About The Florida War
You could say Ponce started it. He splashed ashore in 1513 with his king’s banner and an expeditionary crew of steel-helmeted Spaniards. The Floridians — never having seen white people but forewarned they were bad news — chased him off. Juan Ponce de León tried again in 1521. This time a Floridian archer put an arrow through Ponce’s thigh, sending him not just back to his ship but soon into the sweet Hereafter.
Ponce was finished but his countrymen weren’t. Waves of them lapped ashore, soldiers, settlers and missionaries. Africans were also in the mix, free and enslaved. More than 300 years later — where this story picks up — the struggle between these three Atlantic peoples: Native Americans, Africans, and Europeans was still unfolding. The course it took in Florida was unlike anywhere else in America.
Because Florida is just different. Poking out into the Atlantic like a great sore thumb, it guards trade routes from the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. That made it strategically valuable to squabbling European powers. But this vast swampy peninsula was also a nearly impenetrable refuge for those escaping trouble up north and those who had long called it home.
Florida meant freedom to the Native American people who became the Seminoles. It also meant freedom to black people escaping slavery in Georgia, the Carolinas, and the territory’s coastal plantations. These two distinct peoples built a unique society.
Ponce’s colonizing dreams of 1521 died exactly 300 years later when Spain handed Florida over to the United States. The U.S. had its own radically different dream. Not of colonizing or christianizing the locals, but removing them entirely — mass deportation by race.
The result was the Florida war, from 1835 to 1842, also called the Second Seminole War. It became America’s longest, deadliest, and costliest war against its indigenous people. It saw the largest slave liberation in American history by an order of magnitude. Impressive superlatives.
But the conflict is largely forgotten. Even those of us who live in the former war zone know little about it. So many familiar places were contested ground: Sanford, New Smyrna, Port Orange, Ocala, Gainesville, Kissimmee, Shingle Creek (hi Disney World!), pretty much all of central Florida, then south to Lake Okeechobee and east to the Loxahatchee River (Jupiter).
My hope is that this series will jog the memory. It’s about the people, the motivations, the intrigues, and the heartbreak of this conflict. It’s about how this place was put on the course to become our Florida.
About me
I’m a lawyer and the Mayor of Maitland, a city in Florida that takes its name from the war. I’ve spent most of my career in the practice of federal Indian law — the U.S. law specific to Native American tribes. I’m also a history and politics guy with an interest not just in Florida but in Latin America and the Caribbean, among other places. My interest in the war began in elementary school when I first learned about the capture of Osceola, the great Seminole war leader. In college, the historical span of Native nations in what is now the southeastern U.S. opened far wider for me when I studied J. Leitch Wright’s book, Creeks and Seminoles. Since then, my bookshelves have groaned a little more every year. While I’m a Florida product with degrees from Florida State University and the University of Florida, my wife and I have also lived in Washington, D.C., Oregon, and Alaska, which all have special places in our hearts.
About you
If you’ve made it this far, maybe this interests you. You may be a Floridian wondering who was here before. Maybe you’re interested in Native American history. Maybe you’re intrigued by African maroon communities. (Or maybe you’re a relative or friend who is required to subscribe.) In any case, please read and comment, let me know if there’s something you’d like to see discussed. And if you are so moved, please share this with your friends.
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