Chapter 7: 1837-1841, The Seminole War

William Harney had just been promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and assigned to duty in Florida. He arrived at St. Augustine in January of 1837 and promptly met with General Jesup to receive his new orders.

2 “Colonel Harney, you will assume command of four companies here and join Colonel Fanning at Volusia. From there, you will proceed together up the St. John’s River and find Emathla, Coacoochee and their warriors. Our objective is to round up all of the Seminoles, remove them from this state and conclude this business as quickly as possible,” the general told him.

3 Harney saluted and began preparing to carry out his orders. At that moment, however, he had no idea that he was embarking on an assignment that would drag on for four long years and take many twists and turns before it was over.

4 Colonel Fanning was a veteran of the War of 1812 who made do with only one arm and had a temper that was comparable to William’s own. “He’s a tough old son of a bitch,” Harney thought. “I think I can work with him.”

5 When the steamboats reached Lake Monroe, Harney suggested that they erect a breastwork of logs along the southern shore for protection. “The devils are close, and we’re exposed here,” Harney explained.

6 “Put the men to work!” Fanning agreed. Thus, within a short time, the soldiers had felled several trees and constructed a crude defensive position at the precise spot that Harney had chosen earlier. “It’s not pretty, but I think it will work!” he proclaimed with satisfaction.

7 “The men worked hard, sir,” Captain Charles Mellon said as he came up behind Harney, who was still admiring their work. “Yes, captain, I am pleased,” the colonel told him. “I’ll rest a little easier tonight. Make sure everyone is behind it when we bed down, and that their rifles are at the ready.” “Are you expecting trouble?” the captain asked. “I just like to be ready,” Harney smiled.

8 Early the next morning, before the sun had risen in the sky, the colonels and their men were awakened by the sound of Seminole war whoops and rifle fire. Bullets were flying everywhere at once. The sleepy men grabbed their weapons and began firing wildly into the darkness surrounding them. Captain Mellon stood upright and tried to steady the men closest to him. Suddenly, he sank to the ground again. He had been struck by one of the balls in his chest. Harney instinctively knew that he was dead.

9 “Steady yourselves, goddammit!” he shouted. “Don’t fire unless you see something to fire at!” At the same instant, Colonel Fanning ordered one of the steamboats to train its canon fire on the trees and cover in front of the breastworks. The shooting continued for several hours as the sun rose higher in the sky.

10 Finally, as the morning fog began to melt away, the Seminole rifles fell silent. Harney waited about fifteen minutes and sent a few scouts out to examine the area where the warriors had seemed to be concentrated. They found some discarded apparel, knives and bullet pouches, but no Indians. They did, however, find several trails through the brush and grass tinged with streaks of fresh blood where it appeared that the Seminoles had dragged their wounded warriors away from the battle.

11 Everyone was shaken up, but Harney’s breastworks had saved them from being slaughtered in the night. Thereafter, the place would be known as Fort Mellon in honor of the fallen captain.

12 By the middle of March, General Jesup had finally succeeded in persuading several of the Seminole chiefs to sign a treaty at Fort Dade. Under the terms of the agreement, all hostilities would immediately come to an end, and the chiefs agreed to assemble their people for removal from Florida within three weeks.

13 “I want you to immediately reoccupy Fort Mellon, construct adequate storage facilities, gather supplies and prepare to receive any Indians who may choose to surrender there,” Jesup ordered. “General, I really believe that I could be of better service to you and the army at Fort Dade,” Harney replied.

14 “Colonel Harney, I need you at Fort Mellon,” the general said flatly. “I believe that Fort Mellon will play a key role in gathering the Indians together for removal,” he explained. “You have your orders, Colonel!” the general interjected before Harney could offer further protest.

15 Consequently, Harney once again loaded troops and supplies aboard steamboats and traveled up the St. John’s River to Lake Monroe. Once there, they quickly set about the tasks that had been assigned to them and made excellent progress toward achieving those objectives.

16 Moreover, it soon became clear that General Jesup had been right about the role that Fort Mellon would play. Many of the chiefs in that part of the state led their people to the fort and proceeded to set up camps around it.

17 Nevertheless, the deadline had come and gone again to assemble the Indians for removal. Despite Harney’s reports about the Indians gathering around Fort Mellon, the general was growing impatient with the whole process. “There are too many stragglers,” he complained.

18 Then, at the beginning of May, Osceola himself showed up at Fort Mellon. Harney was ecstatic. The mere presence of the great warrior chief put him and Fort Mellon at the center of things.

