Chipco | |
---|---|
Native name | Echo Emathla (Deer Leader) |
Born | c. 1805 Near Tallapoosa River, Alabama, United States |
Died | October 16, 1881 (aged 75-76) Lake Pierce, Florida, United States |
Allegiance | Seminole |
Years of service | 1835–1858 |
Battles/wars |
|
Chipco, also known as Echo Emathla, (1805-1881) was a 19th-century Seminole Indian chief and warrior. He was one of the most prominent Seminole chiefs during the Seminole Wars, and by the end of the conflict he was the main leader of the Muscogee-speaking band of Seminoles in Florida. [1] At a young age, Chipco and his family of Red Sticks fled as refugees to Florida because of the War of 1812, where they joined the Seminole tribe. [2] As Chipco grew older he became a chief and eventually fought against the United States and its policy of Indian Removal. Chipco was one of the Seminole leaders at the Dade Battle, where Seminole warriors successfully ambushed a column of the U.S. Army and killed over 100 U.S. troops. [1] This battle started the Second Seminole War, which Chipco would fight in through its entire duration. By the end of the Seminole Wars, Chipco and his band had successfully resisted the United States and were part of the group of Seminoles who remained in Florida, and they were the only Seminole band who continued living in Central Florida. [3]
Chipco was born around 1805 among the Upper Creeks of the Muscogee tribe who lived along the Tallapoosa River in Central Alabama. He was born into the Deer Clan through his mother's lineage. [1] The name Chipco is derived from a Muscogee word meaning "tall" or "long". [4] Chipco's family was part of the Red Sticks faction of the Muscogee. The Red Sticks were political traditionalists who militantly opposed both the United States and the adoption of White American cultural practices. The Red Sticks were opposed by the "National Creeks" faction of the Muscogee, who instead advocated for allying with the United States and assimilating into White American culture. The Red Sticks were defeated by the United States and the National Creeks in the War of 1812 and many of them fled south as refugees to Florida. Chipco was part of this wave of refugees at a young age, and after migrating to Florida they soon joined the Seminole tribe who were already living in the area. [2]
During the First Seminole War in 1818, Chipco's father was killed by Andrew Jackson's troops at a Seminole village along the Suwannee River. His family then went further south and settled along the Peace River. [1] Chipco then moved near Tampa Bay, where he would start visiting the newly constructed Fort Brooke to trade. [2]
Shortly before the Second Seminole War started, Chipco had risen to the position of chief among the Muscogee-speaking Seminoles. Around this time, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, with the goal of ethnically cleansing the Seminoles from Florida. President Jackson also appointed Wiley Thompson, a former congressman from Georgia, to oversee the removal of the Seminoles from Florida. Chipco and many other prominent Seminoles such as Abiaka and Osceola, staunchly opposed the Indian Removal policy.
