Journey into Wilderness: An Army Surgeon's Account of Life in Camp and Field during the Creek and Seminole Wars, 1836-1838

by Jacob Rhett Motte, James F. Sunderman (Editor)

“The book has a double value in the text of the author and the annotation by the editor. The author adds to . . . our knowledge of the peninsula warfare and gives probably the best extant account of operations in the north central region of Florida and in southern Georgia.”— Journal of Southern History
 
“The reader gets a good feeling of what campaigning in Florida meant to one used to the comforts of Charleston and Cambridge. . . . Lively, humorous, and very easy to read. In style the book is far above most descriptions of the Seminole Wars written by participants.”— Florida Historical Quarterly
 
In 1836, 24-year-old Jacob Rhett Motte, a Harvard-educated southern gentleman with a literary flair, departed his hometown of Charleston to serve as an Army surgeon in wars against the Creek and Seminole Indians. He found himself transported from aristocratic social circles into a wild frontier.
           
Motte recorded his experiences in a lively journal, presented in full in Journey into Wilderness. In his journal, Motte relates observations of Indian warfare from southern Georgia and eastern Alabama to Key Largo in Florida. He reports his impressions of pioneer settlements, military fortifications, towns, roads, frontier life and society, and geography. His journal also offers glimpses of the economic, political, and religious trends of the time. A fascinating story and travelogue, it is a rare firsthand account of life on the Georgia-Alabama-Florida frontier.
 
 

380 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

Reviews

[Josh Liller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jacob Rhett Motte, a physician from Charleston, South Carolina, joined the US Army as a medical officer in 1836. His memoir covers his trip to join the Army in Alabama at the tail end of the brief Second Creek War, followed by a slow journey across southern Georgia and into northern Florida for the middle phase of the Second Seminole War. His service subsequently brought him to the Florida East Coast where he would be present for several key events of the war, including the Second Battle of the Loxahatchee. The edition I read was published in the 1960s with annotated endnotes and better identification of many of the officers, fellow physicians, and other individuals encountered.

Motte relates not only his own first-hand experiences, but also some events he missed but heard about second-hand soon after they occurred. This is certainly a historically valuable primary source for anyone interested in the Second Seminole War. Motte is an educated man who often quotes poetry and literature, and waxes philosophically. I personally found him a bit too meandering on occasion. He is descriptive and seems to be making an earnest effort at accuracy, though his opinions are often very much of his era with regard to Native Americans and blacks. The annotations, while often helpful and generally well-researched, do show their age at times. A new edition with updated annotations would be helpful. Supplementing the text are four wartime illustrations from Capt. Vinton, Motte's fellow officer, and some simple but effect maps added by the editor to show Motte's travels.

To anyone interested in the Seminole Wars this is a must-read. I think those with a general interest in Florida history will usually find it worth reading as well. To the more casual reader of biography or history, I give a mild recommendation.

[Jeffrey Wade · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book to do some research and a little known war and the region, where most of my family are from. The writer himself can be overly florid at times with the purple prose, but then, you are reading this to get a glimpse into the era and it gives you that. From the description of Paddy Carr's army of Creeks, to tales of moving through the Florida swamps and bayous, to stories of crazy brothers in the Georgia wilderness, you get an up close detailed glimpse of that period in Southeastern history before everything became about black and white, and there were actually a multitude of nations and peoples occupying the land.

[Joshua Lay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amazingly useful and easy to read, even funny sometimes.