Moultrie Creek Treaty

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The area in central Florida assigned to the Seminoles by the Treaty of Moultrie Creek

The Moultrie Creek Treaty was an agreement signed in 1823 between the United States government and some of the Seminole chiefs in present-day Florida . The United States acquired Florida from Spain in 1821 under the Adams-Onís Treaty . In 1823, the Florida Territory Government decided to relocate the Seminoles to a reservation in the center of the Florida Peninsula.

A meeting to negotiate the treaty was scheduled for early September 1823 at Moultrie Creek, south of St Augustine . Over 425 Seminoles attended the meeting, and Mikasuki chief Neamathla was elected as negotiator for the Seminoles . Under the terms of the treaty, the Seminoles were forced to place themselves under the protection of the United States. Another provision was that the Indians renounced all claims to their lands and should move to a reservation of 4 million acres (16,000 km²). The reserve was located in central Florida. The northern border was north of today's Ocala . To the south the border ran on a line south of the Tampa Bays. The western and eastern borders of the reserve were cut off from the inland coasts. Contact between the Seminoles and traders from Cuba and the Bahamas was to be avoided. Neamathla and five other chiefs were allowed to keep their villages along the Apalachicola River .

In the Moultrie Creek Treaty, the US government was required to protect the Seminoles as long as they were peaceful and law-abiding. The government was supposed to deliver agricultural implements, cattle and pigs to the Seminoles, compensate them for the relocation and the losses associated with it, and provide the Seminoles with an annual ration of provisions until the Seminoles could sustain themselves with their first harvest. The government was also to pay the Seminoles $ 5,000 a year for 20 years, and to support a translator, school, and blacksmith for 20 years. In return, the Seminoles had to approve the construction of roads through their reservation and had to hand over any refugee or runaway slave they apprehended to the jurisdiction of the United States.

literature

  • John Missal, Mary Lou Missal: 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 ).