Seminole Wars Authority

SW0119 GARI Archaeologists Excavate, Survey to Locate ’Lost’ Seminole Red Town of Chucochatti

 
Sean Norman, acting director for the Gulf Archaeological Research Institute, returns to the podcast to discuss the history of Chucochatti and what GARI found during their excavations and survey.
 
More than 250 years ago, a displaced group of Muscogee-speaking Upper Creek Indians established a settlement just outside present-day Brooksville, located north of Tampa.
Chucochatti, which means red house or red town, was a prosperous, self-sustaining Native community of deer hunters, traders, farmers and cattlemen. It was one of the first settlements of the Creek people in Florida. The town was so prosperous that Americans erroneously considered Chucochatti the seat of the Seminole Nation. With the American demand for removal, its chief, Blackdirt accepted federal payments and relocated his band to the Oklahoma Territory in 1836. During subsequent removal operations, the U.S. Army burned the abandoned down. Its location vanished into history.
Marker image courtesy of Tampa Bay Tribune
In May 2014, Seminole Tribe of Florida representatives cut a ribbon to unveil a roadside marker on the side of State Road 50 commemorating Chucochatti. In 2019, Brooksville City Council, seeking to pinpoint the exact location of the long-gone town, approved access to the city-owned, 56-acre Griffin Prairie. With support from tribal leaders, the institute and the Historic Hernando Preservation Society secured federal grant to delineate Chucochatti.
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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SW0118 An Uneven Fate awaited the International Cast of Characters after Prospect Bluff Battle

Warriors from Bondage by Jackson Walker portraying the attack on the Fortat Prospect Bluff, or as the Americans called it, the Negro Fort.
In previous episodes, we have examined the history and activities surrounding the Fort at Prospect Bluff and then its destruction and its grim aftermath.
In this episode, published on the anniversary of the fort's destruction, July 27, Historian Dale Cox returns to give us the rest of the story on many of the key figures involved. While the Americans executed the fort’s leaders, how did Abraham fare? What became of the survivors? Who was the Forbes agent who treated the maroons whom the Americans had deemed too injured to treat. Who was the Coweta leader who captured some 100 maroons outside the fort? What was the brutal fate that awaited the British officer who removed any remaining maroons in the fort’s vicinity to a Black Seminole town further inside Florida?  What does a long overlooked letter from Lt. Col. Duncan Clinch tell us about American intentions for the self-liberated blacks within Spanish Florida’s borders? And who was Mary Ashley, a black maroon who hoisted the British flag each morning, helping with firing artillery, and who was buried in dirt by the explosion? She lived a harrowing life afterwards but was redeemed some years later by the British officer responsible for overseeing the fort’s operations. Dale Cox discusses all this and more.
 
A British flag flies over the former grounds of the British (or Negro) fort at Prospect Bluff. A marker on site details the devastation. Below, the British evacuated blast survivors to Nero's Fort on Suwannee River. 
 
American officers submitted an inventory of the stores captured from what they dubbed the Negro Fort.
Secretary of War John C. Calhoun submitted a report to the Congress on the battle at Negro Fort. 
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. 
Subscribe automatically to the Seminole Wars through your favorite podcast catcher, such as iHeart or Stitcher or Spotify, DoubleTwist, or Pandora or Google podcasts or iTunes, or ... Check it out so you always get the latest episode without delay where and when you want it. Like us on Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube!

SW0117 Historian Dale Cox Recalls the Tragic, Devastating American Attack and Destruction of the ’Negro Fort’ at Prospect Bluff in July 1816

In a previous podcast, Historian Dale Cox set the stage for the American attack on the Fort at Prospect Bluff.
In this episode, Dale recalls the actual determined American campaign and the fort’s stubborn resistance between July 10 and July 27, 1816. This was not rag-tag defense by desperate self-liberated former slaves. These were well-trained British colonial marines who were black. Some indeed were former slaves, but all considered themselves free men and women. The fort’s defense was an all-hands operation with the wives and children filling bags with gun powder that the marines used to fire artillery rounds that kept the Americans at bay on the Apalachicola River in Spanish Florida. The marines successfully warded off continued American naval barrages until the Americans’ very last shot, when everything changed in a flash.
Reenactors portray British Colonial Marines of the 1816 era.
 
