANT ADJUTANT GENERAL'S OFFICE, ARMY OF THE SOUTH,} _Fort Brooke, East Florida_, July 29, 1839. }

"SIR: It becomes my painful duty to inform you of the a.s.sa.s.sination of the greater part of Lieutenant Colonel Harney's detachment, by the Indians, on the morning of the 23d instant, on the Coloosahatchee River, where they had gone, in accordance with the treaty at Fort King, to establish a trading-house. The party consisted of about twenty-eight men, armed with Colt's rifles; they were encamped on the river, _but unprotected by defenses of any kind_, and, it is said, without sentinels. The Indians, in large force, made the attack before the dawn of day, and before reveille; and it is supposed that thirteen of the men were killed, among whom were Major Dalham and Mr. Morgan, sutlers. The remainder, with Colonel Harney, escaped, several of them severely wounded. It was a complete surprise. The Commanding General, therefore, directs that you instantly take measures to place the defenses at Fort Mellon in the most complete state of repair, and be ready at all times to repel attack, should one be made. No portion of your command will, in future, be suffered to leave the garrison except under a strong escort. The detachment will be immediately withdrawn. Should Fort Mellon prove unhealthy, and the surgeon recommend its abandonment, you are authorized to transfer the garrison, and reinforce some of the neighboring posts.

"I am, Sir,

GEO. H. GRIFFIN,

_a.s.sistant Adjutant General_.

Lieutenant W. K. HANSON,

Commanding at Fort Mellon."

The Indians killed ten men belonging to the military service, and eight citizens, employed by the sutlers; while Colonel Harney and fourteen others escaped. The Indians obtained fourteen rifles, six carbines, some three or four kegs of powder, and about three thousand dollars worth of goods.

Lieutenant Hanson, commanding at Fort Mellon, on receiving the order which we have quoted, seized some thirty Indians at that time visiting Fort Mellon, and sent them immediately to Charleston, South Carolina; whence they were embarked for the Indian Country, west of Arkansas, where they joined their brethren, who still resided upon the Cherokee Territory.

In these transactions, the Exiles who remained in Florida appear to have taken no part, at least so far as we are informed. They labored to obtain the treaty of peace; but such was the treachery with which they had been treated, that they would not subject themselves to the power of the white people, and were not of course present at the treaty; nor were they recognized by General McComb as a party to the treaty, or in any way interested in its provisions. Indeed, we are led to believe that General McComb adopted the policy on which General Taylor usually practiced, of recognizing no distinctions among prisoners or enemies.

The Administration appeared to be paralyzed under this new demonstration of the power and madness of the Seminoles. At the commencement of the war, some officers had estimated the whole number of Seminoles at fifteen hundred, and the negroes as low as four hundred. They had now sent some two thousand Indians and negroes to the Western Country; and yet those left in Florida, renewed the war with all the savage barbarity which had characterized the Seminoles in the days of their greatest power. Indeed, they exhibited no signs of humiliation.

The Secretary of War, Mr. Poinsett, a South Carolinian, probably exerted more influence with the President in regard to this war than any other officer of Government. His predecessor, General Ca.s.s, had treated the Exiles as mere chattels, having "no rights." He had advised the employment of Creek Indians, giving them such negroes as they might capture; he had officially approved the contract made with them by General Jessup. After he left the office, his successor, Mr. Poinsett, approved the order purchasing some ninety of them on account of Government. He had advised Watson to purchase them; had done all in his power to consign them to slavery in Georgia. He was, however, constrained to make an official report upon the state of this war, at the opening of the first session of the Twenty-sixth Congress, which a.s.sembled on the first Monday of December, 1839.

That report, when considered in connection with the events which gave character to the Florida War, const.i.tutes a most extraordinary paper.

Notwithstanding all the difficulties which he had encountered in his efforts to enslave the Exiles, to prevent at least ninety of them from going West, and the complaints of the Seminoles who had emigrated to the Western Country, at finding themselves dest.i.tute of homes and of territory on which to settle, he made no allusion to their troubles; nor did he give any intimation of the difficulties arising on account of the Exiles; nor did he even intimate that such a cla.s.s of people existed in Florida.

[Sidenote: 1840.]

