The Loxahatchee Battle

I want to welcome all of you to the Stuart Heritage meeting like to welcome Mr Whitman um Mr Carr okay Steve Carr and we're going to let them go without Much Ado to the program if I'm going to determine it without further Ado over to Mr Whitman Alice knows a lot more about Mr Whitman than I do uh Alex you feel like coming up and introducing well go ahead um and he'll tell you uh all about uh how they what they do down Jupiter and how they're involved with the Seminole Wars thank you all for coming good evening can you hear me my name is Jeff Whitman thank you all for coming I'm very grateful

the last time I had to speak before this many people was in front of the County Commission and I don't really enjoy doing that I'm going to enjoy this um I'm here with my partner Steve Carr on weekend hunting battlefields for probably the last 30 years almost and um the Stuart Lewis said that the promo for the plan tonight that um I was an expert on the Seminole Wars um I am not an expert Steve Carr Steve Carr is the expert I'm all defer to him any any questions that I can't answer him he's much more knowledgeable than I am but um anyhow let me tell you a little bit about history about what happened

um the Loxahatchee Battlefield was almost um never found was never preserved there was a plan not to preserve it um the and I'm going to say this off the Record it's not just my opinion but uh there are several people in Palm Beach County that did not want any word of the battlefield um coming out to the public and there are a couple of reasons for that and um basically Steve Carr there are three people that found the battle so Steve Carr Kevin Randell and myself it was uh April of 1991. and the politicians and the people the developers down in Palm Beach County did not want any word of the battle site coming out

for the public to know about it one of the County Commissioners I'm not going to tell you which one it was but he wanted to turn it into golf course it was about 600 status sections about 640 acres maybe a little bit more and the other problem was with the developers were running rampant down there and they were controlling the County Commission and they're trying to build why would Indian Town Road make it into four lane road and straighten it out and they did not want any word of the battlefield coming out because um that would they'd have to do archaeological surveys and it would slow everything down the developers and they had huge traps

of land on the north side of Indiantown they wanted to do this huge development there and since then the property and Cypress Creek has been preserved it's a natural area but at the time I'm not going to tell you the developer because it's actually turned out to be a really good guy but um all that land's been bought by the state and preserved so so but at the time they were trying to meet concurrency for the state the state had more environmental regulations and players and they did not want anybody talking about the battlefield because they're actually seven Federal soldiers that are buried down there and they don't know where they're buried and and for

a long time people just didn't know where the battlefield was when I was a kid there was a marker in Jonathan Dickinson where you rent the canoes and it said this deer here was where the uh the battle battle was fought and um it was actually it was it was about seven miles away from where the state put the marker but um the thing that messed everybody up was and Mott's book Jacob bread Mott Jacob wrecked he fought he was there he was there at the Battle of Loxahatchee and he wrote he he wrote the book um the um Steve what's the name of the book help me out uh Into the Wilderness Into the

Wilderness by Rick Jacob Frank's mom and um he said in the book that the crossed over the river I'm just doing the Jeopardy thing they uh they across from the north to the South and the battle and they said the river was um 30 yards wide and the only place at the river is really 30 yards wide we can cross the north of the South was right there and um where you at the canoes of Jonathan Dickinson and Kevin and I Kevin and I have been hunting the battle for about 10 years but we have trouble finding we the river Loxahatchee the name of this Turtle River um as the crow flies it's only three

miles from the from about to win that to where Riverbend Park it was maybe four miles but literally it's it's um 14 or 15 miles and Kevin and I went over the hole pretty much the whole river with metal detectors and couldn't find anything and um then we get into a little bit of the history here um the second there were three seminal Wars we're talking about the second seminal war and I'm going to just give you a little oh yeah the thing that that got me interested in finding the battle scientist said in the early 1980s 1980 1981 I was part of the Dubois family and I know you heard the bestie Du Bois

boy house DuBois Park Dubois road that was all the Dubois family they were one of the first pioneers in Jupiter and I was dating Bessie's granddaughter who happened to live with Bessie back there when where the uh Dubois houses and Bessie made her living as a cook they had a restaurant there right there in the junior Inland and I would go over to the house every night and she would cook me like a three four course meal and I would get to hear all the old stories about Jupiter from John and Bessie and they had a map in the living room there and he's a big map probably four feet by four feet into myself

from 1856 1857. actually just from the map from the third seminal War but Bessie Newman on Billy goal likes the Third he used to come and stay with her that's how closely the map had the battle side on on the map on the Loxahatchee and I said Bessie John where's do you know where the battle's battle side of this I said no they said it was where the Seminoles um across the river with their cattle and they said uh that um Trapper knew where it was but they didn't know they didn't they had no idea where it was it just it was somewhere out west of Jupiter so that's pretty much gotten me interested in

it and like I said Kevin and I looked forward for about 10 years and then we brought in Steve and Steve and I the first day I brought Steve with us we found and um I'm just going to give the run through a little bit of the history um the second well it's a very very complicated story and um it comes down to the slavery and the uh what was happening was the slaves were running away from the plantations and Georgia and South Carolina and Alabama and they're coming down into the uh the Creek Nation it's actually the uh the creeks and the miccosuki's collectively called the Seminoles and the runaway slaves are coming down

into Florida and becoming part of the tribes and um that created a problem for the plantation owners because they would send the slave catchers after them and chases them down all sorts of conflict with the Seminoles and the white people also because the white people are starting to push down so the Second Seminole windy Moore started really December 28th 1835 with the murderer murder of the Indian agent Wiley Thompson and the date the date Massacre was over by Tampa and let me read the notes here um that's that really started the uh the war right there um Osceola was the one that murdered Wiley Thompson at Fort King and from there they had just got

worse um I'm going to jump to 1837. and uh talked about major major general Thomas Jessup he was put in command and he was had four columns that were pushing down the state pushing the Seminoles further south and he had four columns there was General Taylor I'm sorry Colonel Taylor who later became General after the battle of Okeechobee General Hernandez General Eustis and general Jessica they had these four columns coming down it was they probably had about 2 000 men maybe a little bit more and they pushed all the Seminoles down to the North Bank of like a cherry and that's where General Taylor ran into him and they had the Battle of Okeechobee um

that was uh December December 25th okay Christmas 1830 1837. and that set the stage for the uh the Battle of Loxahatchee because at the Battle of Okeechobee um the Jessup was not involved in that battle at all it was only um Taylor's um people soldiers and um that battle resulted in 26 men killed and 111 wounded and um I don't know if any of you know John Durham but John Durham was the one that found the battle side it was a he did the research he found a battle side and um there was a conflict there with the senegals because um there was alligator and there was kokuchi Wildcat and there was Sam Jones Sam

