urbances, as to cause his death; if such be the
fact, the subsequent act of the Indians, however lamentable, must be
considered as one of retaliation, and I can not but think it is to
be deplored that they were afterwards 'hunted' with so unrelenting a
revenge." The word _hunted_ was used advisedly by Humphreys, for, as
we shall see later, when war was renewed one of the common means of
fighting employed by the American officers was the use of bloodhounds.
Sometimes guns were taken from the Indians so that they had nothing with
which to pursue the chase. On one occasion, when some Indians were being
marched to headquarters, a woman far advanced in pregnancy was forced
onward with such precipitancy as to produce a premature delivery, which
almost terminated her life. More far-reaching than anything else,
however, was the constant denial of the rights of the Indian in court
in cases involving white men. As Humphreys said, the great disadvantage
under which the Seminoles labored as witnesses "destroyed everything
like equality of rights." Some of the Negroes that they had, had been
born among them, and some others had been purchased from white men
and duly paid for. No receipts were given, however, and efforts were
frequently made to recapture the Negroes by force. The Indian, conscious
of his rights, protested earnestly against such attempts and naturally
determined to resist all efforts to wrest from him his rightfully
acquired property.

[Footnote 1: The correspondence is readily accessible in Sprague,
30-37.]

By 1827, however, the territorial legislature had begun to memorialize
Congress and to ask for the complete removal of the Indians. Meanwhile
the Negro question was becoming more prominent, and orders from the
Department of War, increasingly peremptory, were made on Humphreys for
the return of definite Negroes. For Duval and Humphreys, however, who
had actually to execute the commissions, the task was not always so
easy. Under date March 20, 1827, the former wrote to the latter: "Many
of the slaves belonging to the whites are now in the possession of the
white people; these slaves can not be obtained for their Indian owners
without a lawsuit, and I see no reason why the Indians shall be
compelled to surrender all slaves claimed by our citizens when this
surrender is not mutual." Meanwhile the annuity began to be withheld
from the Indians in order to force them to return Negroes, and a
friendly chief, Hicks, con