Seminoles, Muscogees (called "Creeks" by English-speakers), Alabamas, and Choctaws were also reported to be living in southwest and southern Florida in the early 19th century.
Many Native Americans were employed by and often resident at Spanish-Cuban fishing ranchos along the coast of southwest Florida.
During the Second Seminole War, a band led by Chakaika that lived in the Shark River Slough in the Everglades was particularly called "Spanish Indians".
William Bartram reported that in 1774 an old Muscogee told him about a town called "Calusahatche" on the "Bay of Carlos" (Charlotte Habor), occupied by Calosulges (Calusa people) which included ancient residents of Florida called "Painted people" and "Bat necks".
A band of Hitchiti-speaking Oconees,[c] led by Ahaya, settled on the Alachua Savanna (now called Paynes Prairie) sometime around 1750.
[d] In the 1950s, Miccosukees living west of Miami told William C. Sturtevant that they remembered the kalasa:Lî[e] (Calusa people), but regarded them as Spanish.
)[18] Neill collected a story from a Cow Creek Seminole informant relating how a people called imá:la, who were big and ferocious, fought with the ko:ico:bî (Mikasuki for the Florida panther, possibly meaning the Panther or Tiger clan of the Miccosukee).
[22] Neill notes that imá:la resembles "Emola", the name of a Timucuan town in northeastern Florida mentioned by René Goulaine de Laudonnière.
The Miccosukee oral history did include the presence of kalasa:Lî (Calusa people), who were generally viewed as being Spanish.
[6] The Calusa and other Pre-Columbian era Indigenous peoples of Florida, with the possible exception of those called "Spanish Indians", were gone by 1800.
[35] William Whitehead, customs inspector in Key West, wrote in 1831 that the women at the fishing ranchos were all Indians, and that the color of their children's skins indicated that many were fathered by the Spaniards.
He said that they worked for the Cuban fishermen from August until March, cultivated small plots and fished in the off-season, but did not hunt.
[37][33] Steele indicated in a letter to Thompson that the Seminoles did not claim the Spanish Indians as members because they did not want to share the annuities they received from the government.
[39] John Worth has stated that the Spanish Indians of the ranchos were neither Seminole nor Calusas, but a creole community that emerged in the 18th and early 19th centuries, consisting of Spanish Cuban fishermen and people predominantly descended from Muskogean-speaking people who were present in southwest Florida decades before the Seminoles.
[31] Wiley Thompson wrote to Florida governor William Pope Duval at the beginning of 1834 about a settlement of "negroes, Indians, and Spaniards", southeast of Charlotte Harbor, "a lawless, motley crew".
[43] The band of Spanish Indians that were led by Chakaika, including about 100 men of fighting age, lived in the Everglades in 1839–1840.
[44] Chakaika was reported to have earlier been a fisherman and sailor at a Spanish fishing rancho, known as "Antonio Nikeka".
[45] While Judge William Marvin of Key West blamed Chakaika for leading the attack on the settlements in the area of the Miami River in January 1836 and for an attack on Charlotte Harbor in April 1836 in which Henry Crews, customs collector for Charlotte Harbor, had been killed,[46] other sources say that Chakaika's band stayed out of the Second Seminole War until 1839.
In April, customs inspector Henry Crews was murdered at Charlotte Harbor, and a party of 25 Seminoles led by Wyhokee raided the Useppa Island fishing rancho.
[49] Thomas Lawson, then Surgeon General of the United States Army, led an expedition along the southwest coast of Florida in 1838, looking for Indian settlements.
Two of the men complained that their wives had been claimed by Holata Emathla as part of his band being sent to Indian Territory.
Macomb thought he had reached agreement with the principal leaders of the Seminoles in south Florida, but the men he met with apparently represented only one of four independent bands in the area.
[54] As part of the truce agreement, a trading post was established on the Caloosahatchee River, guarded by 25 soldiers under Colonel William S. Harney.
On the morning of July 23, 1839, about 160 Indians attacked the trading post and Army camp in the Battle of Caloosahatchee.
Colonel Harney escaped in his nightclothes, but half of the soldiers and some civilians were killed, either immediately or after being captured.
[55] Worth states that Chakaika's entry into the war was a response to the destruction of the Spanish rancho system by the US Army in 1836–1839.
He was guided by John, a former slave who said he had been captured by Chakaika when his master Henry Crews was killed in 1836 at Charlotte Harbor.
He reported that Chakaika was planning to attack Indian Key, but he was not deemed credible, and was held as a prisoner.
The hammock, south of the Tamiami Trail in the Shark River Slough, has been given the archaeological site identifier of 8DA69.
Some Seminole families in Oklahoma claimed Spanish ancestry in 1932, but it is unclear whether they derived from Chakaika's band or from rancho Indians.