Jones was a micasuki and they decided In the Heat of the battle Steve and I we dug musky balls there it was pressed right up against 441 where 441 is now you got to remember the uh the lake came came further up they didn't have the river Canal it came right up to where the Cypress Ridge is and it had a white sand beach and Sam Jones apica that's what the Sentinels call them um he took his people South and went down to um probably the mound in um in um Wellington a big Bliss amount put his people down there and then they referred they went further down to Pine Island Saint John's Island which

is um west of Fort Lauderdale and that really saved the assembled tribe um because what happened was the other ones came into the other group fashion Wildcat and alligator came into the Loxahatchee and they had a camp Village there right where Riverbend Park is now and um Unfortunately they back in the battle most of them gave themselves up and they were sent out to the Arkansas territory the Indian Territory so really they only Sentinels are reminded in the state or the miccosuki's under Sam Jones but um so so they had the Battle of Okeechobee Christmas day in 1837 and then they had another battle Palace battle was um on the east east side of the

Loxahatchee and that was in January 14 1837. and there were a bunch of Soldiers and Sailors got killed in that battle and um they had done the 24th Jess had heard about Palace battle and I don't know whether heard about the Okeechobee battle or not but he sent his forces down and he came out he left in Fort Pierce and he went out to Fort Lloyd he had um let me get this right here he had 600 reviews 400 artillery men um 500 Alabama's policy volunteers and 35 Delaware Indians and he came right up the bench Warrington Trail which went from Fort Lloyd which is out it's out Fort Lloyd is on the Red Lodge

in Dairy on Okeechobee it's uh and they had to go out they had to go straight west from Fort Pierce and they went to um Fort Lloyd and they met up with General Eustis who said with his men and that's where they got the 1500 troops and then they had to bypass the headwaters of the St Lucie and then they had to bypass the headwaters of the Loxahatchee and they came right down this is how they found them so they came they came right down into town the old Newtown Road it Indian Trail and since in the new Indian town was a little bit further south of the old Indian Town Trail but the old

Indian Town Trail was part of the vancouverity trail which was an Indian Trail and um it led right into the Loxahatchee now when you get the Battle of Loxahatchee um there's a hammock there that runs all north and south of the river and if you go down Taylor Road you go down to the shunt property then you go to a five-year garage road then you go to the Blankenship property and um that whole hammock with their Seminoles lived in the whole hammock and we were finding muscle balls and stuff and um in that area and the hammock actually goes all the way up to Martin County and the other thing was why I say that

the battle really started in Martin County was that um there's a hand all that land is underwater and they would have to go and the Seminoles would pretty much go by dug out the news and there was a hammock out on map Gary Road which I know was the Indian village a small Indian village and they probably had a century out there and the century gave word to the Seminoles of the camp The Village have never been that the soldiers were coming and the Battle of Loxahatchee was strictly a defensive battle it was only fought to get the people um away from the soldiers it was just a delayed tactic and they had about four

hours time because the dragoons about 500 dragoons got fired on when they first um approach to hammock and um we um and then it took a couple more hours for the rest of the troops to um come down the vancouverington trail of the old Indiantown Road and dating that intense fire from the Indians and the Indians knew they were coming because the Indians had time to notch the trees and cut down clear the sawgrass so they had to open the field to shoot at the soldiers and the soldiers really had a tough time and um they uh the assault um the soldiers were under a lot of fire and I've got to move down how

many were killed anyway the county did not want any word of this to come out because like I said they wanted to get concurrency they didn't want the battle about the great the bottom of soldiers bodies to be found um we came right down the battle came right down Indiantown Road and that's where we pretty much found a great shot and the monster balls and we have a lot of the stuff from the battle here just so you can see them here's a concrete rocket right here they were shooting off the concrete Rockets mainly just to scare the Indians but um let me get some figures for you and I'll tell you how many soldiers

were killed they did an archaeological study and in 1994 and we were mentioning it several times they gave us credit for it then a few years later here's the survey right here it's it's over 200 pages and we're mentioning them several times as helping find the battle um then they redid it this is about 100 Pages here that completely cut us out which you know the most important thing was in the battle the battlefield was preserved and they still haven't found the Soldier's bodies but um if you go to the park um they kind of got they kind of got things mixed up and mainly because of the people that are doing the tours and

stuff weren't there they weren't involved and um fighting with the battle and they say that the soldiers came up from the south and they said that there's a tree there and that's the trailer tree of Tears where all the soldiers were buried and that's helpful big tree the big tree has the septic tank right next to it it's a great big oak tree but that's where the group of studies now now ma said that when it crossed they crossed over the river from the north to the South um then the the Indians dispersed they got the hell out of there and they had enough time they probably had from the battle probably started about noon

when all the good mom was dark probably seven o'clock and when lot and the soldiers were able to um get across the river they found the dead soldiers from Palestine which was a couple a couple weeks earlier then they crossed the back across the river and they buried the soldiers on the north side of the river the Northwest side of the river so anybody that says the soldiers were buried south of the river Southeastern River they're just wrong they really modest Journal journey into wilderness um let me just get my thoughts together here um this Joseph was uh leading the charge and um during that Wilderness you should all read that book because it's fascinating

