It was today, Independence Day, 189 years ago, the decisive engagement of the Creek Indian Crisis took place on the Choctawhatchee River between Colonel Leavin Brown and the Jackson County Militia and the Creek Warriors of Cosapina – roughly around the area of the present-day Shoal River Wayside Park on the southern extremity of the Crestview City Limits before the land becomes Elgin Reservation Territory.
The Crisis, which you can read more about here, had really begun some three years earlier – but had moved from retribution killings between bands of Creek and white settlers to all-out war in 1837.
Leading up to the Battle of Shoal River on Independence Day, 1837
Outgunned and outmatched, the small Scotch-Irish settler population that had settled in the area of Walton and present-day Okaloosa County 20 years prior made an appeal to the Governor of the Florida Territory, Richard Call, for help. Call would send the most bloodthirsty pack of vagabonds he could find, apparently, the Jackson County Militia under the command of Lt. Colonel Leavin Brown.
During the delay in the message for help, the Creek did not keep their hands clean. Several ambushes in the Walton County area left almost two dozen settlers dead. Those killed were searching the wilds for Creek who’d stolen their cattle.
By May, the 73 conscripts of the Jackson County Militia arrived in the area of modern-day Bruce, near today’s Walton-Bay county line. There, they cornered a band of Creek warriors, defeated them in a bloody battle with heavy casualties, and chased them west.
While the warriors retreated to find better ground to fight the Jackson County militia, the militia took the time to commit several war crimes. In the area of Alaqua, Colonel Brown’s men would kill a dozen defenseless women and children already in their custody and scalp them. Colonel Brown himself would respond to the accusation by claiming he and his men had only killed nine women and children in cold blood.
A United States Marine Lieutenant attaached to a unit that came upon the scene of the massacre moments after the killings would report, “I am firmly of the opinion that the poor devils were pinned up and slaughtered like cattle, and such was the opinion of friendly indians in our company. The shrieks of poor children were distinctly heard at a house distant, I should think, a quarter of a mile. Several were scalped, and all who had earrings had their ears slit with knives to possess themselves of silver. I do think this is one of the most outrageous acts civilized men could be guilty of.”
No punishment was meted out to Colonel Brown or his Jackson County Militiamen for the war crime.
Financial Pressures
While the Jackson County militia was doing its level best to exterminate the Creek of the western Florida Panhandle, a financial crisis in the United States proved to be the Americans’ greatest threat to victory against the Creek and their Seminole Cousins.
Andrew Jackson, the president of the United States, allowed the Second Bank of the United States to expire, a policy decision that stemmed from his hatred and mistrust of centralized financial power. The lapse meant that the government essentially could not continue its main source of revenue in those days – land sales to settlers. This faltering of the government’s main revenue source in turn caused a financial crisis and the decision to tighten the military budget in 1837. Already, the government spent more than half a billion dollars in today’s money to fight the several hundred Seminole and Creek warriors in Florida without much to show for it. Jackson’s opposition in Congress, the Whigs, excoriated him and his allies for it. The Whigs got their belt-tightening measures, which put real pressure on the United States’ front-line soldiers in the war.
The Climax of the Creek Indian Crisis
Despite the financial difficulties back east – and the dashing of any hopes the Jackson County militia had for federal reinforcements – the Jackson County men would finish the bloody job.
On Independence Day, 1837, the militiamen cornered the Creek warriors at a bend in the Shoal River, which, if you look at it on a map, eerily resembles Horseshoe Bend.
The 70 or so Jackson County militiamen engaged about 100 Creek, just a portion of the total number of warriors estimated in the area, and routed them. As they fled across the river, they left between eight and ten dead Creek behind, according to Pensacola State Historian Brian Rucker. Jackson County’s men took three wounded in the 20-minute battle.
Two weeks later, Brown’s command would catch up with the Creek host and attack them again at Alaqua Creek and kill five more at a cost of a single Jackson County militiaman’s life and five more wounded.
The fifteen dead and, we could assume, more wounded in the two engagements left a mark on the Creek resistance. Sensing that to continue was futile, Creek began to surrender without a fight. A month and a half after the engagement at the Shoal River, Creek leader Cosapina would surrender to the militia.
More die-hard subunits of the original band began making their way overland to join their Seminole cousins and fight on the Florida Peninsula. Many more disintegrated from the main body of Creek and sought shelter in the wilds of the panhandle from the East Pass into the Choctawhatchee Bay through the rest of the panhandle. By the time the survivors reached Seminole-controlled lands, about 100 Creek men, women, and children joined up with their nominal allies near modern-day Orlando.
Fallout from the Creek Indian Crisis of 1837
The unrest in the region severely affected the local economy to the point where Governor Call signed an order in October to send rations to those in Walton County who needed them.
Despite the defeats, there were still antagonistic and capable Creek remnants left behind in the wildlands that made up Walton County. In January of 1838, a warrior would rob a barge on the Choctawhatchee River. In March of the same year, Governor Call would visit Walton County to attempt to negotiate with the remaining Creek who were hidden in the pine forests. Later that year, the US government would remove the Apalachicola Indians and declare the Panhandle free of Native Americans. Bands of Creek still roamed the area. Between 1840 and 1847, whites were killed all across the panhandle, including along the Choctawhatchee River.
