Nearly 200 years after Second Seminole War, Riverbend Park battlefield near Jupiter raises a host of questions — some of them inspiring, others complicated and uncomfortable.
JUPITER — Dry leaves crackle under Glenn Bakels’ boots as he trudges along a shaded path under a canopy of oak trees draped in Spanish moss at Riverbend Park.
“That’s when we get to this point here,” said Bakels, wearing a broad rim hat, olive green shirt and cream-colored pants with suspenders — the uniform worn by early 19th century Tennessee volunteer militiamen. “When you read the history, the record of it, they felt they had the Seminoles’ backs up against the wall. Gen. (Thomas) Jesup was determined to end this war once and for all.”
The conflict Bakels, a retired Palm Beach County Fire Rescue special operations captain, is referring to is called the Second Seminole War. But historians, and battle reenactors like Bakels, believe the fierce confrontation, fought between the end of 1837 and the start of 1838, was a continuous 40-year armed struggle between the U.S. government and Florida’s indigenous people and their allies, including free Black people alternatively known as Black Seminoles or maroons, that extended from 1817 to 1858.
What is decided by all accounts is that the fierce battle that took place in the cypress marsh of at the Loxahatchee River in this 644-acre Palm Beach County park was the war’s largest battle, an hourslong conflict dominated by cannon and musket fire that ultimately ended in the equivalent of tie. It was a draw that left the U.S. Army in control of southeastern Florida territory, and an untold number of Seminoles who got away left to live in the wetlands to the west and south as the only unconquered tribe in U.S. history.
Nearly 200 years later, this site is a deposit of revelations — most of them inspiring, others complicated and uncomfortable.
As America kicks off a year of celebrations leading to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the Loxahatchee River battlefield offers a complex query. How does this part of the American story fit in with the broader narrative of freedom and emancipation?
Riverbend Park also frames an entire list of other questions, too, about this land’s future. Does it serve as an illuminating archaeological and historical site? Or does it join the county’s other 100-plus parks as a general place for recreation to serve a growing population?
For the reenactors and members of the Loxahatchee Battlefield Preservationists, the answer is easy. Tell the story, they say, the whole story.
“We have this wonderful opportunity to do something far greater than ourselves and share this exceptional story,” said Derek Hankerson, president of the group. “This story of red and Black patriots is so powerful.”
Humans in Palm Beach County date back to time of pyramid construction
The story, however, begins millenniums before the battles of January 1838. Based on prior digs at the park, there is abundant evidence the history of humans living in the area now encompassed by the park and the northeast corner of Palm Beach County began about 5,000 years ago — during the era in which Egyptian pharaohs built pyramids near the Nile River.
“We’re not just talking about the battle here,” said Steve Carr, a preservation advocate. “We’re talking about continuous habitation for many, many thousands of years and it’s all buried into this 600-acre park.”
The historical record, however, picked up pace and intensity in the past 500 years, with the first arrival of Europeans in La Florida in 1513. The peninsula and its western-stretching Panhandle soon were in the periphery of global Great Power geopolitics and warfare.
Throughout the next 263 years, colonial rule swapped between Spain and Britain. After 1776, the soon-to-be constitutionally bound United States also eyed the lands beyond its original border in southern Georgia.
The new U.S. government eyed Spanish Florida with the same wariness it did British colonies to the north in Canada and French outposts to the west in the Louisiana territory. That leeriness turned violent with a series of engagements pitting the U.S. military and militias against Florida’s indigenous people and the free Black people and other allies in the early 19th century.
The first sustained confrontations took place a few years after the War of 1812 in what is known as the First Seminole War. Commanded by then Gen. Andrew Jackson, he of the $20 bill, the military struck Seminole villages in northern Florida and pressured Spain to ultimately cede Florida to Washington in the 1819 Adams-OnÃs Treaty.
Twenty years later, the war arrived in Jupiter.
Army-Seminole engagement in Loxahatchee becomes ‘run for their lives’
The conflict that spread to the banks of the Loxahatchee River ramped up on Christmas Day 1837. Gen. Zachary Taylor, eventually America’s 12th president, commanded a military force that struck Seminole encampments at Lake Okeechobee.
