The Second Spanish Period

1784-1821

Part Nine

Road to the First Seminole War

Representative image of items for sale/trade from the British to Florida Indians

Ambrister, Arbuthnot, and the Florida Indians

            Before Captain George Woodbine of the British Royal Marines departed from the Apalachicola River, he summoned Kinache, the British-friendly chief of Miccosukee who had once been allies with William Augustus Bowles, to a meeting in which he promised the chief he would return to Florida in a year. About a year later, the former governor of Georgia and new U.S. Indian Agent David Mitchell informed the U.S. Secretary of War “that a British agent is now among these hostile Indians, and that he has been sending insolent messages to friendly Indians and white men settled above the Spanish line.”[1]

In actuality, there were at least two British agents meddling in Florida in 1817, who were actively enticing the Indians to war on Americans. One was an elderly Scottish trader named Alexander Arbuthnot. Arbuthnot had been trading with the Creeks and Seminoles for some time from his base in the Bahamas, but he moved to Florida to replace John Forbes and Company in 1817. His activities in Florida were of great concern to the United States because Arbuthnot had basically became the new Nicholls. Arbuthnot wrote several letters to British officials requesting that the British government protect the Florida Indians. He requested arms and ammunition, as well as other supplies. He wanted to see all Creek lands that were taken via the Treaty of Fort Jackson returned to their rightful owners. The Creeks and Seminoles even gave Arbuthnot power of attorney, signed by twelve Creek and Seminole chiefs, many of whom were wanted men in the United States.[2] 

Brigadier General Edmund P. Gaines

Arbuthnot sent letters to American officials as well, stating that the British government would not tolerate Americans trespassing onto Creek and Seminole lands, including those taken in the Treaty of Fort Jackson, which was now a part of the United States. This made Alexander Arbuthnot a wanted man in the United States. In a letter from Muscogee chiefs to the King of England, the Indians requested that British officers should be dispatched to their lands to help fight American encroachment. “We have found and bled for him (King of England) against the Americans, by which we have made them our bitter enemies. Surely, then, he will not forget the suffering of his once happy children here.”[3]

The other British agent stirring up trouble in Florida was former officer Robert Ambrister. Ambrister, like Arbuthnot, frequently requested arms, ammunition, and supplies from the British government for the Indians to use to resist American encroachment along the Florida border. Arbuthnot and Ambrister were not working together, in fact Arbuthnot did not like Ambrister, but the United States just viewed the two as the new “Nicholls and Woodbine.”

Escalating Tensions

In 1817, the newspapers of Georgia were full of atrocities committed by Florida Indians. The Americans and the Seminoles did not like each other, and tensions were on the rise. American squatters, and outlaws, often raided Seminole villages, killing them and taking their cattle. This angered the Seminoles, and often young warriors would retaliate by stealing their cattle back. In February of 1817, a group of Seminoles attacked the isolated home of the Garrett family, located near the St. Mary’s River, just north of the Florida border in Georgia. While Obediah Garrett was away, who the Seminoles believed had earlier murdered one of their own, the Seminoles found his wife and two children, one a toddler, the other a baby, and shot and stabbed them to death, before they took their scalps.

“I received by the last weeks mail a letter from the Honble. Archd. Clark, Intendant of the town of St. Mary’s,” Brigadier General Edmund P. Gaines wrote Jackson, “which it appears that another outrage of uncommon cruelty and barbarism has recently been perpetrated on the southern frontier of Georgia. A party of Indians attacked a defenseless family and massacred a women (Mrs. Garrot) and her two children – the women and eldest child were scalped, the house robbed and set on fire.”[4] In the same letter, Gaines goes on to tell Jackson of a man named Alexander Arbuthnot. “I enclose also, a letter signed ‘A[lexander] Arbuthnott.’ This letter appears to have been written by one of those self-styled Philanthropists who have long infested our neighboring Indian villages, in the character of British Agents – fomenting a spirit of discord.”[5]

With already bad relations between the Americans in Georgia and the Seminoles, and Miccosukees, the murder of the Garret family only made matters worse. Once Americans learned of the Garrett murders, many of them sought vengeance on any Indian they came across near the Florida-Georgia border. However, let it be known that Georgians killed far more Florida Indians then the Indians killed Georgians. Gaines blamed the hostility on Kinache’s Miccosukee people and pinned the Seminole chief a letter stating “Your Seminole are very bad people…you have murdered many of my people, and stolen my cattle…but just give me the murderers and I will show them my law.”[6] Gaines goes on to warn the chief to stay away from Englishmen, and requested permission to enter their towns to retrieve “my black people”.

