“The whole country south of St. Augustine has been laid waste during the past week, and not a building of any value left standing. There is not a single house remaining between this city and Cape Florida, a distance of 250 miles.”
When this occurred the original Indian tribes of Florida encountered by the early Spaniards had completely disappeared. Some had been wiped out during the long period of border conflict with the English. Others had succumbed to epidemics of disease. By the early 1800’s the principal Indians found in Florida were called Seminoles, and were a combination of several tribal remnants from Georgia and Alabama.
Under United States rule the Seminoles were first restricted to a more limited area by the Treaty of Moultrie in 1823. But as settlers continued to pour in, a demand arose for their complete removal from Florida to reservations in the West, which the younger Seminole leaders were determined to resist. The effort to force their removal to western reservations resulted in conflict that dragged on for seven years, from 1835 to 1842.
Officer after officer was sent to Florida to take command of operations against the Indians, including General Winfield Scott of subsequent Mexican War fame; and General Zachary Taylor, later to become President of the United States. But roving bands of Seminoles continued to strike and vanish into the dense swamps and little known woodlands.
In 1837 two prominent Seminole leaders, Osceola and Coacoochee, with seventy of their warriors, were seized by General Hernandez under orders from General Jesup at a point a few miles south of St. Augustine. The Indians had come in under a white flag for a parley with United States officers. The captives were brought to St. Augustine and imprisoned in the Castillo, from which Coacoochee and twenty companions managed to escape. Osceola died soon after transfer to Fort Moultrie, Charleston.
During May of 1840 a party of actors enroute from Picolata to St. Augustine were attacked by Indians, and near the same point two St. Augustine residents were murdered.
“It is useless to complain,” stated a news item of the day. “The fact remains that we have been pent up in this little city for the last four years and a half by a few worthless outlaws. Our friends and neighbors, one after another, have been hastened to the mansions of the dead, and he who is foolhardy enough to venture beyond the gates may be the next victim.”
But St. Augustine as usual managed to be gay. A young lieutenant, William Tecumseh Sherman of later Civil War fame, was stationed at Picolata and frequently rode into St. Augustine for diversion. In one of his letters home he wrote under date of February 15, 1842:
“The inhabitants (of St. Augustine) still preserve the old ceremonies and festivities of old Spain. Balls, masquerades, etc., are celebrated during the gay season of the Carnival (just over), and the most religious observance of Lent in public, whilst in private they can not refrain from dancing and merry making. Indeed, I never saw anything like it—dancing, dancing, and nothing but dancing, but not such as you see in the North. Such ease and grace as I never before beheld.”
Dr. Motte, a young military surgeon, made a similar observation in his journal: “The St. Augustine ladies certainly danced more gracefully, and kept better time, than any of my fair country women I ever saw in northern cities. It was really delightful to see the beautiful Minorcan girls moving through their intricate waltz to the music of violin and tambourine.”