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</a></font><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000">December 24,
2009<br><br>
</font><h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><b>The Battle of
Lake Okeechobee <br><br>
</i></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#990000">
Christmas Eve Freedom Fighters
</b></font></h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4>By WILLIAM
LOREN KATZ <br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=6 color="#990000">T</font>
<font face="Verdana" size=2>his Christmas Eve marks the 172nd anniversary
of a battle for liberty in 1837 on the banks of Lake Okeechobee, Florida,
that helped shape the United States of America. An estimated 380 to 480
freedom-fighting African and Indian members of the Seminole nation threw
back an advance of more than a thousand US Army and other troops led by
Colonel Zachary Taylor, a future President of the United States.
<br><br>
The Seminoles so badly mauled the invaders that Taylor ordered his
soldiers to fall back, bury their dead, tend to their wounded and ponder
the largest single US defeat in decades of Indian warfare. The battle of
Lake Okeechobee is not a story you will find in school or college
textbooks so it has slipped from the public consciousness. But in a
country that cherishes its freedom-fighting heritage, Black and Red
Seminoles of Florida sent everyone a message that deserves to be
remembered and honored. <br><br>
Around 1776 the Seminole nation had reconstituted itself as a
multicultural nation by aligning itself with escaped Africans who had
long lived in the peninsula. Beginning in the early 18th century hundreds
of African Americans had fled bondage in Georgia and the Carolinas to
find refuge and a productive life in Florida. Though Spain claimed
Florida, it was an ungoverned land in which Native Americans roamed
freely as did slave runaways, pirates and whites who rejected the
limitation established by European invaders. <br><br>
Generations of slave runaways established plantations in Florida, raised
cattle and horses, brought up their children and took care of their
elderly. For fifty miles along the Appalachacola river, African people
ran plantations, and pursued a healthy, happy family life. When the
Seminoles, a break-away segment of the Creek Nation, arrived in the
penninsula around the time of the American Revolution, Africans were on
hand to instruct them in methods of rice cultivation they had learned in
Senegambia and Sierra Leone. Based on this cooperation, two peoples of
color hammered out an agricultural and military alliance against US
slaveholder posses that periodically raided their communities. <br><br>
In 1816 General Andrew Jackson, hero of New Orleans and commander of US
Armies in Florida, determined to terminate this resistance on the
southern flank of the US border. To Jackson and slaveholders who
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dominated the federal government, Florida's free Seminole people of color
constituted a clear and present danger to the US slave system. They saw
these free communities as holding a beacon light that could entice
thousands of runaways to bolt Georgia, the Carolinas and Louisiana. Even
more, the Seminoles offered escapees a safe haven. Perhaps most
important, since Africans played a leadership role in the
newly-integrated Seminole Nation, their villages stood as a successful,
alternative societies, and refuted white claims that Africans were meant
to be slaves. <br><br>
Prodded by slaveholders, Washington officials connived at destroying the
Seminole alliance, and re-enslavement of the African members. Beginning
in 1811 President James Madison, Virginia slaveholder and father of the
U.S. Constitution, provided covert US support to this military effort.
Finally, in 1819, the United States purchased Florida from Spain, and
prepared to settle scores with the Seminoles. The Seminole nation,
however, refused to capitulate, and rejected any surrender its African
brothers and sisters members. <br><br>
The result was three Seminoles wars that lasted from 1816 to 1858, at
times tied up half of the US Army, cost the Congress $40,000,000 and took
1500 US military deaths. This also represented the single largest and
longest explosion of slave resistance in the United States. <br><br>
Throughout Africans played key roles. In 1837, when US troops were
engaged in the second Seminole wars U.S. General Sidney Thomas Jesup, the
best informed US officer in the field, wrote "This, you may be
assured, is a negro and not an Indian war." He continued: <br><br>
Throughout my operations I have found the negroes the most active and
determined warriors; and during the conferences with the Indian chiefs I
ascertained they exercised an almost controlling influence over them.
<br><br>
Because Seminoles fought in a jungle area they knew better than the white
invaders, their armies ran circles around their numerically and
technologically superior foe. Though they had the added burden of moving
their families out of harm's way, Seminoles soldiers were able to baffle,
surprise and humiliate the US army, navy and marines. In its desperation
to quell resistance, the US officers ordered the taking of women and
children as hostages and the violation other codes of warfare. These
tactics did not achieve victory or split the red-black alliance but they
indicate that the Seminole war can be viewed as early versions of US
intervention and disaster in Vietnam. <br><br>
In 1837 Chief Osceola and other Seminole leaders were seized coming with
a white flag to a conference called by U.S. authorities. Osceola's
personal bodyguard of 55 at the time included 52 men of African descent.
