1832 Payne’s Landing. Numerous chiefs sign a treaty agreeing to move west to Arkansas as long as seven of their number are able to see and approve the lands. The treaty is ratified at Fort Gibson, Arkansas. Numerous chiefs also protest the agreement.
1835 Summer. Wiley Thompson claims that Osce-ola has repeatedly reviled him in his own office with foul language and orders his arrest. Osceola is handcuffed and incarcerated.
November. Charlie Emathla, after agreeing to removal to the west, is murdered. Most scholars agree Osceola led the party which carried out the execution. Some consider the murder personal vengeance, others believe it was proscribed by numerous chiefs, since an Indian who would leave his people to aid the whites should forfeit his own life. December 28. Major Francis Dade and his troops are massacred as they travel from Fort Brooke to Fort King. Wiley Thompson and a companion are killed outside the walls of Fort King. The sutler Erastus Rogers and his two clerks are also murdered by members of the same raiding party, led by Osceola.
December 21. The First Battle of the With-lacoochee—Osceola leads the Seminoles.
1836 January. Major General Winfield Scott is ordered by the Secretary of War to take command in Florida.
February 4. Dade County established in south Florida in memory of Francis Lang-horne Dade.
March 16. The Senate confirms Richard Keith Call governor of the Florida Territory.
June 21. Call, a civilian governor, is given command of the Florida forces after the failure of Scott’s strategies and the military disputes between Scott and General Gaines. Call attempts a “summer campaign,” and is as frustrated in his efforts as his predecessor.
1837 June 2. Osceola and Sam Jones release or “abduct” nearly 700 Indians awaiting deportation to the west from Tampa.
October 27. Osceola is taken under a white flag of truce; Major Sidney Jesup is denounced by whites and Indians alike for the action.
November 29. Coacoochee, Cowaya, sixteen warriors, and two women escape Ft. Marion.
Christmas Day. Jesup has the largest fighting force assembled in Florida during the conflict, nearly 9,000 men. Under his command, Colonel Zachary Taylor leads the Battle of Okeechobee. The Seminoles choose to stand their ground and fight, inflicting greater losses to whites despite the fact they are severely outnumbered.
1838 January 31. Osceola dies at Ft. Marion, South Carolina. (A strange side note to a sad tale: Dr. Wheedon, presiding white physician for Osceola, cut off and preserved Osceola’s head. Wheedon’s heirs reported that the good doctor would hang the head on the bedstead of one of his three children should they misbehave. The head passed on to his son-in-law, Dr. Daniel Whitehurst, who gave it to Dr. Valentine Mott. Dr. Mott had a medical and pathological museum, and it is believed that the head was lost when the museum burned in 1866.)
May. Zachary Taylor takes command when Jesup’s plea to be relieved is answered at last on April 29. The Florida legislature debates statehood.
1839 December. Because of his arguments with federal authorities regarding the Seminole War, Richard Keith Call is removed as governor. Robert Raymond Reid is appointed in his stead.
1840 April 24. Zachary Taylor is given permission to leave command of what is considered to be the harshest military position in the country. Walker Keith Annistead takes command.
December 1840-January 1841. John T. MacLaughlin leads a flotilla of men in dugouts across the Everglades from east to west; his party becomes the first white men to do so.
September. William Henry Harrison is elected president of the United States; the Florida War is considered to have cost Martin Van Buren reelection.
John Bell replaces Joel Poinsett as secretary of war. Robert Reid is ousted as territorial governor, and Richard Keith Call is reinstated.
1841 April 4. President William Henry Harrison dies in office: John Tyler becomes president of the U.S.
May 1. Coacoochee determines to turn himself in. He is escorted by a man who will later become extremely well known—Lieutenant William Tecumseh Sherman. (Sherman writes to his future wife that the Florida war is a good one for a soldier; he will get to know the Indian who may become the “chief enemy” in time.)
May 31. Walker Keith Armistead is relieved. Colonel William Jenkins Worth takes command.
1842 May 10. Winfield Scott is informed that the administration has decided there must be an end to hostilities as soon as possible.
August 14. Aware that he cannot end hostilities and send all Indians west, Colonel Worth makes offers to the remaining Indians to leave or accept boundaries. The war, he declares, is over.
It has cost a fledgling nation thirty to forty million dollars, and the lives of seventy-four commissioned officers. The Seminoles have been reduced from tens of thousands to hundreds scattered about in pockets. The Seminoles (inclusive here, as they were seen during the war, as all Florida Indians) have, however, kept their place in the peninsula; those remaining are the undefeated. The army, too, has learned new tactics, mostly regarding partisan and guerilla warfare. Men who will soon take part in the greatest conflict to tear apart the nation have practiced the art of battle here: William T. Sherman, Braxton Bragg, George Gordon Meade, Joseph E. Johnston, and more, as well as soon-to-be president Zachary Taylor.
1845 March 3. President John Tyler signs the bill that makes Florida the 27th state of the United States of America.
Heather Graham, Captive
(Series: MacKenzies # 2)
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