STRANGERS IN THEIR OWN LAND

1. STRANGERS IN THEIR OWN LAND SEMINOLES AND AFRICAN-AMERICANS IN FLORIDA

2. Florida Changes Flags • 1565: Pedro Menendez de Aviles established the first permanent European settlement in North America at St. Augustine. • 1702-04: Led by Colonel James Moore, Carolinians and their Creek Indian allies attacked Spanish Florida in 1702 and destroyed the town of St. Augustine, but could not capture the fort, Castillo de San Marcos. Two years later, they destroyed the Spanish missions between Tallahassee and St. Augustine, killing and enslaving many Indians. • 1719-22 The French captured and occupied Pensacola.

3. Florida Changes Flags • 1763: The Treaty of Paris ended the French and Indian War. Britain gained control of Florida in exchange for Havana, Cuba, which the British had captured from Spain during the Seven Years’ War (1756–63). England divided Florida into two colonies: East and West Florida • 1776–83: The two Floridas remained loyal to Great Britain throughout the War for American Independence • 1783: Spain, allied with France, captured Pensacola. • 1784: The Spaniards regained control of Florida.

4. Florida Changes Flags • 1814-18: General Andrew Jackson led military expeditions into Florida (see First Seminole War) • 1821: The loss of Spain's American colonies and its on-going problems with the United States led to the transfer of Florida to the United States. • 1821: Florida became a U.S. territory. Andrew Jackson was appointed first Governor of Florida. • 1845: Florida became the twenty-seventh state of the United States on March 3, 184

5. Florida Changes Flags • 1861: Florida seceded from the Union on January 10, 1861. Within several weeks, Florida joined other southern states to form the Confederate States of America. • 1861-65: The Union held Fort Meyers and Key West throughout the Civil War. • 1865: Ultimately, the South was defeated, and federal troops occupied Tallahassee on May 10, 1865.

6. Seminoles Seminoles were originally a part of Creek Indian groups in Georgia and Alabama and were historically a late arrival to Florida. The name Seminole was originally derived from the Spanish word cimarrone, a word used by the early Spaniards to refer to Indians living apart form the Spanish missions or any other Spanish-Indian settlements

7. Genesis of the Seminoles:18th Century • 1710: With the exception of a few stragglers, the indigenous people of Florida had been virtually annihilated from disease and attacks by Europeans. • 1740: Muskogee-speaking sedentary farmers began to settle near present-day Gainesville. • 1763: The "Eligio de la Puente" report mentions the invasion of Creek people, who had overrun all of peninsular Florida, even reaching Key West. Those who would later be called the Seminole and Mikasuki establish themselves in the north-central interior of Florida. • 1765: Muskogee speaking people are referred to as "Seminolies" in British documents.

8. African-Americans in Florida:18th Century • 1738: The Spanish established Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose (Fort Mose), the first free African community in America, to provide the first defense against the British. • Approximately 100 Africans lived at Fort Mose, forming more than 20 households. Together they created a frontier community which drew on a range of African backgrounds blended with Spanish, Native American and English cultural traditions.

9. As runaways came to St. Augustine some were re-enslaved or sold back to the English. • 1724-28: Formerly ensalved in Carolina, Francisco Menendez arrived in St. Augustine around 1724. He became Captain of the Black Militia of St. Augustine and fought to ensure promises of King Carlos.  In 1728, helping to defend the Northern Florida Frontier from English and Native American raids, the Black Militia gained the respect and honor. • 1739: The largest slave uprising in the history of North America took place near Charleston, SC. The Spanish were blamed . • 1740: The British attacked St. Augustine under General George Oglethorpe. Fort Mose was captured.

10. African-Americans in Florida:18th Century • 1752: Spaniards rebuilt Fort Mose. Africans established in St. Augustine, returned to their military/agrarian lifestyle. Many of the men married Indian women and still others hunted and traded with Indian allies. • 1784: When the British evacuated Florida, Spanish colonists and settlers from the newly formed United States came pouring in. Others who came were escaped slaves, trying to reach a place where their U.S. masters had no authority and effectively could not reach them. • 1787: More than half of the plantations in Florida had fewer than four African slaves.

11. African-Americans in Florida:19th Century • 1821-45: Territorial status. By 1840 white Floridians were concentrating on developing the territory and gaining statehood. The population had reached 54,477 people, with African American slaves making up almost one-half of the population. • 1821: Andrew Jackson Allen, one of the earliest performers in America, does a song-and-dance in blackface. He sings a "Negro dialect" song on the Pensacola stage. • 1831: Stephen Foster, composer of appealing love songs for the parlor and upbeat songs for minstrel shows, wrote "Old Folks at Home." aka “Way Down Upon the Suwannee River”

12. African-Americans in Florida:19th Century • 1845: Florida entered the Union as a slave state, balancing the free state status of Iowa • 1851: Steven Foster's song, "Old Folks at Home," was adopted as the official state song by the Florida state legislature.