He declared the result of General McComb's negotiation had been the loss of many valuable lives. "Our people (said he) fell a sacrifice to their confidence in the good faith and promises of the Indians, and were entrapped and murdered with all the circ.u.mstances of cruelty and treachery which distinguish Indian warfare. * * * The experience of the last summer brings with it the painful conviction, that the war must be prosecuted until Florida is freed from these ruthless savages. Their late, cruel and treacherous conduct is too well known to require a repet.i.tion of the revolting recital; it has been such as is calculated to deprive them of the sympathy of the humane, and convince 'the most peaceable of the necessity of _subduing them by force_."

It appeared necessary to raise the cry of treachery and cruelty against the Indians and Exiles. They had no friend who was acquainted with the facts, that could call attention of the nation to the treachery which had been practiced on them by the order, and with the approval, of the Secretary of War. No man was able to say how many fathers and mothers and children were, by the influence of that officer, consigned to a fate far more cruel than that which awaited the men, under Colonel Harney, at Coloosahatchee.

In his report the Secretary most truly remarked: "If the Indians of Florida had a country to retire to, they would have been driven out of the Territory long ago; but they are hemmed in by the sea, and must defend themselves to the uttermost, or surrender to be transported beyond it." And he might well have added: _When they shall be thus transported, they will have no country--no home_. Indeed, the whole report shows that he relied on physical force to effect an extermination of the Indians and their allies; he looked not to justice, nor to the power of truth, for carrying out the designs of the Executive.

Men in power appear to forget that justice sits enthroned above all human greatness; that it is omnipotent, and will execute its appropriate work upon mankind. Thus, while the people of Florida and Georgia had provoked the war, by kidnapping and enslaving colored men and women, to whom they had no more claim than they had to the people of England; while they had sent their pet.i.tion to General Jackson, asking him to compel the Indians to seize and bring in their negroes, and had protested against the peace negotiated by General Jessup, in 1837;--Mr.

Reid, Governor of Florida, in an official Message to the Territorial Legislature, in December, 1839, used language so characteristic of those who supported the Florida War, that we feel it just to him and his coadjutors to give the following extract:

"The efforts of the General and Territorial Governments to quell the Indian disturbances which have prevailed through four long years, have been unavailing, and it would seem that the prophecy of the most sagacious leader of the Indians will be more than fulfilled; the close of the fifth year will still find us struggling in a contest remarkable for magnanimity, forbearance and credulity on the one side, and ferocity and bad faith on the other. We are waging a war with beasts of prey; the tactics that belong to civilized nations are but shackles and fetters in its prosecution; we must fight 'fire with fire;' the white man must, in a great measure, adopt the mode of warfare pursued by the red man, and we can only hope for success by continually harra.s.sing and pursuing the enemy. If we drive him from hommock to hommock, from swamp to swamp, and penetrate the recesses where his women and children are; if, in self-defense, we show as little mercy to him as he has shown to us, the anxiety and surprise produced by such operations will not fail, it is believed, to produce prosperous results. It is high time that sickly sentimentality should cease. 'Lo, the poor Indian!' is the exclamation of the fanatic, pseudo-philanthropist; 'Lo, the poor white man!' is the e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n which all will utter who have witnessed the inhuman butchery of women and children, and the ma.s.sacres that have drenched the Territory in blood.

"In the future prosecution of the war, it is important that a generous confidence should be reposed in the General Government. It may be that mistakes and errors have been committed on all hands; but the peculiar adaptation of the country to the cowardly system of the foe, and its inapt.i.tude to the operations of a regular army; the varying and often contradictory views and opinions of the best informed of our citizens, and the embarra.s.sments which these cases must have produced to the authorities at Was.h.i.+ngton, furnish to the impartial mind some excuse, at least, for the failures which have hitherto occurred. It is our duty to be less mindful of the past than the future. Convinced that the present inc.u.mbent of the Presidential Chair regards with sincere and intense interest the afflictions we endure; relying upon the patriotism, talent and sound judgment of the distinguished Carolinian who presides over the Department of War, and confident in the wisdom of Congress, let us prepare to second, with every nerve, the measures which may be devised for our relief. Feeling as we do the immediate pressure of circ.u.mstances, let us exert, to the extremest point, all our powers to rid us of the evil by which we are oppressed. Let us, by a conciliatory course, endeavor to allay any unkindnesses of feeling which may exist between the United States army and the militia of Florida, and by union of sentiment among ourselves, advance the happy period when the Territory shall enjoy what she so much needs--a long season of peace and tranquillity."

