LIVING HISTORY
DIVIDED WARPATHS
THE FLORIDA WAR 1848
In 1841, William Tecumseh Sherman played a leading role in capturing the Seminole nation’s most dangerous leader, Coacoochee, in Fort Pierce.
One veteran of the Second Seminole War was
the victor, the other became the vanquished
Everyone has heard of Osceola, but how about the
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BY RICK CRARY
Seminole warlord who replaced him during the
Florida War? Coacoochee was his name and the
safest prison in the peninsula couldn’t hold him.
Not for long. He was just as dangerous, just as dashing, just
as fiercely brilliant as Osceola — even more so. As the chief
opponent of the 1830 Indian Removal Act, no place in Florida
was safe for soldiers and white settlers while Coacoochee
was running free.
He and his devoted warriors could be lying in ambush
within every thicket, along any trail, behind any clump of
trees. It is one of history’s ironies that a future Yankee warlord
famous for his own brand of terror, William Tecumseh
Sherman, would play a key role in bringing Coacoochee’s
reign to an end — right here on the Treasure Coast.
According to his biographer Susan A. Miller, a scholar of
Seminole descent, his name should be pronounced CoAHcoochee
or GoAHgoojee. That takes some getting used to, so
many historians have taken the easy way out and resorted
to calling him Wild Cat, based on a loose translation of his
Seminole name.
History’s victors tend to run roughshod over some of the
finer details of yesteryear’s reality. For instance, as Miller
tells us in her book Coacoochee’s Bones, Osceola’s name wasn’t
really Osceola. It was Asin Yahola, but a mispronunciation
caught on with the public and became a permanent part of
his legend.
The Florida War, also known as the Second Seminole War
1835-1842, began in earnest when the Seminoles made
coordinated attacks in several regions. Coacoochee’s first as- >>
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