Dade battle was a Early Republic and War of 1812 engagement fought in Florida, 1835. It was a Seminole victory.
In 1835, United States forces suffered a stinging setback in what became known as the Dade battle, sometimes referred to as the Dade massacre. The government had been pursuing efforts under the Indian Removal Act of 1830 to push the Seminoles off land granted to them in the Treaty of Moultrie Creek, a promise made after Spanish Florida became American territory through the Adams-Onis Treaty. Washington now sought to send the Seminoles to Indian Territory instead, as spelled out in the Treaty of
In 1835, United States forces suffered a stinging setback in what became known as the Dade battle, sometimes referred to as the Dade massacre. The government had been pursuing efforts under the Indian Removal Act of 1830 to push the Seminoles off land granted to them in the Treaty of Moultrie Creek, a promise made after Spanish Florida became American territory through the Adams-Onis Treaty. Washington now sought to send the Seminoles to Indian Territory instead, as spelled out in the Treaty of Payne's Landing.
Marching from Fort Brooke on Tampa Bay toward Fort King in Ocala to deliver reinforcements, two companies of the U.S. Army, totaling 103 men and led by Major Francis L. Dade, walked into an ambush laid by roughly 180 Seminole and Black Seminole fighters. Nearly the entire command perished in the attack. Only three soldiers made it out alive, along with their guide, Louis Pacheco, and one of the survivors succumbed to his injuries the next day.
This clash ignited the Second Seminole War, a conflict that dragged on until 1842. By its close, the majority of Seminoles had been captured or had surrendered and were shipped away from Florida entirely. A small band held on in the central part of the state, as seen with Chipco's group, while others pushed further south toward the Everglades' fringes in the Big Cypress region, a movement associated with figures like Abiaka and Holatta Micco. No official treaty ever brought this war to a close, and it stood as merely one more episode in the drawn-out history of the Seminole Wars.
Two companies of United States troops, numbering 110 men and drawing soldiers from the 2nd Artillery, 3rd Artillery, and 4th Infantry Regiments, set out from Fort Brooke on December 23, 1835. Major Francis Langhorne Dade led the column northward along the Fort King military road, tasked with bringing supplies and reinforcements to Fort King, near what is now Ocala. Fort Brooke itself sat on the site of present-day Tampa.
Unbeknownst to the marching soldiers, groups of Seminoles and their warriors had gathered quietly at various points along the path ahead. Watchers are said to have tracked the column's progress the entire distance, taking note of the men's sky-blue coats and relaying word of their movements to the Indian chiefs.
Tensions had been building among Florida's Seminoles, who bitterly opposed the government's efforts to drive them from their homeland toward a reservation in the west. Dade understood that his troops were being trailed by Seminole fighters and that an assault remained a real possibility. Still, he judged that any strike would most likely happen while crossing rivers or while passing through the denser forest to the south. Once his men had cleared those danger points, he grew confident enough to withdraw the scouts posted on the flanks, hoping this would allow the column to advance more quickly. The open pine and palmetto landscape they now traveled through offered no cover for anyone mounted or standing upright, yet it proved more than sufficient to hide warriors lying low or crouched in wait, poised to strike.
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