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Collectively, they became known as Seminoles and included Creek, Hitchiti, Apalachee, Mikisúkî, Yamassee, Yuchi, Tequesta, Apalachicola, Choctaw, and Oconee and were joined by escaped slaves and others in the pursuit of better lives among the thick virgin forests, wide grass prairies and spring-fed rivers of interior Florida.

They shared an instinct for survival and a commonalty of purpose: refusal to be dominated by the Europeans. With the re-establishment of Spanish rule, more non-Indian settlers arrived. During this period, settlers from the other Southern colonies began to drift into North Florida. An starting with the turn of the century this influx accelerated.

When Thomas Jefferson became president he sent General Andrew Jackson down to harass the Spanish in Florida. Spain finally tired of the colony, which was expensive and difficult to maintain and, in 1821, agreed to sell it to the United States for $5 million. The United States never actually paid Spain that $5 million—in a style typical of the canny “Cracker” inhabitants of this state, Floridians claimed it all as payment for damages incurred during the Spanish occupation!

England had great plans for Florida. The territory was divided into two sections—East and West Florida— with capitals at St. Augustine and Pensacola. Settlers were promised land grants and other benefits; areas were mapped in detail; tentative peace was made with some of the Creek Indians, who had been gradually moving into the territory and down the peninsula.

But the English were able to fulfill few of their hopes in Florida, since they had to turn their attention to the American Revolutionary War. Though both East and West Florida remained loyal to the British, when the dust had cleared following the American Revolution, Spain had regained the two territories and their capitals.

Col. James GadsdenColonizing began in earnest. Spain offered generous land grants both to its own people and to the new Americans. Florida also became an accessible and safe haven for escaping slaves from the new states. Settlement in Florida began to occur in Southern area. The first permanent white settlers in the Miami area arrived in the early 1800s.

During the decades that followed, a wide variety of individuals left their mark on the history of this area. In the 1830s, statesman Richard Fitzpatrick from South Carolina operated, with slave labor, a successful plantation on the Miami River. He cultivated sugar cane, bananas, corn and tropical fruit. Major William S. Harney, in command at Ft. Dallas which was located on Fitzpatrick’s Planatation on the north bank of the Miami River, led several raids against the Indians during the Second Seminole War (1835-1842).

The United States obtained Florida from Spain in 1821. Colonel James Gadsden, who conducted the first survey in 1825 of today’s County, was not impressed. A road would be impractical, he wrote, because “the population of the route will probably never be sufficient to contribute to [its maintenance], while the inducements to individuals to keep up the necessary ferries will scarcely ever be adequate.”

The Gadsden party reported the presence on New River of two families, headed by William Cooley and David Williams. Cooley raised vegetables for subsistence and processed coontie root into arrowroot starch for cash. Because navigation was a sometime thing through the shifting and shallow New River mouth, it was fortunate that the produce was relatively imperishable. Inland, other newcomers were arriving.

They were Seminole Indians, pushed southward by settlers who coveted their rich north Florida pastures. As demands mounted that they be removed to Oklahoma, so did their resentment. On December 28, 1835, they struck, killing Major Francis L. Dade and 104 of his 107 officers and men in an ambush north of Tampa that set off the Second Seminole War.