The Second Spanish Period

1784-1821

Part Four

William Augustus Bowles – Part Three

The flag of "Muskogee"

Spanish and Indian Relations at San Marcos

In the middle of 1792, Francisco Guesy was replaced as commandant of Fort San Marcos by Captain Francisco Montreuil. Montreuil hated the quite boredom of the backwoods Apalachee province, comparing a year at Fort San Marcos to “a century in purgatory.”[1] Constantly writing and requesting a transfer back to Pensacola, and complaining about sickness, Montreuil was replaced on May 27, 1793 by Captain Diego de Vegas. It was Vegas’s second time commanding the San Marcos garrison. Around the same time, Georgia militia general Elisha Clarke, a Revolutionary War hero, tried to form an independent republic by taking Creek lands on the Oconee River in Georgia. Twice he was involved in plans to invade Spanish Florida to the south. Clarke threatened the Creeks and Seminoles in Florida, Panton’s Wakulla store, and Fort San Marcos itself. The Governor of Louisiana and West Florida, Francisco Luis Hector de Carondelet, knew the fort was not formidable enough to withstand an American attack, so he sent a supply schooner immediately to Vegas at Fort San Marcos. He instructed the vessel to stay anchored at the fort until Clarke no longer was a threat. If the Americans did attack, Vegas was to destroy anything useful to them in the fort, and retreat to Pensacola with their honor intact. Luckily, the attack from Clarke and the Americans never came.

While William Augustus Bowles was still in captivity, his followers continued to linger around the Fort San Marcos, and Vegas wished he had enough food and gifts to give them in order to keep them happy. In May of 1794, a supply schooner called San Marcos de Apalache arrived at the fort bearing gifts for the locals, but no food unfortunately. Vegas knew that the Creeks, Miccosukees, and Seminoles were expecting food so he pinned a letter to Pensacola asking for some. The Indians were on hard times, as a drought had been in place for a few years, which of course meant a poor harvest. Vegas, being a man of honor and empathy, gave an elderly Seminole some food when he approached the fort one day offering to trade his blanket for some. Vegas gave him some foodstuff, but refused to take the poor man’s blanket.

Plans for San Marcos de Apalache, c.1791

The fort itself still had problems that continually plagued the men stationed there. As many of San Marcos’s commandants had done in the past, Vegas worked hard trying to get his superiors to acknowledge the fort’s weaknesses. On June 2, 1794 Vegas pinned a detailed description of the fort’s numerous failings. The wooden pickets in the stockade, which were the heavy, pointed polls of pine that created the fence-like fortifications, were rotting away. He wanted to replace them with a stone wall, which had originally been part of the plans, but was never completed. Only the western bastion on the Wakulla River side had been done, the rest was made out of wooden pickets. Vegas suggested that the existing limestone wall needed to be repaired as well. He asked government officials in Pensacola for artisans, carpenters, lumber, and a scow, which is a flat boat used for transporting. He wanted it to transport limestone from the quarry, by the old watchtower. Vegas also asked for gifts, food, and alcohol for the upcoming annual summer presents for the local Indians.[2]

The governor sent army engineer Juan Maria Perchet to San Marcos de Apalache to inspect the fort. Perchet recommended new, nine-foot-tall pickets for the stockade, loop holes for muskets to fire from while the soldiers could remain protected, and an earthen platform inside the stockade. Perchet’s recommendations were ignored. Vegas wrote another letter to the governor on behalf on the Indians, and also stated that if they did not please them there could be a bloody revolt, and the fort's condition would make it difficult to put down. In August, Governor Carondelet sent a schooner with gifts, munitions, food, and alcohol to San Marcos, but nothing to help repair and strengthen the fort. 

During the summer of 1795, one-fourth of the garrison at San Marcos was constantly sick, which usually left only twenty-five men to protect the fort in the event of an attack. Yellow fever hit the fortification, as well as a hurricane on August 12 which uprooted giant trees, destroyed the stockade, and swept everything that was not nailed down into the river. Water destroyed several wooden buildings within the fort, and wind ripped their roofs off. The Indian villages of Tallahassee and Miccosukee got hit by the hurricane badly as well, killing many Seminoles and Miccosukees.

