Page 47 - a-history-of-columbia-county-florida-(1996)-edward-f-keuchel

A History of Columbia County Florida (1996) Edward F. Keuchel 36/340

The Second Seminole War

defective, and, moreover, the purpose of the party had been to
punish not to kill the Indian.6
Pressure for the complete Indian removal from Florida gained
momentum. In the spring of 1826 the Secretary of War warned the
Seminoles that they must maintain peace and order or be trans­
ferred to lands west of the Mississippi River.6 7 Early in 1827 Joseph
M. White, Florida’s territorial delegate to Congress, introduced a
resolution calling for the removal of all Seminoles from the
territory.8
The “Indian Removal Act” of 1830 during the administration
of President Andrew Jackson set in motion the machinery to
transfer all the eastern Indians to permanent Indian lands west of
the Mississippi River. Its provisions were that the federal govern­
ment could trade land in the West for Indian land in the East and
do what was necessary to remove the Indians to the new land.
Floridians kept a continual flow of petitions to the federal govern­
ment to get the Seminoles out of the territory. On January 30,1832,
the War Department appointed James Gadsden to negotiate with
the Seminoles. Gadsden was a personal friend of President Jackson
and had been very influential during the negotiations of the Treaty
of Moultrie Creek nine years earlier.9
Gadsden made preparations for the Indian chiefs to meet with
him and discuss removal. He had difficulties in locating them as
the previous years’ drought had destroyed their agriculture and
they were forced to hunt long beyond their normal season. Gadsden
wrote to the President from Palatka on March 17,1832, that many
of the tribes had been subsisting for several months on nothing
more than the roots and cabbage of the palmetto tree.10

6Schofner, History of Jefferson County, pp. 66-67.
’Martin, Florida During the Territorial Days, p. 229.
* Niles Register, Vol. XXXI, January 6, 1827, p. 303.
9Mahon, History of the Second Seminole War, pp. 72-75.
10Martin, Florida During the Territorial Days, p. 230.

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