Seminole

Florida had been the home of several indigenous cultures prior to the arrival of European explorers in the early 1500s. However, the introduction of Eurasian infectious diseases, along with conflict with Spanish colonists, led to a drastic decline of Florida's original native population. By the early 1700s, much of La Florida was uninhabited apart from towns at St. Augustine and Pensacola. A stream of mainly Muscogee Creek began moving into the territory at that time to escape conflict with English colonists to the north and established towns mainly in the Florida panhandle.

Native American refugees from northern wars, such as the Yuchi and Yamasee after the Yamasee War in South Carolina, migrated into Spanish Florida in the early 18th century. More arrived in the second half of the 18th century, as the Lower Creeks, part of the Muscogee people, began to migrate from several of their towns into Florida to evade the dominance of the Upper Creeks and pressure from encroaching colonists from the Province of Carolina.[11] They spoke primarily Hitchiti, of which Mikasuki is a dialect, which is the primary traditional language spoken today by the Miccosukee in Florida. Joining them were several bands of Choctaw, many of whom were native to western Florida. Some Chickasaw had also left Georgia due to conflicts with colonists and their Native American allies. Also fleeing to Florida were African Americans who had escaped from slavery in the Southern Colonies.

The new arrivals moved into virtually uninhabited lands that had once been peopled by several cultures indigenous to Florida, such as the Apalachee, Timucua, Calusa and others. The native population had been devastated by infectious diseases brought by Spanish explorers in the 1500s and later colonization by European settlers. Later, raids by Carolina and Native American slavers destroyed the string of Spanish missions across northern Florida, and most of the survivors left for Cuba when the Spanish withdrew after ceding Florida to the British in 1763, following the French and Indian War.

While John Swanton stated that the Seminole encountered and absorbed Calusa that had remained in southwest Florida after the Spanish withdrew from Florida in 1763, more recent scholarship holds that there is no documentary evidence of that.[12][13]

As they established themselves in northern and peninsular Florida throughout the 1700s, the various new arrivals intermingled with each other and with the few remaining indigenous people. In a process of ethnogenesis, they constructed a new culture which they called "Seminole", a derivative of the Mvskoke' (a Creek language) word simano-li, an adaptation of the Spanish cimarrón which means "wild" (in their case, "wild men"), or "runaway" [men].[14] The Seminole were a heterogeneous tribe made up of mostly Lower Creeks from Georgia, who by the time of the Creek War (1813–1814) numbered about 4,000 in Florida. At that time, numerous refugees of the Red Sticks migrated south, adding about 2,000 people to the population. They were Creek-speaking Muscogee, and were the ancestors of most of the later Creek-speaking Seminole.[15] In addition, a few hundred escaped African American slaves (known as the Black Seminoles) had settled near the Seminole towns and, to a lesser extent, Native Americans from other tribes, and some white Americans. The unified Seminole spoke two languages: Creek and Mikasuki (mutually intelligible with its dialect Hitchiti),[16] two among the Muskogean languages family. Creek became the dominant language for political and social discourse, so Mikasuki speakers learned it if participating in high-level negotiations. The Muskogean language group includes Choctaw and Chickasaw, associated with two other major Southeastern tribes.

In part due to the arrival of Native Americans from other cultures, the Seminole became increasingly independent of other Creek groups and established their own identity through ethnogenesis. They developed a thriving trade network by the time of the British and second Spanish periods (roughly 1767–1821).[17] The tribe expanded considerably during this time, and was further supplemented from the late 18th century by escaped slaves from Southern plantations who settled near and paid tribute to Seminole towns. The latter became known as Black Seminoles, although they kept many facets of their own Gullah culture.[18]

During the colonial years, the Seminole were on relatively good terms with both the Spanish and the British. In 1784, after the American Revolutionary War, Britain came to a settlement with Spain and transferred East and West Florida to it. The Spanish Empire's decline enabled the Seminole to settle more deeply into Florida. They were led by a dynasty of chiefs of the Alachua chiefdom, founded in eastern Florida in the 18th century by Cowkeeper. Beginning in 1825, Micanopy was the principal chief of the unified Seminole, until his death in 1849, after removal to Indian Territory.[19] This chiefly dynasty lasted past Removal, when the US forced the majority of Seminole to move from Florida to the Indian Territory (modern Oklahoma) after the Second Seminole War. Micanopy's sister's son, John Jumper, succeeded him in 1849 and, after his death in 1853, his brother Jim Jumper became principal chief. He was in power through the American Civil War, after which the U.S. government began to interfere with tribal government, supporting its own candidate for chief.[19]

