SW017 God Willing a Creek Will Rise: Reinterpreting David Moniac's Heroism and Death at Wahoo Swamp Battle

The folk expression, “If God is willing and the Creek don’t rise” traces one lineage to a probably (and sadly) apocryphal letter from an early 19th century Superintendent of Indian Affairs. If true, it would have referred to lingering fears regarding a potential Indian insurrection, not to an overflowing of the banks of a body of water, as is commonly assumed today.  

In this episode, we modify it for a third use: By looking closely at the exemplary heroism of the extraordinary David Moniac in the Second Seminole War, we pray the esteem of this Creek will rise among our podcast's listeners. 

You see, David Moniac was a Creek, one of mixed ancestry. He held the distinction as both the first Native American and the first Alabaman to secure an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy, from which he graduated with the Class of 1822 at West Point, N.Y. Moniac lead a band of 750 Creek warriors (serving alongside a US Army contingent) against the Seminole at Florida's Wahoo Swamp in present-day Sumter County.  Major General Thomas Jesup declared Moniac "as brave and gallant a man as ever drew a sword or faced an enemy." He perished in the fighting.

Generations of historians have attributed Moniac's death to being struck down by a "barrage of galling fire" from Seminoles perched on the other side of a stream that Moniac had been attempting to cross. They draw this narrative from the later recollections of a military officer who was in the vicinity but not actually present at the site of this specific engagement. 

Something did not seem right with this long-accepted report, however, to retired US Army Brigadier General Richard Allen. Why would a West Point-trained officer attempt crossing a stream of an unknown depth to reach a hostile shore in the middle of a fire fight? Allen, an artillery and later ordinance officer who’d commanded troops in Vietnam, knows soldiering and he knows jungle fighting. A graduate of the US Army War College and the US Army Command and Staff College, which he completed first in his class, Allen also knows researching.

For the occasion of the 2019 bicentennial of Alabama’s entry into the Union, Allen began exploring its favorite sons of the era. This is when he first encountered the curious circumstances surrounding David Moniac’s death. Backed by previously overlooked official documents as well as his own common sense about military matters and swamp terrain, Allen makes a most persuasive case that Moniac’s action in this battle was even more heroic than the diarists and historians ever suspected. Allen joins us today to share his revelatory findings. [Art of David Moniac leading Creeks at Battle of Wahoo Swamp by Jackson Walker]

Host Patrick Swan is a board member with the Seminole Wars Foundation. He is a combat veteran and of the U.S. Army, serving in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, and Kosovo, and at the Pentagon after 9/11. A military historian, he holds masters degrees in Public History, Communication, and Homeland Security, and is a graduate of the US Army War College with an advanced degree in strategic studies. This podcast is recorded at the homestead of the Seminole Wars Foundation in Bushnell, Florida. 

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