This hand drawing is by Dr. James Motte, who was detached to Col. Wm. Harneys celebrated Second Dragoons, the forerunner to the Second Cavalry. He was stationed for a time at Ft. Dallas on Biscayne Bay. His diary of the war, Journey into Wilderness is awesome. A sidebar, he was reportedly present, and possibly complicit, when Dr. Weedon, of Ft. Pierce, removed Osceolas head following his death at Fort Moultrie in Charleston. I go on. Check this out; its kind of long. To set it up, John Thompson was an assistant keeper at the Cape Florida Lighthouse under John Dubose. In Jan. 1836 the Indians killed the Cooley family on New River and burned Richard Fitzpatricks plantation on Miami River, and the entire population of Biscayne Bay abandoned their homes and fled to Indian Key and from there to Key West. On March 16 Dubose returned to duty at the lighthouse, but on July 18 he departed again, leaving Thompson and Aaron Carter, his assistant and an elderly black man, there to operate the light until military re-enforcements could be dispatched to the area. Five days later they were attacked by Indians. Thompson tells the story in Tequesta, 1949: On the twenty-third of July, 1836, about 4 P.M., as I was going from the kitchen to the dwelling house, I discovered a large body of Indians within twenty yards of me, back of the kitchen. I ran for the Lighthouse, and called out to the old negro man that was with me to run, for the Indians were near. At that moment they discharged a volley of rifle balls, which cut my clothes and hat and perforated the door in many places. We got in, and as I was turning the key the savages had hold of the door. I stationed the negro at the door, with orders to let me know if they attempted to break in. I then took my three muskets, which were loaded with ball and buckshot, and went to the second window. Seeing a large body of them opposite the dwelling house, I discharged my muskets in succession among them, which put them in some confusion; they then, for the second time, began their horrid yells, and in a minute no sash of glass was left in the window, for they vented their rage at that spot. I fired at them from some of the other windows, and from the top of the house; in fact, I fired whenever I could get an Indian for a mark. I kept them from the house until dark. They then poured in a heavy fire at all the windows and lantern; that was the time they set fire to the door and the window even with the ground. The window was boarded up with plank and filled with stone inside; but the flames spread fast, being fed with yellow pine wood. Their balls had perforated the tin tanks of oil, consisting of two hundred and twenty-five gallons. My bedding, clothing, and in fact everything I had was soaked in oil. I stopped at the door until driven away by the flames. I then took a keg of gunpowder, my balls [essential when fighting Indians] and one musket to the top of the house, then went below and began to cut away the stairs about halfway up from the bottom. I had difficulty in getting the old negro up the space I had already cut; but the flames now drove me from my labor, and I retreated to the top of the house. I covered over the scuttle that leads to the lantern, which kept the fire from me for sometime. At last the awful moment arrived; the cracking flames burst around me. The savages at the same time began their hellish yells. My poor negro looked at me with tears in his eyes, but he could not speak. We went out of the lantern and down on the edge of the platform, two feet wide. The lantern was now full of flame, the lamps and glasses bursting and flying in all directions, my clothes on fire, and to move from the place where I was would be instant death from their rifles. My flesh was roasting and to put an end to my horrible suffering I got up and threw the keg of gunpowder down the scuttle - instantly it exploded and shook the tower from top to bottom. It had not the desired effect of blowing me into eternity, but it threw down the stairs and all the woodenwork near the top of the house; it damped the fire for a moment, but it soon blazed as fierce as ever. The negro man said he was wounded, which was the last word he spoke. By this time I had received some wounds myself; and finding no chance for my life, for I was roasting alive, I took the determination to jump off. I got up, went inside the iron railing, recommending my soul to God, and was on the point of going ahead foremost on the rock below when something dictated to me to return and lie down again. I did so, and in two minutes the fire fell to the bottom of the house. It is a remarkable circumstance that not one ball struck me when I stood up outside the railing although they were flying all around me like hailstones. I found the old negro man dead, being shot in several places, and literally roasted. A few minutes after the fire fell a stiff breeze sprung up from the southward, which was a great blessing to me. I had to lie where I was, for I could not walk, having received six rifle balls, three in each foot. The Indians, thinking me dead, left the Lighthouse and set fire to the dwelling place, kitchen and other outhouses, and began to carry off their plunder to the beach. … About 12 o’clock I thought I could perceive a vessel not far off. I took a piece of the old negro’s trousers that had escaped the flames by being wet with blood and made a signal. Some time in the afternoon I saw two boats with my sloop in tow coming to the landing. I had no doubt that they were Indians, having seen my signal; but it proved to be the boats of the United States schooner Motto, Captain Armstrong, with a detachment of seamen and marines under the command of Lieutenant Lloyd, of the sloop-of-war Concord. They had retaken my sloop, after the Indians had stripped her of her sails and rigging, and everything of consequence belonging to her. They informed me that they heard my explosion 12 miles off, and ran down to my assistance, but did not expect to find me alive. These gentlemen did all in their power to relieve me, but, night coming on, they returned on board the Motto, after assuring me of their assistance in the morning. Next morning, Monday, July 5, three boats landed, among them Captain Cole, of the schooner Pee Dee, from New York. They made a kite during the night to get a line to me, but without effect, they then fired twine from their muskets, made fast to a ramrod, which I received, and hauled up a tailblock and made fast around an iron stanchion, rove the twine through the block, and they below, by that means, rove a two inch rope and hoisted up two men, who soon landed me on terra firma. I must state here that the Indians had made a ladder by lashing pieces of wood across the lightning rod, near 40 feet from the ground, as if to have my scalp, nolens volens. … These lines are written to let my friends know that I am still in the land of the living, and am now in Charleston, S. C., where every attention is paid to me. Although a cripple, I can eat my allowance and walk without the use of a cane. John W. B Thompson in Tequesta, 1949 and Pioneers and Settlers of Southeast Florida.
Posted on: Sun, 11 Jan 2015 23:52:23 +0000
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