Tuesday Marks 175th Anniversary of Dade Massacre, Start of Second Seminole War

With the 150th anniversary of the Civil War around the corner in April, its easy to overlook the anniversary of another war that greatly shaped Floridas history.

Tuesday marks the 175th anniversary of the Dade Massacre -- kicking off the Second Seminole War. On December 28, 1835, two companies of U.S. infantry under Major Francis Dade marching up from Fort Brooke in present-day Tampa to Fort King, around what is now Ocala, andwere ambushed by a host of Seminoles near what is now Bushnell. Of the 110 troops under Dades command, 107 were killed in the battle while two of the three survivors died of their wounds. Dade, a Virginian, is memoralized today across the state, including having a city and county named after him.

The war, which was the most expensive Indian war in American history, also ranks as one of the longest conflicts the United States ever engaged in. The war would lag on until August 1842 -- two and a half years before Florida would becomea state. More than 1,600 Americans lost their lives, most to disease. For the Seminoles, who had already been diminished by the Indian removal policies backed by President Andrew Jackson, the war was even more devastating. By the mid-1840s, there were little more than 3,000 Seminoles in Florida.

Along Interstate 75, the state preserved the battleground as the Dade Battlefield Historic State Park in Sumter County.