19 “I am honored to have the great Osceola as my guest,” the colonel began. “Thank you,” the chief replied as he took Harney’s hand in his.

20 “I came here for the good of my people,” he continued. “You can see that our need is great. How will you help us?” he demanded. “We will see to your needs,” Harney assured him.

21 “Will you honor me by sharing my tent tonight?” the colonel asked. Osceola studied Harney’s face and wondered if his smile and warm welcome masked some sort of treachery.

22 “I will stay with you tonight,” he finally responded. “And we will talk of many things and see if we can be friends,” the chief concluded.

23 That evening, the two men sat across from each other in the colonel’s tent. At first, there was an awkward silence; but Osceola’s desire to take Harney’s measure was almost as great as the colonel’s was to take his. The chief made the first move.

24 “I met President Jackson when I was a boy,” he began. “He was very big in my eyes.” (Jackson had just destroyed his home and taken captive most of his family.)

25 “Yes, he always makes a big impression,” Harney smiled. “He has been a close friend of my family for over thirty years now. He’s almost like a father to me, and he would like to be a father to your people as well,” the colonel finished. “That tells me just about everything I need to know about you,” Osceola thought to himself.

26 “Where were you born, Colonel?” “I was born in Tennessee,” Harney replied. “Do you still live in Tennessee? Does your family live there?” Osceola questioned. “My home is in Missouri now,” Harney answered. “And yet, here we sit together in my home,” the chief continued.

27 “What do you think of my home?” he asked. “Honestly, I do not see why anyone would want to live here!” Harney said without flinching. “There are too many things here that are ready to bite or sting you, and everything is too wet and swampy,” he finished.

28 “Even things that bite and sting need a place to live!” Osceola chuckled. “It is unfortunate that we cannot all stay in the place where we are most at home.” “Are we talking about us or the Seminole people?” Harney asked. Osceola was silent.

29 “I think that you will like your new home, and there won’t be any white people there to harass you,” the colonel continued. “Where will my people go when the white man decides he wants that land?” the chief asked. Harney squirmed. “No one can tell what’s going to happen in the future,” he grumbled.

30 The colonel studied his guest’s face. “The president and the general hope that you will cooperate with our efforts to gather your people together and transport them to their new home,” he offered. “I brought my people here with me,” Osceola reminded him. “Yes, yes you did,” Harney concluded as he scratched his whiskers and sighed.

31 Within a few weeks, Osceola and his warriors had slipped away from Fort Mellon and liberated Jesup’s detention camp near Tampa Bay in the middle of the night. Even so, before he left Harney’s post, he had instructed his followers to get as far away from the fort as possible before sunrise. As a consequence, all the general’s careful preparations went up in smoke during the course of one summer night.

32 Colonel William Harney needed a break. General Jesup approved his request for leave, and he quickly left Florida to visit his wife and daughter in St. Louis. During his absence, Jesup had Osceola seized at a peace conference near St. Augustine and imprisoned. The chief died a few months later in captivity.

33 The following spring, General Zachary Taylor replaced Jesup in Florida. The months that followed were spent searching for scattered bands of Seminoles and attempting to pursue them into the wilderness. The natives, however, proved to be very skillful in eluding the soldiers.

34 Finally, in the spring of 1839, Washington sent General Alexander Macomb to Florida to negotiate a new peace agreement with the Indians. The resulting informal understanding that emerged from those talks allowed the Seminoles to remain in the southwestern part of the state for the time being. Consequently, General Macomb ordered Colonel Harney to scout out a site for a new trading post in the area and begin construction as soon as possible.

35 Harney selected a site along the Caloosahatchee River and named it Fort Van Buren in honor of Andrew Jackson’s successor to the presidency. “I’ll need two companies to guard the new post,” he told General Taylor.

36 “I cannot spare even one company for that business right now!” Taylor exclaimed in exasperation. “I’ll give you some more troops when the Indians begin to gather there,” he promised.

37 Frustrated, Harney did the best he could with twenty-two of his own dragoons. The colonel was able to persuade James Dallam of Tampa Bay to run the trading post, and a few Seminoles began drifting in to see what the new post had to offer.

38 Preoccupied with trying to keep the fort supplied, Harney summoned Sergeant Bigelow to his tent. “I need you to post guards and make sure that our men are vigilant about the security of this post,” he told him. “I understand, sir,” the sergeant assured him.

39 One evening, after hunting wild hogs all day to feed his soldiers, the tired colonel headed straight for his tent, pulled off his clothes and fell into bed. The next morning, he awoke to rifles firing and Seminole war whoops.