The military then moved south toward what today is Riverbend Park. The force consisted of 600 dragoons, soldiers who rode horses to battle but then dismounted to engage the enemy. They were joined by 500 Tennessee volunteers and 100 Alabama volunteers.
How many Seminoles and others were in the area is not precisely known, but it is believed to have been just under 1,000 divided among two villages.
Bakels, who is the preservationist board’s resident historian, said the Army first sent Jesup and his expeditionary to the Loxahatchee River scene. The 96 men were mostly sailors, many of them African American, who had been hastily trained as infantry men and handed muskets, he said. Also part of the force was Joseph E. Johnston, later a storied Confederate general, who traveled in civilian attire.
Near the location of Fort Jupiter, Bakels said the force captured an indigenous woman, who was coerced into giving up information about Seminoles’ whereabouts. The first skirmish ensured.
Bakels said the Seminoles’ tactic was to fall back, luring the soldiers into a trap. Then, according to accounts of the battle, he said, the “whoops” of the indigenous warriors “started with a low growl, like a panther, and then crescending to a high screech like an owl that was terrifying and absolutely unnerving to the sailors and soldiers.”
Shots were fired and the fighting commenced. Fortunately for the expeditionary force, Johnston was present.
“He quickly took command of the beleaguered sailors and soldiers,” Bakels said. “But the rear guard action became a five mile running battle for their lives back … with the Seminoles chasing them and engaging them along the way. The Seminoles claim they would have killed every one of them if not for the cover of darkness.”
‘Deafening silence’ at end of fierce battle in Jupiter area
Word got to Gen. Abraham Eustis at Fort Pierce and the larger Army force was mobilized. The harsh march to the battle scene was rugged, requiring bridge building over waterways, encumbered by moccasins and diamondback snakes.
The units lugged artillery. Once cannons had been positioned, near what is now a gasoline station on Indiantown Road, the order to fire into the dense pinewood flat occupied by Seminole warriors, and also women and children, was given.
The Seminoles and maroons hid in the tree cover where they built defensive breastworks. It was difficult for the soldiers to see the enemy in the thickets, so they relied on the cannons that fired bucketloads of grape shot trying to dislodge their foes. The battle then ensued.
The Seminoles ultimately fell back, crossing the river allowing them to get non-combatants to relative safety. All told, the conflict is said to have lasted two hours.
“With that, the battle comes to a screeching halt,” Bakels said. “They talk about the silence almost being as deafening as all the noise, rockets, banging into trees, artillery, muskets, rifles all going off.”
Nine soldiers and two Tennessee volunteers were killed on site, and two more combatants would die a day later. The soldiers returned to an area called Paddock Point, where they established a depot called Fort Jupiter.
One Seminole was reported killed in battle, but it is not certain he was the lone fatality.
Big legacy of Riverbend battle is ‘The Big Grab’
The Seminole inhabitants of the villages dispersed after the fighting.
Some went to an area of hammocks known as Hungry Land, where stories tell of an older Black woman who heroically and poignantly sacrificed her life to allow the indigenous peoples to escape to safety while the Army believed they had them encircled in a siege.
Others moved southwest, to the area of the present day Wellington mall. There, a resupplied Army force caught up with them around Feb. 5, 1838, a week or so after the conflict. Bakels said the Army records show some of the fighting men were not particularly looking forward to another “drubbing” by the indigenous fighters.
Instead, talks ensued in which the Seminoles “petitioned” the American military to allow them to stay in the area. Jesup and the field officers initially agreed, Bakels said, and reassured the indigenous people gathered with the soldiers at Fort Jupiter.
But Bakels said the request was later denied by their superiors and the Van Buren administration. On March 20, 1838, the Army dragoons surrounded the Seminole camp at For Jupiter.
“They committed what we would call an atrocity these days where they arrested 696 Seminoles under a white flag of truce,” Bakels said. Also apprehended were 147 maroon allies at the fort, according to documents.
Such a maneuver was called a “grab,” Bakels said, the nabbing of purported hostiles under a white flag of truce.
“Now, this is the biggest capture of, the largest capture, in American history of indigenous people under the white flag truce,” said Bakels.
