These united Seminoles were able to retain their power, but with considerable losses. During Newnan's three-week campaign, Seminole settlements, crops, cattle, horses and other livestock were taken or destroyed. The Seminoles have to rebuild their lives. Meanwhile, to survive, the Seminoles and the runaway slaves traded weapons with the British throughout the early 1800s and supported this European country during the War of 1812.
The American government sent Andrew Jackson to Florida with his army of 3,000 troops. He successfully attacked the Seminoles and left many dead and dying behind in their destroyed villages. The United States seized control of Florida. When the settlers came in, they invaded Tallahassee, a Seminole settlement. The governor asked the Seminole to move and the Seminole refused. In 1823, the governor to offered to sign a treaty with the Seminoles, called the Treaty of Moultrie Creek. It required the Seminoles to give up their land and move south and to agree to discontinue hiding runaway slaves. The Seminole were then given a reservation of four million acres of land in the area south of present-day Ocala. However, unlike other Native American tribes, the Seminoles refused to go onto the reservations. They therefore fought again, in the Second Seminole Wars. However, the results were not as favorable. Many Seminoles were sent to Western reservations, and those who remained went to there are some still living in this area today.
According to Covington, many changes have taken place for the Seminole Indians since 1858, when less than 300 remained on the peninsula just since the federal government did not have the money nor men to remove them to Indian Territory. Presently, less that 1,500 Seminoles and Miccosukees live in Florida, including those living away from the...
For many it is indeed a changing life, with more comfortable housing, food purchased at the supermarket, color television sets, the latest fashions in clothing, and late model cars. To some older Seminoles, however, remaining on the reservation guarantees them the good life; it will be the younger Seminoles whose choices decide the future of the tribe. If they no longer have the desire to use their language or if they believe hat life outside the reservation is better, the Seminole land will greatly alter. Yet of all the tribes in the United States, it has been these Seminoles of Florida that have been the most reluctant to adjust themselves to the white world, and they still have reservations to which they can retreat from it.
This was the most interesting aspect of this book, therefore, that this tribe continued to fight against the white domination and against all odds. The Seminoles have been one of the very few sovereign nations that never surrendered nor signed a formal treaty with the U.S. Rather than be controlled by foreign invaders, these tribes moved into the dangerous Florida Everglades and told everyone "to come and get them" if they wanted. The U.S. government tried on several occasions giving up and realizing that the Seminoles would not assimilate themselves into a system that by any standards were patently unfair and racist. There was something in their culture that made them more resistant to external change and having the ability to retain their Native American ways.
This book may have been written for individuals who study the Seminoles in a professional basis, but it was a very interesting book and well written. There were parts that were too detailed that I passed over, but it was almost like a novel where I continued…