As you can imagine, Gaines’s letter to the Seminole chiefs greatly angered them. Chief Kinache responded by writing, “You charge me with killing your people, stealing your cattle, and burning your houses. It is I that have cause to complain about the Americans. Where one American has been justly killed while in the act of stealing cattle, more than four Indians have been murdered while hunting by those lawless freebooters. I harbor no negroes. When the Englishmen were at war with America (War of 1812), some took shelter among them; and it is for you white people to settle those things among yourselves, and not to trouble us with what we know nothing about. I shall use force to stop any armed Americans from passing my towns or my lands.”[7]

Chief Neamathla

After receiving the Kinache’s response, and infuriated by it, Gaines pinned another letter to General Andrew Jackson, dated October 1, 1817, which stated, “They (the Seminole chiefs) acknowledge the murder of a women (Mrs. Garret) and her two children- but justify the act upon the ground that the Warriors who committed the this outrage had lost friends, had entered our Settlements to take satisfaction, found at the house of Garret a kettle belonging to the Indians that had been killed, and therefore ‘Supposing the murder had been committed by the husband of the women.’ Killed her and her children… I am convinced that nothing but the application of force, will be sufficient to ensure a permanent adjustment of this affair. I shall therefor put the First Brigade in motion for Fort Scott as soon as I can possibly obtain transportation, and I trust that I shall at least by the 20^th or 25^th reach that place…My heavy supplies will go by water with suitable guards; the principle part of the force however will go by Land; and in any event we shall finish the new road, near one third of which is already completed. By a letter from Major (David E.) Twiggs the Commandant of Fort Scott, I learn that he had been warned, some weeks past, by the principle Chief (Neamathla) of the Fowl Town (fifteen miles above the Fort, and nearly twenty miles above the national boundary), ‘not to cut another stick on the East of Flint River,’ adding that ‘the land was his, and he was directed by the powers above to protect and defend it, and should do so; and it would be seen that talking could not frighten him’. Major Twiggs adds that he had not seen the Chief nor any of his people since he made the above threat, and that the Indians of this town alone had recently stolen and killed an hundred head of cattle in one drove. I shall confer with the agent upon the subject of punishing and removing out of our limits these disorderly Indians.”[8]

Map showing Major Muhlenburg's path from Alabama to Apalachicola Bay and the location of Fort Scott just above the Georgia line.

From Alabama, General Gaines, with a guard made up of troops from the 4^th and 7^th U.S. Infantry left for Fort Scott before the full force of the First Brigade. Before Gaines departed, he ordered Brevet Major Peter Muhlenburg, of the 4^th Infantry, to proceed to Fort Scott from Mobile Bay with vital supplies. The water route forced him to sail down the Gulf Coast of Spanish Florida and up the Apalachicola River. Once Gaines arrived at Fort Scott, he was surprised that Major Muhlenberg was not already there. “I regret to be under the necessity of saying to you (General Jackson) that Major [Peter] Muhlenburg [Jr.] with the detachment and supplies sent around by water, has not yet arrived.”[9] Concerned for the supplies that were very badly needed at Fort Scott, General Gaines dispatched Lieutenant Richard W. Scott of the 7^th Infantry with 40 soldiers to travel down the Apalachicola, to locate Major Muhlenburg and help him reach the fort safely. Gaines then turned his attention to the reason he was there, which was to chastise Chief Neamathla of Fowltown.

Sources used:

Belko, W. S. (2011). Epilogue to the War of 1812. In W. S. Belko, America's Hundred Years' War: U.S. Expansion to the Gulf Coast and the Fate of the Seminole, 1763-1858 (pp. 54-102). Gainesville: University Press of Florida.

Moser, H. D., Hoth, D. R., & Hoemann, G. H. (1994). The Papers of Andrew Jackson, Volume IV, 1816-1820. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press.

Remini, R. V. (2008). Andrew Jackson: A Biography. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

American State Papers, Foreign Relations, Vol. 4. 1815-1822 - http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwsplink.html

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[1] Belko, p.73

[2] Ibid. p.74

[3] Remini, p.147

[4] Gaines to Jackson, April 2, 1817, The Andrew Jackson Papers V.4, p.106-107

[5] Ibid, p.107

[6] Gaines to Seminole chiefs, ASPFR.V4.p585-586

[7] Kinache to Gaines, ASPFR,V4.p.586

[8] Gaines to Jackson, Oct. 1, 1817, The Andrew Jackson Papers V.4, p140-141

[9] Gaines to Jackson, Nov. 21, 1817, The Andrew Jackson Papers V.4, p151