Once it became clear that the Seminoles would not be removed without a fight, both sides made preparations for war. In December 1835 General Duncan Clinch ordered a column of U.S. Army troops to march from Fort Brooke up north to Fort King in order to strengthen Fort King's defenses against an impending Seminole attack. This column was led by Major Francis Dade and was made up of 110 soldiers and 1 six-pounder cannon. [5] While marching north on December 28, 1835, the U.S. soldiers were ambushed by a force of Seminole warriors, which included Chief Chipco. [6] The Seminoles wiped out the army column and killed nearly all the soldiers, including Major Dade. This would subsequently be known as the Dade Battle, and it would mark the start of the Second Seminole War. Chipco fought all throughout the Second Seminole War, and he was never killed or captured. Chipco would employ guerrilla warfare tactics by staying hidden in the wilderness and leading his warriors on raids. [3] In 1839, Chipco led a raid on Fort Cummings near Lake Rochelle. During this raid, Chipco killed a U.S. Army sentry, scalped him, and took his gun. [7] Chipco's last known location during the Second Seminole War before hostilities ended in 1842 was around Lake Istokpoga. [8]
While a temporary peace had been achieved in Florida with the end of the Second Seminole War in 1842, tensions between Seminoles and White Floridians still remained. Even though the war was over, the U.S. Government still tried to get the Seminoles to leave Florida through negotiations and bribery. Chipco himself stated that he would never leave Florida, and he also boasted that he "didn't fear all the crackers in Florida". [9] In 1849 two White men named George Payne and Dempsey Whidden were killed by Seminoles at the Kennedy-Darling Trading Post near Paynes Creek, and the trading post itself was burned down. In 1850 a White orphan boy named Daniel Hubbard was also killed by Seminoles in Marion County. Both of these killings were attributed to Chipco and his band. [8]
The U.S. Government made one final attempt to remove the Seminoles from Florida in 1855, which began the Third Seminole War. Immediately after this war began, Chipco's band of Muscogee-speakers started to raid areas in both southern and central Florida. In 1856 the raiders from Chipco's band attacked Whites in modern-day Hardee county, Manatee county, Lee County, Hendry County, Sarasota County, Hillsborough County, Pasco County, and Polk County. [10] After initially going on the offensive, Chipco and his band then went south to hide in the Everglades, where he successfully avoided capture for the remainder of the war. [11] In 1858 the Third Seminole War and the Seminole Wars as a whole finally ended as the United States gave up its attempts to remove the remaining Seminole bands in Florida.
After the Seminole Wars ended, Chipco and his band left the Everglades and moved back up north to live in Central Florida. [11] Chipco's band subsequently set up a village near Lake Pierce in Polk County. The Seminoles who lived in Chipco's village farmed patches of corn, rice, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, sugarcane, melons, and tobacco. [12] The Seminoles at Chipco's village also owned herds of pigs, cows, and horses. Despite his great hostility towards the White Floridians during the Seminole Wars, Chipco ended up having friendly relations with the White settlers in his old age. He continued traveling to Tampa to trade, and he would dine at the homes of White settlers. In 1879 Chipco's village was visited by U.S. Army officer Richard Henry Pratt. During his visit Pratt commented on how fertile the soil around the village was, and on the abundant amount of crops grown by Chipco's band. Pratt told Chipco that he had come to see what kind of help the government could give to his people, but Chipco dismissed any offers for help from the government, saying that he did not want to hear any "Washington talk". [12] Shortly before his death, Chipco chose his nephew Tallahassee to be his successor as the leader of the Muscogee-speaking band of Seminoles. Chipco died at his Lake Pierce village on October 16, 1881. He was buried together with his Kentucky rifle at his funeral. His death was reported in many newspapers across the United States. [1]
The Muscogee, also known as the Mvskoke, Muscogee Creek or just Creek, and the Muscogee Creek Confederacy, are a group of related Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands in the United States. Their historical homelands are in what now comprises southern Tennessee, much of Alabama, western Georgia and parts of northern Florida.
The Seminole Wars were a series of three military conflicts between the United States and the Seminoles that took place in Florida between about 1816 and 1858. The Seminoles are a Native American nation which coalesced in northern Florida during the early 1700s, when the territory was still a Spanish colonial possession. Tensions grew between the Seminoles and settlers in the newly independent United States in the early 1800s, mainly because enslaved people regularly fled from Georgia into Spanish Florida, prompting slaveowners to conduct slave raids across the border. A series of cross-border skirmishes escalated into the First Seminole War, when American General Andrew Jackson led an incursion into the territory over Spanish objections. Jackson's forces destroyed several Seminole, Mikasuki and Black Seminole towns, as well as captured Fort San Marcos and briefly occupied Pensacola before withdrawing in 1818. The U.S. and Spain soon negotiated the transfer of the territory with the Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819.
The Seminole are a Native American people who developed in Florida in the 18th century. Today, they live in Oklahoma and Florida, and comprise three federally recognized tribes: the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, the Seminole Tribe of Florida, and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, as well as independent groups. The Seminole people emerged in a process of ethnogenesis from various Native American groups who settled in Spanish Florida beginning in the early 1700s, most significantly northern Muscogee Creeks from what are now Georgia and Alabama.
