Brass Bowl

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Years of Conflict

Throughout its existence, Fort Brook retained its prominence in the U.S. military’s offensive operations in Florida.  Below present-day Whiting St., there were horse sheds, a bake house, a carpenter’s shop, a Quartermaster’s store, a “pen” for Indian prisoners, a hospital, & a cemetery.  Nine overall commanders would take the field in Florida, & most of them would visit the fort at one time or another.  Among them were Gen., later President, Zachary Taylor, Gen. Thos. S. Jesup, & Lt. Col. William Harney.  Solders of all ranks, from privates to generals, would gain military experience here that would propel them to advancement in their nation’s later 19th century wars: the Mexican War, the Civil War, & the U.S wars against the western Plains Indians.  The Fort Brooke reservation, 4 miles square, reached the zenith of its occupation in late 1837, when 65 officers & 1596 enlisted men were in garrison.  Over the last year, 450 Indians had been gathered at the fort, awaiting transport to the West.  Others continued to come in or be captured.  On June 2, 1837, Osceola & Abraka & a war party of about 200, released the prisoners.   Gen. Jesup was disheartened.  “This campaign, so far as relates to Indian migration,” he wrote, “has entirely failed.”  In Oct. 1837, a number of Indian war leaders were captured, & the fort’s garrison was reduced, even as the war dragged on for another five years.  The U.S. withdrew from Florida in 1842, ending the 2nd Seminole War, & Congress pased the Armed Occupation Act, encouraging white settlement of the Florida frontier.

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Fort Brooke & the Indians

 When the U.S. acquired Florida, in 1821, the policy of the U.S. government still favored making treaties & attempting to buy Indian lands.  Within a decade, however, the situation changed dramatically.  Gen. Andrew Jackson became President Jackson.  The Indian Removal Act (1830) made it official policy that any future treaties would require the Natives to move to the newly created “Indian Territory” west of the Mississippi River.  The situation of the Florida Indians already had been worsened significantly by the Treaty of Moultrie Creek (1823), which restricted them to poor, wet & unproductive lands in the center of the peninsula.  The military authorities tried to restrict liquor dealers from the reservation, but with little success.  Some settlers, desirous of Indian lands & the economic upturn that a military presence would bring, disguised themselves as Indians & attacked their own neighbors in order to justify a call for a military buildup.  Promised supplies did not arrive on time; the Indian’s planting & harvesting cycles were disrupted; & starvation became a real possibility.  The Treaty of Payne’s Landing (on the St. John’s River), forced upon the Florida Indians in 1832, was strictly a Removal treaty.  The determination of the U.S. government to enforce this treaty would precipitate the longest & most costly Indian war in U.S. history.  The entire fighting system of the U.S. Army, Navy, & Marine Corp would change because of the experiences of the soldier at Fort Brooke & other Florida forts during the Seminole Wars of Removal.

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Fort Brooke & Tampa

Throughout the 2nd & 3rd Seminole wars (1835-42; 1856-58), Fort Brooke served as the nucleus of a small but growing community that included not only soldiers of many ethnic backgrounds & languages, but also settlers, slaves, & Freedmen lured by the military economy, as well as by all of the excellent features of terrain & climate that continue to attract residents & visitors today.  Among the troops were man foreign-born men for whom military enlistment provided fast & east entry into the new society;  although service in the heat, mosquitoes, & snakes of Florida would not seem easy at all.  An Englishman, John Bemrose, who served as a hospital orderly at several Florida forts, recorded that he met Germans, French, Scots, Polish, Swedes, Canadians, & Nova Scotians,  Their languages seemed to him “like the chatter of Babel.”  The Indians visited the fort to obtain supplies.  Indian prisoners & emigrants encamped there, awaiting transport.  The long shoreline of Cotanchobee also made a fine meeting place for Cuban fisherman who secretly brought arms & ammunition to support the Indian resisters  In Jan, 1834, Hillsborough became Florida’s 18th county, & its seat was named for Tampa, the settlement that had taken root a  round Fort Brooke. The fort remained active until it was formally abandoned by the U.S. government on Dec. 21, 1882.  It was occupied regularly until 1860 & thereafter, was a seasonal camp for soldiers from Key West Barracks.

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It was Gen. Andrew Jackson who recommended that a fort be built on Tampa Bay.  James Gadsden, his aide, suggested that troops from the Fourth Infantry should be the first to be stationed at the new post.  Col. George Mercer Brooke, a hero of the War of 1812, commanded a unit of the Fourth, which was stationed at Pensacola.  Col. Brooke arrived at the Tampa Bay site on Jan 22, 1824, with four companies.  The fort that he designed had utility, convenience, & beauty.  Capt. Isaac Clark, a military comrade, pronounced the barracks with its setting among the majestic live oaks & wild orange trees, “The best barracks of its kind, in the United States.”  A visitor found the site “delightful.”  Beyond the beauty of its location, Cantonment Brooke - soon, Fort Brooke, would become the southern anchor of the U.S .military line of offense & control that would be anchored on the northeast by Fort King, at the Indian Agency, near the site of the old Indian village of Ocale (Ocala, “my camp”).  In proposing the fort on the bay, Gadsden had told the Secretary of War that “a judicious location of an adequate force simultaneous with the concentration of the Indians cannot but have the happy effect of obtaining such a control as to render them perfectly Subservient to the views of the Government.”  In this, he was echoing the view of many in government, but not of the military officers on the scene.  The soldiers knew that the Florida Indians had no intention of becoming “perfectly Subservient” to anyone.

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The U.S. & the Indians.

 The 19^th-century conflicts recorded in U.S. history as the 1^st, 2^nd, & 3^rd Seminole Wars were, in reality, part of a much larger & longer clash of cultures.  Since its own birth, in conflict, the U.S. has wrestled the “the Indian problem.”  Although the tribes were recognized as sovereign nations &, therefore, independent actors in this international drama, the continuous population growth & ever-expanding settlement of the new “Americans” spawned almost a century of Wars Of Indian Removal that were destined to end, finally, at Fort Brooke, Florida, the Indians’ Cotanchobee, in 1858.  From the Iroquois in the north, to the Cherokees in the Carolinas &, finally, to the Seminoles in Florida, the U.S. fought the Indians over control of land.  In 1813 U.S. soldiers had crossed an international border to burn Indian towns in Spanish-Florida.  In 1817-18, Andrew Jackson entered Spanish-Florida & destroyed Indian towns, crops, & livestock, in the 1^st Seminole War.  By the Treaty of Moultrie Creek (near St. Augustine), in 1823, the Florida tribes were confined to a reservation in the interior of the peninsula, but getting them to go there was another problem entirely.  Supplying them with promised foodstuffs was yet another.  A military fortification, to be constructed on Tampa Bay, would permit the U.S. government to get promised supplies to the Indians & also would defend against Cuban Spaniards who might supply their old Indian friends with arms and ammunition.