The Seminole Tribe of Florida: Survival in a New Land

The Seminole Tribe of Florida was granted federal recognition by the United States Congress in 1957 and is fully independent of the Seminole Tribe of Oklahoma.  The Seminole Tribe is one of the four federally recognized tribes in the southeastern states that is of Creek origin. (See our 3-part series on the Historical Overview of the Southeastern Creek Tribes and Creek Nation for a greater understanding of the Seminoles.)

By the mid-eighteenth century the Indian nations of the southeastern United States had been shattered by the federal government. In many cases their ethnic identities were all but gone. In Florida, the great Timucua, Ais and other significant tribes no longer existed, devastated predominantly by diseases introduced by European explorers. For Creek Indians in Georgia and Alabama, north Florida offered a new and different life – land and the desire to live in peace free from the intertribal and international conflicts taking place just to the north of Florida.

Florida offered fertile land for agriculture and livestock. Locales that once sustained Spanish and Indian missions and ranches from the Florida Panhandle area to St. Augustine and Palatka became home to Creek Indians. The Spanish in the St. Augustine area actively encouraged the movement of Creeks into Florida and the Creeks were quick to establish avenues of trade. Artifacts recovered from archeological sites indicate that Florida Creeks initially lived much like their Creek relatives to the north. But gradually they became independent of the northerly Creeks and developed a new way of life suited to their surroundings. By 1760 they had received a new name “Seminole” from the Spanish “cimarrones” meaning wild ones who broke away.

It is believed the name Seminole was first used relative to those former Creeks who settled in the area of Central Florida near the present city of Gainesville, and that the band later led by the famed “Cowkeeper” was the group to whom this first applied. The band had migrated to the area from the Oconee River region of southern Georgia around the mid-1800’s and tended the cattle they found in central Florida at the abandoned Spanish ranch La Chua. They were at one time part of the Lower Creeks who had migrated southward in search of better and more open lands. 

Important aspects of Creek life were retained by the Seminoles. Each Seminole town maintained its own identity and name. Traditional Creek activities such as stickball games, taking of the black drink, the “busk” or green corn celebration and dance, and smoking the peace pipe continued. Seminoles became actively involved in partnering with white traders, exchanging honey, cow and deer hides, garden produce for European ceramics and metal items from buttons to guns. Women were full participants in this trade, exchanging their garden products and handcrafted items. Individuals and their families began to emerge as entrepreneurs and economic decision makers versus the traditional town councils and hereditary leaders. A distinctive Seminole way of life different from that of the Creek Indians was emerging.

In addition to Lower Creeks who had migrated to Florida, other Indians including Yuchi and Yamasee Indians and black slaves who had escaped from plantations in the Carolinas and Georgia also moved to Florida and in some instances had joined the Seminoles. In the early nineteenth Century another large migration of Creeks took place following Andrew Jackson’s defeat of Upper Creek warriors at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814. For Jackson, interceding in what had essentially been a Creek civil war had been a convenient way to deal a blow to the Indian population and free lands for new white settlers. He sided with one group of Upper Creeks against the Upper Creek faction known as “Red Sticks” named for their red war clubs. It was the Red Sticks who were among those who migrated to Florida.  

In 1817 Jackson invaded Spanish Florida and attacked Spanish towns pushing some bands of Seminoles south. Two years later, Spain ceded Florida to the United States and Florida became a U. S. Territory. That same year the First Seminole War Began. By 1820, after the influx of Creek Indians following the Red Stick War, there were 5,000 Creeks and Seminole Indians living in Florida. In 1823 the United States government signed the Treaty of Moultrie Creek with several Seminole chiefs in an effort to prevent further friction between new white settlers and Seminoles. This forced the Seminoles to agree to move to lands in the central part of the state, from Fort King, near present day Ocala, to Lake Okeechobee in the south.

In 1830 the Indian Removal Act became the law of the land – Southeastern Indians were to be moved west of the Mississippi River to Indian Territory. The Seminoles simply refused to go. Federal militia were sent to deal with the situation; the Second Seminole War was underway. In 1835 Seminole warriors lead by their historically great leader, Osceola, raided an army supply train south of Gainesville. Ten days later in the Dade massacre other Seminoles attacked and decimated a contingent of more than 100 United States soldiers.

Two years later 400 Seminole warriors and 800 federal troops fought a pitched battle immediately north of Lake Okeechobee. From this engagement the Seminoles learned not to face federal troops in an open test of fire power, but to fight a guerilla war with raids and skirmishes. Eventually many Seminoles were captured or surrendered and shipped to Indian Territory. By 1842 the Second Seminole War was over.  Of the 6,000 who had lived in Florida fewer than 500 remained. Small bands of Seminole people sought refuge in the isolated Everglades.