but General Jessup was leading the charge and um he um turned around and looked and there was nobody behind him he was he was there all by himself and there's the firing was too hot for the Tennessee Volunteers and the rest of the regulars didn't follow him and at that moment he got hit by a basketball and it didn't run to the cheek and it broke his glasses and one of the things that I wanted to let you know is the Seminoles um they had better guns they had uh they had English and Spanish Rivals where the uh the federal troops the main the main gun they had was a a mustard 69 pounds of

musket and these were very accurate the rifles were much more accurate but the Indians kept the uh the balls and then balls in the mouth and they record the powder down the muscle of their their rifles and they wouldn't measure the powder and then they would spit a ball down into the barrel and cock it and shoot they're all flip-flops back then pretty much and probably what happened with Jessup was that it didn't hadn't measured the powder correctly the ball didn't have enough charge in it to just it just glanced but they were um long story short there were seven seven soldiers killed um how many were rooms did you've helped me have um sorry

my computer's down right now yeah yeah well what happened was seven were Bears seven died right there and probably about 23 or 29 were wood and most of those were the Tennessee Volunteers and uh so Joseph kind of derided them and said they weren't very brave but he didn't want to drive them too much Mrs Foster's Andrew Jackson he was a Tennessee and so he didn't he didn't beat him up too bad but out of all that I think there's 27 or 29 that were wounded 23 were the Tennessee Volunteers so then you know they really fought the apartment the thing is we still don't remember the soldiers are buried and we have a theory

there was a great big amount of dirt piled up when they were doing the road by the way and um that we think they might have covered over the grave so that nobody would know where the soldiers were buried I mean the man was 25 30 feet high that um it is one of the most beautiful places in Florida we should all go down there and see it um after the battle um they took the wounded and they went to court Jupiter they went to um Paddock point and uh my friend Bobby Gilbert he was one of the first he was him and Kevin Randle found Fort Jupiter and I said how did you ever

find uh Fort Jupiter he said well I looked in the street map Palm Beach County street map and I found an old Fort Jupiter Road and they said they went down there and just found all sorts of artifacts one of the art and we we've dug most of the artifacts from Fort Jupiter um there really wasn't a lot of little Loxahatchee just with the uh it just wasn't I mean the most thing the most of the artifacts we found out there were the musket balls and Steve found the great shot and it's in it's in the first archaeological survey the archaeologists did the survey his name was Bob Carr no relation to Steve Carr and

he gave Steve Khan the credit for um finding the grave shot that was the key to proving that it was actually the battle of the Loxahatchee and we have some grave shot here on one of them that Steve was kind enough to do but Steve was using an old metal detector that would pick up Horseshoes and nails and and we had the better metal detectors that would pick up the non-ferrous like brass they had copper he was going around taking Horseshoes and beer cans and he was digging up he was digging out the great shot bushes Iron and that turned out to be the key to prove to prove the battle side and then so

um we work with the archaeologists on that we told them how the battle progressed we really helped him give them an idea how to battle went on and we got credit in the first archaeological survey but they never uh never gave us any credit and the second architology which doesn't really matter but the main thing is the battlefield and they destroyed it they probably destroyed half the battlefield where they put in Indiantown Road because if you look it's it's 300 yards they they bulldozed everything for 300 yards and straighten the road out and put a new bridge across the Loxahatchee but getting back to the battle after the battle they went to uh and established

Fort Jupiter and all the Indians they sent out parties dragoons trying to bring them in they've got some of them in but after the battle several hundred of the Seminoles came in I think it was Wildcat came in and one under flag of truce and they said we want to surrender and um Jessup said well come on and we'll have parlay and um we'll see if we can work it out since hundreds of the Indians came in they were literally started um they didn't have any food they had 200 head of cattle which is soldiers rounded up they were very prosperous assembles they had crops they had cattle the the the war made it so

hard they kept moving they had to keep moving and moving and kept being pushed South and so Jessup had a parlay with him and um they were all behaving they were they said will it be one piece it was the pursuit piece they said that actually wanted to press the war he said we're Coke and she was saying we didn't really want to find it you know and blanked on the mega city which really the miccosuki were much more tougher unbelievably tough and they had more of the Black Seminoles and the Black Seminoles were very ferocious because they had more to lose than the Seminoles because the Seminoles already had a territory in the Arkansas

territory hundreds of thousands of Acres out in um out west west of the Mississippi which was their designated reservation so they already had the land but the problem was the Black Seminoles the soldiers the command were taking the blacks that the blacks away from the Seminoles and the blacks actually become part of the tribe and that was where the road was um just one oh yeah so anyway support um just wrote a letter to Secretary of War Poinsett and said look these are good people Florida is no place for for any white man to live I said it's too inhospitable but the rattlesnakes the mosquitoes it was just they were just noticeable there they're all

everybody at the Port was getting sick and they said this is just Nolan no no white men want to live here just let the Indians stay they're not going to cause any problems and points that brought them back a month later and said no no we're pressing more you can't you can't have the truth so long story short the Indians got moving those and is all kind of moved out to Fort Brook removed or removed out to the Arkansas territory Oklahoma and it was really sad I'm going to say one more thing about the Seminoles I'm going to turn it over to Steve um one of the people probably my hero there's oh everybody hears

about Osceola and he was tough and he was captured by Jessica under a flag of troops and in prison in uh Fort Sam San Marcos up in Saint Augustine but everybody thinks that Osceola is a main character but they're saying generals and Sam Jones was probably to me the most fascinating person in the whole seminal War he was not a lawyer he was not a chief he was a medicine man he was ashamed and he was almost feared by all the all this animals they they would not go against him a matter of fact when he died they all came down to see his body because he was so powerful they said you had the

spirit of three men inside him and uh he was pretty powerful in the matter of fact the sun house when I go down and talk to the Sentinels down in the Big Cypress they still talk about him graphically and so anyway um coming back to June before all these battles took place Loxahatchee Battle Battle of Okeechobee paddle Scandal on June 2nd Jessica had eight almost 900 Seminoles rounded up at Fort Brook and he had an attention again under guards and they were ready to put them on steamboats and ship them out to the Indian Territory the next day and this is before Osceola was captured in the flag of troops this is June 2nd 18