Osceola, named Billy Powell at birth in Alabama, became an influential leader of the Seminole people in Florida. His mother was Muscogee, and his great-grandfather was a Scotsman, James McQueen. He was reared by his mother in the Creek (Muscogee) tradition. When he was a child, they migrated to Florida with other Red Stick refugees, led by a relative, Peter McQueen, after their group's defeat in 1814 in the Creek Wars. There they became part of what was known as the Seminole people.
The Second Seminole War, also known as the Florida War, was a conflict from 1835 to 1842 in Florida between the United States and groups of people collectively known as Seminoles, consisting of American Indians and Black Indians. It was part of a series of conflicts called the Seminole Wars. The Second Seminole War, often referred to as the Seminole War, is regarded as "the longest and most costly of the Indian conflicts of the United States". After the Treaty of Payne's Landing in 1832 that called for the Seminole's removal from Florida, tensions rose until fierce hostilities occurred in the Dade battle in 1835. This conflict started the war. The Seminoles and the U.S. forces engaged in mostly small engagements for more than six years. By 1842, only a few hundred native peoples remained in Florida. Although no peace treaty was ever signed, the war was declared over on August 14, 1842.
Francis Langhorne Dade was a United States Army soldier who served in the War of 1812 and the Seminole Wars. Dade was killed in a battle with Seminole Indians that came to be known as the "Dade Massacre".
Red Sticks —the name deriving from the red-painted war clubs of some Native American Creek—refers to an early 19th century traditionalist faction of Muscogee Creek people in the Southeastern United States. Made up mostly of Creek of the Upper Towns that supported traditional leadership and culture, as well as the preservation of communal land for cultivation and hunting, the Red Sticks arose at a time of increasing pressure on Creek territory by European American settlers. Creek of the Lower Towns were closer to the settlers, had more mixed-race families, and had already been forced to make land cessions to the Americans. In this context, the Red Sticks led a resistance movement against European American encroachment and assimilation, tensions that culminated in the outbreak of the Creek War in 1813. Initially a civil war among the Creek, the conflict drew in United States state forces while the nation was already engaged in the War of 1812 against the British.
The Miccosukee Tribe of Indians is a federally recognized Native American tribe in the U.S. state of Florida. Together with the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma and the Seminole Tribe of Florida, it is one of three federally recognized Seminole entities.
The Battle of Wahoo Swamp was an extended military engagement of the Second Seminole War fought in November 1836 in the Wahoo Swamp, approximately 50 miles northeast of Fort Brooke in Tampa and 35 miles south of Fort King in Ocala in modern Sumter County, Florida. General Richard K. Call, the territorial governor of Florida, led a mixed force consisting of Florida militia, Tennessee volunteers, Creek mercenaries, and some troops of the US Army and Marines against Seminole forces led by chiefs Osuchee and Yaholooche.
Wild Cat, also known as Coacoochee or Cowacoochee (from Creek Kowakkuce "bobcat, wildcat") (c. 1807/1810–1857) was a leading Seminole chieftain during the later stages of the Second Seminole War and the nephew of Micanopy.
The Treaty of Payne's Landing was an agreement signed on 9 May 1832 between the government of the United States and several chiefs of the Seminole Indians in the Territory of Florida, before it acquired statehood.
Abiaka, also known as Sam Jones, was a Seminole-Miccosukee chief, warrior, and shaman who fought against the United States during the Seminole Wars. He was born among the Miccosukee people of Georgia, who would migrate south into Florida and become part of the Seminole tribe. He initially rose to prominence among the Seminoles as a powerful shaman. Abiaka became the principal chief of the Seminoles in 1837 during the Seminole Wars. He was a guerrilla warfare tactician and he led the Seminoles at the Battle of Lake Okeechobee, the largest battle of the conflict. Abiaka successfully resisted the United States and its policy of Indian Removal, and his leadership resulted in the continued presence of the Seminole people in Florida.
