Battle of Jupiter Inlet

In South Florida during January 1838, west of Jupiter Inlet, American forces clashed twice with Seminole Indians under Chief Abiaka in what became known as the Battles of the Loxahatchee. The first of these engagements, sometimes called Powell's Battle, took place on January 15 and pitted a combined Navy-Army detachment against the Seminoles, with U.S. Navy Lieutenant Levin M. Powell commanding. Nine days later, on January 24, a much larger force under U.S. Army General Thomas Jesup returned to nearly the same ground, giving rise to the name Jesup's Battle. Both confrontations unfolded in the same general locale and involved the same body of Seminole fighters.

Background

By January 1838, the Seminoles gathered near the Loxahatchee were the very same band that had clashed with American forces at Lake Okeechobee only a month before. According to Seminole historian Billy Bowlegs III, it was Chief Abiaka who guided this group toward the Palm Beach County shoreline afterward, aiming to scavenge wrecked ships for much-needed gunpowder, clothing, and provisions.

Both the fight at Lake Okeechobee and the engagements along the Loxahatchee formed pieces of a larger campaign pushing into Southern Florida, an offensive General Thomas Jesup had devised.

Battle name

Consistency has never been the strong suit of how these two engagements were labeled over the years. Some older accounts, Guinn among them, mistakenly call Powell's fight the Battle of Jupiter Inlet, an error that likely traces back to newspapers of the day describing the action as taking place "near" the inlet.

Today both engagements carry the name of the Loxahatchee River, a designation distinct from the present day town of Loxahatchee, Florida. That river name itself comes from an Anglicized rendering of its Seminole title, "Locha-hatchee," meaning turtle river. Writers have not agreed on a single spelling across time, with Mahon offering "Lockahatchee" and Buker using "Locha-Hatchie" instead.

Second Battle of the Loxahatchee (Jesup's Battle)

Once word reached Major General Thomas S. Jesup that Powell had pinned down a Seminole band, he marched his troops overland from Fort Pierce, skirting west of the St. Lucie River before closing in on the encampment from that direction. His command numbered roughly 1,500: six hundred dragoons of the 2nd Dragoons led by Lieutenant Colonel William S. Harney, four hundred artillerymen drawn from the 3rd Artillery Regiment under Colonel Lemuel Gates, four hundred Tennessee Militiamen commanded by Major William Lauderdale, a hundred militiamen from Alabama, and thirty-five Lenape scouts. The Seminoles preparing to meet Jesup relied on tactics identical to those employed a month before at Lake Okeechobee, clearing the sawgrass ahead of their line for a clearer field of vision and cutting notches into tree trunks to brace their rifles.

By the afternoon of January 24, Jesup's scouts had pinpointed the Seminoles' location within a thick hammock. His dragoons and foot soldiers pushed forward against that position, backed by cannon fire and Congreve rockets. Under this bombardment, the Seminoles retreated across the Loxahatchee River and established a new line along its eastern bank. In the midst of their withdrawal, Jesup himself spurred his horse ahead toward the water.

The instant he arrived at the riverbank, a Seminole shot grazed his face, tearing open his left cheek and destroying his glasses. What followed was an exchange of gunfire across the river between the American forces and the Seminole fighters, with the Tennessee Militia under Lauderdale absorbing the worst of the losses. Harney and a portion of his dragoons succeeded in fording the river and striking the Seminole flank on the far bank. Once their women, children, and older members had been moved safely away, the Seminole warriors pulled back further into the Everglades.

In the aftermath, Jesup's men came across the body of a Navy sailor who had served under Levin M. Powell, confirming that the two engagements had unfolded in nearly the same location. Only a single Seminole body was recovered from the field. This clash marked the final large scale, formally arranged engagement of the Seminole Wars.

Aftermath

General Jesup himself judged the engagement a failure, describing it as having yielded nothing of value, and lamenting that its chief effect was to push the Seminoles deeper into the Everglades, beyond the easy reach of pursuing soldiers. Out of this frustration came a change of heart: Jesup became convinced that the Seminole Indians could not be beaten outright, and he went so far as to petition Secretary of War Joel Poinsett, asking that the tribe simply be permitted to stay in Florida. Command did not remain in his hands much longer. By May 1838, General Zachary Taylor had taken over from Jesup as head of all American forces in the territory.

Before that change occurred, though, Jesup's men had already put up Fort Jupiter close to Jupiter Inlet. Major William Lauderdale stayed behind with his Tennessee Militiamen, and within two months he pushed on southward to New River, where he established the fort that would carry his name, Fort Lauderdale. Meanwhile, Chief Abiaka led the Seminoles further south into what is now Broward County, only to be tracked down once more by American troops, this time at the Battle of Pine Island Ridge in March 1838.