Seminole Wars

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: [unknown]
Surnames/tags: Wars Military_and_War

Seminole Wars (1816–19, 1835–42, 1855–58)

The Seminole Wars, also known as the Florida Wars, were three conflicts in Florida between the Seminole—the collective name given to the amalgamation of various groups of Native Americans and African Americans who settled in Florida in the early 18th century—and the United States Army. Taken together, the Seminole Wars were the longest and most expensive (both in human and monetary terms) Indian Wars in United States history.

The First Seminole War (circa 1816-1819) began with General Andrew Jackson's excursions into West Florida and Spanish Florida against the Seminoles after the conclusion of the War of 1812. The governments of Britain and Spain both expressed outrage over the "invasion". However, Spain was unable to defend its territory, and the Spanish Crown agreed to cede Florida to the United States in the Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819. According to the Treaty of Moultrie Creek of 1823, the Seminoles were required to leave northern Florida and were confined to a large reservation in the center of the Florida peninsula. The U.S. government enforced the treaty by building a series of forts and trading posts in the territory, mainly along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts.

The Second Seminole War (1835-1842) was the result of the United States government attempting to force the Seminoles to leave Florida altogether as described in the Treaty of Payne's Landing of 1832, which Seminole leaders claimed that they signed under duress. Raids and skirmishes and a handful of larger battles raged throughout the Florida peninsula, with the outgunned and outnumbered Seminoles effectively using guerrilla warfare to frustrate the ever more numerous American forces. After several years spent chasing bands of Seminole warriors through the wilderness, the US Army changed tactics and began seeking out and destroying Seminole farms and villages, a strategy which eventually changed the course of the war. The war resulted in most of the Seminole population in Florida being killed in battle, ravaged by starvation and disease, or relocated to Indian Territory in modern Oklahoma. A few hundred Seminoles were allowed to remain in an unofficial reservation in southwest Florida.

The Third Seminole War (1855-1858) was again the result of Seminoles responding to settlers and US Army scouting parties encroaching on their lands, perhaps deliberately to provoke a violent response that would result in the removal of the last of the Seminoles from Florida. After an army surveying crew found and destroyed a Seminole plantation west of the Everglades in December 1855, Chief Billy Bowlegs led a raid near Fort Myers, setting off a conflict which consisted mainly of raids and reprisals with no large battles fought. American forces again strove to destroy the Seminoles' food supply, and in 1858, most of the remaining Seminoles, weary of war and facing starvation, agreed to be shipped to Oklahoma in exchange for promises of safe passage and cash payments to their chiefs. An estimated 100 Seminoles still refused to leave and retreated deep into the Everglades to live on land that was unwanted by white settlers.