1837. that night Osceola and Sam Jones came in and took out 800 almost 907 volts from the detention camp for gear guarded and a stealth night just just took it and can you imagine moving paid 900 people from a fort with soldiers there were probably hundreds of soldiers that were guarded snuck them all out and that just killed Justice like the war if they hadn't been removed that night the war would have been over the next day because the Seminoles just could not have pressed the war without those eight nine hundred percent rules so um Sam Jones if you ever ever read about him he's pretty uh pretty amazing guy and now I'm getting tired

we talked and I'm going to let Steve take her because Steve was there right there with him and he's my partner he's been with my partner for almost 30 years and he'll tell you he'll tell you about some of the artifacts can I clear the treasure hunting partner because you have to be specific about you yes thank you Jeff you did a pretty good job like he said we've known each other for 30 years so I'm just amazing he had this epiphany of memory tonight that was a blue Gateway um I would like to I just want to let you know I know those chairs are hard and so I'm going to limit myself to

the I'm not going to go over the three hour window that they gave me to school so yeah just I'm looking out for almost didn't come up here tonight after I read the article about what happened at the Stuart police station last night I don't know how many of you read that but it was kind of interesting that someone broke into the Stuart police station and sold all the toilet seats foreign the reason I here is that this story is it as Jeff said earlier he alluded the complexity of the story and the story is much more than what it appears to be on the outside there were so many factions there's so many um

moving parts to the story that it's hard to stand up here and do a program that does Justice to it because there's just so much going on here let me ask you a question and I like to get my audiences engaged in what I'm doing I don't like to just stand up here and preach to you I like to get you engaged so I want to by raising of the hands how many of you in this room have heard the name Spartacus those particles okay everything almost everybody in here Spartacus was the leader of an Insurrection of slaves in the Roman era and um he is known throughout history for this great attempt and and

admired for his attempt to free slaves to give men their freedom um now this let's throw out two other names and let's see how well this goes over Abraham and John Cavallo how many have heard those names oh okay I say two we make three hands coming up Abraham and John Caviar why the names are important is they were the first leaders of an Insurrection that aimed to free African Americans from servitude in America um when they came into their mistake escaped from plantations when they came into North Florida they were given a special status by the Seminoles because of not only knowledge Abraham was incredible incredibly smart person he had he was spoke several

different languages John Caballo was a horn leader there were both African-Americans and they were both on the same page that something had to be done to lead a or to create an opportunity for African Americans to exit out of slavery and isn't it interesting that they're probably the most notable members of the of the African-American community that began slave the thought of of changing the way America looks at stats at slavery um they were instrumental in giving their people hope and I think what's amazing about all of this is it happened right here in Florida it happened in our state um the sad thing is we haven't done a really good job with our history

here in other states it doesn't matter where you go throughout the country they showcase their history but in Florida we seem to have and I think many of you who are history oriented people would agree with me that we've done probably the poorest of jobs of showcasing um our history and and so this is why I come out and that is to kind of correct that and to kind of put um history back into the ears of people and get people talking about it because history is what connects us to our environment and uh if we lose that connection then we lose caring about our environment caring about where we live um I am not

a treasure hunter and I've been portrayed as a treasure hunter for a long time I'm a history Hunter and my job in the early days was to prove that history existed the Loxahatchee battlefield for one of the many places that I have worked on and many places where I have recovered artifacts I've never sold an artifact in my life uh as a matter of fact I've donated more artifacts than I I um I've kept so with that said I want you to understand what are what Jeff and I were up against back in the 80s when we were trying to uncover the battlefield of the Loxahatchee Battlefield and what didn't get said tonight was there

were actually two battles that incorporate the Loxahatchee Battlefield uh Powell style um uh Lieutenant 11 s Powell who brought a group of sailors and soldiers into that same area of the Loxahatchee on admission he was on The Scouting mission to try to locate the Indians determine their number and then report back to General Jessup who was at Fort Pierce in that battle it was a extremely aggressive battle and nearly a massacre um that was watching January 15 18 30. eight helping my brain may be slippery January 15th I think it was um with that said um on January 24th but let me back up and say that uh after that battle the numbers of Seminoles

were determined their location was was determined that information got back to Fort Pierce um general just then put a plan in motion to March his men through the interior floor to come around the back side of the Loxahatchee to surprise the Seminoles and that was fought on January 24th 1838 so with that said we have two battles that were actually fought on the same piece of property or in the same same area uh going back to why it was so important for us to find the battlefield um I have I was born and raised here I have a connection to this area I left to go into the army for four years I came back

went to work for Palm Beach County fire rescue as a paramedic and I had when you work as a firefighter paramedic you have one day on 24 hours something you have two days off my two days off I was nothing but history I wanted to learn history I had grown to a point in my life where I just wanted to understand better where I grew up this the problem that I was facing with that is that the development was rampant it was just unchecked development and and I know you're all familiar with that and how that works but we did not have a historic preservation officer in Palm Beach County we didn't have an archaeologist

besides in the county to protect its historical resources as a matter of fact they just didn't care there was really very few people that actually cared about history and that bothered me I was on my days off I was actually teaching I worked in the Loxahatchee Historical Society in their summer camp I would teach teach Florida history this is back in the 80s and I remember having a conversation with a gentleman who everybody told me was the most knowledgeable about the area including the Waxahachie battle and my conversation with him went something like this where's the Waxahachie Battlefield I remember I don't know that bothered me um it wasn't long after I got an interest

in the Loxahatchee Battlefield I started meeting people and asking questions and I had a great Fortune to meet my good friend Jeff Whitman at a military history show so we talked about which it seems like we talked for hours we had like-minded in in in not only hunting for history but preservation of History and our job really um was that we didn't decided and I I didn't know that Jeff was already Jeff is he keeps things close to the vest there and I didn't know he was already looking for the Loxahatchee Battlefield so when I'm having this long conversation and telling them all about this lost Battlefield he was just nodding his head yeah yeah

