The Seminole War: Big Cypress

The following graphic summary of the Big Cypress expedition is appended to a long and interesting diary kept by an officer: "Thus ended the Big Cypress campaign, like all others. Drove the Indians out, broke them up, taught them that we could go where they could; men and officers worn down; two months in water; plunder on our backs; hard times; trust they are soon to end.. Indians asking for peace in all quarters. The only reward we ask is the ending of the Florida War."

A year more of such operations ended it. All the Indians, with the exception of about three hundred and sixty men, women, and children, had been sent to Arkansas. These, under the chiefs Billy Bowlegs and Arpaika, were allowed to remain, within the district south of Pease Creek, no apprehension of further difficulties being felt.

The Florida War may be said to have commenced with the massacre of Major Dade's command, on the 28th of December, 1835, and closed, by official proclamation, on the 14th of August, 1842. It was generally said to have cost the United States forty millions of dollars.. Captain Sprague, in his valuable work, states the expenditure at nineteen millions.. The number of deaths among the regular troops during the war amounted to an aggregate of fourteen hundred and sixty-six, of whom the very large number of two hundred and fifteen were officers.