After the hurricane was over, Vegas had his men do what they could do to repair the fort. In October, Lieutenant Colonel Francisco de Paula Gelabert arrived at San Marcos to inspect the fortress and suggest repairs. He made a report which requested a new, longer stockade on the north side of the fortification, a new moat, and repairs made to several of the building inside the fort. Nine months later, approval to repair the fort came from Spain, and Carondelet finally sent the men and supplies needed to do the job. By June, 1797 the work was completed, although the limestone wall was never repaired, and holes still existed in them. Vegas had the holes covered with lime, a temporary fix. In August of 1797, Vegas got mysteriously sick and died at San Marcos. He was replaced by Captain Juan Dominguez, a man unfit for the rugged life of garrisoning Fort San Marcos. His garrison had several soldiers commit desertion and he often complained about the condition of the fort. He was soon replaced by Captain Tomas Portell on February 11, 1798.

Indians in the area were still on hard times and the Spanish at San Marcos rarely had any provisions to offer them. In 1798 and 1799, Indian loyalty to the Spanish started to decline drastically because of this. Another thing that angered the Indians were the Spanish surveyors who were trying to mark the boundary between the United States and Spanish territories. The Indians did not understand what the surveyors were doing. The surveyors were harassed, mostly by the younger warriors, who stole their horses and fired their muskets at them.[3] A large group of Seminoles and Creeks gathered on the Chattahoochee River, promising to violently stop the surveying. The head of the American surveyors in the area, Andrew Ellicott, stopped his work and began to leave the area via his schooner, heading to the safety of St. Augustine.

At San Marcos, Portell tried to explain to the angered Indians that the surveying had nothing to do with their land, and would not affect them. To make matters in San Marcos worse, on September 11, 1799 a man named George Redden Foster suddenly arrived from East Florida. He had with him an employee of Panton, Leslie and Company. The two men were looking for Forrester, the man who ran the Wakulla store. Foster also had the Indians from Miccosukee meet with him. This was very strange and unnerving to the Spanish. Why was this man meeting with the Miccosukees? At the meeting, Foster told the Indians that a man was soon coming to talk to them, a very important man. Captain Portell inquired Foster about this secretive man, but he would not reveal any more information. Angered, Portell had Foster detained and his personal belongings investigated. The captain found some suspicious documents and arrested Foster. The Spaniards did not realize it yet, but the mysterious man who was coming to talk with the Indians was none other than William Augustus Bowles.

The Return of William Augustus Bowles

While imprisoned by the Spanish, the Anglo-Spanish War of 1796 began and Bowles was to be transported from the Philippines back to Spain, but he managed to escape to Sierra Leon, a free-black British colony in West Africa. Now free from Spanish captivity, and with the help of the British, William Augustus Bowles was on his way back to Florida, still with intentions of creating a free Indian state of Muskogee. When the Spanish government found out about Bowles’s escape they made the Spanish authorities in America aware. The Spanish ambassador to the United States was in Philadelphia when he received word. As quick as he could, he alerted Lieutenant Governor Vicente Folch at Pensacola and Governor of East Florida Enrique White. Soon, Governor Gayoso in New Orleans learned of Bowles’s imminent return to the Gulf Coast, and concerned himself about the unrest he could cause with the Indians there. Folch instructed Portell back at San Marcos to inquire among the Indians all he could learn about Bowles, and to try to sway the Indians to stay loyal to the Spanish. He also requested the Panton Wakulla store to do the same. The Spanish were getting prepared for Bowles’s return.

