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The United States prepared to execute; not a redskin was ready, and troops were sent. The Indians began immediately to gather their crops, remove the squaws and pickaninnies to places of safety, secure war equipments—in short, prepare for battle.

It was a question of wonderment many times among the officers how the Indians procured their ammunition in such quantities, and how they kept from actual starvation. Hidden as they were in their strong fortresses—the fastnesses of the swamps—many believed that they would be starved out, and would either stand a fair field fight or sue for peace. An old Florida settler who carried his rifle through seven years of Indian warfare explains the mystery. He says: “The Indians had been gathering powder and lead for years, ever since the time Chief Neamathla made his treaty with General Jackson. Besides, Cuban fishing smacks were always bringing it in, and trading with the redskins for hides and furs. As for provisions, they had their ‘Koontie’ flour, the acorn of the live oak, which is fair eating when roasted, and the cabbage of the palmetto tree. For meat, the woods were full of it. Deer and bear were abundant, to say nothing of small game, such as wild turkey, turtle and squirrel.” The Seminoles at this time, 1834, owned, perhaps, two hundred slaves, their people had intermarried with the maroons, and in fighting for these allies they were fighting for blood and kin. To remove the Indians and not the negroes was a difficult thing to do. The Seminoles, now pressed by the United States troops, committed depredations upon the whites; bloody tragedies occurred, and the horrors of the second Seminole War were chronicled throughout the land.