Existing comment:
The guard quarters. One of the people they had guard was Osceola and his men. As one of the signs says:
Florida's best known Indian group, the Seminoles, are relatively newcomers to the pages of Florida history. The first bands of Creek Indians to move from British Georgia into Spanish Florida in the early 1700's were arriving 200 years after the first Spanish explorations and settlements. Throughout the 18th century, fragments of several Indian tribes from today's Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina moved south and were joined by runaway black slaves from British plantations, who often lived as vassals of the Indian towns in north and central Florida
The name Seminole comes from a Muskogee word "semano-li" which comes in turn from the Spanish term "cimarron," meaning wild or runaway.
In 1832, Federal policy aimed to removed [sic] Indians from all lands east of the Mississippi to make way for expanding white settlements. Most Seminoles refused to be moved to the "Indian Territory". In 1835, guerilla fighting broke out; the next seven years proved to be the most costly Indian war ever fought by the United States Army.
Osceola, a war leader, was arrested under a flag of truce just south of St Augustine in October 1837. He and 203 Seminoles were imprisoned here at Fort Marion for two months. In late November 1837, twenty Indians led by Wildcat and John Cavallo escaped from the fort and fled south the Everglades. In December, Osceola and the other prisoners were transferred to Fort Moultrie at Charleston, South Carolina. Osceola died there from an infection in January 1838. Only about 200 Seminoles remained hidden in south Florida at the end of the Seminole wars. |