During the 2nd Seminole War in 1836, the Mosquito Roarers, a company of Florida militia under Major Benjamin Putnam, fought a large band of Seminoles pillaging Dunlawton, a sugar plantation on the Halifax River. Heavy fighting followed, but the militiamen could not disperse the Indians. Seminole raids eventually destroyed the extensive system of sugar plantations on Florida's east coast, and the sugar industry in this area never recovered.