Seminole Indian Wars -Primary Documents

Assistant inspector General reports made to THE Inspector General: 1817 and 1835-1836.

Dade blog 5As a member of the Seminole Wars Foundation, it was my pleasure to transcribe some of the original military status reports of the U.S. Army during the early years when Florida was still a relatively wild territory. I am publishing these documents with the permission of the Foundation in hopes of offering some excellent primary sources material to students, researchers and anyone else who might be interested.

It was the job of the Assistant Inspector Generals to visit the various forts in Florida in order to:

  • Analyze the status of the forts themselves
  • Assess the condition of and need for supplies and equipment and to
  • Evaluate personnel

The reports were made in booklet-like journals and, of course, in longhand.

All locked up and ready for any attackTranscribing those documents wasn’t an easy task because of the various writing styles, the fading of ink, the compactness of the writing, and the periodic unclear words. But in the final product, I kept each line of words exactly as they were written, which makes them look very abbreviated on a regular sized piece of paper and on a computer screen.

There was no way to reconstruct some of those unclear words so you will find a lot of question marks.

A little friendly conversation to lessen the tensionOverall, this isn’t fun reading but it does offer some wonderfully detailed insight as to exactly what was going on in those forts of old. And because of my interest in the Dade battle of 1835 that triggered the Second Seminole War, I found it interesting when I discovered the mention Francis Langhorne Dade. This was when he had the rank of Lieutenant in the year 1817 instead of the rank of Major that he had time of his death in 1835

The 4 links below offer you first the original and then the transcription:

Soldiers' encampment before the battle

 

 

Original Report #1

Transcription of Report # 1

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Original Report # 2

Transcription of Report #2

 

Seminole stories of past conflictsIf you are looking for other sources of information regarding the Seminole Wars, here are some further links:

The Seminole Wars Foundation

The Dade Battlefield Society

The St. Augustine National Cemetery

Florida History: The Dade Battle, Part I

Florida History: The Dade Battle Part, II

Florida History: The Dade Battle Part, III

Florida History: The Dade Battle, Part IV

Florida History: Fort Christmas, FL

Captain Fraser, Captain Gardiner and Luis PachecoPhoto Galleries:

Dade Battlefield Park

Dade Battle Encampments

Dade Battle: Reenactment, Part I

Dade Battle: Reenactment, Part II

Fort Christmas, FL

 

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