By Bob Davidsson
Fifty years before the founding of West Palm Beach, a Seminole town called "Cha-chi's Village" in honor of its chief peacefully existed along the chain of lakes which today are part of the city's western suburb.
The demise of the original inhabitants of the Palm Beaches - the Jeaga, Guacata (Santaluces) and Tequesta tribes - due to introduced diseases and slave raids during Queen Anne's War (1702 -13), resulted in the county reverting to a depopulated wilderness.
The Spanish Santa Lucia outpost (1565-66) and the English Grenville Plantation (1760s) both failed to take root near Jupiter Inlet, leaving the land uncontested and open to settlement. The newly formed Seminole tribe entered the Palm Beaches first as hunters in the late 1700s, and then as settlers in the 19th century.
The Seminole village chief Cha-chi (also spelled as Chai-chee, Chi, or Chai Chi in military documents) has the distinction of the first known resident of the Palm Beaches identified by name. Polly, his wife, likewise is the first woman residing in the county with a name and identity we can trace back to the 1840s.
Col. William Jenkins Worth, the U.S. army commander ultimately responsible for the capture and abandonment of the Seminole village, and his officers also used the English name "George or Old Georgy" in place of Cha-chi's Muskogean name when referring to him in their official correspondence.
The commencement of the Second Seminole War in 1835 initially had little impact on Cha-chi's Village. The tribe continued to raise crops along both shores of the freshwater Hypoluxo Lake (the Seminole name for Lake Worth, meaning "water all around, no way out").
The battle lines slowly shifted southward following the capture and death of the war chief Osceola. A major battle was fought along the northern shore of Lake Okeechobee on Christmas Day, 1837. In 1838, the war came to the Palm Beaches with the arrival U.S. Navy, Army and state militia units at Jupiter Inlet.
Two skirmishes were fought long the Loxahatchee River in January 1838, followed by the construction of Fort Jupiter three miles west of the inlet. Cha-chi's Seminole neighbors to the north were forced to either surrender or withdraw into the Everglades.
Mayor William Lauderdale's 233 Tennessee Volunteers, stationed at Fort Jupiter, cleared a pathway west of Cha-chi's Village. It was called the "Military Trail." In four days, "Lauderdale's Route" was cut and hacked, linking the Jupiter garrison with an outpost 63 miles to the south on the New River. The camp was named Fort Lauderdale after its commanding officer in March 1838.
The remaining Seminole Indians in the eastern Palm Beaches were flanked to the north and south by military forts, while Army units patrolled the new road to the west. The unwanted war had arrived at the doorstep of Cha-chi and his village.
By the year 1841, a war-weary United States government searched for a way to end the six-year conflict. Only a few hundred Seminole and Mikasuki Indians remained in South Florida. The remainder were killed, captured or deported to reservations in the Indian Territory (Oklahoma).
Col. Worth was the officer assigned the task of ending the war. His strategy was to send small detachments of Army regulars, supported by Navy river boats and Indian guides, to seek and destroy the remaining Seminole hideouts.
Captain Wade's Raid
On Nov. 5, 1841, Captain Richard A. Wade embarked from Fort Lauderdale with 60 men in 12 dugout canoes. His destination was the Hillsboro Inlet and the river system along the Broward-Palm Beach County line where Seminole hunting parties were reported.
In his journal, Captain Wade reported, "We proceeded by the inland passage to the northward, coming out in the bay at Hillsborough Inlet, and in such a manner canoes were concealed from the view of an Indian, whom I there discovered fishing on the northern point of the inlet."
The frightened fisherman was captured and coerced to lead the soldiers to his encampment 15 miles to the west. The camp was surrounded and assaulted, resulting in the capture of 20 Indians and the deaths of eight, who were killed while trying to escape.
In his report, Captain Wade wrote, "Under the guidance of an old Indian, found among our prisoners, who is called Chia-chee, I took up a line of march through nearly a mile of deep bog and saw grass, then through pine barren and some hammock, to a cypress swamp, a distance of some 30 miles northward."
"Here (on November 8) we were conducted to another village," he reported, "which we also surrounded and surprised, and captured 27 Indians, took six rifles and one shotgun, and destroyed a large quantity of provisions and four canoes."
The next day Cha-chi led the soldiers and captives back to Hillsboro Inlet where the canoes were left under guard. Captain Wade's raid resulted in the capture of 55 Indians. Cha-chi won the trust of the Army officer and was allowed to return to the Palm Beaches alone to persuade any remaining Seminoles to surrender.