When open, visitors can walk the grounds of the fort. The National Park Service teamed with the US Forest Service to conduct a non-invasive above-ground survey of the fort's former confines. (Below) Pompey Fixico, a Seminole Maroon descendant from Los Angeles, spoke at the 200th Commemoration of the Battle of the Fort at Prospect Bluff, in 2016. 
Amidst the rubble, the Americans landed unopposed at the fort at Prospect Bluff. Authorities interviewed and executed some. And, regardless of previous manumission, the Americans condemned free, self-liberated maroons back into slavery, whether that was in the United States or in Spanish Florida.
A few months later, in the late fall of 1816, the British finally returned, only to find the fort destroyed and its occupants dead or re-enslaved. Then-Captain Woodbine picked up stragglers who had fled into the woods after the explosion. He resettled them at Nero’s Town on the Suwannee River, still, in Spanish Florida.
 
The Secretary of War forwarded to Congress a report on the Destruction of the Negro Fort, wholly "justifying" US action in the Spanish Florida territory, based on military reports. Dale Cox examines the fighting, the explosion, and the grim aftermath for the fort’s defenders. TwoEggTV produced a video feature that can be used as a supplement to this podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Uq8tl0tZBc
 
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. 
Subscribe automatically to the Seminole Wars through your favorite podcast catcher, such as iHeart or Stitcher or Spotify, DoubleTwist, or Pandora or Google podcasts or iTunes, or ... Check it out so you always get the latest episode without delay where and when you want it. Like us on Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube!

SW0116 A British-built Fort at Prospect Bluff in Spanish Florida Shielded Blacks and Indians from U.S. Territorial Designs on Apalachicola River

 
In July 1816, the so-called year without a summer, the U.S. military made war on an Apalachicola River outpost in Spanish Florida. It wasn’t the Spanish who were attacked, however. It wasn’t their fort. It also wasn’t the British who were attacked. The Treaty of Ghent ended the US war with Britain the previous year. So who was in this Fort at Prospect Bluff, which stood in defense and defiance against any intruders?
Historian Dale Cox author of, appropriately enough The Fort at Prospect Bluff, returns to the Seminole Wars podcast to explain who was in the fort and why the U.S. government viewed it as a threat, even though it operated in internationally recognized Spanish territory.
Note a sketch of the area (above) versus an above-ground LIDAR view of the outline today.
 
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. 
Subscribe automatically to the Seminole Wars through your favorite podcast catcher, such as iHeart or Stitcher or Spotify, DoubleTwist, or Pandora or Google podcasts or iTunes, or ... Check it out so you always get the latest episode without delay where and when you want it. Like us on Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube!
 

SW0115 Scholar David Fowler Recovers and Presents Riveting Narratives from One National Newspaper’s 1st Draft of Florida’s U.S. History

David Fowler published five volumes taking Florida's U.S. history from pre-territorial to territorial to statehood. 
 
It is a reporter’s conceit that journalism is the so-called first draft of history. When it comes to the Seminole Wars, it takes some digging into that first draft to determine what information people read at the time of newspaper publication. Chris Kimball has scourged the pages of the Army-Navy Chronicle to identify all references to the Seminole Wars. That was a great task but it was somewhat easier in that the ANC concerned itself with military news.
But an even more monumental task comes from examining what other newspapers of the era with a “national” reach reported. Take the Niles Weekly Register. The NWR was a general interest publication that included military news. A collection of just the Florida news comes from scholar David Fowler's five (!) volume Niles' Florida. 
Niles' Florida provides a comprehensive analysis of the dramatic and, often times, violent history of Florida, beginning with the role it played in the War of 1812, moving through an in-depth view of the Seminole Indian wars, and culminating with the admission of Florida into the American Union. Niles' Florida contains numerous anecdotes and narratives on events that played a key role in the transition of a wild territory, as described by Andrew Jackson, to become 27th state in our American Union. Detailed information is available on the activities of the Seminole Indians, Africans, British, Spanish, and Americans. Living the experiences of Florida's birth through the eyes of the people who were there, is the best history lesson you may ever get.
This project began for David Fowler when he visited an Indian mount in Fort Walton Beach, Florida and picked up a pamphlet that referenced a Black Seminole called Abraham, sense keeper for Micanopy. He was intrigued by this Abraham and sought to find more; David had caught the research bug. In due time, he volunteered for a task of not only identifying but also republishing every single article or reference about Abraham as presented in the Niles Weekly Register. He expanded it to cover all of Florida history referenced in the Register, including great coverage of the long Seminole Wars.
 
Newspaper illustration from a photograph of Abraham
In a series of volumes, David comprehensively traces and recovers what then-contemporary readers learned in real time about the progress of those regrettable conflicts. He combined his professions as a reporter, a librarian, and a historian to paint a unique picture of the birth and development of the Sunshine State. Its history unfolds like current events leading readers to turn the pages and discover even more.
David Fowler joins us to discuss the monumental undertaking.
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. 
Subscribe automatically to the Seminole Wars through your favorite podcast catcher, such as iHeart or Stitcher or Spotify, DoubleTwist, or Pandora or Google podcasts or iTunes, or ... Check it out so you always get the latest episode without delay where and when you want it. Like us on Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube!

