In 1892 a reporter for the Missouri-based Daily Globe-Democrat interviewed an elderly Black man by the name of Louis Fatio living near Jacksonville, Florida. Throughout the interview, Fatio described parts of his tumultuous life of 92 years, first as an enslaved guide for the U.S. army and then as a captive living among the Seminoles. In sitting for the interview, Fatio seized an opportunity to recount his own version of his life story—a story that had been distorted and used by white Americans for various political purposes for decades.
Fatio was born near Jacksonville, but he lived most of his life out West before returning to Florida around 1882. During an absence of nearly 50 years, Fatio had become relatively famous (or rather, infamous) throughout the country. In 1835 Seminole and Black Seminole warriors took Fatio prisoner after they massacred 110 United States soldiers, including Maj. Francis Dade (namesake of Miami-Dade County), for whom Fatio served as a guide. This massacre sparked the conflict known as the Second Seminole War, which lasted until 1842. Only one other person, Private Ransom Clarke, survived the attack. Fatio was initially presumed dead. It was later discovered, however, that Fatio had survived and was living among the Seminoles. From the 1830s into the 1870s, at least three white authors asserted that Fatio led Maj. Dade and his men into a trap. Fatio could not respond to this accusation because the U.S. let the Seminoles take him, along with several hundred other enslaved and free Black people, out of Florida and into Indian Territory in 1841. Fatio’s decades-long absence from Florida meant that it was white Americans who shaped his story and turned Fatio into a symbol that served different political goals on the issue of slavery. The 1892 newspaper interview allowed Fatio to seize control of his own story and directly alter the established history of the United States.
Fatio’s early life reflected the impact of Florida’s cosmopolitan population upon enslaved people. Fatio was born to enslaved parents in the year 1800 on the plantation of Swiss soldier and merchant Francis Phillip Fatio, called “New Switzerland,” which abutted the eastern bank of the St. John’s River. He grew up among Africans, Seminoles, Spanish, British, white, and African Americans as Florida changed hands between several nations before its eventual acquisition by the U.S. in 1819.