Betrayal on Wakulla River

By 1813, a tragic civil war between Lower Creeks and Upper Creeks, or Red Sticks, at Horseshoe Bend in Alabama brought famine to the Red Sticks. Their leader was Hillis Hadjo, or Prophet Josiah Francis, who followed a prophetic movement that predicted doom if the white man's way was followed. He led his family away from Alabama into Spanish Florida and established Francis Town on the Wakulla River, where his family moved in 1816. There was no unity among the Creeks or between the United States and Spanish Florida. A southern border between those two countries was established in 1795, but it was only a line on paper. South of that line, Americans referred to the Creeks as Seminoles. The Creeks were divided into Upper Creeks in Alabama and Lower Creeks in Georgia. Lower Creeks included the mixed-blood Kennards, allied through marriage with the Hitchiti tribe near Albany, Georgia. Among the hundreds of Lower Creeks who joined Andrew Jackson's U.S. Army operation into Spanish Florida in 1818 were John and Willam Kennard. Jackson wanted to destroy the Upper Creeks, or Seminoles, who had established a large community called Miccosukee along the border with the United States. In 1818, U.S. General Andrew Jackson briefly took control of the Spanish Fuerte San Marcos de Apalache at the end of the Wakulla River. Billy, an enslaved person belonging to William Kennard, betrayed Prophet Francis's whereabouts to Jackson. Francis was lured to the fort, and Jackson ordered him hanged on April 18, 1818, believing he was a British sympathizer. Afterwards, Jackson and his army rested at the Kennard place at Wakulla Spring before continuing to Pensacola.

Florida · United States