Simple historic facts. I quote them as illustrating the events that ushered in the Seminole war. Barbarous though they be, they were but acts of retaliation—the wild outburst of a vengeance long pent up—a return for wrongs and insults patiently endured.
As yet, no general engagement had taken place; but marauding parties sprang up simultaneously in different places. Many of those who had inflicted outrage upon the Indians were forthwith repaid; and many barely escaped with their lives. Conflagration succeeded conflagration, until the whole country was on fire. Those who lived in the interior, or upon the borders of the Indian reserve, were compelled to abandon their crops, their stock, their implements of husbandly, their furniture, and indeed every article of value, and seek shelter within the forts, or concentrate themselves in the neighbouring villages, around which stockades were erected for their better security.
The friendly chiefs—the Omatlas and others—with about four hundred followers, abandoned their towns, and fled to Fort Brooke for protection.
The strife was no longer hypothetical, no longer doubtful; it was declared in the wild Yo-ho-ehee! that night and day was heard ringing in the woods.
Chapter Fifty.
Tracing a Strange Horseman.
As yet but few troops had reached Florida, though detachments were on the way from New Orleans, Fort Moultrie, Savannah, Mobile, and other dépôts, where the soldiers of the United States are usually stationed. Corps of volunteers, however, were being hastily levied in the larger towns of Georgia, Carolina, and Florida itself; and every settlement was mustering its quota to enter upon the campaign.
It was deemed advisable to raise a force in the settlements of the Suwanee—my native district—and on this duty my friend Gallagher was dispatched, with myself to act as his lieutenant.