I've heard about it turns out for the last 10 10 years prior he was actively looking for the battlefield he was they were hiring airplanes and going up and following the Loxahatchee they were in neck deep in the Loxahatchee and Gator holds trying to turn up artifacts to prove that the state was wrong about the location the state had located it in Jonathan Dickinson State Park um and Jeff knew that wasn't right um we had we had a lot of things going against this number one was the time Factor development um and I think the most pressing issue was that the county did blast Jeff said and I'm going to back that up 100 I

can't even want this now as a matter of fact the property that the battlefield turned out to be on was um it was posted no trespassing very poorly posted because I never saw those signs the first 26 times but the problem what we had to accomplish was was it there or wasn't it there and one of the things Jeff I think Jeff was the first one Jeff and Kevin moranville with Bobby Gilbert flying the airplane they noticed uh in mocks we're going to refer back to Mott's book and Mott's book was the key to unlocking this battlefield it was all in the book and it was just how you read the book that that was

the love the key that unlocked the mystery of where the battlefield was because in Mott's Journal he says we crossed the river from the north side to the South side and that was key because in the Loxahatchee River it flows mainly North and South it does now because it's been channelized it's been reworked it's been much has been done by um by The Growers the Fruit Growers over the years to change the direction of the river but what Jeff saw was he found a place just south of Indiantown Road I believe they spotted my hair the first time and on this place they could see the old um water hickories the giant cypress and they

could see how those giant cypress trees from the air went were going in the north-south direction but then they made a 90 degree turn and went to back to the east the problem was there wasn't any really much water there it was it was all dried up in there and the answer to that mystery was work in the back area of the Loxahatchee Slough had dried up the original River so the original banks of the river were still there it's just the water had been redirected to a new location where it sits today and that was in the Reese Groves it comes down the center of the race but back in the old days it

came out of the Loxahatchee Slough Jeff saw these trees and he said if those trees are there and they wind like that there hadn't been a river there and so after having several conversations with Jeff one day he called me up and he said I think we know where the battlefield is do you want to come it's like I'm on my way you know I'm on my way I'll meet you there and I hadn't looked for a long time with no lark Jeff had found a lot of artifacts that were related to the second seminal War but nothing that was definitive and nothing in that area we found them all over this because the really

the soldiers were marching up and down they were all their camping all through there so it wasn't unlikely that we were going to find artifacts but nothing in that connected us to Nevada but on that day that Jeff Cole he called me this is my first time working with him and um I I got up there and we walked across the old wooden bridge and I'm looking at this place and I'm thinking he's got to be kidding me he can't be here there's no there's no water here there's no River here it was almost it was almost completely dry I could walk across it I said you think the battle spot here with within five

minutes Jeff and recovered a musketball and Kevin moranville had recovered a musketball what happened is the county had just removed the exotic plants out from the old section of the river and they take a lot of a lot of exotic plants out there so it was a great opportunity for us to get in there and work as we followed the whole Riverbank we found more and more and more musket Falls and we got to a section when we came close to the um the Indiantown Road Bridge then we found many musket Falls and we were getting pretty excited by that point um some subsequent visits after that started producing more definitive artifacts I had a

couple of letters here but before I read this I just want to tell you that um even though we we did remove artifacts we did so so that we would have a case against the county if for some reason the county said that's not the battlefield you know we documented everything we took out and then another point I want to make is we didn't take everything I mean we we marked a lot of a lot of artifacts in there we didn't take everything we just took enough to be able to prove that we were onto something as soon as we were convinced the three of us if we were treasure Hunters what we would have

done is just dug all the buttons and musket balls and everything up and put them on eBay right that's what these guys do that wasn't our goal our goal was to find somebody who could help us go circumvent the counties plan and the County's plan was was pretty simple what they wanted to do with that Park which is named Riverbend Park and Riverbend Park actually was the name of the trailer park that was there before and they had cleared out all the trailers and they kept the name of the trailer park which seemed kind of crazy to us but anyhow what the county wanted to do and what the county needed to do to um

help the developers in the area was they needed to produce what's called recreational concurrency concurrency in order to develop West Jupiter in order to develop a thousand new homes out there there's there are several things that need to be in place before the state will allow them to proceed with the permitting process and and that can those concurrency laws are what actually saved us now they the developers needed what was called recreational concurrency it means if you're going to build a thousand houses you but you've got to provide some type of record recreational resources um for the people who are going to live there but they also needed Road concurrency so that road had to

be widened from two lanes to what is it like six or eight Lanes now um it and also they had to have fire stations and police in in place but the bottom line for us was the developers were targeting Riverbend Park to meet their recreational concurrency needs and had the county um allowed them to have that that Park as a recreational for the to meet the recreational needs it would have become a regional part I don't know if you're familiar with regional parks but Regional Parks have softball football basketball courts they have you name it it's in there and so that's what was destined to happen to the Loxahatchee Battlefield and that is why it

