Fort Brooke built to make the Moultrie Creek treaty stick (mouth of the Hillsborough River, Tampa, 1824)

SUMMARYFort Brooke built to make the Moultrie Creek treaty stick (mouth of the Hillsborough River, Tampa, 1824) [Connections: Tampa Bay, Nov 5, 2026]

RECORDColonel George M. Brooke built the post in 1824 after a November 5, 1823 order to place four companies of the 4th Infantry at Tampa Bay. Treaty commissioner James Gadsden, who signed the Treaty of Moultrie Creek (1823) for the United States and doubted the Seminoles would honor it, pushed for a post that would show "power and disposition to compel obedience." The Clio entry says Americans read the treaty as ending Seminole rights to stay around Tampa Bay, and the fort was built to enforce that reading

PATTERNTampa did not start as a town; it started as an army post placed on Native land to enforce a paper claim. The Seminole Tribe of Florida's own name for Fort Brooke was Coo Taun Cho Bee, "Big Shore Line" (see the reburial card)

LENS (WW9)The city's birth certificate is an enforcement order: Tampa was planted to push the original people off the shore

OPENRead the treaty's text on the Tampa Bay boundary, and Brooke and Covington, "The Establishment of Fort Brooke," Florida Historical Quarterly 31:4 (April 1953)

SOURCEFort Brooke (Clio), citing Brooke and Covington, FHQ 31:4 (1953), and Covington, Sunland Tribune 6–7 (1980–81).