William Augustus Bowles and a small army comprised of runaway slaves, Seminole Indians, and ex-patriot English and Spanish citizens attacked and seized the St. Marks Store on the Wakulla River, owned by the trading firm Panton, Leslie & Company, on this date in 1792. Bowles was born in Maryland before the American Revolution and joined the British Army at a young age. While stationed in Pensacola in the 1780s, he left the British army and headed into the interior with the Creek and Seminole Indians, eventually traveling to the Bahamas. Bowles spent much of his time with the Creeks and Seminoles of the southeast, eventually declaring himself “Director General of the Muskogee Nation,” and establishing a Muskogee Nation. Bowles was able to organize a rabble army to harass and interrupt trade within Spanish Florida for the next few years. He often targeted the trading stores of Panton, Leslie & Company, one of the largest Indian trading houses in the southeastern United States, based in Pensacola. The colonial Spanish government, the U.S. government, and the owners of Panton, Leslie & Company issued bounties for his arrest. Bowles was successful in evading the gallows, including a daring escape from a Spanish prison in the Philippines, until 1803, when he was turned over to Spanish authorities. He eventually died while still imprisoned at Morro Castle in Havana, Cuba, in 1805.
~Florida Historical Society
