This series contains summarized reports and related maps received by Headquarters, Troops in Florida (April 1854 - April 1856) and Headquarters, Department of Florida (April 1856 - February 1858), located at Fort Brooke, during the Third Seminole War. They were abstracted from detailed original reports that were prepared by field officers serving with the Army in Florida.
These summarized reports describe the various map-producing activities of the Army in Florida, including surveying, exploring, road-building, and scouting. They contain extensive comments about the terrain and other topographic features of Florida's coastal and inland geography, field notes on the geology of the State, and remarks about its flora. The reports emphasize cartographically useful details, such as the natural bridge at Arch Creek, and describe the navigational problems caused by the dense islands of cypress, mangrove, and live oak that dotted Florida's wide sawgrass prairies. The reports also include many references to Indian life, diet, trails, and villages.
The maps that accompany the summarized reports are also largely the result of field observations. Some maps are rough sketches of routes traversed by scouting parties or exploring expeditions, drawn to only an approximate scale. Typically, these maps indicate prominent rivers and lakes, military posts and roads, forts, and the location of Indian trails and villages. They sometimes include notations on water levels, vegetation, and sources of fresh water. Other maps, often associated with reports of formal surveys, are more accurately rendered, drawn to scale, prepared with multicolored inks, and more fully annotated.
The maps were separated from the original reports and bound with these summarized reports in two volumes in rough chronological order. This was presumably done at Fort Brooke under the supervision of Brevet Major Francis N. Page, Assistant Adjutant General, Department of Florida, prior to his departure from Florida in May 1858. Each summary includes the date and purpose of the expedition, the name of the reporting officer, and the file citation of the original report that is among the main series of letters received by Headquarters, Troops in Florida, or Headquarters, Department of Florida. A few maps are not accompanied by summaries of, nor otherwise keyed to, specific reports. These maps may represent either loose maps for which the original report was not available at the time of binding or, more probably, maps compiled at headquarters from information contained in several reports or taken from other maps.
