SW067 Fort King Road Warriors: Key Avenue Blazes Military Path through Heart of Reservation

The Fort King Road bisected the heart of the Seminole Indians' Central Florida reservation. But it was not intended provocatively, at least until the war came. The Army used it to fulfill the U.S. Government's treaty obligations supplying provisions to the Seminole. Everyone considered it a generally safe road on which to travel; that is, until the ambush of Dade's column. That action transformed the Fort King Road into the essential travel artery in the Florida Theater of War to remove the Seminole Tribe to Oklahoma. How did it fare in this new role? 

Sean Norman, acting director of GARI, Gulf Archaeological Research Institute, joins us to discuss how the Fort King Road served as the key enabler of troops and supplies fighting in the first two years of the Second Seminole War. Battlefields may comprise a set piece of landscape but battles themselves can sprawl over a multitude of terrain, including roads. Sean Norman states why the Fort King Military road falls within such a parameter. He also explains the travails in laying a "blazed trail" and why just paving over what came before often seemed the best course. In our next episode, he returns to discuss the GARI survey on the area comprising the Fort King Road; what we can say about its terrain and its road workmanship; how baggage trains' vulnerability led to the need for military outposts and forts for security; and how it can be used to extrapolate general Seminole, Soldier, and Settler pathways to skirmishes, battles, and campaigns. 

 

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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