and escaped slaves who established Minatti south of Lake Hancock in the late 1810s. These "maroons", as they were commonly called, were slaves who escaped from Georgia and the Carolinas. The Black Seminole of Minatti were allies of the Red Stick Creek in Talakchopko, a village that preceded present-day Fort Meade. The Seminole leader Osceola had strong ties to Talakchopko. Many of the events leading up to the Second Seminole War were associated with Osceola and the Minatti war chief Harry. By the end of the Second Seminole War in 1842, both Minatti and Talakchopko had been destroyed by US forces. The Armed Occupation Act of 1842 facilitated European-American settlement of the Florida peninsula in the 1840s, although the act prohibited settlement near the Peace River, as this was considered Seminole land. Enforcement of that part of the act was not strictly enforced; however, and settlers eventually moved into the area. As the settlement grew, the residents began to plant citrus trees and build one-room school houses and churches. In 1851, Fort Blount was established by Redding Blount. Bartow developed east of this site. At some point in the 1850s, Fort Blount was renamed as Peace Creek or Peas Creek, which was a translation of the Spanish Rio de la Paz of early maps. About a month after the secession of Florida in 1861, the state established Polk County from the eastern portion of Hillsborough County. A few months later, the American Civil War began with the Battle of Fort Sumter. Because of the turmoil of secession and the war, the county had no official county seat for its first six years. The state legislature had directed the voters of Polk County to choose a site for the county seat and mandated that the site be named "Reidsville." During the war, the area's major contribution to the Confederacy was supplying food, particularly cattle and beef. The Union army and navy had effective control of the west coast of Florida, and many cattlemen retreated inland and formed the "Cow Cavalry" as a defense against Union troops. One of the wealthiest members of the Cow Cavalry was Jacob Summerlin. After Summerlin purchased the Blount property in 1862, he donated a large parcel of land to build a county courthouse, two churches and a school. Later that year, the town which had been known as Fort Blount, Peace Creek, Peas Creek, and briefly