was hosted uh we have conclusive proof that the county was aware of the fact that they knew before we did that the battlefield was there we didn't really discover we we're not really the fight because there were people within the county who knew and I have a letter that actually proves that and it was part that letter was written two years prior to us yet going in there but it was the letter from the state archaeologist notifying the county that it's likely that that was that property was the Loxahatchee Battlefield so the battlefield really was never lost it was just more forgotten than it was lost with that said we had found enough conclusive proof

in working about six to eight months um six to eight months we had found enough enough artifacts to believe that we could make a case for it being the Loxahatchee Battlefield and it had to be a strong case because if the county county attorney comes after us and blows us out of the water then that becomes a regional park and the Loxahatchee Battlefield would have never ever been known um would have never it would not exist today so our job from this point was to work try to find a um knowledgeable archaeologist that could come up and do an archaeological survey we had to partner we partnered with the gentleman Mr Richard prozek Mr prosic

had worked with an archaeologist in Miami he was a police officer and we partnered with Mr prosec Mr prosec called in an archaeologist the archaeologist contacted us and we went out we worked on the first archaeological survey um the letter he wrote me this is a dated August 22nd 1994 was um dear Steve I would like to take a few minutes of thank you for taking the time to share with me and the archaeological teams the artifacts that you you covered at Riverbend Park I felt that in a span of several hours your tour of the park provided us with important sense of its artifact distribution in regard to the battle and the seminal War

related events in the park I appreciate your cooperation and any further assistance you or any acquaintance can provide I would at some point some future date like to obtain some of the artifacts for publication publication quality photographs to provide an exhibit and just lay on the box actually Battlefield which is what I did I want just read one quick note and then I'm going to gonna wrap this up um not too long ago I get accused of stealing artifacts from the loxanchi battlefield I had a gentleman who went to the Palm Beach County resource review board and told them that the artifacts that I took were not conclusive conclusively proof that the battle that they

were from the Battle of Loxahatchee and this government stood up and told a lot of love stories but the main story and the main thing that he pointed out was that I had nothing to do with the battlefield and I'm not up here self-promoting but what I what I do want to say is this I want to read this article it says bump or photograph the material that Steve Carr brought and then made notes uh SC car pointed out areas in the park where the artifacts were found and see car offered the material as part of the survey this is my quote the uh reporter voted you need the artifacts more than I do that

was me speaking to Mr Carter um he told the archaeologist Bob Carr told him to keep the material until there might be a proper an appropriate and proper repository such as a a proposed interpretive Center at the park where they could be displayed now with that said the artifacts that we have here are all artifacts that were accessed prior to the county acknowledging that it was a part after that first archaeological survey which I worked on I could probably close to 100 hours in that survey and I took the photographs of everything that we did I took them and Jeff was there as well we took them to all the places that we found artifacts

the one artifact that Jeff mentioned that changed everything was this piece of grape shot which is right sitting right here that is mentioned in the archeology archaeological survey and uh firing great shot they all dropped musket poles the firing brake shot was something that they did Justin and about and that was that was a now the artifacts that are up here and I'm going to uh and my part of the program um all of these artifacts I'm looking for a home for I gave three cases of the original sets of artifacts to the Palm Beach County and as of right now Palm Beach County cannot account for the artifacts Museum to be stored because they

do not have a facility I spoke with the county archaeologist Christian Davenport I say Chris finally this stuff does not belong in my garage I want to find a home and what Mr Devon or the county archaeologist told me is he said Steve don't give it to me he said I work out of a cubicle he said that would have to go underneath my chair so I just don't have a place to put it and after what happened with the first donation of three cases exactly like these he said it's not a good idea um so this is our dilemma in Palm Beach County and on the you know regarding the battlefield is can we

establish the battlefield and perpetuate it for people to come in the future like such a battlefield preservationists or the host organization they've done a wonderful job in letting people know that the battle exists but I think we have to do a lot more than that we need an interpretive Center there we need to tell these Multicultural stories that come out of that battle um we I mean there's just so much that we can learn there's so much that we can tell our children I work today as a volunteer at Grassy Waters preserve we have four to five school buses a day coming out and learning environmental science I can see that same amount of school

buses coming to the Loxahatchee Battlefield every day it should be happening these kids should be learning our history but they're not and so I'm going to stand on the soapbox and say this is my objective if I had a magic wand I would put the wheels into motion to take this part to its appropriate level of historic preservation and also give it an opportunity for more people to access it more people to understand it and for more people to love it it's one of the most beautiful places in Palm Beach County I encourage you to visit if you have any questions Jeff and I would be more than happy to answer them now and that's

my part of the program and I'm Steve Carr thank you pleasure to be great he's a great speaker um something else I just wanted to tell you real quick and then we can wrap it up um Steve Carr and Issa and Brian started the locks to have to Battlefield preservationist group so um he is one of the original co-founders of that group um all my artifacts came from Fort Jupiter which uh Audrey leave she was a panic and um that was where Fort Jupiter was and she was like an eight year old 80 year old lady and she would come out with her metal detector and we would all come together most of my artifacts

came from Fort Jupiter just just so you know um in conclusion I just want to let you to get your list of some of the people that were in either Fort Pierce or Fort Jupiter and it's it blows me away first Josephine Johnston he was the Commanding General of the Confederate Army all your civil warm-ups probably know who he is Apel another gen Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman who uh destroyed the from Atlanta to Savannah um Doubleday who helped create the game baseball jubile early another Civil War General Robert Anderson who was the commanding officer Fort Sumter who was the Confederate general who helped the Confederacy lose the Border personal opinion and uh Major

General Thomas Sydney Jessup uh his wife was a niece to William Clark of uh Lewis and Clark famous and um Sam Cole was down there too he came down and um tested his revolving rifle which was uh up until up until Cole came along all the rifles were single shot muzzleloaders and uh he came he came and tested his cult revolving with Michael Bridge loading rifle so there's a and we were finding his bullets down there at outer religious property at the County Sports so anyway we're grateful that we came today thank you so much as I know all of you love history and thank you very much for coming now we'll take some questions

