Assignments for Ft. Heileman and the Seminole Wars
Part I: Measuring and expanding the knowledge base
1.
Write an essay of at least three paragraphs explaining the causes of the
Seminole Wars, the dates of the fighting, and the results of the warfare. What was
the total cost of the war?
2.
Create a timeline of the Seminole Wars. Include the dates when fighting
started and stopped, and the significent events and battles in the wars. When did
the Seminole Wars start and end? Regarding the First Seminole War, the U.S.
Army Infantry history says 1814, and ended in 1819. The U.S. Navy Naval
Historical Center says 1816-1818. The unit history of the 1st Battalion, 5th Field
Artillery it started and ended in 1818. What do the Seminoles say? How many
Seminole Wars does the Seminole Tribe acknowledge? Go to this website to find
out: http://www.seminoletribe.com/ Click on the “History” section and read the
material there. In the History section, click on the timeline and look at the dates of
the wars. What dates will you use? Why did you choose those dates?
3.
Geography and War Go to this website:
http://www.revision-notes.co.uk/revision/26.html
What is guerilla warfare? What advantage did the Seminoles have in guerillastyle warfare? How did Florida’s landscape make “conventional warfare”
difficult, but guerilla warfare easy?
4.
Create a series of maps of the Seminole Wars.
On a Florida map, mark the location of Ft. Heileman, all battle sites in the state,
and all the lakes, counties, forts, and towns named for the Generals and natives.
On a map of the south and southwestern United States, mark the significant
mileposts along the route of the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma.
On a map of the United States, show where Seminoles, Creek, Cherokee,
Chickasaw, and Choctaw live today.
Explore Jackson’s attitudes toward Native Americans.
General Andrew Jackson fought in the First Seminole War, and President
Andrew Jackson ordered the Seminoles and other natives to move westward.
What did Jackson say about Indian Removal? Use this website:
http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=25
General Jackson adopted a Creek infant whose parents were killed by his men in
the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in Alabama. He named the boy Lincoyer and raised
5.
him as a family member. Lincoyer learned to read and write and learned a
trade. He died as a teenager, from TB. How does Jackson’s attitude toward
Lincoyer compare to his words in the Congressional address above?
6.
The phrase “Columbian Exchange” refers to the ideas, crops, animals, and
diseases that Columbus and the subsequent explorers and settlers brought to the
New World, and the ideas, crops, animals, and diseases that were taken back to
Europe.
This cultural swap dramatically changed the lives of people in the Americas,
in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Horses, for example, came from Europe, and changed
the lifestyle of Native Americans in the western United States from sedentary
(staying in one place) to nomadic, and allowed them to begin hunting bison on the
Great Plains. Potatoes, taken from the New World to England in the 1500s,
became the basis of the diet of the working class in Ireland. When the potato crop
in Ireland failed in the 1840s, it brought an enormous increase in Irish immigrants
to the US, which changed American culture as a result. Florida’s orange crop is a
consequence of the Columbian exchange.
A.
Go to this website
http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/cultural/northamerica/cherokee.html
Make a list of five ways the Cherokee culture became “Americanized.”
B.
Go to these websites:
http://www.seminoletribe.com/culture/chickee.shtml
Write a paragraph describing a chickee and explaining when and how Seminoles
first created chickees.
http://www.floridatikihuts.com/
What is the modern, “American” use of Seminole “chickees”?
C.
Compare these two pictures. The first one is of Taos Pueblo in New
Mexico. The Pueblo is over 1,000 years old. The second one is a new hotel in
Sedona, Arizona. How is the architectural style of the buildings similar? Which
way is the “Columbian exchange” going?
Part II: Using Primary Sources
Primary sources are the original documentation of an event. Primary
sources include papers such as government docuements, military orders, diaries,
newspaper accounts, and photographs. Artifacts such as tools, weapons, clothing,
and kitchen utensiles of a period are also primary sources. Primary sources must
be evaluated to determine how accurate they are and how much of an event they
effectively illustrate.
After gathering evidence from primary sources, the historian creates a
secondary source by writing about the findings, analyzing them, or putting them
together into a story about the past. The primary sources used in the following
lessons include letters from civilians and military in the fort and in the area, a
Congressional Resolution, parts of the Constitution, military records, and images.