13.  THE SEMINOLE WARS • The First, Second and Third Seminole Wars were never declared wars on the part of the American government. They were: • A continuation of American policy to contain Native American populations east of the Mississippi and remove them to reservations west of the Mississippi, a policy that culminated in the Indian Removal Act of 1830. • Early battles fought over the jurisdiction of runaway slaves that would eventually escalate into the Civil War. • The Seminole Wars resulted in the removal of nearly four thousand Seminoles to Oklahoma with a remnant of approximately three hundred disappearing into the Everglades

14. Important Figures: Seminoles • Neamathla (fl. early 19th c.), leader of the Mikasukis, chosen spokesman at 1823 Moultrie Creek conference • Micanopy (c.1795-1848), chief after 1833, ally of Osceola, removed to Oklahoma in 1838. • Ote-emathla "Jumper," (fl. 19th c.), a Red Stick Creek, Micanopy's brother-in-law and sensebearer (advocate). • King Philip (17? -1840), leader of Mikasuki band and brother-in-law to Micanopy • Coacoochee "Wildcat" (1810?- 18?), King Philip's son and Micanopy's nephew, war-leader, removed to Oklahoma in 1841, whence he led followers, especially the Black Seminoles to Coahuila, Mexico

15. Important Figures: Seminoles • Abraham, Black Indian (fl. 19th c.), interpreter and advisor to Micanopy • Halpatter Tustenuggee "Alligator" (fl. 19th c.), Alachua warchief with King Philip's band • Osceola or Asi-yaholo "Billy Powell" (1804?-1838), Red Stick Creek, war-leader of Seminole band • Holata Micco "Billy Bowlegs" (c. 1810-1864), Seminole warchief most prominent in Third Seminole War, resisted emigration to Oklahoma until 1858 • Arpeika or Abiaka "Sam Jones" (1750's?- 1860), Mikasuki shaman, highly resistant to relocation, he led his followers into the Everglades

16. Important Figures: Americans • Andrew Jackson (1767-1845), General, first U.S.governor of Florida, seventh President of the U.S. (1829-37) • Francis L. Dade, Army Major who led ill-fated expedition resulting in Dade Massacre, 1835 • Wiley Thompson, Indian agent in charge of Seminole removal 1833-35, killed by Osceola • Thomas Sidney Jesup (1788-18 ), commander of the army in Florida (1836-38) • Zachary Taylor (1784-1850), "Old Rough and Ready," commander of the Army in Florida (1838-40) • William Jenkins Worth (1794-1849), commander of the Army in Florida at end of Second Seminole War (1841-42), twelfth President of the U.S. (1849-50)

17. The First Seminole War: 1817-1818 • Preceded by years of border disputes along the Florida-Georgia border • Fort Negro, on the Apalachicola River, built by the British in 1815 and turned over to a band of runaway slaves on the British departure, was an obstacle for the US in the supply route to Georgia. • General Edmund Gaines (1777-1849) was ordered to destroy the fort. A hot cannon ball landed in a powder magazine blowing up the fort and killing 270 of its 344 occupants.

18. The First Seminole War: 1817-1818 • Neamathla, village chief of Fowltown, reacted by warning General Gaines that if the Americans tried to cross the border into Florida, they would be annihilated. • A gunfight between American soldiers and Neamathla's Seminoles on November 21, 1817, is considered the opening salvo of the First Seminole War. • The War Department ordered General Andrew Jackson to bring the Seminoles under control. • On March 9, 1818, Jackson swiftly marched into Florida, despite opposition in Washington. • Meeting little resistance, he moved against the Seminole villages around Lake Miccosukee and captured St. Marks on April 6.

19. Adams-Onis Treaty: 1821 • The First Seminole War, ended with General Andrew Jackson's (1767-1845) occupation of the city of Pensacola and the Spanish surrender of Fort Barrancas to the American army in May, 1818. • His victory led to the Adams-Onis Treaty of 1821 in which Spain ceded the territory of Florida to the United States. • The hostilities among the white Americans and the Seminole and black inhabitants of Florida continued.