40 “What in the hell!” he exclaimed as he wiped the sleep out of his eyes. Then he heard someone shout, “Run for the river!”

41 Without bothering to dress, he quickly emerged from his tent and saw several of his men heading toward the river. Then he saw many warriors with rifles in their hands headed in his direction. There was no time to think. William made a mad dash for the woods. He ran and ran until he could no longer hear any footfalls behind him. He stopped, sweating and out of breath.

42 The colonel bent down and scooped up a big handful of mud and smeared it on his face, arms and legs. He heard a noise and crouched down behind one of the saw palmettos that was near him. It was one of his soldiers. “Hey, over here!” he whispered.

43 The man turned in the direction of the sound and hurried over to join the colonel. “We’re going to have to move quickly if we’re going to make it out of here,” Harney told him. The man nodded and followed the colonel out of the thicket.

44 Harney quickly circled back around to the river and found the canoe which he had earlier stowed there for just such an occasion. The two men pushed the craft out into the water, carefully slid into place and began paddling down the river. When they reached the open sea, they spotted a small boat with nine more men who had escaped the carnage at the fort. Both crafts quickly headed for shore and reunited on the beach.

45 “It was Chakaika and those damned Spanish Indians!” one of the men told him. “We’ll wait for dark and return to the fort,” Harney told them. “I doubt that we’ll find any survivors, but we have to try,” he explained. The men, although visibly shaken by the ordeal, all nodded their heads in agreement and waited for nightfall.

46 They made their way back up the river to Fort Van Buren through the darkness and stealthily slipped ashore. The stench of death and decomposition met them as they crept up the trail toward the post. Their dead and mutilated comrades were still lying where they had fallen. There was no one left to save.

47 The colonel motioned for his men to return to the river. He’d heard some of the Seminole warriors stirring in the camp which they had set up on the other side of the river. “We’ve only got two rifles,” he whispered to one of the men. “I don’t want to get all of us killed!”

48 After they made it back to the ocean, they sailed for Key Biscayne. As soon as the news of what had happened at the post reached the outside world, the fighting resumed throughout Florida.

49 “Our efforts to save these people from extermination have not been appreciated!” Harney exclaimed. “No more talking. We must hunt them down like animals and hang them from the highest trees!”

50 Nevertheless, the colonel’s health prevented him from exacting immediate revenge. He was granted leave and went to Havana to recover. His wife and children joined him there, and he was ready to return to Florida by May.

51 In the meantime, General Taylor had been replaced by General Walker Armistead. The new commander ordered Harney and his men to harass the Seminoles that were hiding in southern Florida.

52 Harney, however, was still plotting his revenge against Chakaika. In November, he hired a black prisoner named John to lead him to the chief’s hideout in the Everglades. Next, he borrowed some canoes from marines serving with the Mosquito Fleet. Then he led a detachment of about ninety men from Fort Dallas up the Miami River into the Everglades.

53 And, although Armistead had specifically forbidden him to dress his men in Indian garb, Harney disregarded the order and did it anyway. “It will be harder for those bastards to tell we’re coming!” he had told his men before they got started.

54 They encountered their first natives two days later. They quickly overtook two families paddling through the dark water and forced them to a nearby island. “Hang them!” Harney ordered as he pointed at the two adult men. The women and children watched in horror as the soldiers carried out the colonel’s order.

55 Harney turned toward John. “Tell the women that I’m going to hang their children if they don’t show me where Chakaika’s camp is located!”

56 The Black man swallowed hard and turned to the women. Harney didn’t need a translator. He knew instantly that they had refused.

57 “I can lead you to his island,” John volunteered. “Alright then!” the colonel exclaimed as he turned and headed back to the canoes.

58 They went ashore without being detected. Chakaika was chopping wood when the soldiers stormed into his camp.

59 He laid down his axe, smiled and offered his hand to the nearest soldier. The soldier promptly raised his rifle and pulled the trigger. The chief dropped dead before him. He then knelt down beside him, took out his knife and scalped Chakaika.

60 Several more warriors were captured, along with the chief’s wife and children. When the fighting stopped, the colonel ordered his men to gather everyone around two prominent trees located at the edge of the camp. Once again, he pointed at two of the warriors and said, “Hang them!”

61 With his thirst for vengeance satiated, he returned to Fort Dallas. Harney had demonstrated that the United States Army could penetrate the Everglades and find the Seminoles who were hiding there. The grateful state of Florida presented him with a commendation and a sword.