In 1837 Chief Osceola and other Seminole leaders were seized with a white flag approaching a conference called by U.S. authorities. (Osceola’s personal bodyguard of 55 at the time included 52 men of African descent.) US forces imprisoned the Seminoles in a cell in Castillo de San Marcos, later renamed Fort Marion, in St. Augustine. Osceola, ill and depressed, sat slumped on the floor, his life ebbing away. Army officials also captured another Seminole peace delegation that included two fire-brands of the resistance, Wild Cat or Coacoochee, 25, and his Black sub-chief, John Horse, also 25.
Bilingual, tall, powerfully built, and a crack shot, Horse usually draped himself in silver amulets, rich sashes and elaborate, bright plumed head shawls. a commanding presence with tested diplomatic skill, calm self-assurance and battle-field courage, Horse occupied a strategic position among the Seminoles because he also was brother-in-law of Holatoochee, a leading Seminole who had the ear of Miconopy, the nation’s ruler. Other Chiefs such as Jumper and Holatoochee repeatedly asked Horse, widely respected for his knowledge of the foe, to negotiate with US authorities.
From their 18 foot by 33 foot cell at Fort Marion where they were held with two dozen Seminole prisoners, Coacoochee and Horse devised a plan. “We resolved to make our escape or die in the attempt,” Wild Cat later wrote. They took weeks to loosen the iron bar in the jail’s 18 foot roof and create a hole eight inches wide. The heavier prisoners agreed to diet in order to slip through, and some 20 prisoners, including two women, escaped through the opening. For over five days the band made its way southward living “on roots and berries” — and gathering allies and guns.
U.S. Colonel Zachary Taylor raced after them accompanied by 70 Delaware Indian mercenaries, l80 Missouri riflemen and 800 U.S. regular army soldiers from the Sixth Infantry, the Fourth Infantry and Taylor’s First Infantry Regiment. The day before Christmas US forces found the Seminoles had carefully positioned themselves at the northeast corner of Lake Okeechobee. Seminole marksmen were perched in the tall grass or in trees, the sprawling Lake a few hundred yards behind them.
Taylor’s forces advanced through a swampy area and its five foot high razor-edged sawgrass. Movement was impassable for horses, and extremely difficult and slow for humans as soldiers sank up to their thighs in the mud and water beneath them. At 12:30 in the afternoon of Christmas Eve Seminole snipers prepared for battle. The first shot had yet to be fired when the Delawares, sensing disaster, deserted and left for home. The Missouri riflemen charged the Seminoles position but a withering fire brought down their commander, many commissioned officers and some of non-commissioned officers. The Tennesseans fled.
Colonel Taylor next ordered his regular army troops forward but they encountered deadly rifle fire. He later reported the earliest Seminole barrages brought down “every officer, with one exception, as well as most of the non-commissioned officers” and left “but four . . . untouched.” After a two and a half hour battle in which they had been vastly outnumbered, Seminole soldiers fell back their canoes and made their escape.
As Christmas Day dawned Colonel Taylor forces counted 26 U.S. dead and 112 wounded, seven dead for each dead Seminole fighter, and the US had taken no prisoners. Americans rounded up 100 Seminole ponies and 600 cattle.
Lake Okeechobee was the US military’s most decisive defeat in more than four decades of warfare in Florida. Four days after his army limped back to Fort Gardner, however, Colonel Taylor claimed victory — “the Indians were driven in every direction.” The US Army accepted his report, and promoted him.
From that point, however, US officers had to recognize the unity and strength of the African-Seminole alliance. Said General Thomas Sidney Jesup, “The negroes rule the Indians, and it is important that they should feel themselves secure; if they should become alarmed and hold out, the war will be resumed.”
Based on his reputation as an “Indian fighter,” Zachary Taylor was elected the 12th President of the United States. Historians continue to distort the battle of Lake Okeechobee. In the authoritative The Almanac of American History (1983), Arthur Schlesinger Jr. summarized the battle in one inaccurate sentence, “Fighting in the Second Seminole War, General Zachary Taylor defeats a group of Seminoles at Okeechobee Swamp, Florida.”
This is the nation of Patrick Henry and “Give me Liberty or give me death!” The United States was born in struggle against British colonial rule. It proudly declared people had natural rights and dedicated itself to self-determination. The heroic, freedom fighting struggle of the Seminole nation stands as a milestone in the American battle for liberty.
This article is adapted from William Loren Katz’s book, Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage.
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