Bowlegs, Billy, 1808?-1863 or 1864

Billy Bowlegs (1812?-1864?), Seminole chief who led the third and final Seminole war against the whites of Florida, also known as the Billy Bowlegs war of 1855-1858, was born on the Alachua savannah in Florida. He was a direct descendant of Secoffee, originally a Creek chief who migrated to Florida from the Creek homelands in Alabama and Georgia and later founded the Seminole nation. The names of Billy Bowlegs's father, mother, and other family members are unknown.

A striking feature of Bowlegs was his unusual style of dress. The Seminoles, admirers of distinctive costumes, were quite taken with the Scottish Highlanders who entered Florida in 1736. Both the Highlanders and the Indians shared common customs and attitudes. For instance, both were tribal and organized into clans, both preferred skirtlike clothing and refused to wear trousers, and both wore a similar style of garb in the form of breechcloths. In an 1852 daguerreotype portrait and an 1852 magazine portrait, Bowlegs, with a dash of Highland flair, is shown wearing three large silver gorgets (a distinctive emblem of authority), an embroidered bead bandolier, leggings with a wide strap and garters fingerwoven in diamond patterns, a calico frock, a short cloak, and a patterned paisley scarf attached to a scalloped turban with a profusion of protruding black ostrich feathers.

Bowlegs received his name not because of the curvature of his legs but from a family appellation, possibly from the corruption of the word "bolek" or "bowleck." Bowlegs spoke fluent English and Spanish and could sign his name. In fact his leadership name, "Halpatter-Micco [Micco meaning leader], appears for the first time in history" (Gifford, p. 26) when in an attempt to end hostilities before the second Seminole war, his signature appeared on the Treaty of Payne's Landing, 9 May 1832, in which he and fourteen other Seminoles agreed to cede their Florida lands and remove themselves to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River. Later Bowlegs and the others denied this act. Bowlegs also was a Seminole representative in parleys to end hostilities during the final stages of the second Seminole war in 1842.

On 10 May 1842 President John Tyler ended any military action against the Seminoles, thereby concluding the second Seminole war. The Armed Occupation Act of 4 August 1842, however, became the beginning of the end for the Seminoles, as 200,000 acres of their homeland were taken by settlers coming into middle Florida. Even though on 14 August 1842 the Seminoles, in Military Order 28, were given 2.5 million acres for a "temporary" hunting and planting reserve and were protected with a corridor of land surrounding this reserve by President James Polk on 19 May 1845, the pioneer settlers kept infringing on the Seminoles' territory, often claiming some of this land as their own. Obviously the relations between the settlers and the Seminoles became strained, and the settlers would not be happy until all the Seminoles were forced out of Florida, even though the Seminoles, and not the whites, went to great lengths to respect the terms of the 1842 agreement.

As tensions kept rising, especially with the proposal for an early removal of the Seminoles, the Seminoles in 1848 started to acquire rifle powder and lead through trading, in order to prepare themselves for what they felt would become inevitable: war. Attacks and raiding occurred randomly from July 1849 to May 1850. Some attacks were done by outlaw Seminoles who were eventually turned over to the militia by Seminole chiefs such as Bowlegs and Sam Jones in order to keep the peace. However, both the settlers and the militia were tired of the ongoing attacks and raiding, so that it became more and more desirous for the Seminoles to be removed from Florida. In February 1851 Luther Blake, hired as a special agent to rid Florida of the Seminoles, enticed Bowlegs to go to Washington, D.C., to meet President Millard Fillmore in the fall of 1852, in an endeavor to persuade Bowlegs to leave Florida. For a second time, on 20 September 1852, Bowlegs signed an agreement promising to move to Indian Territory, although he was still not ready to leave Florida. In January 1853 the Florida legislature signed a law making Seminole residence in Florida illegal and forbid trading with the Indians. By June 1854 the Indians were feeling the effects of the trade embargo and were running out of supplies.

As the settlers kept infringing on the Seminoles' territory, the Seminoles were forced to move deeper and deeper into the Florida everglades. In the fall of 1855 the Seminoles gathered to plan their warfare tactics against the white settlers. On 17 December 1855 First Lieutenant George L. Hartsuff took a reconnaissance into the Big Cypress Swamp, where Bowlegs's village was located. During their patrol they cut down and carried away bunches of bananas belonging to Bowlegs (there is some debate whether this was done maliciously or not). In anger Bowlegs led a war party of thirty Seminoles and attacked Hartsuff on 20 December 1855, thus igniting the last Seminole war in Florida. By 1 March 1856, in preparation for war, "Federal troops in south Florida numbered eight hundred men; state troops in federal service, two hundred and sixty men; state troops in state service, four hundred men; making a grand total of one thousand, four hundred and sixty men. Opposed to this force were about one hundred Seminole warriors; thus making a battlefield odds of one Indian to fourteen opponents" (Covington, Bowlegs War, p. 38). On 14 and 16 June 1856 two important Indian leaders were killed, ending the Seminoles' power in offensive strikes. On 19 November 1857 Bowlegs's village was discovered, and his food, animals, and crops were either taken or destroyed. As other villages were discovered, their food supplies were also demolished. A cessation of activity resulted, and white truce flags were soon displayed by the militia. On 15 March 1858 Bowlegs held council with the militia for the first round of negotiations, and on 27 March 1858 he accepted the terms of the proposal and began moving from the swamps. On 4 May 1858 Bowlegs and his followers met at Fort Myers and boarded the Grey Cloud and left Florida. They had a stopover in New Orleans, where Bowlegs was described "as possessing two wives, one son, five daughters, fifty slaves and one hundred thousand dollars in hard cash" (Covington, Bowlegs War, p. 79). The names of his two wives, one son, and four of his daughters are unknown. The only name mentioned is one daughter from his first wife, known as Lady Elizabeth Bowlegs. On 8 May 1858 Colonel Gustavus Loomis declared the third Seminole war officially ended.