Battle of Wahoo Swamp

Battle of Wahoo Swamp
Part of Second Seminole War
United States Marines searching for the Indians during the Seminole War.
Date November 21, 1836 Location Sumter County, Florida 28°41′23.64″N 82°13′22.26″W / 28.6899000°N 82.2228500°W / 28.6899000; -82.2228500 Result American victory
Belligerents
United States	Seminole
Commanders and leaders
Richard K. Call	Osuchee Yaholooche
Strength
2,500	approx. 600
Casualties and losses
12 killed, 34 wounded	35-75

The Battle of Wahoo Swamp was an extended military engagement of the Second Seminole War fought in November 1836 in the Wahoo Swamp, approximately 50 miles northeast of Fort Brooke in Tampa and 35 miles south of Fort King in Ocala in modern Sumter County, Florida. General Richard K. Call, the territorial governor of Florida, led a mixed force consisting of Florida militia, Tennessee volunteers, Creek mercenaries, and some troops of the US Army and Marines against Seminole forces led by chiefs Osuchee and Yaholooche.

Soon after hostilities began in late 1835, a portion of the Seminole and Black Seminole of north and central Florida removed to the Wahoo Swamp – a largely unmapped wilderness of wetlands, dense hardwood hammocks, and scattered wet prairies – as a refuge from attempts to expel them from the territory as demanded by the Indian Removal Act. Settlements were established on patches of dry land along the Withlacoochee River, and the area became a base from which small raiding parties launched attacks on US military forces and plantations between Fort Brooke and Fort King.

In the autumn of 1836, General Call's forces arrived in the area to seek out and destroy Seminole villages and farms along the Withlacoochee to break their resistance. However, though he forced the Seminoles to retreat deeper into the swamp in a series of sharp engagements, he was unable to follow due to difficult terrain and dwindling supplies. American forces had left the Wahoo Swamp by the end of November 1836, and Call was relieved of his command by General Thomas Jesup the following month.^[1][2]