Sunday Favorites: Along Came Polly

The woman credited with saving the Seminole Nation shot her husband rather than see him be forced into service to help the U.S. government track Seminoles for the second time.

In other historical records, he killed himself.

This story of tragedy and loyalty begins at the onset of the Second Seminole War in 1835, when the U.S army captured the Emateloye "Polly Parker" and her husband Chai during a raid. The two were forced into service as scouts, tracking Seminoles through the Everglades.

It was a frightening time to be a Seminole. Those who weren’t killed were captured and sent to internment camps like the one on Egmont Key. Seminole women would hide their babies under a pile of leaves to avoid detection, as all Seminoles captured alive were worth $250 a head, according to a 2013 Tampa Bay Times article by Ben Montgomery.

The period of unrest is considered the longest war ever fought on American soil. Deemed the Seminole Wars, or Florida Wars, they were a series of three conflicts between the Seminoles (a name given to the collective union of Native Americans and blacks) and the U.S. Army under General Andrew Jackson’s command.

While the natives and blacks enjoyed freedom under Florida’s Spanish rule, conflict began in 1816 just before Florida became a U.S. territory. The U.S. attacked a fort manned by black Seminoles in Apalachicola and killed 300 warriors. The first of the wars ended when Florida was ceded to the U.S. Then, in 1823, the Treaty of Moultrie Creek required Seminoles to leave northern Florida and retire to a large reservation in the center of the territory.

In 1835, the Second Seminole war began when the U.S. government wanted the Seminoles to leave Florida altogether, as was required in the Treaty of Payne’s Landing, which Seminole leaders claim they signed under duress. Guerrilla warfare broke out all over the state, with most of the Seminoles sent to internment camps to await deportation to 'Indian Territory' in what is now Oklahoma. A few hundred Seminoles escaped to the Everglades.

Polly and Chai guided one of three companies throughout the Everglades to track those escaped "hostile natives." However, according to researcher William Steele, she managed to take the militants on a wild goose chase, leading them on hunts all over the swamp but never unearthing any evidence that Seminoles were residing there.

Despite their efforts to stay loyal to their tribe, they were considered outcasts after the war ended in 1842, settling in a camp near Bradenton under Chief Billy Bowlegs. Only about 300 Seminoles remained. They lived in accord with the early settlers on the Manatee River. It is documented in books that Bowlegs even visited pioneer homes to keep the peace. However, when surveyors began assessing the tribe’s lands to sell to white buyers, Bowlegs attacked the survey party and began the last of the Seminole Wars in 1855.

Again, Parker and Chai were asked to serve as scouts. Many believed that Chai committed suicide on his own accord rather than leading the army again, but a letter included in Steele’s research suggests Parker killed him.

Parker, Billy Bowlegs and most of the other Seminoles north of the Everglades had been captured and taken to Egmont Key to await transport to New Orleans where they would make the long journey down the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma. Many of the Seminoles died in waiting on Egmont. Their graves were identified by white crosses and their names mostly unknown.

On May 4, 1858, approximately 160 Seminoles boarded the steamship Grey Cloud, which was destined for the Mississippi River.

However, when the ship stopped to refuel in the Florida Panhandle, Polly escaped, convincing her captors to let her get off the ship to gather medicinal herbs.

Traveling by night, she made it 300 miles, back to Fisheating Creek near Okeechobee in less than a week. The tribe was completely decimated, and Parker only bore one child, Lucy Tiger. However, her granddaughter Lena Morgan had seven children and seventeen great-grandchildren.

It might not seem like a lot, but most living Seminoles have Parker somewhere in their genealogy and attribute her return to the revival of the tribe in the Everglades.

Parker lived to be over 100 years old. Her descendants laid her to rest near a life oak in a cabbage hammock somewhere between Brighton and Kissimmee River.