Florida's True History — From 1715 to Today
The history you were taught was incomplete. The Yamasee didn't vanish after 1715 — they were hidden through census classifications that erased Indigenous identity, church records that collapsed colonial categories, and legal systems that converted sovereign peoples into racial minorities. Here is what really happened.
Visual Historical Context: These artistic representations depict Yamasee people during different periods of our history—from sovereign warriors defending our territory, to families building communities in Spanish Florida, to landholders preserving our heritage through documented evidence. While these are artistic interpretations, they reflect the documented reality: we were never conquered, never removed, and never erased. These images honor the dignity, resilience, and continuity of Yamasee people across three centuries.
Florida's First Freedom Fight
"They called it defeat. We called it strategic withdrawal. There is a difference."
On Good Friday, April 15, 1715, the Yamasee launched one of the most significant Indigenous resistance movements in North American history. Simultaneous attacks across hundreds of miles of Carolina frontier nearly ended English colonization in the Southeast. It wasn't random violence — it was a coordinated military response to systematic exploitation: debt slavery, land theft, and the trafficking of Indigenous children.
The colonists claimed victory by 1717, but Yamasee survivors strategically withdrew into Spanish Florida rather than surrender. British officials declared us "defeated" on paper, but in truth our people were adapting and migrating — not capitulating.
Yamasee families built lives in Spanish Florida through agriculture, trade, and community governance—preserving cultural identity while adapting to colonial realities.
"Where others saw division, we built alliance. Fort Mose was proof that freedom could be shared."
In 1738, Spanish governor Manuel de Montiano established Fort Mose just north of St. Augustine — the first legally sanctioned free community of African and Indigenous peoples in what became the United States. Yamasee leaders and Afro former slaves built and governed this fortified town together, creating a unique alliance that challenged colonial racial hierarchies.
Fort Mose was more than a military outpost; it was proof that Black and Indigenous people could "win their liberty through great daring and effort" and contribute to Florida's multi-ethnic heritage. Spain, influenced by centuries of Moorish rule, did not enforce the strict racial caste system of the English colonies. In Fort Mose, free Black men served in the militia alongside Indigenous allies.
"No treaty. No surrender. No end. The war that began in 1715 never stopped—it evolved."
What mainstream history calls the "Seminole Wars" were actually the continuation of Yamasee resistance under new names. From 1816 through the 1850s, the United States fought the longest and costliest Indian conflicts in American history trying to conquer Florida's Indigenous and Maroon inhabitants.
The Yamasee-Seminole fighters — often a mix of Black and Indigenous warriors — perfected guerrilla tactics in the swamps. General Jesup famously wrote in 1837: "This is a Negro war, not an Indian war," acknowledging that African-descended Black Seminoles were central to resistance.
No formal treaty of surrender was ever signed by the Yamasee or Seminole Nation. The war that began in 1715 "never ended, only changed form."
"They couldn't conquer us by force. So they tried to erase us by pen."
In 1865, the Civil War ended slavery — but it ushered in a new war-by-paper against Indigenous peoples of the Southeast. Through census manipulation, church registry conversion, and legal redefinition, families who had been "Indio" or "Mestizo" under Spanish law were reclassified as "Colored," "Mulatto," or "Negro" under American systems.
Indigenous peoples disappeared from official records not through death or migration but through bureaucratic erasure. The goal was eliminating treaty rights, territorial claims, and sovereign status. If there were no Indians, there could be no Indian land.
Through federal land patents, family records, and documented presence, Yamasee families maintained their heritage and territorial connection across generations—evidence that contradicts the erasure narrative.
"We survived because we documented. We endured because we remembered. We remain because we never left."
Despite systematic erasure, Yamasee families survived. They:
- Maintained bloodlines carrying genetic and cultural inheritance
- Preserved oral traditions passing down knowledge official records denied
- Adapted cultural practices without destroying them
- Held land — like Mary Day's 80 acres in Columbia County — establishing documented presence that contradicted the "removal" narrative
The families profiled in Keepers of Florida — the Days, the Joneses, the Ingrams, the Baughs, the Littles — represent thousands of Yamasee descendants who remained in Florida and preserved knowledge of their heritage through generations of official erasure.
Interactive Timeline
Explore the complete timeline from 1715 to 2025 with embedded images, document links, and historical context.
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