Seminole

History

The large territory of what is now called Florida once held perhaps 200,000 Seminole ancestors in hundreds of tribes, all members of the Maskókî linguistic family, the Muscogean language of the Creek Indians. In the 1700s, as a result of growing European settlement, they had migrated to Florida from Georgia and Alabama. Originally, the Seminole occupied the wooded areas of northern Florida, but they eventually spread as far south as the Everglades. The Seminole were not a homogeneous tribe at that time, but rather disparate groups. Groups of Lower Creeks moved to Florida to get away from the domination of Upper Creeks, while others were seeking new, more fertile land for crops. In addition to the Creeks, Seminoles included Hitchiti, Apalachee, Mikisúkî, Yamassee, Yuchi, Tequesta, Apalachicola, Choctaw, and Oconee, as well as runaway black enslaved people. The Spaniards (who held [Page 1905]control of Florida until 1821, when they ceded the land to the United States) called these indigenous Florida people Seminoles, which, according to Richard Sattler in The Encyclopedia of North American Indians, is a corruption of the Spanish word cimarrón, meaning “wild” or “runaway.”

By the turn of the 19th century, conflicts with white settlers who wanted Indian land were becoming more commonplace. In 1817, these conflicts escalated into the first of three wars. Future U.S. president Andrew Jackson invaded Florida, attacked several key locations, and pushed the Seminole farther south. By 1823, most of Seminole tribal land had been ceded to the U.S. government, leaving about 5 million acres. After Andrew Jackson was elected president in 1828, there was a growing movement to transfer all Indians living in the United States to west of the Mississippi River, which eventually led to the passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830, authorizing Jackson to negotiate with Indians in the south for their removal to federal territory in exchange for their homelands. Two years later, the Treaty of Paynes Landing was negotiated with Seminole representatives and called for their removal to Indian territory in Oklahoma within three years. In 1835, with removal imminent, Osceola, a Seminole leader, instigated a rebellion resulting in the Second Seminole War. Seminole medicine man Abiaka also played an important role in the Seminole wars. Although not as well-known as Osceola, he was a powerful spiritual leader who used his “medicine” to inspire Seminole warriors to battle, and he directed a number of successful battles, including the battle of Okeechobee in 1837.

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