Left Flank

Between July 15 and August 1816, a battle fought on the Apalachicola River in northwestern Florida at Prospect Bluff eliminated a unique and very real impediment to American expansion westward. The Negro Fort was a stubborn legacy of the Creek War, abandoned in the summer pf 1815 by renegade Red Sticks, Seminoles, and their British allies, but still garrisoned by the remaining Maroons, or Black Seminoles - the offspring of Seminoles and escaped Georgian African-American slaves. A porous border and the example of independent Black Seminole towns and accomplished chiefs and advisers encouraged even more slaves to escape. The Creek War had ended with the Treaty of Fort Jackson on August 9, 1815, but a few British entrepreneurs, backed by marines and local Caribbean governors and their Spanish ally waiting for another chance to pounce on the United States, had kept the American-Florida border hot with Native raids. Major General Andrew Jackson, observing the Negro Fort's strategic importance, saw a way to rid the United States of a few problems all at once.

The Negro Fort was impressive,and the battle to subdue it underhanded. Generals Jackson and Edmund Gaines planned to send American vessels, two schooners and two gunboats, commanded by Sailing Master Jairus Loomis, up the Apalachicola to force the Maroons to fire first, necessitating a honorable response by a detachment of the US Fourth Infantry, commanded by Colonel Duncan Clinch. Inside the Negro Fort, three African-American leaders, Garzon, Cyrus, and Prince, each with military experience leading or assisting Red Stick or Seminole war parties, commanded 250-300 African-Americans, and also 1,600 Seminoles, Choctaws, and Creeks, and a schooner patrolling the river. The eight-sided earthen fort sported 10 guns, including four 24-pounders atop walls 15 feet high and 18 feet thick. Near the Negro Fort lived about a thousand men, women, and children growing crops. The bombardment of the Negro Fort on July 25 went well for the defenders until a freak accident when one American shell, which were now fired «red-hot», was lobbed from Loomis' gunboats and rolled through the door of the magazine. The explosion was terrific, and the slaughter devastating. In addition, Clinch allowed his Creek allies to slaughter survivors. Clinch acquired 2,500 rifles, 50 carbines, 400 pistols, and 500 swords, and destroyed the countryside. Clinch's own recollections were conveniently less barbarous.

«The explosion was awful, and the scene horrible beyond description. You cannot conceive, nor I describe the horrors of the scene. In an instant lifeless bodies were stretched upon the plain, buried in sand and rubbish, or suspended from the tops of the surrounding pines. Here lay an innocent babe, there a helpless mother; on the one side a sturdy warrior, on the other a bleeding squaw. Piles of bodies, large heaps of sand, broken guns, accoutrements, etc, covered the site of the fort. The brave soldier was disarmed of his resentment and checked his victorious career, to drop a tear on the distressing scene.»

Yet, the impressive display did not mollify the Seminoles for long, and the British returned to sow rebellion. In the next year, the First Seminole War commenced. Sean Michael O'Brien, from whose book, In Bitterness and Tears: Andrew Jackson's Destruction of the Creeks and Seminoles, sums up the the political and economic consequences of the Creek War and First Seminole Wars as «the most disastrous conflicts in Native American history.» The Battle of Horseshoe Bend, the decisive end of the Creek War, resulted in more Native deaths than any single other conflict, and the Treaty of Fort Jackson forced the cession of half of the Creek state, opening up the Alabama and Mississippi for white American expansion. The British and Spanish missed an opportunity to block American expansion by creating a Native border state along the Georgia-Alabama-Florida borders.  And, Southern slave owners' fears of a slave insurrection lost one major manifestation. As DKos' gjohnsit argues:

A consistent theme in the history of slavery is the fear - the fear that the people you are doing wrong are going to learn enough to realize the wrongs being done to them and make you pay for it. It's the manifestations of this fear that are interesting.

What I find compelling is the alternative the Negro Fort offers of another America.

On this blackest of days in Native American history, the spectacle of Senator Barack Obama standing and asking Native Americans for their votes has a poignant ring.

The rarely-publicized meetings are one piece of what Indian Country leaders describe as an unprecedented effort this year by the presidential field to pay heed to this small and historically overlooked voting bloc. In the last two weeks alone, Obama, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, campaigned on Indian reservations across South Dakota and Montana as Sen. John McCain met with tribal leaders in New Mexico.

Comprising less than 2 percent of the U.S. population and concentrated mostly outside key primary states in past election years, Native Americans are seeing an uptick in prominence because of political and geographic realities.

The prolonged primary season has pushed the contest into states with larger Native communities—states that typically voted too late to attract much attention from presidential candidates. With the emergence of the Mountain West as the newest general election battleground, the Native vote is more highly sought-after than ever since it has proven to be mobilized and instrumental in recent statewide races.

And, what will Native Americans get for voting for Senator Obama?

He hosted a conference call with 100 tribal leaders, where he pledged adequate funding in his administration for healthcare, education and other programs. «Honoring sovereignty means maintaining an open door relationship. I want all of your tribes to have a voice in developing my policies,» Obama said, according to the Seminole Tribune.

He released a platform that went a step further than Clinton by promising to appoint an American Indian policy advisor to his senior White House staff.

What about some of that casino money in Obama's clean campaign coffers?

The subtitle of this book, The Adventures and Fate of the First English Colonists in America, is perhaps more accurate than the title, which should be something like "Walter Raleigh, America's First Governor". Big Chief Elizabeth's narrative spans the reigns of three English monarchs, from Henry VIII to James I, but Ralegh's constant devotion to his colonization project amidst all the distractions of English and world history is the main focus. The casualty of those distractions is the Roanoke colony, the so-called "Lost Colony", founded in 1586 (check out also the Searching for the Lost Colony DNA Blog.

One surprising aspect of this book's discussion, other than the theory it espouses about the fate of the Lost Colonists, is Ralegh's opinion and directives about how colonists should deal with the native inhabitants. Having studied the Spanish approach to dealing with the Indians, Ralegh made it a crime punishable by death to harm Indians. Obviously, this policy was difficult to keep, and Milton is quite clear about how many chiefs dealt with outsiders. But, this policy led to several public relations campaigns featuring tours of England by willing and unwilling Indians to London. The most notable, of course, was the marriage and visit to London of Pocahontas and her husband, John Rolfe. Within this civilizing project, whereby Indians were converted to Christianity and lived as English, lies one strand of the future problems plaguing American-Native American relations to this day.

This book is loaded with a wealth of colorful details about all participants in the colonization project. For instance, Englishmen walked the entire coast of America well before Jamestown and Plymouth were founded. The author tries to address alternate theories of what happened to the Lost Colony, but not thoroughly. His retelling of this narrative includes the Pocahontas legends, the story of Jamestown, the competition between England and Spain, Elizabeth's and James' court politics, Walter Raleigh's role as the first governor of Virginia, and some Native American politics. It works best as an introduction to all.