Using Primary Sources: Life at the Fort
When the Second Seminole War erupted across Florida’s Panhandle, attacks
on solitary travelers and isolated plantations caused people to congregate in the
few towns that existed. Ft. Heileman, established on the banks of Black Creek in
1836 as a military depot, attracted thousands of refugees.
The presence of over a thousand civilians created a huge logistical problem
for the leaders at the fort. The problems are similar to those faced by FEMA when
a hurricane threatens landfall. Hundreds and sometimes thousands of people have
to be housed, fed, and adequate restrooms provided.
Read the quotations from the Primary Sources below to answer the
questions which follow.
Document One: Some affluent local residents shared what provisions they had,
but large scale help was needed. A group of citizens in St. Augustine requested
that Congress provide. . .
“immediate relief of the poor families . . whose dwellings, provisions, and
means of subsistence have been burnt, destroyed, or abandoned, and who
have fled for refuge. . .[and] who depended for their daily bread, upon the
labor of their fathers, husbands, and sons, who have been taken from them
for the general defense. . . .”
Question One: What were the two general causes of the suffering of the residents?
Question Two: What phrases in the Preamble to the Constitution (below)
authorizes the government to provide the relief the citizens are requesting?
“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union,
establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense,
promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves
and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United
States of America.”
Document Two: Congress, sympathetic to the “suffering inhabitants,” passed a
resolution requesting. . .
“That the president of the United States be authorized to be delivered from
the public stores to the unfortunate sufferers who are unable to provide for
themselves, and who have been driven from their homes by Indian
depredations in Florida, until they can be re-established in their possessions,
or so long as the president may consider it necessary.”
Question Three: What phrase in Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution (below)
explains why Congress requested that the President actually carry out the directive
to help?
“Section 2. The President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy
of the United States, and of the militia of the several states. . . .”
Problems at the Fort
The issuing officers showed “indifference” and “contempt” to the suffering.
Many were so weak they had “not the physical strength to go to Black Creek
for a soldier’s ration.”
Supplicants had to prove they are unable to provide for themselves.
“The peculiar state of things in Florida, there may be such a scarcity of
provisions as to render it difficult to procure them.”
General George Gibson, in charge of the Commissary of General
Subsistence wrote that “the roll of Citizens . . . shows . . . 37 that came within
the resolution of Congress, but . . . the roll is now upwards of 500 individuals,
and the roll itself is lengthened from one sheet of paper to five yards.”
Several thousand refugees eventually huddled at the Fort. Captain Thomas Childs
of the 3rd Artillery described the encampment: “. . . They have shelters which
keep out neither wind nor rain – at this season of the year it rains violently,
every afternoon – and their subsistence is the ration of the soldier.
The measles have broken out among them and their insufficient shelters have
given them colds.
In a hut ten feet square, four sticks would be driven into the sand and poles
laid across them, for boards to rest upon. On these some had beds and others
nothing but blankets.
Oh! The emaciated objects that lay upon them – some with raging fevers –
others with diarrhea – others were swollen frightfully. Sometimes, father,
mother, and children all lay, prostrate. In one instance, the father and
mother died, leaving five children, all sick, the oldest only thirteen years old.”
The suffering inhabitants had little to do, no crops to tend or livestock to feed or
any of the normal tasks that occupied their days. Lt. Col. Hunt wrote to General
Jesup of the social problems that were developing: “A great evil exists at this
Depot. . . Which is very injurious to the public interest. At this time there are
fifteen or more shops built on the ground which ought to be occupied for
public purposes and every one of them is a grog shop or store where
spirituous liquors are sold. . . . soldiers and volunteers resort to them, and
becoming intoxicated. . .drunken broils and disturbances are the
consequence; besides many of these [shops] are kept by men who would not
hesitate to buy stolen property.”
Question One: What health problems did the inhabitants endure?
Question Two: What logistical problems did the military face?
Question Three: What social problems developed in the encampment?
Projects:
1. Imagine life at Ft. Heileman during the worst of the refugee crisis. Write a
fictional diary of your daily life or write a letter to a friend in a major
northern city (such as New York City of Philadelphia) describing life at the
fort. What did people in the more cosmopolitan cities of the country read
about the wars in the newspapers? When was the last Indian attack on the
city you choose to write to?
2. Create performance art such as a poem or a scene from a play to present to
the class, demonstrating some aspect of life at the fort.