I don't know how much time we have Alice how much time do we have we have to be out by we have another hour okay I have no idea what time it is can I throw one thing I want to throw one thing that I didn't get to say and I wanted to just this is very quick um believe it or not this is an original copy this just came out of the Seminole Museum it was on loan there for two years we'll be going back I own it but it's a letter from the Secretary of War on expenditures to fight the Indians in Florida and I want to direct you to page 10. and

on the bottom of page 10 um there is these are the expenditures for fighting the seminal Wars in Florida at the bottom of the page 59 59 persons received one thousand five hundred sixty nine dollars and forty seven forty cents for the capture and destruction of 57 Indians sundry persons received a hundred for bringing in Tampa Bay five Seminole Indians sundry personals receive fifty dollars each for bringing into Tampa Bay 12 hostile Indians sundry persons they don't want to mention your name for bringing a body an Indian body into Fort Brooke receive 45 what is this telling you they were paying bounty hunters to kill Seminoles to kill Seminoles they're paying bounty hunters here's the

document that proved it with that said this again this war was less about patriotism and more about American expansion um you know I hate to go back in history and then pick people apart but I'm not going to mention his name but if you have a twenty dollar bill you can here he is um but he seemed to have a God complex and when I say a God complex that means control everybody and control people and and and it doesn't matter who he kills who he hurts who and you know this is a lesson that we need to continuously revisit I mean the American government is paying people to murder Seminole Indians and let me

say something where these people are murdered they were on their own property because the Treaty of Moultrie Creek the Treaty of Payne's Landing the treaty uh the first three treaties with the Seminoles gave them the right to live in Florida forever it wasn't until the Treaty of Fort Gibson where they got a bunch of sub-chiefs drunk took them out and showed him a million Acres out west in Arkansas and says oh this is going to be your land a million Acres they didn't tell them they were going to be sharing it with the creek which were their Arch enemies and they had killed each other before the second seminal War the Seminoles and the mikasukis

had fought the The Creeks to I mean on a daily basis so this is where Jackson is putting them he's going to put them on the same reservation as their Arch enemies so I just want you to look into this and say ask yourself where were we I don't fault the American Soldier I was an American Soldier and I did what my government asked me to do and I honest to God I didn't like what I did um I wish I could take every minute of it back but I did my duty um and in the same case I think we have to extend that to the soldiers who fought in the second seminal War

we have to challenge ourselves you know we have to always open our mind to say are we doing the right thing and um in this case clearly this war um was not an honorable war and it wasn't that's why I think it escaped so much history but I think it's that more than anything is the reason why we need to remember it and to promote it so that we don't have to repeat it that I'm off my soapbox now share that with you any questions about um about anything up here yes sir you told us it's a beautiful area and we should visit but I'm not clear how do you get there from here south

often times um when you get off of uh either I-95 or the turnpike you want to get uh get off and go west and it's just a short distance off on your left hand side there's the entrance to what it's confusing because you think you're going to be pulling into a battlefield Park you're actually pulling into what's called Riverbend Park the old trailer park name we tried we fought dearly to get that whole park you know uh named for the Loxahatchee Valley but we lost that we did gain 65 acres of uh permanent trust but we did not gain the the name loxatchy Battlefield so loxatch Battlefield shares the title remembers Steve see we we

just fixed that this year so there is a nice sign out in front that says Riverbend Park just a big event it says right underneath Loxahatchee River Battlefield Park big white beautiful letter so that's a good that is that's the good news because that's something that we had fought for a long time I had originally hoped when we were negotiating that the whole 686 Acres would be designated the Loxahatchee River Battlefield Park and that wasn't going to happen because the county still had even after the battlefield was noted logged and state filed and I got a historic uh Federal historic plan even after that the county brought in land stewardship was it lasting Joellen weissinger

they brought in a uh a person to do the planning for the park and one of our moles intercepted the plan and on the plan was um a 160 units Glen Bagels County 160 campsite campsites for 160 camps motor homes thank you um if you've ever been through the park they have this massively built bridge and this this bridge is huge and the county kept saying well this is so people can bring their canoes over the Loxahatchee River and launch them they paid millions and millions of dollars for this bridge and we're telling them well I don't think so why are you going to pay 10 million dollars for a bridge to launch canoes something's

not going well the bottom line was that bridge was built to support motorhomes going in and out of there so we we kind of we fought that because where they were going to place the campers was directly into the center of what today is the 65 acres that we were guaranteed you know to be named the Loxahatchee Battlefield Park so we had to fight that and that was a big that was a big Time battle unfortunately we got commissioner Coons and commissioner Marcus winter on our side and they they fought for us on that and we end up winning there's about five of them so went out there we said we're going to stand here

if you're going to build um for the cement things for the camper parking we're going to be right here when you do it Glenn you were there brother you were right there with me thank God that's one of the men who stopped that development they also had a Motocross a motocross track scheduled in there I'm over across track pretty much everything yeah football field soccer fields parking lots for 600 cars right on the battlefield yes ma'am I see your hand I went on your website I'm assuming it's your website and you have a reenactment coming up I'm going to defer them because we have we're fortunate enough to have members of locks at your Battlefield

preservations hey how about standing up all the members of Loxahatchee Battlefield preservations would you please stand up because these are your keepers of History January 27th we will have our second reenactment that's a Saturday not too far away come join us 10 in the morning until uh four in the afternoon it's a good way to learn history it's a really loud so sole program next weekend on Monday a Shepherd yeah yes sir the artifact that you're fine you're trying to retain and have found out that you couldn't trust believe that what the County government down there couldn't any uh anyone in the University system State University system help you with the cataloging and retention of