20. Suggested Solutions to the “Indian Problem” • 1) Total removal of the Seminoles from the peninsula and relocation to Georgia or to Oklahoma, • 2) Concentration of the Seminoles on a reservation in Florida • 3) Full citizenship granted to the Seminoles with each family receiving a plot of land to break the tribal bond and promote private enterprise --this suggestion was totally ignored, and the Seminoles were strongly resistant to removal.

21. Moultrie Creek Treaty: 1823 • Restricted Seminole settlements to a reservation of four million acres north of Charlotte Harbor and south of Ocala with no land within twenty miles of any coast, a stipulation that would hinder foreign contacts. • The Seminoles agreed not to make the reservation a haven for escaped slaves. • Six small reservations were granted to six north Florida chiefs, including Neamathla, the elected spokesman for the tribes at the conference. • However, almost before the treaty took effect, President James Monroe was moving towards a policy of general Indian removal.

22. Indian Removal Act: 1830 • One of the first bills proposed by the newly elected President Jackson in 1830 • Mandated that that Eastern Indians be encouraged to trade their eastern land for western land or lose Federal protection • After the act was made law on May 28, 1830, pressure was applied to the Seminoles to conform to the new law.

23. Payne’s Landing Treaty : 1832 • James Gadsden was named special agent to the Seminoles with the purpose of persuading them to move West. • In May, 1832, he convened a meeting with the chiefs at Payne's Landing. The meeting has been the subject of much political and scholarly controversy as no minutes of the meeting were kept. • All that is certain is that a treaty was signed by seven chiefs and eight subchiefs on May 9, 1832, who agreed to travel to inspect the lands in Oklahoma, and if they found them satisfactory, they would agree to move west as a part of the Creek allocation. • Nearly all of the chiefs whose names were on the treaty later repudiated it.

24. Fort Gibson Treaty: 1833 • An exploratory party of seven chiefs left Florida for Oklahoma in October, 1832, and returned to Fort Gibson, Arkansas, in March, 1833. • Again there are allegations of coercion and forged marks on the Fort Gibson Treaty in which the chiefs agreed that the Seminoles would move west within three years -- one third of the population each year.

25. Opposition to Removal • Replacing Phagan as Indian agent in December, 1833, Wiley Thompson was put in charge of Seminole removal. • The Indians were encouraged in their reluctance to move both by white traders and by their Indian-Negro allies and slaves who had everything to lose if the Seminoles went to Oklahoma. • Strong opposition to migration emerged, especially from the war-chief Osceola, who advised condemning any Indian who favored removal. • Relations deteriorated and skirmishes increased between the government and Seminoles throughout 1835 culminating in the outbreak of war in December.

26. Second Seminole War1835-1842 • The two most notable incidents occurred on December 28th, 1835, when the Seminoles presented a two-pronged attack. • Jumper and Alligator with 180 warriors ambushed a relief column marching from Fort Brooke to Fort King under the command of Major Francis Dade. Only three of the 108 soldiers escaped slaughter in the fierce battle that followed. • Meanwhile Osceola led sixty warriors in an attack on Fort King with the express purpose of killing Wiley Thompson who had imprisoned Osceola in chains earlier during the year. • Unfortunately for the Seminoles, the Dade Massacre pressured Northerners in Congress to accept Southern proposals for more troops and equipment.

27. Second Seminole War • General Jesup had convinced a large number of chiefs and their tribes to emigrate on the condition that they would be accompanied by their Negro allies and slaves. • Opposition from landowners and the press led to a compromise that only those who had lived with the Seminoles before the outbreak of the war would be permitted to go. • Over seven hundred Seminoles had gathered at Fort Brooke north of Tampa by the end of May 1837, including Micanopy, Jumper, Cloud and Alligator. • On the night of June 2, Osceola and Arpeika surrounded the camp with two hundred warriors and spirited away nearly the entire population.

28. Second Seminole War • Jesup no longer felt any compunction about using trickery to gain his ends. • In September 1837 King Philip, Yuchi Billy, Coacoochee and Blue Snake with their followers were captured and imprisoned them at Fort Marion. • Osceola and Coa Hadjo sent word that they were willing to negotiate. At the conference near Fort Peyton, Jesup ordered the truce violated and the Indians were imprisoned.

29. Osceola • News of Osceola's capture spread through the nation. • When he was transferred to Fort Moultrie in Georgia , George Catlin visited him and painted his portrait. • His death on January 30, 1838, enshrined him as a martyr to the Indian cause.