Perhaps no vice is more general among mankind than a desire to represent ourselves, and our country and government, to mankind and to posterity as just and wise, whatever real truth may dictate. Surely, if General Jessup's official reports be regarded as correct, the people of Florida should have been the last of all who were concerned in that war, to claim the virtue of magnanimity or forbearance, or to charge the Seminoles or Exiles with ferocity or bad faith. The expression that "_it is high time that sickly sentimentality should cease_," manifests the ideas which he entertained of strict, equal and impartial justice to all men.

This message was an appropriate introduction to the legislative action which immediately succeeded its publication. It was that legislative body which first gave official sanction to the policy of obtaining blood-hounds from Cuba to aid our troops in the prosecution of this war.

Of this atrocious and barbarous policy much has been said and written, and its authors.h.i.+p charged upon various men and officers of Government.

At the time of the transaction, it was represented that the blood-hounds were obtained for the purpose of trailing the Indians, and historians have so stated;[123] but for various reasons, we are constrained to believe they were obtained for the purpose of trailing _negroes_. It was well known that these animals were trained to pursue _negroes_, and _only_ negroes. They would no more follow the track of a white man than they would that of a horse or an ox. It was the peculiar scent of the negro that they had been trained and accustomed to follow. No man concerned in obtaining these animals, could have been ignorant that they had, in all probability, never seen an Indian, or smelt the track of any son of the forest.

Every slaveholder well understood the habits of those ferocious dogs, and the manner of training them, and could not have supposed them capable of being rendered useful in capturing Indians. The people of Florida appear to have been stimulated in the commencement and continuance of this war solely by a desire to _obtain slaves_, rather than to _fight Indians_; and while acting as militia or as individuals, they were far more efficient in capturing negroes and claiming those captured by other troops than in facing them on the field of battle. Nor can we resist the conviction, that catching _negroes_ const.i.tuted, in the mind of General Jessup, the object for which those animals were to be obtained. Such was evidently his purpose when he wrote Colonel Harney, as quoted in a former chapter, "If you see Powell (Osceola), tell him that I intend to send exploring and surveying parties into every part of the country during the summer; and that I shall send out and take _all the negroes who belong to white people, and he must_ not allow the Indians or Indian negroes to mix with them. Tell him I am sending to Cuba for blood-hounds to trail them, and I intend to hang every one of them who does not come in."

We cannot close our eyes to the fact, that General Jessup intended the blood-hounds to be used in catching "the negroes belonging to the white people," as he said. Those white people were mostly slaveholders of Florida; those who proposed in the legislative a.s.sembly of that territory the obtaining of the animals, and adopted a resolution authorizing their purchase. They did not wait for the President to act, nor for the "Secretary of War," whom the Governor of Florida characterized as "that distinguished _Carolinian_" on whose judgment and patriotism the people of Florida so much relied.[124]

By resolution, Colonel Fitzpatrick was "authorized to proceed to Havana, and procure a kennel of blood-hounds, noted for tracking and pursuing negroes." He was fortunate in his mission. He not only obtained the animals, but he accomplished the journey, and reached St. Augustine as early as the sixth of January, 1840, with a reinforcement for the army of the United States of thirty-three blood-hounds well trained to the work of catching negroes. They cost precisely one hundred and fifty-one dollars seventy-two cents, each, when landed in Florida. He also procured five Spaniards who were accustomed to using the animals in capturing negroes; and as the dogs had been trained to the Spanish language, they would have been useless under the control of persons who could only speak the dialect of our own country.

The very general error that existed throughout the country, at the time of this transaction, arose from a misapprehension of the facts. There had been much said in regard to these blood-hounds before they were actually obtained. When the report of the War Department, under the resolution of the House of Representatives of the twenty-eighth of January, 1839, was published, containing the letter of General Jessup addressed to Colonel Harney, which we have quoted, many members of Congress appeared indignant at what they regarded as a stain upon our national honor in obtaining and employing blood-hounds to act in concert with our troops and our Indian allies in this war. Party feelings ran high, and southern members of Congress, who were acting with the Whig party, were willing to seize upon any circ.u.mstance that would reflect discreditably upon the then existing Administration.

