In November 1835, hostilities flared up on the Florida peninsula. In December, General Duncan L. Clinch ordered Dade's troops to reinforce the garrison at Fort King. A six-day march from Fork Brooke, near modern Tampa Bay, took the soldiers through a Seminole reservation where all but two of the troopers were killed. Over the next eight years, nearly four thousand soldiers and Indians died in the conflict.
The usual techniques for defeating the Indians worked poorly in Florida. The U.S. Army could not find Indian allies because the Seminoles had killed off the other tribes. Waiting for winter to attack food stores did not work in Florida's not hot climate. Progressively narrowing the hostile territory by building forts was futile since Florida was so large and had so many swamps.
At the end, 3000 Seminoles went to Oklahoma, but a thousand or so held out against the Army in the Everglades for years during the smaller-scale '''Third Seminole War'''.