The Dade battle was an 1835 military defeat for the United States Army.
Ahaya was the first recorded chief of the Alachua band of the Seminole tribe. European-Americans called him Cowkeeper, as he held a very large herd of cattle. Ahaya was the chief of a town of Oconee people near the Chattahoochee River. Around 1750 he led his people into Florida where they settled around Payne's Prairie, part of what the Spanish called tierras de la chua, "Alachua Country" in English. The Spanish called Ahaya's people cimarones, which eventually became "Seminoles" in English. Ahaya fought the Spanish, and sought friendship with the British, allying with them after Spain ceded Florida to Great Britain in 1763, and staying loyal to them through the American Revolutionary War. He died shortly after Britain returned Florida to Spain in 1783.
John Watts, also known as Young Tassel, was one of the leaders of the Chickamauga Cherokee during the Cherokee–American wars. Watts became particularly active in the fighting after frontiersmen murdered his uncle, Old Tassel (1708–1788), in 1788.
Uchee Billy or Yuchi Billy was a chief of a Yuchi band in Florida during the first half of the 19th century. Uchee Billy's band was living near Lake Miccosukee when Andrew Jackson invaded Spanish Florida during the First Seminole War and attacked the villages in the area. Yuchi Billy and his band then moved to the St. Johns River. During the Second Seminole War, Uchee Billy was an ally of the Seminoles, and was one of the principal war chiefs who fought the U.S. Army.
David Moniac was a United States Army soldier of Muscogee descent. He was the first Native American graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York in 1822. He was born into a prominent family of Upper Creeks, and was related to major Creek leaders on both sides of his family. Moniac was also the first cadet to enter West Point from the new state of Alabama. Moniac resigned his commission in 1822 to manage his clan's property in Alabama, where he developed a cotton plantation.
Neamathla (1750s–1841) was a leader of the Red Stick Creek. His name, in the Hitchiti language, means "fat next to warrior", "fat" being a reference to great courage. The Hitchiti language had no written form, but modern scholars agree that Eneah Emathla is the "proper" spelling of his name in English; however, there were two other men also named Eneah Emathla, so the modern convention is to use the spelling Neamathla for the leader.
Fort Basinger's original site is located approximately 35 miles (56 km) west of Fort Pierce, Florida, along U. S. Highway 98 in Highlands County, Florida. It was a stockaded fortification with two blockhouses that was built in 1837 by the United States Army. It was one of the military outposts created during the Second Seminole War to assist Colonel Zachary Taylor's troops to confront and capture Seminole Indians and their allies in the central part of the Florida Territory in the Lake Okeechobee region. The Seminole Indians and their allies were resisting forced removal to federal territory west of the Mississippi River as directed by the Indian Removal Act.
Fishing ranchos were fishing stations located along the coast of Southwest Florida used by Spanish Cuban fishermen in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The Spanish fished the waters along the coast of Florida in the late fall and winter of each year, salting the fish, and then carrying the cured fish to Havana by the beginning of Lent. The Spanish fishermen hired Native Americans who lived along the coast as guides and to help with catching and curing the fish, and with sailing to Havana. The Spanish established fishing stations, called "ranchos", on islands along the coast as bases during the fishing season. The Native American workers lived year-round at the ranchos, or moved to the nearby mainland during the off-season to hunt and raise crops. Many of the Spanish fishermen eventually started living at their ranchos year-round. They married or formed relationships with Native American women, and their children grew up at the ranchos, so that many of the workers were of mixed ancestry, Spanish and Native American. All the residents of the ranchos spoke Spanish. One author has suggested that a Spanish-Native American creole society was forming in the ranchos by the second quarter of the 19th century. The fishermen also carried Native Americans from Florida to Havana and back on a regular basis.