In the 1930s and 40s, American Indians were treated as orphaned wards by a federal government preoccupied with world conflict. After World War II, a policy of termination and assimilation was pursued by the United States.
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The 1920s closed with two profound events, the completion of the Tamiami Trail, which opened Florida’s last frontier, and the deadliest hurricane in history, the 1928 storm, which whipped the waters of Lake Okeechobee into a tidal wave that drowned Other Seminoles profited from the early boom in Florida tourism by selling crafts and wrestling alligators. The 20th century saw the re-emergence of those Florida Seminoles who had resisted removal, and survived economically by selling plumes, hides, fish and game to whites on the edges of the Everglades, at trading posts like Smallwood in Chokoloskee,īrown’s Boat Landing in Big Cypress, and Stranahan in Fort Lauderdale. Or removing them to Oklahoma in the Seminole’s own Trail of Tears. Often called the First, Second, and Third Seminole Wars, the conflicts of the first half of the 19th century, were in fact one long battle waged against the Seminoles, killing and pushing survivors further into the South Florida wilderness – As Taylor watched from the rear of his 1,000 troops, no more than 500 Seminoles including Sam Jones (Abiaka), Coacoochee (Wildcat),Īlligator, and the Prophet, killed 26 soldiers and wounded more than 100, while suffering only 11 casualties themselves. National prominence as an Indian fighter, despite losing the great Battle of Okeechobee on Christmas Day 1837. The Seminole Wars also helped produce two American presidents, Andrew Jackson, who enhanced his reputation as an Indian fighter by raiding villages in North Florida, and deporting Indians to the western wastelands, and Zachary Taylor, who gained
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Refusal to give up, even stabbing a treaty in an act of legendary defiance, that most characterized the man and his tribe. Such conflict produced one of the great Native American leaders, Osceola, whose courage and cunning defined the Seminole resistance before he was taken under a flag of truce and died in a South Carolina prison in 1838. The Seminole Wars resulted from many factors: broken treaties which would have preserved as much as five million acres of Florida (land on the Tribe’s six modem reservations encompasses less than one-fiftieth of that, none of it primeĬoastal land), expansionist desires on the part of the growing United States, and the friction that arose when Seminoles gave safe haven to escaped slaves. The Seminoles, MiccosukeesĪnd related Indians have struggled to survive in Florida despite heavy odds, including three undeclared wars with the United States. Meanwhile, the total current population of Florida exceeds 14 million. The indigenous population of the Florida peninsula, estimated at 200,000 in 1500, is less than 3,000 today. Profound would be a gross understatement. Only the years since 1510, about four percent of the Tribe’s history, have been touched by European culture. Ancestors of the Seminoles have lived in what is now the Southeastern United States for at least 12,000 years.