Captain Wade wrote, "Having seen much in the old man, Chia-chee, to inspire my confidence, I permitted him to go from our camp to bring in other Indians, which he promised to do in three or four days. This promise he subsequently redeemed, having brought in six at Fort Lauderdale."
As the result of the Wade expedition, there were few if any Seminole Indians remaining in the eastern Palm Beaches. Perhaps Cha-chi's motive in assisting the U.S. Army as a guide was a promise that he and his family could remain in Florida instead of deportation to Oklahoma. The promise was kept by both the Army and Cha-chi, at the expense of his tribe and former villagers.
Lake Worth Exploration
Captain Wade was rewarded for the successful raid with a promotion to the rank of major. Following reports of renewed Indian activity along the Loxahatchee River, he led a second expedition Dec. 19 with 17 canoes and 80 men on a a round trip from Fort Lauderdale to Fort Jupiter and back. He followed an unexplored waterway, later named "Lake Worth" in honor of his commanding officer, as his chosen route.
Joining him on the expedition was Lt. Andrew A. Humphreys, a topographical engineer, to survey and record new discoveries on their journey. He would later draw a map which included the location of Cha-chi's Village.
In his memoir, "Inland Routes from Fort Jupiter to Fort Lauderdale," he described Lake Worth as "a pretty body of water, about 20 miles long and three quarters of a mile in width; bounded on the west by pine barren, and on the east by sand hills of the beach, which are sometimes 12 to 15 feet in height, and covered with cabbage trees, wild fig, mangroves, saw palmettos, with here and there a variety of cactus."
As the expedition traveled south from Fort Jupiter, he wrote, "Six miles from the last haulover, on the west side of the lake, is Chachi's Landing. A broad trail, half a mile in length, formerly led from this place over a spruce scrub towards the villages of the Indians whose gardens were on the opposite shore of Lake Worth, which they reached by hauling their canoes over the trail."
Humphreys estimated Cha-chi's Village was located 12.5 miles south of Lake Worth Creek, and 1.5 miles west of Lake Worth. He added, "Captain Wade's command were two days in going from Fort Jupiter to Chachi's Village."
His description of the abandoned village reads as follows: "The site of this (town) is on a pretty island, bounded on the northbound-east by a deep clear pond half a mile wide, and between a mile and a half and two miles long. On the west and the south it is surrounded by a grassy lake."
After aiding Captain Wade, Cha-chi was a guide for the Navy's "Mosquito Fleet," under the command of Captain John T. McLaughlin. The fleet's mission was to search coastal waters and inlets for hostile natives. During one of these missions, "Chi's Cut" in Biscayne Bay was named for guide who located it for the fleet.
Before the war's end, Cha-chi also guided the expedition of Captain John Rogers Vinton along the western side of Lake Worth in a failed effort to capture the war chief Sam Jones. In the summer of 1842 only about 300 Indians remained in Florida. By general order, Col. Worth declared the war over on Aug. 14, 1842.
After the war, Cha-chi and his wife Polly moved to the Manatee community in Hillsborough County. He was shunned by members of his tribe for assisting the Army, and lived in fear of reprisal. On Oct. 12, 1852, Florida Gov. Thomas Brown issued a proclamation to protect Cha-chi from his enemies, both white and native American.
The governor's executive order stated, "Whereas it has been presented to me by a petition of a number of the citizens of the county of Hillsborough that a certain Indian of the tribe of the Seminoles now in Florida by the name of 'Chi' and his wife have been outlawed by their tribe for the offense of acting as a guide to the United States troops during the period of Indian hostilities in Florida, and that the faith of the general government has been pledged for the protection of said Chi and his wife..."
Despite state protection, Cha-chi continued to live in fear. With the outbreak of the Third Seminole War, his anxiety increased to the point that he decided to take his own life. His only reward for risking his life as an Army scout was a bag containing $100 in coins.
On June 6, 1856, Lt. Alex S. Webb noted in his journal, "I forgot to mention the death of Corporal Manning of my company, of Chi the Indian. Chi committed suicide. He evidently felt that he was neither Indian or white, and got himself out of the world to avoid meeting parties of Indian scouts."
His widow, Polly, who spoke Spanish, served as a guide for the U.S. Army during the Third Seminole War, with the assistance of a translator named Philippi. During one of her missions, Polly found the source of the Miami River for a lost Army unit then "let out a panther yell".
Cha-chi's Village continued to appear on state maps through the 1870s, when the name, like the village, disappeared.
2014. (c.)
NOTE: Index and additional articles archived in Older Posts.
No comments:
Post a Comment