After raids by Anglo-American colonists on Seminole settlements in the mid-18th century, the Seminoles retaliated by raiding the Southern Colonies (primarily Georgia), purportedly at the behest of the Spanish. The Seminoles also maintained a tradition of accepting escaped slaves from Southern plantations, infuriating planters in the American South by providing a route for their slaves to escape bondage.[20]

After the United States achieved independence, the U.S. Army and local militia groups made increasingly frequent incursions into Spanish Florida to recapture escaped slaves living among the Seminole. American general Andrew Jackson's 1817–1818 campaign against the Seminoles became known as the First Seminole War.[21] Though Spain decried the incursions into its territory, the United States effectively controlled the Florida panhandle after the war.

Coeehajo, Chief, 1837, Smithsonian American Art Museum

In 1819, the United States and Spain signed the Adams-Onís Treaty,[22] which took effect in 1821. According to its terms, the United States acquired Florida and, in exchange, renounced all claims to Texas. The president appointed Andrew Jackson as military governor of Florida. As European American colonization increased after the treaty, colonists pressured the federal government to remove Natives from Florida. Slaveholders resented that tribes harbored runaway black slaves, and more colonists wanted access to desirable lands held by Native Americans. Georgian slaveholders wanted the "maroons" and fugitive slaves living among the Seminoles, known today as Black Seminoles, returned to slavery.[23]

Sign at Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park commemorating hundreds of enslaved African Americans who in the early 1820s escaped from this area to freedom in the Bahamas.

After acquisition by the U.S. of Florida in 1821, many American slaves and Black Seminoles frequently escaped from Cape Florida to the British colony of the Bahamas, settling mostly on Andros Island. Contemporary accounts noted a group of 120 migrating in 1821, and a much larger group of 300 enslaved African Americans escaping in 1823. The latter were picked up by Bahamians in 27 sloops and also by travelers in canoes.[24] They developed a village known as Red Bays on Andros.[25]

Under colonists' pressure, the U.S. government made the 1823 Treaty of Camp Moultrie with the Seminoles, seizing 24 million acres in northern Florida.[26] They offered the Seminoles a much smaller reservation in the Everglades, of about 100,000-acre (400 km²).[27] They and the Black Seminoles moved into central and southern Florida.

In 1832, the U.S. government signed the Treaty of Payne's Landing with a few of the Seminole chiefs. They promised lands west of the Mississippi River if the chiefs agreed to leave Florida voluntarily with their people. The Seminoles who remained prepared for war. White colonists continued to press for their removal.

In 1835, the U.S. Army arrived to enforce the treaty. The Seminole leader Osceola led the vastly outnumbered resistance during the Second Seminole War. Drawing on a population of about 4,000 Seminoles and 800 allied Black Seminoles, he mustered at most 1,400 warriors (President Andrew Jackson estimated they had only 900). They countered combined U.S. Army and militia forces that ranged from 6,000 troops at the outset to 9,000 at the peak of deployment in 1837. To survive, the Seminole allies employed guerrilla tactics with devastating effect against U.S. forces, as they knew how to move within the Everglades and use this area for their protection. Osceola was arrested (in a breach of honor) when he came under a flag of truce to negotiations with the US in 1837. He died in jail less than a year later. He was decapitated, his body buried without his head.

Other war chiefs, such as Halleck Tustenuggee and John Jumper, and the Black Seminoles Abraham and John Horse, continued the Seminole resistance against the army. After a full decade of fighting, the war ended in 1842. Scholars estimate the U.S. government spent about $40,000,000 on the war, at the time a huge sum. An estimated 3,000 Seminoles and 800 Black Seminoles were forcibly exiled to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi, where they were settled on the Creek reservation. After later skirmishes in the Third Seminole War (1855 -1858), perhaps 200 survivors retreated deep into the Everglades to land that was not desired by settlers. They were finally left alone and they never surrendered.[28][29]

Several treaties seem to bear the mark of representatives of the Seminole tribe,[30] including the Treaty of Moultrie Creek and the Treaty of Payne's Landing. The Florida Seminoles say they are the only tribe in America never to have signed a peace treaty with the U.S. government.[31]

