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A History of Columbia County Florida (1996) Edward F. Keuchel 47/340

A History of Columbia County, Florida
Colonel Brown did not exaggerate the Indian danger in the
area. Samuel Forry, a regular army physician stationed near
Ocala, wrote on April 12, 1838, that:
“about Newnansville, Forts White and Fanning, and
from this point to Fort Dade the country is literally alive
with red-skins. On the 9th two men were killed about
twelve miles from here, north of the Newnansville road. A
woman, who is the wife and sister of these two men, has
been brought into this post. . . . About twenty persons
have lately been killed on this frontier. A messenger
arrived here begging assistance to bury the dead, as the
families had congregated in several houses for defense.
The whole frontier is being abandoned.”31

Governor Call was distressed over the situation in Columbia
County, but as territorial governor he had military authority over
the militia and not the regular army. In the event that General
Eustis continued to refuse federal service to the volunteers the
governor authorized Brown to place them under territorial ser­
vice. Call stated that he would endeavor to have the legislative
council allocate funds for their pay, but noted that he had no
authority whatever from the federal government to pay for the
territory’s defense. Anything he did along those lines was his own
responsibility and not that of the territory. Call lamented that at
the moment he was not able to provide either pay or forage and
subsistence. Indeed, he had not yet even been able to send the corn
he had promised to Fort White which was to sustain the settlers of
Columbia and Alachua counties.34 35
The relief corn, some 2,000 bushels, finally reached Fort
White in May, 1838, and was distributed to the needy of Columbia
and Alachua counties on a priority basis. The aged and infirm,
widows, orphans, and those1 families forced from their homes by

34 “Letters of Samuel Forry, Surgeon U.S. Army, 1837-1838,” Florida Historical
Quarterly 7 (July, 1928), p. 102.
35R. K. Call to Robert Brown, April 13, 1838, in The Floridian, special
supplement, February 9, 1839.

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