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

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.

Author: Jacob Rhett Motte
Publisher: University Press of Florida
Published: 12/12/2017
Pages: 380
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.22lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.85d
ISBN: 9780813064581

About the Author
Jacob Rhett Motte (1811-1868) was a U.S. Army surgeon during the Seminole Wars of the early nineteenth-century. He later worked in private practice in Charleston, South Carolina.