On the twenty-seventh day of December, 1839, the Hon. Henry A. Wise, a member of the House of Representatives from Virginia, addressed a letter to the Secretary of War, inquiring as to facts relating to the employment of blood-hounds in aid of our troops.[125]

To this letter Mr. Poinsett, the Secretary of War, replied on the thirtieth of December, as follows:

"WAR DEPARTMENT, December 20, 1839.

"SIR: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the twenty-seventh instant, inquiring into the truth of the a.s.sertion made by the public papers, that the Government had determined to use blood-hounds in the war against the Florida Indians; and beg to a.s.sure you it will give me great pleasure to give you all the information on this subject in possession of the Department.

"From the time I first entered upon the duties of the War Department, I continued to receive letters from officers commanding in Florida, as well as from the most enlightened citizens in that Territory, urging the employment of blood-hounds as the most efficient means of terminating the atrocities daily perpetrated by the Indians on the settlers in that Territory. To these proposals no answer was given, until in the month of August, 1838, while at the Virginia Springs, there was referred to me, from the Department, a letter, addressed to the Adjutant General by the officer commanding the forces in Florida (General Taylor), to the following effect:

"HEAD QUARTERS ARMY OF THE SOUTH,} _Fort Brooke_, July 28, 1838. }

"SIR: I have the honor to inclose you a communication this moment received, on the subject of procuring blood-hounds from the Island of Cuba to aid the army in its operations against the hostiles in Florida. I am decidedly in favor of the measure, and beg leave to urge it as the only means of ridding the country of the Indians, who are now broken up into small parties that take shelter in swamps and hommocks, making it impossible for us to follow or overtake them without the aid of such auxiliaries. Should this measure meet the approbation of the Department, and the necessary authority be granted, I will open a correspondence with Mr.

Evertson on the subject, through Major Hunt, a.s.sistant Quarter Master at Savannah, and will authorize him, if it can be done on reasonable terms, to employ a few dogs with persons who understand their management.

"I wish it distinctly understood, that my object in employing dogs is only to ascertain where the Indians can be found, not to worry them.

"I have the honor to be, sir,

Your obedient servant,

Z. TAYLOR,

_Brev. Brig. Gen. U. S. A. Commanding_.

General R. JONES,

Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C."

"On this letter I indorsed the following decision, which was communicated to General Taylor: 'I have always been of opinion that dogs _ought_ to be employed in this warfare to protect the army from surprises and ambuscades, and to track the Indian to his lurking place; but supposed if the General believed them to be necessary, he would not hesitate to take measures to secure them. The cold-blooded and inhuman murders lately perpetrated upon helpless women and children by these ruthless savages, render it expedient that every possible means should be resorted to, in order to protect the people of Florida, and to enable the United States forces to follow and capture or destroy the savage and unrelenting foe. General Taylor is therefore authorized to procure such number of dogs as he may judge necessary: it being expressly understood that they are to be employed to track and discover the Indians, not to worry or destroy them.'

"This is the only action or correspondence, on the part of the Department, that has ever taken place in relation to the matter. The General took no measures to carry into effect his own recommendation, and this Department has never since renewed the subject. I continue, however, to entertain the opinion expressed in the above decision. I do not believe that description of dog, called the blood-hound, necessary to prevent surprise or track the Indian murderer; but still I think that every cabin, every military post, and every detachment, should be attended by dogs. That precaution might have saved Dade's command from ma.s.sacre, and by giving timely warning have prevented many of the cruel murders which have been committed by the Indians in middle Florida. The only successful pursuit of Indian murderers that I know of, was, on a late occasion, when the pursuers were aided by the sagacity of their dogs. These savages had approached a cabin of peaceful and industrious settlers so stealthily, that the first notice of their presence was given by a volley from their rifles, thrust between the logs of the house; and the work of death was finished by tomahawking the women, after tearing from them their infant children, and das.h.i.+ng their brains out against the door posts.

"Are these ruthless savages to escape and repeat such scenes of blood, because they can elude our fellow citizens in Florida, and our regular soldiers, and baffle their unaided efforts to overtake or discover them?

On a late occasion, three of our estimable citizens were killed in the immediate neighborhood of St. Augustine, and one officer of distinguished merit mortally wounded. It is in evidence, that these murders were committed by two Indians, who, after shooting down the father and beating out the son's brains with the b.u.t.ts of their rifles, upon hearing the approach of the volunteers, retired a few yards into the woods and secreted themselves, until the troops returned to town with the dead bodies of those who had been thus inhumanly and wantonly butchered.