I thought you might enjoy reading a chapter from my book,
The Scott Massacre of 1817. Published in January of this year for the benefit of the West Gadsden Historical Society, it tells the story of the bloody battle on the Apalachicola River that led to Andrew Jackson's 1818 invasion of Spanish Florida and ultimately the cession of the colony to the United States.
The book is available in both print and Kindle editions through
www.amazon.com or at
www.exploresouthernhistory.com/dalecox.
Chapter One
The Year without a Summer
On November 30, 1817, a boat carrying
soldiers and supplies, as well as seven women and four children, rounded the
sharp bend of the Apalachicola River where the city of Chattahoochee stands today. The current was strong and
despite the efforts of the men pulling at the oars, the boat was pushed close
to the east bank of the river. Lieutenant Richard W. Scott of the 7th U.S. Infantry regiment commanded the vessel and had been
warned that he might face an attack from Red Stick Creeks and their Seminole Indian allies before he reached the confluence of the
Flint and Chattahoochee Rivers.
Scott and his soldiers, half of whom
were sick and unarmed, had kept careful watch but so far the attack they
expected had not materialized. By the morning of the 30th, the boat
was less than two miles from the confluence and only twelve miles from the
safety of Fort Scott. Fighting to
keep the boat moving forward as it was pushed near the east bank by the current,
the lieutenant and his men never saw the warriors who were waiting there for
them.
The shoreline erupted with a sheet of
flame as lead balls exploded from hundreds of rifles and muskets, all aimed at
Lieutenant Scott and his command. The bloodbath that followed
forever changed American history. The U.S. Army sustained its first defeat of
the Seminole Wars, a series of
conflicts that would plague the nation for four decades to come. In their
victory, the Seminoles and their Red Stick allies assured their defeat in the
greater war. Andrew Jackson would be sent to invade foreign soil, clearly
demonstrating to Spain that it could not hope to hold Florida. The old colony
became a U.S. territory just four years later.
The autumn of 1817 came during a time of
tumult and chaos in the world. The spell started in 1811 when a brilliant comet appeared in the skies. Massive earthquakes
shook the New Madrid Fault that same year, so rattling the United States
that politicians took to the streets in Washington, D.C., believing that
the capital was somehow under attack. The natural phenomena at least partially
helped spark a time of great disturbance in the course of world history. The
once mighty Creek Nation was shattered at Horseshoe Bend in March 1814 and that same year Andrew
Jackson smashed the British at the Battle of New
Orleans. Napoleon fell, rose, and
fell again. And just as it seemed as if peace might return to the world, the
volcano Timbora erupted in the Pacific.
Ash from the explosion drifted high into
the atmosphere and slowly spread around the world. So much of it infiltrated
the sky that the year of 1816 was remembered for decades to come as the “Year
Without a Summer.” Strange
weather destroyed the corn crops in New England and Europe. Hundreds of
thousands died and food riots shattered the peace of Switzerland. In the United
States, the light of day glowed in a strange golden or orange color and unseasonable
cold persisted far longer than anyone had ever seen. The unusual and deadly
weather continued for two years to come.
In Florida during the summer of 1816,
U.S. forces destroyed the so-called “Negro Fort” on the Apalachicola River.
A heated cannonball passed through the open door of a gunpowder magazine, instantly
ignited an explosion that shook the ground as far away as Pensacola. In a blinding
flash, 270 of the estimated 320 men, women and children in the fort perished.
With them was destroyed or captured a
vast armament of muskets, carbines, swords, gun flints, cannon, powder and
other military supplies that had been left behind by the British at the end of
the War of 1812. The totality
of the disaster so stunned the Lower Creek and Seminole Indians of Florida, Southwest Georgia and South
Alabama that they did not resist the movement of the American troops as they
marched back up the river to Georgia. Returning to a temporary outpost called
Camp Crawford on the lower Flint River, they began
building a more permanent fort with squared log buildings and comfortable
quarters. The new post was called Fort Scott, after General Winfield T. Scott,
and was described as “elegant” by one inspector who reviewed the work in
progress.
The fort was still incomplete in
December 1816 when orders came for Lieutenant Colonel Duncan Lamont Clinch and his men from the 4th U.S.
Infantry to evacuate it. Leaving the buildings and
supplies stored there in the care of George Perryman, the mestizo
brother of the Lower Creek chiefs William and Ben Perryman, the troops evacuated Fort Scott and headed north to Fort Gaines and then Fort Mitchell.
The move gave new confidence to the
refugee Red Stick fighters concentrated near the confluence of
the Flint and Chattahoochee Rivers. They had fled
to the region after their bloody defeat at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend seeking and receiving resupply from the
British who had built two forts on the Apalachicola. Irate over the destruction of their depot at
the “Negro Fort,” they now
exacted their revenge on the unfinished and unguarded buildings of Fort Scott. Appearing
almost as soon as the soldiers departed, they threatened Perryman and drove him off from the place. He was only
able to secure his family and a few personal possessions before fleeing the
scene in a canoe. The supplies left at the fort were ransacked and stolen and
fire was set to the log buildings. George Perryman saw at least three buildings
burning as he fled. The Indians, he said, were “in numbers.”[i]
It is generally believed, and probably
accurately so, that the Fowltown warriors were among those who raided Fort
Scott. The town had joined with the Uchees (Yuchis) in
“taking the talk” of the Prophet Josiah Francis and his followers during the Creek War of
1813-1814.
