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LIVING HISTORY
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Okeechobee, just in time to block an invasion into southeastern
Florida by a future president’s troops.
It was Christmas Day 1837. As usual, the Seminoles played
the field to their advantage and forced the soldiers to wade
through reeds and bogs. After sustaining heavy casualties,
Col. Zachary Taylor declared victory and retreated. Thanks to
Coacoochee, the war would drag on for years — long enough
for Sherman to graduate in 1840 as a 2nd lieutenant and join
the war effort.
By the time Sherman arrived in Fort Pierce, Coacoochee
had been reduced to playing hide and seek with the army
for a couple of years. He must have been running low on
gunpowder and bullets. He was also running out of places to
hide where his people could stay long enough to raise needed
crops without the army finding and destroying them.
When he showed up six miles west of Fort Pierce in 1841,
no one seems to have realized that he had moved his women
and children to a secret location on the Treasure Coast. It was
somewhere out in the high ground nestled in the midst of
“Al-pa-ti-o-kee Swamp,” as the military map designated the
vast region.
TREASURE COAST ENCOUNTER
An African American interpreter named Joe arrived at Fort
Pierce on an Indian pony along with several other Seminoles.
Joe showed the fort’s commander, Maj. Thomas Childs, a
pass that had been negotiated with another officer elsewhere
in the territory. Was it valid? Could the infamous Coacoochee
safely come in for supplies? Childs said he could and gave
FLORIDA MEMORY
Sherman the biggest assignment of his career before Lincoln
offered him a command some 20 years later. Gen. Thomas S. Jesup was the first to capture Coacoochee. He became the
Seminole leader’s biggest supporter in Washington after the war.
RICK CRARY
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Imprisoned in Fort Marion early during the war, Coacoochee made a daring escape and continued to lead his warriors for several more years.