SW0114 Marine Vietnam Vet Preserves Corps Heritage as Seminole War-era Leatherneck

Marines in the Second Seminole War served on land at and around Fort Foster in central Florida as well as in the Everglades where some dubbed them as swamp sailors. 
Visitors on the Fourth of July, American independence day, call at the Tampa Bay History Center to learn more about our heritage. Built on the site of the old Fort Brooke military reservation, the center invites distinguished guests to present on a number of topics. Marine Living Historian Dave Ekardt is one of them. He has been a perennial at the center over the years, presenting talks and demonstrations about the Marines in the Second Seminole War. He also presents at various recreated forts and commemorative battle events.
 
Dave Ekardt in a summer and temperate U.S. Marine Corps uniform from 1830s. 
He joins us today to share how in seven years of war, the Marines in Florida suffered nary a blemish to their reputation during their tour of duty. While an often futile assignment for the Army, Marines made the best of their presence and demonstrated without a doubt their great value to the nation’s leaders when the nation needed them for pressing business.
Dave shares stories and anecdotes about the Marines contributions to the Second Creek and Seminole Wars. The old man of the Marines, Commandant Archibald Henderson, proved a daring, brash, brave, and professional in running the Corps and in bringing them to Florida. Dave examines that deployment, as well as the Marines’ uniforms and chow, and how his natural curiosity helped him to acquire invaluable records on Marines. These covered the Seminole War but they also provided slices of life about Marines who served later, such as in Nicaragua. Dave pulled information from a variety of resources to eventually pen a book on that Marine’s service there.
Dave Ekardt has published three non-fiction books relating to the the Marines in U.S. military history. 
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. 
Subscribe automatically to the Seminole Wars through your favorite podcast catcher, such as iHeart or Stitcher or Spotify, DoubleTwist, or Pandora or Google podcasts or iTunes, or ... Check it out so you always get the latest episode without delay where and when you want it. Like us on Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube!

SW0113 The Great Rivalry at War: Regulars versus Militia Performance in the Second Seminole War

Regular Army soldiers were seen as professional in all manners of appearance and countenance.
In 1835, with the Federal Government tasked the U.S. Army to forcibly remove the Seminole from the Florida Territory, militia from Florida and volunteers from the several states, aided the regular Army in carrying out this controversial task. In this episode we will assess how the militia, volunteers, and regular Army performed. 
Jesse Marshall returns to talk with us about the militia and the regular Army in the Second Seminole War. He explains what it took to field, equip, train, and employ them in combat action. 
In contrast to the regular Army, popular representations of the militia as mustered were often less than flattering to the militia who were mustering. (above and below). 
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. 
Subscribe automatically to the Seminole Wars through your favorite podcast catcher, such as iHeart or Stitcher or Spotify, DoubleTwist, or Pandora or Google podcasts or iTunes, or ... Check it out so you always get the latest episode without delay where and when you want it. Like us on Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube!

SW0112 History Hunter Steve Carr Sifts Developer’s Dirt Fill Piles to Reveal Okeechobee Battle Artifacts

Pace Ringo Starr, confirmation of the site of the Okeechobee Battlefield did not come easy. By 1985, local memory was hazy, having been handed down for several generations from 1837. In addition, hand-drawn maps from various sources contemporary to the battle did not necessarily match each other or the actual geographic features they represented, in whole or in part. Consultants hired by land developers literally dug up dry holes through a subsurface that should have yielded artifacts from the clash. Oh, and the developers didn’t want any pesky outside archaeologists nosing around the property to prove them wrong and hold up, well, land development.
Enter Bob Carr and Bill Steele on one end. We’ve podcasted with Bill Steele, who shared his recollections. On the other end was Steve Carr, no relation to Bob. The Lake Worth, Florida-native knew something was amiss. The self-described History Hunter put on his thinking cap to assess the anomaly of the land yielding no artifacts on a site that had to be the battlefield.
Steve learned that the overall battlefield, while swampy in 1837, was many decades later covered with up to five-feet of dirt to fill in the swamp and let cattle graze. It is no wonder a shovel test showed no presence, the consultants were not digging deep enough because they did not know to suspect anything so far underneath.
When the development began, excavation began and bulldozers soon carved out land fill that reached the level of battle artifacts. Dumped in a pile on public land – and out of legal recourse from the developer – Steve dug into the accumulating landfill hills to release the mountain of artifacts confirming through physical presence that this was indeed the battlefield. The precise context was lost but Steve salvaged the artifacts and since he witnessed the dirt transported from the battlefield, he knew he could associate anything he found with that site.
 