30. Battle of Lake Okochobee: 1837 • Coacoochee and John Cowaya (or Cavalo), an Indian Negro leader, escaped from Fort Marion on November 29, 1837, with sixteen other warriors and two women, • They headed south to join bands led by Jumper, Arpeika, and Alligator. • The largest and last pitched battle of the war was fought on the banks of Lake Okeechobee on December 25, 1837 • Colonel Zachary Taylor commanded eleven hundred men against approximately four hundred Indians. • The Indians finally retreated from the two-and-a-half-hour battle leaving twenty-six killed and one hundred twelve wounded and having sustained eleven killed and fourteen wounded.

31. Second Seminole War • In February 1838, further treachery at Fort Jupiter netted over five hundred Seminoles • Persuasion and mopping-up operations sent many of the remaining Seminole leaders, including Micanopy, on the westward migration. • Jesup's tenure in Florida, which had resulted in the capture, migration or death of over 2400 Indians, ended in May 1838, when General Zachary Taylor took over command of the Florida forces. • Taylor carried out operations against scattered bands of Apalachicola, Tallahassee and Alachua in northern Florida and Seminole bands in central and southern Florida.

32. Seminole Removal • General Alexander MacComb, commanding general of the army, came to Florida in April 1839, and declared the war over when he concluded an agreement with the Seminoles who agreed to withdraw south of the Peace River by July 15, 1839, and remain there "until further arrangements were made." • Although a trading post was set up on the Caloosahatchee River, the Indians learned that they were not to be allowed to stay in Florida. • Chekika, chief of the Spanish Indians (descendants of Calusas), led an attack and destroyed the post in July. • Col. Harney surprised Chekika in the Everglades and executed him.

33. Seminole Removal • The commands of General Walker K. Armistead and General William J. Worth saw the final years of the Second Seminole War. • Following the successful policy of deceiving chiefs who came to negotiate, most notably Coacoochee, and through continuing guerilla warfare, the army managed to remove all but about six hundred of Florida's Indians who were restricted to a temporary reservation south of the Peace River when Congress refused to continue to fund any further campaigns in 1842.

34. Government Losses in the Second Seminole War • The six and half years of the Second Seminole War were more costly than all of the Indian wars combined. • The armed forces sustained 1466 service deaths and an indeterminate number of losses from wounds and diseases • The conflict cost somewhere in the neighborhood of forty million dollars to the United States Treasury, and property losses across the state were huge.

35. Government gains from the Second Seminole War • The Armed Occupation Act brought new settlers to the interior of Florida which had been made accessible by the mapping, exploration and road-building that had attended the fighting. • The military had gained skill in guerilla warfare and an understanding of the need for inter-service cooperation • The federal government learned to exercise its power to convert economic power into military strength.

36. More Seminole Removal • Between 1842 and the outbreak of the Third Seminole War in 1855, the Seminoles kept to the reservation • The federal government, determined to remove the remaining Seminoles: • offered large financial inducements to leave • installed a strong military presence in the territory • brought chiefs, most notably Billy Bowlegs, to Washington, D.C. to impress them with the power of the government. • The Seminoles remained adamant in their opposition to removal until Secretary of War Jefferson Davis declared that if they did not leave voluntarily, the military would remove them by force.

37. Third Seminole War: 1855-1856 “Billy Bowlegs War” • On December 1855, a band of forty Seminoles led by Billy Bowlegs and Oscen Tustenuggee, attacked a patrol investigating Seminole settlements in the Big Cypress Swamp, marking the first skirmish of the war that was dubbed "Billy Bowlegs War." • It was a war of skirmishes, raids and harrassment against small settlements, both white and Seminole. • A treaty signed on August 7, 1856, that granted the Seminoles over two million acres in Indian Territory along with a generous financial settlement, was the catalyst to the end of the conflict in Florida. • Bowlegs and his band left Florida in May and two other bands left the following February.

38. The Remnant Only the Muskogee band led by Chipco, hidden north of Lake Okeechobee, and Arpeika's Mickasuki band, buried deep in the Everglades, a remnant of 100-300 souls, remained in relative peace in Florida. • The Seminoles of Florida call themselves the "Unconquered People," descendants of just 300 Indians who managed to elude capture by the U.S. army in the 19th century. • Today, more than 2,000 live on six reservations in the state – located in Hollywood, Big Cypress, Brighton, Immokalee, Ft. Pierce, and Tampa. • In addition to the Seminole people, Florida also has a separate Miccosukee tribe.

39. The Civil War: 1861-65 • 1861: The independent "nation of Florida" withdrew from the American Union. • 1861: In Pensacola the Army of the Confederate States of America took Ft. Pickens. • Florida provided an estimated 15,000 troops and significant amounts of supplies— including salt, beef, pork, and cotton—to the Confederacy, but more than 2,000 Floridians, both African American and white, joined the Union army.

