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| Capt. William Bunce ran a fishing ranchero at the mouth of the Manatee River. |
BRADENTON -- As a previous U.S. Customs Officer, Captain William Bunce was torn. In his new life, he had adopted the ways of the Spanish Indians and their seaborne existence. However, his former patriotic duties to the U.S. Government prevented him from completely abandoning federal orders to deport his new family to a territory completely unfamiliar to them. He wrote heart-wrenching letters pleading with a Florida Indian agent to spare his people from deportation – after all, living off the abundant sea life found in the Manatee River was the only life they had ever known.
But Indian tensions ran deep within U.S. government. After the Treaty of Payne’s Landing became law, and Seminoles were to be exiled to Arkansas to join the Creek Indians, and the government attacked a group of hunters, the Seminole Nation rebelled violently. The Florida Militia was alerted. Volunteers were called and aide was solicited from Washington. Richard K. Call was in charge of all military forces in Florida, but at the time they amounted to a few depleted companies of infantry whose duty was to deport an entire nation of Seminole people.
Since Bunce was a leading citizen of Hillsborough County, and did not appear suspect of any subversive activity, the Office of Indian Affairs decided Bunce could keep his Spanish Indian employees because they supposedly were not part of the Seminole Nation on April 30, 1835. However, Bunce may have been advising the Seminoles to hold their ground and not surrender, and on one significant occasion he could have provided a spy for the most memorable attack during the Seminole Wars.
On December 28, 1835, Major Francis L. Dade and his entire command of 112 soldiers were marching from Fort Brooke whent they were ambushed near Fort King by Chief Micanopy and his warriors. There were only three survivors from the attack, one of them was an African-American named Lewis whom Bunce had provided to the army as a guide. The military believed Lewis was responsible for the ambush. During the raid, he slipped to the ground unseen and hid among the palmetto bushes. When the Indians departed from massacre, Lewis went with them.
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| The scene of the Dade Massacre. |
The same day as the massacre at Fort Dade, Chief Osceola and his men ambushed Indian Agent Wiley Thompson, the same man Bunce had written to asking him to spare his ranchero. Thompson and his Lieutenant were walking outside the grounds of Fort King when they were attacked, their bodies were horribly mutated.
The next day, ignorant of what had happened the day before, General Duncan L. Clinch, commander of the U.S. forces set out with 200 soldiers and 460 volunteers from Fort Drane. On December 31, Osceola surprised the troops at the Withlacoochee River. After a long, bloody battle, white troops retired across the river at sundown and retreated back to Fort Drane.
It was full-on war. Plantations in East Florida were ranacked, sugar and gin mills burned, and when the inhabitants could not escape – they were slaughtered. Men, women and children shared a common fate. The same savage warfare was carried out among different tribes across the state. The log courthouse and public buildings at Fort Brook (present-day Tampa) were burned in 1836. The garrison was besieged before reinforcements by water forced the natives to retire.
In early March, Capt. Thomas T. Webb received a report that there was an encampment of Indians with a herd of cattle and horses near Bunce’s ranchero on the Manatee River. A group of 25 men landed at the ranchero. Bunce cooperated fully, even providing them with two competent Indian guides to accompany the expedition. It was thought the encampment was less than two miles away. At dusk, they found tracks and signs of livestock, but no Indians. The next day, the group tracked the rebels south. After 10 miles on a seemingly wild goose chase, the expedition gave up and returned to the ship.
In April of 1836, a report that Seminoles were targeting fishing rancheros prompted Bunce and his native family to abandon their village at Shaw’s point and relocate to Passage Key. At that time, there was a spring-fed lake on the island that was covered with foliage. Mass amounts of pine trees provided wood to erect temporary housing and a necessary lookout tower. Later that month the Caldes Ranchero at Port Charlotte was attacked and burned by Indians. Nearly 100 survivors made their way in pirogues to the village at Passage Key. With the swell in population, Bunce persuaded the U.S. government that his village needed protection. In May, a warship called Grampus carrying eight cannons anchored off the small island. Grampus was one of the navy’s fastest sailing schooners at the time.