Captain Francis Asbury Hendry (center, standing) poses with a group of Seminole Indians

The 1868 Florida Constitution, developed by the Reconstruction legislature, gave the Seminoles one seat in the house and one seat in the senate of the state legislature. The Seminoles never filled the positions. After white Democrats regained control over the legislature, they removed this provision from the post-Reconstruction constitution they ratified in 1885. In the early 20th century, the Florida Seminoles re-established limited relations with the U.S. government. The Seminoles maintained a thriving trade business with white merchants during this period, selling alligator hides, bird plumes, and other items sourced from the Everglades. Then, in 1906, Governor Napoleon B. Broward began an effort to drain the Everglades in attempt to convert the wetlands into farmland. The plan to drain the Everglades, new federal and state laws ending the plume trade, and the start of World War I (which put a halt to international fashion trade), all contributed to a major decline in the demand for Seminole goods.[35]

In 1930, they received 5,000 acres (20 km²) of reservation lands. Few Seminoles moved to these reservations until the 1940s. They reorganized their government and received federal recognition in 1957 as the Seminole Tribe of Florida. During this process, the more traditional people near the Tamiami Trail defined themselves as independent. They received federal recognition as the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians in Florida in 1962.[36]

During World War II, roughly sixty-five Seminoles fled into the Everglades to avoid registering for the draft. The superintendent of the Seminole Indian agency in Dania was able to convince all but two of the group to eventually register.[37][38]

In the 1950s, the Oklahoma and Florida Seminole tribes filed land claim suits, claiming they had not received adequate compensation for their lands. Their suits were combined in the government's settlement of 1976. The Seminole tribes and Traditionals took until 1990 to negotiate an agreement as to division of the settlement, a judgment trust against which members can draw for education and other benefits. The Florida Seminoles founded a high-stakes bingo game on their reservation in the late 1970s, winning court challenges to initiate Native American gaming, which many tribes have adopted to generate revenues for welfare, education, and development.

After removal, the Seminoles in Oklahoma and Florida had little official contact until well into the 20th century. They developed along similar lines as the groups strove to maintain their culture while struggling economically. Most Seminoles in Indian Territory lived on tribal lands centered in what is now Seminole County of the state of Oklahoma. The implementation of the Dawes Rolls in the late 1890s parceled out tribal lands in preparation for the admission of Oklahoma as a state, reducing most Seminoles to subsistence farming on small individual homesteads. While some tribe members left the territory to seek better opportunities, most remained. Today, residents of the reservation are enrolled in the federally recognized Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, while others belong to unorganized groups. The Florida Seminole re-established limited relations with the U.S. government in the early 1900s and were officially granted 5,000 acres (20 km²) of reservation land in south Florida in 1930. Members gradually moved to the land, and they reorganized their government and received federal recognition as the Seminole Tribe of Florida in 1957. The more traditional people living near the Tamiami Trail received federal recognition as the Miccosukee Tribe in 1962.[36]

Seminole tribes generally follow Christianity, both Protestantism and Catholicism. They also observe their traditional Native religion, which is expressed through the stomp dance and the Green Corn Ceremony held at their ceremonial grounds. Indigenous peoples have practiced Green Corn rituals for centuries. Contemporary southeastern Native American tribes, such as the Seminole and Muscogee Creek, still practice these ceremonies. As converted Christian Seminoles established their own churches, they incorporated their traditions and beliefs into a syncretic indigenous-Western practice.[43] For example, Seminole hymns sung in the indigenous (Muscogee) language are inclusive of key Muscogee language terms (for example, the Muscogee term "mekko" or chief conflates with "Jesus"). Also, hymns are frequently led by a song leader (a traditional indigenous song practice).[44]

In the 1950s, federal projects in Florida encouraged the tribe's reorganization. They created organizations within tribal governance to promote modernization. As Christian pastors began preaching on reservations, Green Corn Ceremony attendance decreased. This created tension between religiously traditional Seminoles and those who began adopting Christianity.[45] In the 1960s and 1970s, some tribal members on reservations, such as the Brighton Seminole Indian Reservation in Florida, viewed organized Christianity as a threat to their traditions.