Francis, it was said by his followers,
could communicate with the water spirits. He was often seen walking down into a
flowing stream or river from which he would not emerge for many hours. A
practitioner of the Nativistic religion of the Shawnee Prophet Tenskwatawa, Francis taught the converts who gathered
around him that the Indians should separate themselves from the whites, that
accommodationist chiefs should be overthrown and that the Creeks should live in
peace with all people, but subject to none. No more Native American land was to
be given up.
Such talk resonated with the head chief
of Fowltown (called Tutalosi Talofa or “Chicken Town” in the Hitchiti tongue of
the Lower Creeks). His name or
title was Eneah Emathla, which
translates roughly to “Fat Warrior.” He was not an overweight individual, but
instead was enormous in courage. The whites, who were never very good with
Indian names, called him everything from E-nee-hee-maut-by to Eneamathla before finally settling on the name Neamathla.
A man of courage and talent, Neamathla
was said by one contemporary to be able to command his warriors with a mere
look. He agreed with Josiah Francis that the Creeks should no longer submit to the
expansionist desires of the whites and led his warriors to join the Prophet’s
force at Holy Ground on the Alabama River. The Tutalosi warriors,
however, were cornered and defeated at the Battle of Uchee in what is now Russell County, Alabama, by an overwhelming party
of Cowetas led by the U.S.-allied chief William McIntosh.
Blocked in his objective of joining the
Red Sticks in Alabama and fearing that the women and
children of his town would be subjected to follow-up attack by McIntosh’s
warriors, Neamathla abandoned his town on Kinchafoonee Creek near present day Albany, Georgia, and withdrew
down the Flint River into the deep wilderness near the
Florida border. There he resettled his people and established a new town, also
called Tutalosi Talofa or Fowltown.
Neamathla and his warriors quickly allied themselves
with the British, who appeared on the Apalachicola at about the same time. Joining the auxiliary
force being raised by Lieutenant Colonel Edward Nicolls,
they were given arms, ammunition and a drum for their town. The chief himself
was presented with a military uniform coat of scarlet color and a letter signed
by Captain Robert Spencer testifying that Neamathla was a loyal and good
friend of Great Britain.
Neamathla was present at the British outpost near the
confluence of the Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers on March 10, 1815, when a large gathering of
Creek and Seminole chiefs signed a written appeal to the Prince Regent in
London for help in enforcing the provisions of the Treaty of Ghent. The treaty had
finally ended the War of 1812 and required that all combatants returned to
their prewar land holdings. Colonel Nicolls and other British officers on the
Apalachicola believed that the Creeks were covered under the terms of the
treaty as their war with the United States had been a subsidiary part of the
larger conflict. The United States disagreed and maintained that the Creeks had
already entered into a separate treaty and therefore were not covered under the
Treaty of Ghent.
That agreement, called the Treaty of
Fort Jackson, was negotiated
by Andrew Jackson in August 1814.
Signed by many Creek leaders, it was in effect a Native American surrender. In
exchange for peace, the chiefs agreed to Jackson’s terms and ceded to the
United States a vast stretch of territory including 23,000,000 acres. The
largest swath of this cession was along the Florida border and, unfortunately
for Neamathla and his followers, it included the land on which they had
established their new village.
The presence of Fowltown and other Lower
Creek villages on the Treaty lands was not an
immediate concern to anyone. Few whites were brave enough to settle in the new
territory and the Indians for the most part just wanted to be left alone. The
burning of Fort Scott by Red Stick warriors in January 1817 changed this
equation, however, and events on the frontier soon spiraled out of control. A
flurry of letters and reports traveled back and forth between the frontier and
both the War Department in Washington, D.C., and the
headquarters of Major General Andrew Jackson in Nashville, Tennessee.
The blame for the burning of Fort Scott quickly focused on Neamathla and his warriors at Fowltown. Although they
often debated the proper policy to pursue with regard to the Indians of the
Southeast, in this case U.S. officials reached an almost unanimous conclusion:
Neamathla would have to remove himself and his people from the ceded lands. The
chief, however, believed the land was his and that he was “directed by the
powers above to defend it.” The stage was set for war and the conflict was not
long in coming.
To read the rest of this book, please order it online through Amazon in either print or Kindle format:
The Scott Massacre of 1817: A Seminole War Battle in Gadsden County, Florida
(Book, $17.96)
The Scott Massacre of 1817
(Kindle, $8.95)
[i] Lt. Richard Sands
to Maj. Gen. Edmund P. Gaines, February 2, 1817.
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($19.95)