US forces imprisoned the Seminoles in a cell in Castillo de San Marcos,
later renamed Fort Marion, in St. Augustine. Osceola, ill and depressed,
sat slumped on the floor, his life ebbing away. Army officials also
captured another Seminole peace delegation that included two fire-brands
of the resistance, Wild Cat or Coacoochee, 25, and his Black sub-chief,
John Horse, also 25. <br><br>
Bilingual, tall, powerfully built and a commanding presence, Horse draped
himself in silver amulets, rich sashes and elaborate, bright plumed head
shawls. Widely respected for his knowledge of the foe, and a crack shot,
Horse occupied a strategic position among the Seminoles. Revered for his
often-tested diplomatic talent, calm self-assurance and courage in
battle, he also was brother-in-law of Holatoochee, a leading Seminole who
had the ear of Miconopy, the nation's ruler. Chiefs such as Jumper and
Holatoochee repeatedly asked Horse to negotiate with US authorities.
<br><br>
From their 18 foot by 33 foot cell at Fort Marion where they were held
with two dozen Seminole prisoners, Coacoochee and Horse devised a plan.
"We resolved to make our escape or die in the attempt," Wild
Cat later wrote. They took weeks to loosen the iron bar in the jail's 18
foot roof and create a hole eight inches wide. The heavier prisoners
agreed to diet in order to slip through, and some 20 prisoners, including
two women, escaped through the opening. For over five days the band made
its way southward gathering allies and guns and living "on roots and
berries"<br><br>
U.S. Colonel Zachary Taylor raced after them accompanied by 70 Delaware
Indian mercenaries, l80 Missouri riflemen and 800 U.S. regular army
soldiers from the Sixth Infantry, the Fourth Infantry and Taylor's First
Infantry Regiment. The day before Christmas US forces located the
Seminoles, who had carefully positioned themselves at the northeast
corner of Lake Okeechobee. Seminole marksmen were perched in the tall
grass or in trees, the sprawling Lake a few hundred yards behind
them.<br><br>
Taylor's forces advanced through a swampy area and its five foot high
razor-edged sawgrass. Movement was impassable for horses, and extremely
difficult for humans as soldiers sank up to their thighs in the mud and
water beneath them. <br><br>
At 12:30 in the afternoon of Christmas eve Seminole snipers prepared for
battle. The first shot had yet to be fired when the Delawares, sensing
disaster, deserted and left. The Missouri riflemen charged toward the
Seminoles but a withering fire brought down their commander, many
commissioned officers and some of non-commissioned officers. The
Tennesseans fled. <br><br>
Colonel Taylor then ordered his regular army troops forward but they
encountered deadly rifle fire. He later reported their earliest barrages
brought down "every officer, with one exception, as well as most of
the non-commissioned officers" and left "but four . . .
untouched." After a two and a half hour battle in which they had
been outnumbered, Semnole forces fell back their canoes and made their
escape. <br><br>
As Christmas Day dawned Colonel Taylor forces counted 26 U.S. dead and
112 wounded, seven dead for each dead Seminole fighter, and the US had
taken no prisoners. US troops rounded up 100 Seminole ponies and 600
cattle. <br><br>
Lake Okeechobee was the US military's most decisive defeat in more than
four decades of warfare in Florida. Four days after his army limped back
to Fort Gardner, however, Colonel Taylor claimed victory. He said:
"the Indians were driven in every direction." The US Army
accepted his report, and promoted him. <br><br>
From that point, however, US officers had to recognize the unity and
strength of the African-Seminole alliance. Said General Thomas Sidney
Jesup, "The negroes rule the Indians, and it is important that they
should feel themselves secure; if they should become alarmed and hold
out, the war will be resumed." <br><br>
Based on his reputation as an "Indian fighter," Zachary Taylor
was elected the 12th President of the United States. Historians continue
to distort the battle of Lake Okeechobee. In The Almanac of American
History (1983), Arthur Schlesinger Jr. summarized the battle in one
inaccurate sentence, “Fighting in the Second Seminole War, General
Zachary Taylor defeats a group of Seminoles at Okeechobee Swamp,
Florida.” <br><br>
This is the nation of Patrick Henry and “Give me Liberty or give me
death!” The United States was born in struggle against British colonial
rule. It proudly declared people had natural rights and dedicated itself
to self-determination. The heroic, freedom fighting struggle of the
Seminole nation stands as a milestone in the American battle for
liberty.<br><br>
<b>William Loren Katz</b> is the author of
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0689809018/counterpunchmaga">
Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage</a>. His new, revised edition of
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0767912314/counterpunchmaga">
The Black West</a> [Harlem Moon/Random House, 2005] also includes
information on the Philippine occupation, and can now be found in
bookstores. He can be reached through his website:
<a href="http://www.williamlkatz.com/">www.williamlkatz.com</a><br><br>
<br><br>
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