By the 1980s, Seminole communities were even more concerned about loss of language and tradition. Many tribal members began to revive the observance of traditional Green Corn Dance ceremonies, and some shifted away from Christian observance. By 2000, religious tension between Green Corn Dance attendees and Christians (particularly Baptists) decreased. Some Seminole families participate in both religions; these practitioners have developed a syncretic Christianity that has absorbed some tribal traditions.[46]

Seminole family of tribal elder, Cypress Tiger, at their camp near Kendall, Florida, 1916. Photo taken by botanist, John Kunkel Small

The remaining few hundred Seminoles survived in the Florida swamplands, avoiding removal. They lived in the Everglades, to isolate themselves from European Americans. Seminoles continued their distinctive life, such as "clan-based matrilocal residence in scattered thatched-roof chickee camps."[48] Today, the Florida Seminoles proudly note the fact that their ancestors were never conquered.[49]

In the 20th century before World War II, the Seminoles in Florida divided into two groups; those who were more traditional and those willing to adapt to the reservations. Those who accepted reservation lands and made adaptations achieved federal recognition in 1957 as the Seminole Tribe of Florida.[41]

Many of those who had kept to traditional ways and spoke the Mikasuki language organized as the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, gaining state recognition in 1957 and federal recognition in 1962. (See also Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, below.) With federal recognition, they gained reservation lands and worked out a separate arrangement with the state for control of extensive wetlands. Other Seminole not affiliated with either of the federally recognized groups are known as Traditional or Independent Seminole,[41] known formally as the Council of the Original Miccosukee Simanolee Nation Aboriginal People.[50]

At the time the tribes were recognized, in 1957 and 1962, respectively, they entered into agreements with the US government confirming their sovereignty over tribal lands.

Seminole patchwork shawl made by Susie Cypress from Big Cypress Indian Reservation, ca. 1980s

The Seminoles worked hard to adapt, but they were highly affected by the rapidly changing American environment. Natural disasters magnified changes from the governmental drainage project of the Everglades. Residential, agricultural, and business development changed the "natural, social, political, and economic environment" of the Seminoles.[42] In the 1930s, the Seminoles slowly began to move onto federally designated reservation lands within the region. The U.S. government had purchased lands and put them in trust for Seminole use.[51] Initially, few Seminoles had any interest in moving to the reservation land or in establishing more formal relations with the government. Some feared that if they moved onto reservations, they would be forced to move to Oklahoma. Others accepted the move in hopes of stability, jobs promised by the Indian New Deal, or as new converts to Christianity.[52]

Seminoles' Thanksgiving meal mid-1950s

Beginning in the 1940s, more Seminoles began to move to the reservations. A major catalyst for this was the conversion of many Seminole to Christianity, following missionary effort spearheaded by the Creek Baptist evangelist Stanley Smith. For the new converts, relocating to the reservations afforded them the opportunity to establish their own churches, where they adapted traditions to incorporate into their style of Christianity. Reservation Seminoles began forming tribal governments and forming ties with the Bureau of Indian Affairs.[53] In 1957 the nation reorganized and established formal relations with the U.S. government as the Seminole Tribe of Florida.[42] The Seminole Tribe of Florida is headquartered in Hollywood, Florida. They control several reservations: Big Cypress, Brighton Reservation, Fort Pierce Reservation, Hollywood Reservation, Immokalee Reservation, and Tampa Reservation.[54]

A traditional group who became known as the Trail Indians moved their camps closer to the Tamiami Trail connecting Tampa and Miami, where they could sell crafts to travelers. They felt disfranchised by the move of the Seminoles to reservations, who they felt were adopting too many European American ways. Their differences were exacerbated in 1950 when some reservation Seminoles filed a land claim suit against the federal government for seizure of lands in the 19th century, an action that the Trail Indians did not support.[36]

Following federal recognition of the Seminole Tribe of Florida in 1957, the Trail Indians decided to organize a separate government. They sought recognition as the Miccosukee Tribe, as they spoke the Mikasuki language. It was not intelligible to Creek speakers, but some members of each group were bilingual in the two languages, especially as the Creek-speaking Seminole were more numerous.

The Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida received federal recognition in 1962. The federal government assigned them their own reservation lands, collectively known as the Miccosukee Indian Reservation.[36] The Miccosukee Tribe set up a 333-acre (1.35 km²) reservation on the northern border of Everglades National Park, about 45 miles (72 km) west of Miami.[27]

• Sturtevant, William C. (1987). A Seminole Source Book, New York: Garland Publishing.