ТОП просматриваемых книг сайта:
Black Creek. Paul Varnes
Читать онлайн.Название Black Creek
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781561645756
Автор произведения Paul Varnes
Издательство Ingram
This book is dedicated to my ancestors and
other American pioneers.
Also by Paul Varnes
Confederate Money
Black Creek
The Taking of Florida
Paul Varnes
Copyright © 2007 by Paul Varnes
First paperback printing © 2014
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Inquiries should be addressed to:
Pineapple Press, Inc.
P.O. Box 3889
Sarasota, Florida 34230
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Varnes, Paul, 1934–
Black Creek : the taking of Florida / Paul Varnes. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-56164-396-7 (hb. : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-56164-686-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Seminole War, 1st, 1817–1818—Fiction. 2. Seminole War, 2nd, 1835–1842—Fiction. 3. Florida—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3622.A75B56 2007
813’.6—dc22
2007010725
First Edition
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Design by Shé Hicks
Printed in the United States
Contents
Part IV The Second Seminole War
PART I
The First
Seminole War
June 27, 1817
It was a hot afternoon and we were crossing the St. Marys River from Camden County, Georgia, into Spanish Florida. The Spanish forces then trying to control Florida would not cordially welcome us. It was they and the English who had armed the Seminoles we were chasing.
The English and Spanish governments were not in collusion. The English had armed the Seminoles and encouraged them to raid and kill white Americans during the War of 1812. Spain, weakened militarily over the years, in 1817 was allowing, even encouraging, the Seminoles to raid from Florida into the United States. Unable to defend Florida and the rest of their vast empire, the Spanish were using the Indians in Florida to help protect Spain’s rights to those lands. The Indians thought they were only defending their own rights.
It was no secret that Congress, in 1811, had authorized James Madison to begin the takeover of Florida. This resulted in an invasion, which seized Fernandina. When the initial force of about eighty men got into trouble, Colonel Daniel Newman went to the rescue with 120 Georgia Militiamen. Newman planned to attack Chief King Payne at Payne’s Town, destroy all he could not carry, and return with cattle, horses, and runaway slaves. Payne, the Indian leader, was said to have over a thousand cattle, four hundred horses, and a score of black slaves of his own. As a way of encouraging the Seminoles to fight, the Spanish told them the invaders planned to take the Seminoles’ land and keep it.
Even though the attack on Payne’s Town caught the Seminoles by surprise, it soon became a failure. Outnumbered by more than two to one by the Indians and blacks that Payne gathered, Newman was