A goal of the military operation was to capture people for slavery
Bakels said Jessup had “a history of capturing Seminoles under a white flag of truce.” The general is said to have captured other leaders like Alligator, Osceola, Tuskeegee, Wildcat in that fashion.
“He’d say, ‘Come in and talk to me’ and then bam, he slapped the shackles on them,” Bakels said.” Well, the same thing happened here. Now they call that practice the grab game. When it occurred here at Fort Jupiter, it was called ‘the big grab’ because of the sheer numbers caught.”
Bakels said the Army shipped the captured Seminole population out through the infamous Trail of Tears from Jupiter to southwestern U.S. lands. The African Americans ultimately were taken to St. Augustine and sold into slavery.
But the battle at Loxahatchee followed a clear pattern, he said.
“This was just one of numerous battles,” he said. “In my opinion, the Seminoles won most of them.”
Carr said Jesup later noted that the battle site was “the worst ground that two people ever fought over in the history of man.”
In fact, Carr notes the Seminoles did not present an overt threat to the military. Florida was not valued ground — it was not farmland that pioneers were settling in droves, nor rich in natural resources being exploited.
What it did have were free Black people. And following the 1808 outlawing of the global commercial slave trade in the United States, those individuals became very valuable to Southern plantation and agricultural owners and interests.
“The whole premise of taking Florida was to remove the African American threat that was growing here,” Carr said. “They had to remove the Seminoles in order to get the Blacks. They were moving millions of Americans east of Mississippi River and moving west.”
That, Carr said, opened lands for plantations.
“Who works the plantations? Where are they going to get the people to run these new plantations?” he said. “The last large groups of African Americans were here in Florida. The Seminole war was really fought to get the Seminoles out and now they can start picking off the Blacks. And they did that. They were selling them at auction in St Augustine.”
For reenactors in the roles of Black Seminoles, also called maroons, it is a poignant story they are conveying.
“That this was a fight for freedom when we talk about the Seminole wars,” said Matt Griffin, a Groveland, Florida, resident who has been involved in reenactments since he was about 10 years old. “And this was a fight for survival as well.”
The story is compelling, for example, in that the Seminole and their maroon allies were going up against — and defeating in numerous battles — Army commanders and combatants who would become U.S. presidents and military icons.
“A lot of them cut their teeth right here in Florida fighting the Seminoles, trying to rid Florida of the Seminoles and also the Blacks that were here in that period,” he said.
It may have been 200 years ago, but Griffin says he emphasizes the role these wars played have molded the state and nation we live in now.
“Although it may not get the recognition that other events and time periods in American history get, or even in Florida history get, it played a crucial part in our day to day developments now,” he said. “You’d be surprised how many people don’t understand just how important this segment of Florida history is.”
What was the outcome of the Riverbend battle?
There is more to the epilogue of the Riverbend Park battlefield than simply victimization, tragedy and oppression.
It is also a story of resilience, selfless sacrifice and heroism.
Hankerson, president of the preservation board, said he focuses on the indigenous and maroon inhabitants who defended their freedom.
“That’s cool. They fought for their independence,” he said. “Native Americans said, ‘You are on my land and you are forcing me to go your schools? I’m not assimilating to you. You assimilate to me. Why would you think we would not defend the territory which we have been defending with the Spanish since we arrived. And who are you to push me around?'”
To that end, the Seminole and maroon fighters were not just defending an ideal, or territory, but also a way of life. That, he added, makes it as worthy of any American story.
Bakels said the story should also respect the greatness of the indigenous warriors. Johnston, who served in the Mexican-American War before becoming a Confederate legend in defense of Manassas and other engagements, almost didn’t make it to the Civil War.
Bakels said he logged seven bullet holes in his clothes and a shot through his hat came so close to his scalp that it burned, but did not cut or shatter his skull in the first expeditionary encounter.
Carr puts it more bluntly.
“It just shows you why the Seminoles are the only unconquered tribe in American history,” he said. “They just said F-U man. We’re staying. And they fought.”
Now, the members of preservation board say, it is for today’s generation to learn more about the battle, and to share that knowledge. The history yielded here is worth it.
“The story is so good, so dynamic,” said Carr.
Antonio Fins is a politics and business editor at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. He has a doctorate in U.S. history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. You can reach him at afins@pbpost.com. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.
