Pine Island Ridge and Abiaka's Stand
Near Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Two weeks after Fort Lauderdale went up on the New River, its soldiers went looking for the people the war was aimed at. On the twenty-second of March, eighteen thirty-eight, troops moved against a Seminole stronghold on Pine Island Ridge, a low pine-covered limestone rise in what is now southwestern Broward County. The expedition set out from Fort Lauderdale, boarded boats, and pushed up the New River toward the ridge.
Defending it were Seminole and Mikasuki fighters led by Abiaka, a medicine man the soldiers called Sam Jones, one of the most stubborn and respected resistance leaders of the entire war. Against roughly two hundred twenty Tennessee volunteers and a few dozen regulars, Abiaka's warriors hid in the treetops. As the boats approached, a shot struck the hand of the soldier carrying the flag, and then the whole ridge opened fire.
When the troops finally reached the village, they found it abandoned. They seized ammunition, canoes, clothing, and tools, but they did not kill or capture a single Seminole. The soldiers returned to Fort Lauderdale two days later.
Abiaka was never defeated. He and his people melted into the Everglades, part of the small band that outlasted the war and stayed in Florida, and their descendants live here still.