Trying to return to Florida, Bowles left England on a convoy of ships heading to the West Indies (the Caribbean). He arrived at Barbados where he tried to procure a ride to Florida. Unable to do so, two months later Bowles traveled to Jamaica. He stayed in Kingston for a few months, until the governor of Jamaica granted Bowles a ride on the war ship Fox. Bowles departed from Jamaica on August 10, 1799. He arrived at Nassau on August 22, where he gathered more volunteers and supplies needed for his goals in Florida. On September 4, Bowles and his crew left Nassau on the Fox, bound for the Florida Gulf Coast. Unfortunately for the adventurer Bowles, while sailing through the Gulf of Mexico, the Fox was battered by a severe storm with hurricane force winds, which propelled the ship into shallow waters along the Florida Gulf Coast. The captain of the Fox decided he needed to lighten the ships load, and began to cast Bowles’s supplies into the gulf. This did not help, as the Fox hit ground on the southeastern tip of St. George Island on September 18. The first people to discover that Bowles had returned and was marooned on St. George Island were his allies the Creeks, Miccosukees, and Seminoles, who were surprised and elated to see him, though they had been expecting him to return at some time. For the next two weeks, groups of Indians traveled to St. George Island to greet Bowles. They told him about a US schooner sailing the Apalachicola. It belonged to Andrew Ellicott.[4]

Andrew Ellicott

Andrew Ellicott, a United States surveyor who was leaving the area do to threats from the Indians, encountered the Fox stranded on St. George Island while heading to St. Augustine. The ship was on a wartime mission to transport “General Bowles, chief of the Creek nation, and his staff back to the Florida coast.”[5] Out of inquisitiveness, Ellicott decided to sail to St. George Island. Ellicott met William Augustus Bowles, and stated that he was an interesting man with considerable talents. He also stated that Bowles was delusional, referring to the Indians as “my nation” and “my people.” He gave the marooned men 1,500 pounds of flour and three sacks of rice. In these days, the British Navy impressed sailors from other countries into service, that is, forced them to serve. While grounded on St. George Island, seven impressed sailors, American and Irish, deserted. The men found a small boat and repaired it. They then sailed all around the coast of Florida until they arrived at St. Augustine in East Florida, where they warned Governor Enrique White of Bowles’s return to the Gulf Coast. Ellicott sailed from St. George Island, and reached San Marcos de Apalache on October 8, 1799. Ellicott warned Tomas Portell of Bowles’s arrival, and that the Spanish post was most likely in danger. Ellicott also wrote a letter and informed Lieutenant Governor of West Florida Vicente Folch about Bowles. Folch then wrote to his superior, requesting reinforcements to be placed at his command in order to capture Bowles. The acting governor of Louisiana and West Florida, Marques de Casa-Calvo, agreed to send some soldiers, but did not put them under Folch’s command. The Panton store on the Wakulla River, upon learning of Bowles’s return, gathered what they could and went to the fort for safety. At the fort, Portell discontinued the sale of weapons to the Indians, who were becoming more impatient with the Spanish.

Map of "State of Muskogee", which included present-day Wakulla County

William Augustus Bowles, the “Director General of Muskogee”, successfully landed on the Gulf coast of Florida, where he was expected by the Creeks, Miccosukees, and Seminoles. He left St. George Island and traveled up the Apalachicola River. On October 31, 1799, in a village called Wekiwa, on the banks of the Chattahoochee River, the Director General issued a proclamation that the treaty between Spain and the United States in 1795 was orchestrated “to subvert and destroy the right of Sovereignty which this nation and its confederates have held from the beginning of time.”[6] He appealed to the Indians anger towards the Spanish and called himself their liberator. He also demanded all people that were a part of Spain or the United States leave the Muskogee territory by November 9, 1799. This proclamation garnered a lot of support from the local Creeks and Seminoles.

To be continued in William Augustus Bowles Part Four (of Six)

Sources Used:

Din, G. C. (2012). War on the Gulf Coast: The Spanish Fight Against William Augustus Bowles. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.

Kinnaird, L., & Kinnaird, L. B. (1983, July). War Comes to San Marcos. Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol.LXII, No.1, pp. 25-40.

---

[1] Din, p.66

[2] Ibid. p.71

[3] Ibid. p.80

[4] Ibid. p.86

[5] Kinnaird, p. 26

[6] Ibid. p.28