The Dade Massacre: Seminole Warriors VS The United States
The Battle for Florida
So what led to the Dade Massacre? Well, in 1821 President James Monroe appointed Andrew Jackson as the military governor of Florida. Under pressure by European and American colonists, his goal was to remove the native Seminole people from the area. The Seminole Tribe considered Florida to be their home, and they came into constant conflict with the newly arrived settlers. White slave owners in particular hated the Seminole people for their practice of taking in runaway slaves.
Slowly but surely the American government pushed the Seminole People south. They seized 24 million acres of land in Northern Florida in 1823, offering the Native Americans a small 100,000 acre reservation in the Everglades. Years later they signed the Treaty of Payne’s Landing, ordering the Seminole People to move West of the Mississippi. Although many left, around 4,000 Seminoles refused to leave their land in the Everglades. This set the stage for the Second Seminole War and the battle which has come to be known as the Dade Massacre.
Major Francis Longhorn Dade
Andrew Jackson, now the President of the United States, deployed 6,000 soldiers to Florida in 1835 to enforce the Treaty of Payne’s Landing. The Seminole leader Osceola, who was able to muster just 1,400 warriors, prepared to engage the United States in a guerilla war. United States soldiers set about reinforcing the pitiful forts in the area in an attempt to protect the settlers and plantations in the area. Major Francis Longhorn Dade was one of the officers who was deployed during this operation.
On December 23rd, 1835, Major Dade and 109 men departed present-day Tampa. Their mission was to reinforce Fort King in Ocala, which was severely lacking in manpower and supplies. Meanwhile, hundreds of Seminole warriors were gathering to attack Dade and his men. They convened in the swampland and waited for Osceola to arrive.
The Ambush
Major Dade knew there was a high likelihood that his men would be ambushed during this journey. He expected an attack to come during one of the many river crossings in the early stages of the march. The soldiers put safeguards in place and were able to cross the rivers without incident. What they didn’t know was they were being watched the entire time. Seminole scouts shadowed the soldiers and grew impatient as they waited for Osceola, who was on a mission to assassinate a bureaucratic agent.
The United States soldiers relaxed after five days of marching, thinking the danger was past. Dade and his men marched into an area covered in pine trees and palmettos, where unbeknownst to them 180 Seminole warriors laid in wait. They had decided to attack without Osceola, and prepared to catch the soldiers by surprise.
Suddenly, a singular shot rang out, signaling the start of the ambush. Major Dade fell from his horse, and the vegetation erupted in a storm of musket and arrow fire. It was a complete massacre. In an instant half of the soldiers were killed, and the remaining men struggled to ready their weapons and return fire. The artillerymen managed to fire the company’s cannon, but as the white smoke cleared they were quickly cut down. A separate group made a last stand behind a makeshift log barricade, but they too were quickly overwhelmed by the Seminole warriors.
Aftermath and Survivors
Two of the soldiers, Private Decourcey and Private Clark, survived the Dade Massacre. They laid hidden, covered by the bodies of their comrades. Luckily for them the Seminole warriors were in a hurry and left without looting or scalping the bodies. As looters and swamp people arrived to the scene, they decided to make a run for it. Decourcey and Clark escaped but were spotted by a Seminole warrior on horseback the next day. They split up in another attempt to escape, and Decourcey was never heard from again.
Clark made it to Fort Brooke alive after being helped by a Native American woman. Another man, Private Sprague, was brought to the fort wounded but alive a few days later. This made just two survivors out of the 110 men who set off under Major Dade’s command.
The Dade Massacre serves as a testament to how little control the United States really held over the Everglades and much of Florida. Over the next couple years, every single house and plantation in Miami-Dade county was burned by the Seminole resistance, with the exception of one. The event made national news and sparked a new wave of recruits for the struggling army. Hostilities in the area would not cease until 1842.