In September, an active hurricane season persuaded Bunce to move his ranchero to the higher ground of Mullet Key. The Grampus ensured the Spanish Indians had a safe passage to the north end of the key.
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| After the battle at Dade, it was all out war. |
The general campaign had spread from Caloosahatchee south to Cape Sable by October 1837. Forty-five hundred regular soldiers augmented by 4,000 volunteers were in the field from middle Florida southward and were continually pressing the Indians into open warfare. Then on Christmas day, General Zackary Taylor fought the greatest battle at Lake Okeechobee. With an army just over 1,000, Taylor moved down the west side of the Kissimmee River where he found an army of Indians cunningly posted behind a swamp of sawgrass that was three quarters of a mile wide and impassible for horses. His men frightfully waded to the attack and after a fierce fight, they succeeded in driving the natives to Lake Okeechobee.
On a white sandy beach, Taylor and his remaining men battled the 380 warriors of the greatest chiefdoms in the field. It was a bloody battle with both sides valiant in charges and repulse. When the red line was finally broken, only 20 of the Indians and blacks had been killed. But Taylor’s loss was extensive. The scene afterward was horrific; the sand was stained red from the 25 dead, and over 100 injured in Taylor’s army. The wounded men were carried back through swamps and hammocks with no means of transportation other than manpower. The march to Tampa Bay convey of suffering men on rude litters of poles and dry hides was an experience more trying than the advance against the enemy through 145 miles of unexplored wilderness.
After that battle, even the natives had seen the futility of facing their enemy in open combat. From that point until the end of the war in 1842, the remaining Seminole Nation assumed guerrilla warfare.
At the beginning of the summer in 1837, Lewis, Bunce’s former slave that was involved in the Dade Massacre, surrendered himself to Fort Dade accompanied by a small group of Indians, which included Chief Jumper. Jumper explained to Capt. John Casey that Lewis’ life had been spared because he was accompanying the troops against his will. Since the incident, Lewis had been serving as Chief Jumper’s personal slave. The entire group, including Lewis and Jumper were all sent west to Indian Territory.
That same summer, rumors began circulating that Bunce had advised Seminole leaders to resist the removal to the west. A squadron was dispatched to the Manatee River in late 1837, to destroy Bunce’s original ranchero at Shaw’s Point. They would ignite everything that would burn. Only a concrete tabby house survived.
No one dared to touch Bunce who was considered an influential man in the eyes of local citizens. In 1838, he was elected to represent the Manatee section of Hillsborough County as a delegate to the constitutional convention that was considering Florida statehood.
Regardless of his popularity, the U.S. government considered him a threat. His ranchero at Mullet Key was to be burned, and the inhabitants were to be treated as Seminoles and deported. Shortly after the end of his Indian family, Bunce died.
Peace came in 1842 after seven long years. No war in the U.S. was more expensive or fatal to life in terms of proportion to the strength of the enemy engaged. In five years, 20,000 volunteers had been received from various states augmenting the backbone force of the 4,000 regular U.S. soldiers.
The close of the Second Seminole War marked the beginning of life in the Manatee Area as we know it. Measures were taken by the U.S. government to attract settlers to the area, the most important of which was the Armed Occupation Act of 1842. The law provided any able-bodied man, 21 years or older, 160 acres of land anywhere south of Ocala, provided he lived there for five years, cleared five acres of land and built a house fit for human habitation. The plan actually worked, for it was an opportunity too good for most people to refuse. There was soon a influx of immigrants who owned nothing, but could now find a place to call home in a location that seemed like a paradise.
The area that once witnessed the destruction of native culture and later provided an asylum for those escaping slavery and persecution was now a promising heartland of new beginnings. The settlers knew little of the life that lay before them. There were only about 100 Seminole remaining in the territory, and for a time at least, things were peaceful.
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