The Exiles of Florida. Giddings Joshua Reed
to own their fellow men, would always find persons to testify to their claims, and it was in vain for an Indian to attempt litigation with a slaveholding white man before a slaveholding Judge.57
The Exiles were not the property of the Indians in any sense. The Indians did not claim to own them. Under the rule prescribed, if a white man could get one of the Exiles within his power, he could at any time prove some circumstance that would entitle him to claim some negro; when he proved this, the law of Florida presumed every colored man to be a slave, unless he could prove his freedom. This, no Exile could do; and, when seized, they were uniformly consigned to bondage. The only safety for the Exile was, to entirely avoid the whites, who were not permitted to enter the territory except upon the written permit of some officer.
The slave-catchers, therefore, had recourse to the practice of describing certain black persons, in the Indian country, as their slaves, and demanding that the Agent should have them seized and delivered to him. But the Agent, knowing these claims to be merely fictitious in some instances, paid no attention to them. The claimants, intent on obtaining wealth by catching negroes, and selling them as slaves, complained of the Agent to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, who, on the eighth of February (1827), wrote the Agent, reproving him for his remissness in failing to capture and return fugitive slaves, saying: “Frequent complaints have been made to the Department, respecting slaves claimed by the citizens of Florida, which are in possession of the Indians; all which have been acted on here, in issuing such orders to you as it was expected would be promptly obeyed; * * * and that these proceedings would be followed by the proper reports to the Department. Nothing satisfactory has been received.”
Thus the Indian Bureau, at Washington, took upon itself the responsibility of deciding particular cases, upon the ex parte testimony which the claimants presented; and the commissioner concluded his letter by a peremptory order to Colonel Humphreys, directing him to capture and deliver over two slaves, said to be the property of a Mrs. Cook.
To this order the Agent replied in the language of dignified rebuke. After stating that one of the slaves had been captured by the Indians, and given up, he says: “but they will not, I apprehend, consent further to risk their lives in a service which has always been a thankless one, and has recently proved so to one of their most respected chiefs, who was killed in an attempt to arrest a runaway slave.”58
The love of liberty is universal. We honor the individual who gives high evidence of his attachment to this fundamental right, with which God has endowed all men, and we applaud him who manfully defends his liberty, whether it be a Washington with honors clustering upon his brow, or the more humble individual who defends his liberty in Florida, by slaying the man who attempts to deprive him of it. But these views were not recognized by the agents of our Government.
While the Department at Washington supposed the Agent to have neglected his duty, the Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the territory supposed the Agent had been quite too faithful to the slaveholders. On the twentieth of March he wrote Colonel Humphreys, saying, “Many slaves belonging to the Indians ARE NOW IN POSSESSION OF THE WHITE PEOPLE. These slaves cannot be obtained for their Indian owners without a lawsuit;” and he then directed the Agent to submit the claim, in all cases where there was an Indian claimant, to the chiefs for decision.
In these contests between barbarians and savages, concerning the rights which they claimed to the bodies of their fellow men, the Exiles had no voice. They well understood that the rapacity of the slave claimants was unbounded and inexorable; they therefore endeavored to avoid all contact with the whites, and to preserve their freedom by affording the piratical slave-catchers no opportunity to lay hands on them.
These demands for negroes alleged to be among the Indians, continued to excite the people of Florida and to perplex the officers of Government, threatening the most serious results,59 and continually enhancing the dangers of the Exiles.
The troops at Fort King were called on to aid in the arrest of fugitive slaves; but their efforts merely excited the ridicule and contempt of both Indiana and negroes. These circumstances becoming known to the slaves of Florida, naturally excited them to discontent; and while their masters were engaged in efforts to arrest negroes to whom they had no claim, their own servants in whom they had reposed every confidence, suddenly disappeared and became lost among the Exiles of the interior. The white people became irritated under these vexations. Their indignation against the Indians was unbounded. The Agent, Colonel Humphreys, gave a vivid description of their barbarity, in a letter to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs.60 But remonstrances with the Indian Department appeared to have no effect. Peremptory orders for the arrest and delivery of slaves continued to reach the Agent. These orders he could not carry into effect, as he could command no force adequate to the arrest of the fugitives. Governor Duval began to regard the Agent as remiss in his efforts, and so reported him to the War Department. Some of the most wealthy Seminoles had purchased slaves of the white people, and for many years, perhaps we may say for generations, had been slaveholders. They held their slaves in a state between that of servitude and freedom; the slave usually living with his own family and occupying his time as he pleased, paying his master annually a small stipend in corn and other vegetables. This class of slaves regarded servitude among the whites with the greatest degree of horror.
The owners of fugitive slaves, or men who pretended to have lost slaves, when able, would seize and hold those belonging to the Indians. The Indians being ignorant of legal proceedings, were unable to obtain compensation from those who thus robbed them of what the slaveholders termed property. This practice became so common that, on the seventeenth of April, many of the chiefs and warriors assembled at the Agency, and made their protest to the Agent, declaring that “many of their negroes, horses, cattle, etc., were in the hands of the white people, for which they were unable to obtain compensation.” Contrary to the treaty of Camp Moultrie, white men were at that time in the Indian country searching for slaves, and the chiefs demanded of the Agent the reason why the white people thus violated the treaty to rob the Indians? The Agent could only reply, that the white men were there by permission given them by the Secretary of War.61
So flagrant were these outrages upon the Indians and negroes, that Colonel Brooke, of the United States Army, at that time commanding in Florida, took upon himself the responsibility of addressing the Agent, advising him not to deliver negroes to the white men, unless their “claims were made clear and satisfactory.”62 The District Judge of the United States for the Territory, also wrote Colonel Humphreys, giving his construction of the rules adopted by the Indian Bureau. He thought, in no case, should a negro be delivered up, where the Indians claimed him, until proofs had been made and title established before judicial authority.63
No law was looked to as the rule by which officers of Government were to be controlled in their official duties. The opinion, the judgment, of the individual constituted his rule of action. During the nineteenth century, perhaps no despotism has existed among civilized nations more unlimited, or more unscrupulous, than that exercised in Florida, from 1823 to 1843.
This state of affairs determined the Exiles not to be arrested by white men. Thus, when Governor Duval ordered a compensation for a slave claimed by Mrs. Cook, to be retained from their annuities, the chiefs held a talk with the Agent, and assured him that the “man was born among the Seminoles, and had never been out of the nation.”64
These demands for negroes increased in number; and the whites became more and more rapacious, and the Indians more and more indignant, until hostilities appeared inevitable. The Agent, from long association with the Indians and his knowledge of facts, naturally sympathised with them. He assembled a number of the chiefs at the Agency, and suggested to them the absolute necessity of submitting to the white people; and for the purpose of avoiding further difficulties, advised them to emigrate west of the Mississippi, or, rather, to send a delegation
It is an interesting fact, that the doctrine recently avowed by the Supreme Court of the United States, that “
Vide Executive Documents, No. 271, 2d Session XXVth Congress.
Captain Sprague, of the United States Army, so states, in his History of the War.
Vide Letter of the Agent, dated sixth of March, 1827.
Vide Minutes of Talk held at Seminole Agency, with Treskal, Mathla, and other Chiefs. Ex. Doc. 271, 1st Sess. XXIVth Congress.
Vide Letter of Col. Brooke to Col. Humphreys, 6 May, 1828, contained in the above cited Document.
Vide Letter of Judge Smith, May 10, 1828, contained in same Document.
Vide Statement of John Hick, 15 August, 1828. Ex. Doc. 271, before quoted.