“We are a people to ourself”: Florida’s Native Borderlands during the Mikasuki-Spanish War, 1799–1803

This essay uses the textual record produced in East and West Florida during William Augustus Bowles’s final filibuster campaign. Bowles, a British adventurer, sought to break the Panton, Leslie & Company trade monopoly and establish the “State of Muscogee,” with himself as its “Director General.” This article, however, focuses on his indigenous allies who used Bowles to further their respective agendas. The Mikasukis and their leader, Kinache, protested against the Creek National Council, the Spanish, and the United States for their respective roles in the delineation of the Florida-Georgia border across their homeland. An ensuing Mikasuki-Spanish war lasted over two years and included extensive raiding of East Florida plantations. The Alachua Seminoles and their leader, Payne, made their own geopolitical calculations and decided to help the Spanish appeal to the Creek National Council for assistance. The Creeks suppressed the Mikasuki insurgency and apprehended Bowles. Nonetheless, the conflict demonstrated that the Mikasukis and the Alachuas, who were once Creek colonists in Florida, conducted independent foreign policies, an essential step in their eventual ethnogenesis as Seminoles. Lastly, this work implements a Native borderlands framework that focuses on inter- and intra-indigenous relations as these groups grappled with the forces of Euro-American colonialism.