those you know I hate to lose local connection to these because what we have here and I'm going to lift this up this everybody's looking this why are you bringing on a piece of wood this piece of wood has 14 musket balls in it from the Battle of loxahatchie it's the most definitive artifact I have ever seen from any Battlefield there are nine bullets visible but there are 14 in that little section and the only thing I really my number one comment when I first saw this was God that poor seminal who's behind this thing apparently he got company fire or even regimental fire I don't know but they're all firing at this thing um

and there are guesses that this may have been a canoe it may have been a canoe it may have been a cypress tree that was down on the side that they were using for cover to protect against the crossing there lots of possibilities the one thing we do know is that this wood was dead when the bullets went in it because it didn't grow grow back over this was this came out of the dredge pile when they were rebuilding the bridge over the Loxahatchee we were fortunate enough to get I didn't find this I would love to stand here and tell you I found this I'm the guy me Mimi wasn't me we were fortunate

one of the people that was working when the dredge pile was being produced there from the from the bridge was smart enough to get in there with the metal detector and he recovered an amazing amount of artifacts he sets has become very very ill I'm not sure that he hasn't even passed away by now but he sat down back to me because he didn't know where to send them I want to find home for this art Affair this is this is resting in my garage today it doesn't need to be in my garage it needs to find a permanent home where it can tell the incredible story that uh that that that is certainly locked

inside it the other artifacts in here are there's some very specific artifacts um the ones we have Naval buttons here from Powell's battle that's how we proved we were on Powell's Battlefield when we found the naval button why would we find naval buttons on a uh on a military site unless there were Naval people there the artifact that Robert Carr said was the most definitive artifact which is the grape shop we actually found three of those Jeff has one I have one I gave one to the county and that passes go on I guess it got thrown back in the river I'm not sure they they as of right now the county archaeologists cannot locate

it it's not saying it's not somewhere but it's it's other questions is Riverbend Park where the tribe actually lived no it wasn't but that's a that's a really good question as the Seminoles were being pushed down through Florida after the battle of Okeechobee the Battle of Okeechobee was a disaster for the alliance between the miccosuki's and the Seminoles because they were an alliance they were strong tight Alliance the miccosuki's as Jeff alluded to followed Sam Jones further south the Seminoles after this dis this absolutely destructive Battle of the battle of Okeechobee they went to the East and there were a lot of theories about why did they go to East and how would they know

to that the Loxahatchee River was East because the Seminoles had never been down here it's not likely they had maps and even if they did have maps that probably wouldn't show the Loxahatchee River and the answer to this all comes in the Black Seminoles who were Allied to them because we have now strong evidence to prove that in the area of Jupiter there was an Escape Route for the Underground Railroad that was known to to African Americans they would come to Jupiter and that when they would come to Jupiter twice a year under the moon or under the the uh when Jupiter was at its strongest and you could actually see Jupiter boats would come

from the Bahamas they would come from Andros and the Bahamas and they would pick up runaway slaves I shouldn't say runaway slaves I hate that term runaway African-Americans who had escaped plantations so it's likely that that that oral tradition was known to the African-Americans that were fighting with the Seminoles and it's likely they brought they brought the seminal body to the the um the Loxahatchee River at that point you know they just did what they could do which was to try to hide out and hope that they wouldn't be found um but the United States Army is very very good at what they do they always have them and it didn't take long for General

Jessup who stationed at Fort Pierce anybody heard of that town uh station Fort Pierce to send a riverine Warfare unit that would be like a marine Warfare kind of unit to go down the rivers and start looking that's when they located them on January 15 1838 they located the main body of the Seminoles that battle developed the numbers of seminals that information went back and of course the rest says we know it's history anybody else question yes ma'am you mentioned the Wellington now is that it yeah the whole topographical maps um which show the new topographical maps don't show Native American nouns and um but Native American we're not speaking of seminal um it was

it was it was an extensive noun it was over 60 feet high at one point and that's the one you were referring to and yes yes that and that mound no longer exists it was used to reinforce the golf course at the Banks Trail they allowed amateur archaeologists like myself two weeks before the power came in and then they were developing the golf course but that mound was on a series of Mounds that aligns to the Boynton Mountain Complex into big Mound City um out west of West Palm Beach in the Corbett area but those Mounds were Mounds built by the ancient Americans four to six thousand years ago Linda am I right or am

I wrong oh thank you checks in the mail that mound in Wellington that's the place where they they the uh after the battle of Loxahatchee many of the Seminoles fled South they had lost virtually everything over food weapons ammunition they fled South and they camped on that mound that mound we would call today has been referred to by many soldiers as Camp truce because that's where they forged the truth they negotiated with the Seminoles there they brought in uh Glenn tell me 600. they moved them to to the newly constructed uh Fort Jupiter from Fort Jupiter they awaited um a letter that uh Thomas Sydney Jessup had sent to secretary Ward Joel appoints that the

letter was pleading with with the Secretary of War to allow the Seminoles to stay in Florida and let's just end this war there's nothing here that any anybody could ever want and the Seminoles are perfectly happy to stay here and not cause any trouble that letter went um was with unheated and secretary War ordered General Jessup to proceed with the war and to ship those people uh to West the uh to Fort Gibson area and that's exactly what he did he went over to Fort Brook which was the present day town of Tampa from Fort Brook they went by steamer across the New Orleans by the time they got out to Fort Gibson 77 of

them had died many of them had smallpox um let me finish this by saying this was a holocaust that's that's okay this was this was a holocaust percentage-wise for the Seminoles to miccosuki's five times greater than than what the Jews suffered during World War II percentage-wise we had set roughly 7 000 Seminoles when this when the dust cleared and everything was over um probably less than 500 survived and only 150 here in Florida the rest out in in the Indian Territory where many died from smallpox so it was a holocaust I'll finish there if you all would like to come up and take a look the artifacts there's one other thing um he can come

up all these times there's um we found concrete Rockets because they're using to signal and we have some of them up here as possible