Payne's Landing Contract

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The Payne's Landing Treaty is a land assignment treaty negotiated in 1832 and ratified in 1834 between the leaders of the Native American nation of Seminoles and the government of the United States of America . The negotiations took place in Payne's Landing, on the banks of the Ocklewaha River in Florida , and were carried out on the Indian side by Jumper, Fuck-a-lus-ti-had-jo, Charley Emartla, Coi-had-jo, Holati Emartla Ya-hadjo , Ar-pi-uck-i (Sam Jones) , Hola-at-a-Mico ( Billy Bowlegs ) as well as their Indian agent Major Phagan and translator Abraham. James Gadsden represented the interests of the American government . The rejection of the treaty regulating the relocation of the Seminoles to the West culminated in the Second Seminole War and the deportation of the Indians, known as the Path of Tears .

prehistory

Seminole reserve in central Florida (colored green). Map from 1831.

The heterogeneous group of Seminoles lived after the cession of Spanish Florida by the Adams-Onís Treaty to the United States from 1823 on a reservation in central Florida. In addition to older tribes from the region such as the Apalachicola or the Timucua, they also consisted of various family clans and refugees from the Muskogee . A large part of the nation consisted of African-American or multiracial slaves , or former slaves who had been freed or who had fled from the north. The swampy interior of Florida was not suitable to feed the people living in the reserve, which is why they hunted and procured supplies mainly in the north of their settlement area. The colonists living there viewed the invading Seminoles with great suspicion. This was particularly due to the close connection between the Indians and the Afro-Americans living with them. Although there was no economic interest in the reservation area on the part of the white settlers, they pushed for the resettlement of the Seminoles around 1830, and especially after the Indian Removal Act was passed . In addition, there was hunger, bad harvests and the lack of economic prospects that ultimately convinced the Seminole leadership to start contract negotiations with the government.

Payne's Landing Contract

In the spring of 1832 the Seminoles were asked to negotiate contracts at Payne's Landing. The negotiations were largely closed to the public, if not secretly. Neither minutes nor details of the negotiations were made public. This secrecy and lack of transparency later led to problems with the acceptance of the contract among the Seminoles.

According to the will of the United States, the Seminoles were to be relocated to Indian territory . There they should join the Muskogee and return all runaway slaves to their owners. These contractual terms were unacceptable to many Seminoles for a variety of reasons. For example, they had heard that the climate in the west was much harsher than in Florida. They did not see themselves as part of the Muskogee and were not interested in a union despite some family ties and a partly common history. Another important reason to reject the treaty was the Afro-American influences within the Seminoles. The former or runaway slaves from the north, who were well integrated into Indian society, formed an important part of the people. These so-called Black Seminoles had political influence on the decisions of the nation. They feared a return to white slavery under significantly worse conditions than with the Seminoles.

The contract was signed despite these concerns. As a prerequisite for ratification, it was established that suitable areas for the Seminoles could be found in the Indian territory. To find such areas, a delegation of seven Seminole chiefs traveled west in October 1832. After the expedition ended in the spring of 1833, the seven participants were forced to sign the Fort Gibson Treaty while still in Indian territory . This confirmed that the Seminoles had found suitable land in the west. The chiefs said on their return to Florida that they had been forced to sign and that they did not have permission or the right to make such a decision for the Seminoles as a whole. However, their signature enabled Congress to ratify the Payne's Landing Treaty in April 1834. It did so without any further information or hearing from the Florida Seminoles. The treaty gave the Seminoles three years to evacuate their territories and move to the West, but the government interpreted the period as starting in 1832. The resettlement was therefore expected in 1835.

Resistance to Resettlement

Osceola, leader of the Seminoles, during the Second Seminole War. Portrayed by George Caitlin, 1838.

The Indian agent Wiley Thompson, appointed in 1834, was to carry out the resettlement. He called a meeting of the Seminoles in Fort King, now Ocala , to discuss the modalities of the trip to Oklahoma with them. The Indians informed him that they were not bound by the treaty and would not leave their country. Thompson called in soldiers for Forts King and Brooke as he expected armed resistance to the relocation. Brigadier General Duncan L. Clinch , the commander of the US Army in Florida, also sent word of the expected resistance to Washington, DC He assumed that many troops would be necessary to get the Seminoles to move.

President Andrew Jackson wrote a letter to the Seminoles informing them that the contract and relocation would also be carried out by force if necessary. The Seminoles told him that they were not ready to move. After further negotiations with Thompson, eight of the chiefs agreed to relocate with their tribes, but asked for a deadline by the end of the year. However, some of the most important chiefs, such as Micanopy of the Alachua, vehemently opposed resettlement. Thompson announced the removal of the insurgent chiefs and banned the sale of weapons and ammunition in the settlement area. The situation worsened and the conflict escalated after a soldier was killed by the Seminoles. Osceola killed Chief Charley Emathla, who had attempted to take his tribe to Fort Brooke for transport, an escape that was viewed as treason by the other Seminoles. This marked the beginning of the Second Seminole War in 1835, which continued after Osceola's death in 1838 until 1842. Most of the Seminoles were deported to Oklahoma during the Path of Tears, only about 250 to 500 Seminoles were able to hide in the Everglades and avoid forced relocation.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Grant Foreman: Indian Removal: The Emigration of the Five Civilized Tribes of Indians. University of Oklahoma Press, 1974, ISBN 0806111720 , Book Five: Seminole Removal, p. 319.
  2. ↑ a b Bruce G. Trigger, Wilcomb E. Washburn, Richard EW Adams, Frank Salomon, Stuart B. Schwartz: The Cambridge history of the native peoples of the Americas. Cambridge University Press, 1996, ISBN 0521573920 , pp. 524-525.
  3. ↑ John Missall, Mary Lou Missall: Seminole Wars: America's Longest Indian Conflict. University Press of Florida 2004, ISBN 0-8130-2715-2 , 83.

literature

  • Edwin C. McReynolds: The Seminoles . University of Oklahoma Press, Norman OK 1957 ( The Civilization of the American Indian Series 47), (5th print: ibid. 1988, ISBN 0-8061-1255-7 ).
  • Sean Michael O'Brien: In bitterness and in tears. Andrew Jackson's destruction of the Creeks and Seminoles . Praeger, Westport CT et al. 2003, ISBN 0-275-97946-6 .
  • Francis Paul Prucha: American Indian Treaties. The History of a Political Anomaly . University of California Press, Berkeley CA et al. 1997, ISBN 0-520-20895-1 .
  • John Missall, Mary Lou Missall: Seminole Wars. America's Longest Indian Conflict . University Press of Florida, Gainesville FL et al. 2004, ISBN 0-8130-2715-2 ( Florida History and Culture Series ).

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