Page 53 - John Anderson

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living east of the Mississippi to be relocated west of the river in the
new Indian Territory, what is now Oklahoma. In 1832 the Seminoles
were forced to sign the Treaty of Payne’s Landing, wherein they
supposedly agreed to give up all claim to homes in Florida and
immigrate to the new lands in the west.
All this ended with the outbreak of the Second Seminole War in 1835.
The Seminole Indians of Florida were revolting against U.S. policies
which would remove them to the Indian Territory in present-day
Oklahoma.
The majority of Seminoles repudiated the treaty and prepared to
defend their homeland. In December of 1835, conflict again erupted.
Seminole and black warriors ravaged the prosperous sugar
plantations along the St. Johns River, destroying the Territory’s largest
industry. On 28 December the famed leader Osceola killed Indian
Agent Wiley Thompson and an associate outside of Fort King (Ocala).
On the same day, a large Seminole force wiped out a column of 108
American soldiers marching from Fort Brooke (Tampa) to the safety of
Fort King. Several days later, the Seminoles repulsed an attack by
750 soldiers led by General Duncan Clinch at the Withlacoochee
River. Thus began the Second Seminole War, the longest, costliest,
and deadliest of all the wars the United States has fought against
Native Americans.
During the winter of 1835/1836, the citizens of St. Augustine
watched in dismay as clouds of billowing smoke drifted towards the
city from the south. Except for the slave quarters, all of the
plantations along the Halifax and Tomoka Rivers were burned to the
ground by the Seminole Indians. Efforts to save the plantations were
futile. The people of St. Augustine provided refuge for an exodus of
plantation inhabitants.
Within one month, the thriving plantations from Pellicer Creek to Cape
Canaveral were reduced to ruin. The heyday of sugar was over, and it
was never fully reestablished as an important crop in Northeastern
Florida.

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