A Florida Western can be used to describe a small number of films and literature set in the 19th century, particularly around the time of the Second Seminole War. Not a significant number of these films have been made, as most Hollywood and other genre westerns are usually located in other regions of the United States, particularly the former frontier territories of "the West".
A series of novels about Florida in the 19th century and their Florida cracker characters have been called Cracker Westerns. [1] [2]
In 1895 Frederic Remington and Owen Wister traveled to Florida to write a story on Florida's cowboys for Harper's Weekly . [3]
In the 1990s a series of Cracker Westerns by several authors were published.
In 2014 Rough Edges Press published Palmetto Empire by David Hardy. This novel follows the fictional adventures of backwoodsmen, outlaws, and rebels in the era of the First Seminole War.
It was during the 1950s that most of these films were produced and many included a fictional and stereotypical portrayal of the real life Seminole leader, Osceola, who resisted American expansion into Florida during the late 1830s. The film Distant Drums (1951), which was one of the earliest Florida Westerns made, even changed his name to Oscala and portrayed him as a malevolent savage, filled with a constant bloodlust who fed living prisoners to alligators.
One of the advantages of these types of films, however, was that the producers often used the Florida Everglades as a backdrop. Now a contemporary audience has the benefit of glimpsing this wilderness in its mid-20th century form. The producers of Distant Drums even used the historic Castillo de San Marcos fort as a backdrop for the story. It was depicted as a fictitious stronghold for Spanish gunrunners selling armaments to the Seminole on the west coast of Florida, although it is actually located on the east coast.
Films which were made and could be considered Florida Westerns include:
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 in 1817, when General Andrew Jackson led an incursion into the territory over Spanish objections. Jackson's forces destroyed several Seminole and Black Seminole towns 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 Wilhelm scream is a stock sound effect that has been used in a number of films and TV series, beginning in 1951 with the film Distant Drums. The scream is usually used when someone is shot, falls from a great height, or is thrown from an explosion. The sound is named after Private Wilhelm, a character in The Charge at Feather River, a 1953 Western in which the character gets shot in the thigh with an arrow. This was its first use following its inclusion in the Warner Bros. stock sound library, although The Charge at Feather River is the third film to use the effect. The scream is believed to be voiced by actor Sheb Wooley.
The history of Florida can be traced to when the first Native Americans began to inhabit the peninsula as early as 14,000 years ago. They left behind artifacts and archeological evidence. Florida's written history begins with the arrival of Europeans; the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León in 1513 made the first textual records. The state received its name from that conquistador, who called the peninsula La Pascua Florida in recognition of the verdant landscape and because it was the Easter season, which the Spaniards called Pascua Florida.
The Seminoles 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 is 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 collectively known as Seminoles, consisting of Native Americans 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 open hostilities started with Dade battle. For the next four years, the Seminole and the U.S. forces engaged in small engagements and by 1842 only a few hundred native peoples remained in Florida. The war was declared over on August 14, 1842.
Distant Drums is a 1951 American Florida Western film directed by Raoul Walsh and starring Gary Cooper. It is set during the Second Seminole War in the 1840s, with Cooper playing an Army captain who successfully destroys a fort held by Spanish gunrunners and is pursued into the Everglades by a large group of Seminoles. The fort used in the film was the historic Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine, Florida, and most of the principal photography was shot on location in Florida.
Light a Distant Fire is a 1988 historical novel by Lucia St. Clair Robson that fictionalizes the story of the Second Seminole War, Andrew Jackson, and the charismatic leader Osceola, warchief of the Seminole tribe.
Holata Micco was an important leader of the Seminoles in Florida during the Second Seminole War and was the remaining Seminole's most prominent chief during the Third Seminole War, when he led the Seminoles' last major resistance against the United States government. With the possibilities of military victory dwindling and facing starvation, he finally agreed to relocate with his people to Indian Territory in 1858. He is buried in Hughes County, Oklahoma.
Delmer Lawrence Daves was an American screenwriter, film director and film producer. He worked in many genres, including film noir and warfare, but he is best known for his Western movies, especially Broken Arrow (1950), The Last Wagon (1956), 3:10 to Yuma (1957) and The Hanging Tree (1959). He was forced to work on studio-based films only after heart trouble in 1959 but one of these, A Summer Place, was nevertheless a huge commercial success.
Micanopy, also known as Micco-Nuppe, Michenopah, Miccanopa, and Mico-an-opa, and Sint-chakkee, was the leading chief of the Seminole during the Second Seminole War.
Yellowneck is a 1955 American Civil War film directed by R. John Hugh and starring Lin McCarthy, Stephen Courtleigh, Berry Kroeger and Harold Gordon. It tells the story of five deserters from the Confederate Army who make their way past the Everglades and angry Seminole Indians, in an attempt to get to the Florida coast and then to Cuba.
Fort King was a United States military fort in north central Florida, near what later developed as the city of Ocala. It was named after Colonel William King, commander of Florida's Fourth Infantry and the first governor of the provisional West Florida region.
The Seminole Tribe of Florida is a federally recognized Seminole tribe based in the U.S. state of Florida. Together with the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, it is one of three federally recognized Seminole entities. It received that status in 1957; today it has six Indian reservations in Florida.
The indigenous people of the Everglades region arrived in the Florida peninsula of what is now the United States approximately 14,000 to 15,000 years ago, probably following large game. The Paleo-Indians found an arid landscape that supported plants and animals adapted to prairie and xeric scrub conditions. Large animals became extinct in Florida around 11,000 years ago. Climate changes 6,500 years ago brought a wetter landscape. The Paleo-Indians slowly adapted to the new conditions. Archaeologists call the cultures that resulted from the adaptations Archaic peoples. They were better suited for environmental changes than their ancestors, and created many tools with the resources they had. Approximately 5,000 years ago, the climate shifted again to cause the regular flooding from Lake Okeechobee that gave rise to the Everglades ecosystems.
The Everglades is an American crime-adventure television series that aired in syndication for one season from 1961–62 and in reruns. Ron Hayes starred as Constable Lincoln Vail, a law enforcement officer of the fictional Everglades County Patrol who traveled the Florida Everglades in an airboat, a vehicle which was often the focus of the program. Hayes, a northern California actor and stuntman, was an avid outdoorsman and conservationist.
"Seminole Wind" is a song written and recorded by American country music artist John Anderson. It was released in August 1992 as the fourth single and title track from the album of the same name. It peaked at number 2 on the United States Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart, and reached number-one on the Canadian RPM Country Tracks chart. Before its release as a single, it was included on the B-side of the album's second single release, "Straight Tequila Night."
Seminole is a 1953 American Western film directed by Budd Boetticher and starring Rock Hudson, Barbara Hale, Anthony Quinn and Richard Carlson. Much of the film was shot in the Everglades National Park, Florida. The film depicts the Second Seminole War (1835-1842).
The indigenous peoples of Florida lived in what is now known as Florida for more than 12,000 years before the time of first contact with Europeans. However, the indigenous Floridians living east of the Apalachicola River had largely died out by the early 18th century. Some Apalachees migrated to Louisiana, where their descendants now live; some were taken to Cuba and Mexico by the Spanish in the 18th century, and a few may have been absorbed into the Seminole and Miccosukee tribes.
Johnny Tiger (1966) is a Florida Western film directed by Paul Wendkos, starring Robert Taylor, Chad Everett, and Geraldine Brooks.