A sample of artifacts on display at the annual reenactment of the battle of Okeechobee.
 
In this episode, Steve Carr joins us to tell how he used those artifacts to recover an important site and battle from the national memory hole.
Steve was an excellent candidate to do this. He studied archeology with world famous D Porter Dawson at the University of Georgia in 1978. In a stint with the U.S. Army, Steve served with both the 5th Special Forces and 24th Infantry Divisions, making three deployments to Central America. Palm Beach County was fortunate to enjoy his services as a paramedic for 27 years.
In a sense, this was most apropo. Steve patched up people as a paramedic and he patched up our understanding of the Okeechobee Battlefield with his salvage archaeology efforts.
Now, despite his primary avocation, Steve continued to pursue his archaeological interests on the side, as demonstrated with his mid-1980s work at Okeechobee. In 1993, he started salvage archeology projects with Preserving Our Heritage director Mike Crane. He has conducted numerous mound, ceramic, and civil war site recovery projects. And for our specific interest, he has surveyed or examined 24 Seminole Wars battle sites, including Okeechobee and also the Locha Hatchie surveys. He shared what he discovered during his 17 years teaching pioneer history at Barry University.  
 
 
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. 
Subscribe automatically to the Seminole Wars through your favorite podcast catcher, such as iHeart or Stitcher or Spotify, DoubleTwist, or Pandora or Google podcasts or iTunes, or ... Check it out so you always get the latest episode without delay where and when you want it. Like us on Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube!

SW0111 Dogged Researcher Used Shovels and Smarts to Confirm Okeechobee Battlefield Site

 
We’ve known of the Okeechobee Battle and its site since that encounter on Christmas Day 1837, near that great lake’s northern shore in the southern Florida peninsula. But then, we forgot. We forgot the battle and we forgot the site, other than a marker from the Daughters of the American Revolution. Instead, by the 1980s, we knew the vicinity of the battle but didn’t have any artifacts or other archaeological evidence to definitively say the battlefield was there.
When a housing developer canvassed the area in 1985, the consultants hired came up with “dry holes.” Still, a handful of history hunters and friends of the site and event, pulled out their own shovels – and smarts – to settle the matter. One of those stalwarts is Willard S. Steele, or Bill as we know him. He researched and rushed out a book on the Battle of Okeechobee in 1985, so the public could be informed better about the battle and why the site deserved to be preserved.
Bill’s work has centered around many of the most significant battle sites and villages associated with the history of the Seminole Tribe of Florida. As a contractor for the Archaeological and Historical Conservancy from 1982 to 2012, he scoured the area for signs of the battle and then performed gumshoe research work by identifying contemporary accounts of the battle so he could pinpoint locations on the actual battlefield.  At the roughly the same time, Bill managed operations at History Miami from 1984 to 1990.  In 2002 the Seminole Tribe of Florida hired Bill as their tribal Archivist and, shortly thereafter, appointed him as the Tribal Historic Preservation Officer, a position he held for 10 years. Even after 35 years and more on the case, Bill continues to discover new facets of the battle and the battlefield. He joins us to discuss all of this.
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. 
Subscribe automatically to the Seminole Wars through your favorite podcast catcher, such as iHeart or Stitcher or Spotify, DoubleTwist, or Pandora or Google podcasts or iTunes, or ... Check it out so you always get the latest episode without delay where and when you want it. Like us on Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube!

SW0110 Louie Bears Heart Living Historian Issues Urgent Call for Help to Restore Fort Foster

 
This week we look at the replica Fort Foster -- the history of the original fort and the story of how its replica was built. Today, the fort is closed to the public because of serious maintenance concerns with the wooden platform along its inside walls. In this episode, Louie Bears Heart, a re-enactor of Seminole life [and in his day job, Hillsborough County park ranger] brings the Fort Foster story to life. He also reminds visitors that if they want to help with the restoration of Fort Foster, an account is available for donations:
Hillsborough River State ParkC/O HRSP Preservation Society15402 US-301 NThonotosassa, FL 33592
 
or https://www.gofundme.com/f/restoration-of-fort-foster
 
 
 
Louie Bears Heart 
 
 
This platform inside the fort requires maintenance to ensure the safety of visitors. (Photos by Andrew Foster)
 
 
 
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. 
Subscribe automatically to the Seminole Wars through your favorite podcast catcher, such as iHeart or Stitcher or Spotify, DoubleTwist, or Pandora or Google podcasts or iTunes, or ... Check it out so you always get the latest episode without delay where and when you want it. Like us on Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube!