Now succeeded ten years of trespassing, of insult, and of increasing enmity.  Kidnapers constantly lurked near the Indian possessions, and instances of injury unredressed increased the bitterness and rancor.  Under date May 20, 1825, Humphreys[1] wrote to the Indian Bureau that the white settlers were already thronging to the vicinity of the Indian reservation and were likely to become troublesome.  As to some recent disturbances, writing from St. Augustine February 9, 1825, he said:  “From all I can learn here there is little doubt that the disturbances near Tallahassee, which have of late occasioned so much clamor, were brought about by a course of unjustifiable conduct on the part of the whites, similar to that which it appears to be the object of the territorial legislature to legalize.  In fact, it is stated that one Indian had been so severely whipped by the head of the family which was destroyed in these disturbances, as to cause his death; if such be the fact, the subsequent act of the Indians, however lamentable, must be considered as one of retaliation, and I can not but think it is to be deplored that they were afterwards ‘hunted’ with so unrelenting a revenge.”  The word hunted was used advisedly by Humphreys, for, as we shall see later, when war was renewed one of the common means of fighting employed by the American officers was the use of bloodhounds.  Sometimes guns were taken from the Indians so that they had nothing with which to pursue the chase.  On one occasion, when some Indians were being marched to headquarters, a woman far advanced in pregnancy was forced onward with such precipitancy as to produce a premature delivery, which almost terminated her life.  More far-reaching than anything else, however, was the constant denial of the rights of the Indian in court in cases involving white men.  As Humphreys said, the great disadvantage under which the Seminoles labored as witnesses “destroyed everything like equality of rights.”  Some of the Negroes that they had, had been born among them, and some others had been purchased from white men and duly paid for.  No receipts were given, however, and efforts were frequently made to recapture the Negroes by force.  The Indian, conscious of his rights, protested earnestly against such attempts and naturally determined to resist all efforts to wrest from him his rightfully acquired property.

[Footnote 1:  The correspondence is readily accessible in Sprague, 30-37.]

By 1827, however, the territorial legislature had begun to memorialize Congress and to ask for the complete removal of the Indians.  Meanwhile the Negro question was becoming more prominent, and orders from the Department of War, increasingly peremptory, were made on Humphreys for the return of definite Negroes.  For Duval and Humphreys, however, who had actually to execute the commissions, the task was not always so easy.  Under date March 20, 1827, the former wrote to the latter:  “Many of the slaves belonging to