40. The Abolition of Slavery • 1803: Denmark abolishes the slave trade. • 1807: Britain abolishes the slave trade. • 1817: France abolishes the slave trade. • 1818: Holland abolishes the slave trade. • 1820: Spain abolishes the slave trade • 1824: Sweden abolishes the slave trade. • 1833: Slavery itself is finally abolished in the British colonies. • 1833: Slavery is abolished in the West Indies. • 1834: Slavery ends in the Bahaman Islands. • 1835: On June 25, Queen Maria Cristina abolished the slave trade to Spanish colonies. • 1848: Slavery is abolished in the French colonies. • 1863: African-Americans in Union-occupied areas became free citizens on New Year's Day with the Emancipation Proclamation. • 1863: Slavery is abolished in the Dutch colonies. • 1873: Slavery is abolished in the Spanish colonies of Puerto Rico. • 1880: Slavery is abolished in Cuba.

41. Reconstruction: 1868-77 • The end of the Civil War marked the decline of Florida’s plantation economy. • 1870: Josiah T. Walls served as a state representative and senator and was Florida's first African-American in the U.S. House of Representatives. Jonathan Gibbs filled the office of secretary of state while fellow African-Americans throughout the state served as members of city councils. • 1876: A School for African Americans was built in Tallahassee. • 1877: Reconstruction ended and removal of federal troops began the curtailment of the rights and freedoms exercised by African-Americans.

42. 19th C. Development • 1882: The cigar industry in Tampa, Florida created a unique, multicultural, multiracial urban area. Afro-Cubans, Cuban-born whites and white political exiles from Spain immigrated to work in the cigar factories. • 1887: Eatonville was the first black incorporated municipality in Florida. • African American laborers built Florida’s railroads and roads, tapped the turpentine and farmed the sugar-cane fields in the rapidly growing state.

43. 20th Century • Both agriculture and tourism, before air-conditioning was commonplace, needed workers during the winter. Around 1890 blacks from the Bahamas began arriving in Florida’s lower east coast for seasonal agricultural work. • Between 1900 and 1920, 10,000 to 12,000–about one-fifth of the Bahamian population–came to Florida. By 1920 the foreign-born made up a quarter of Miami’s population; Bahamian blacks comprised 16% of the city’s entire population.

44. Racial Tensions 1920s and 1930s • Following World War I, Florida, like the rest of the nation, experienced heightened racial tensions and anti-immigrant sentiments that led to lynchings and racial persecution. • An election in 1920 in Ocoee in Orange County ended in a race riot and deaths. • in 1923, the entire African-American town of Rosewood was set fire and residents killed by a white mob. • During the Great Depression, the low economic and social statusof blacks meant being in the worst position.

45. World War II • World War II was the last conflict to countenance segregated military units. • Florida in World War II became almost one big military post with 172 installations spread throughout the state. • African-Americans from less segregated regions of the U.S. faced typical Jim Crow rules while on duty in Florida. • German prisoners of war could use facilities from which American blacks were banned. POWs rode in railroad coach cars designated "whites-only," while black GIs were sent to baggage cars. • Famous athletes, such as baseball’s Jackie Robinson and Hank Aaron, encountered the same racial restrictions during spring training sessions in Florida.

46. Civil Rights • After WW II, Florida attracted soldiers who had been stationed here to return as residents. • African-Americans began a fervent voter registration campaign believing that change would come in the voting booth. But change was resisted violently. • On Christmas Eve 1950, Harry T. Moore, state leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), was killed by a bomb beneath his bed because of his voter-registration activities. • By the early 1960s blacks in Florida cities joined others throughout the south in marching to protest segregation and staging sit-ins at segregated facilities. In 1963 and 1964 Martin Luther King organized demonstrations in St. Augustine,celebrating its 400th anniversary of founding.

47. Civil Rights • 1964: Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. • 1965: The Voting Rights Act and the Supreme Court’s "one-man-one vote" ruling and related decisions brought externally imposed change to Florida’s political and racial life. • Although Brown vs, Board of Education negated the separate but equal doctrine in 1954, Florida schools did not desegregate until the late 1960s when school districts were drawn by the courts to ensure racial balance. • Following the civil-rights legislation and court actions of the 1960s African-Americans once again returned to elected positions. In 1968 the first black was elected to the Florida legislature since Reconstruction. • In 1992 the first African-Americans since Reconstruction were elected to represent Florida in the U.S. Congress.