ABSTRACT

The Seminoles are descended from Creek Indians who migrated from Georgia to Spanish Florida in the eighteenth century. The Creeks who migrated usually spoke either the Muskogee or Mikasuki language. In an 1819 treaty, the U.S. acquired Florida and immediately began putting pressure on the Seminoles to cede land claims and accept a reservation. The Seminoles resisted and fought the U.S. in several wars in the 1830s through 1850s. Captured Seminoles were forcibly removed to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). A small minority managed to escape capture by retreating into the Everglades. In the twentieth century, these surviving Florida Seminoles worked to solidify claims to reservation land and to organize as tribes. Some of the Mikasuki-speaking Seminoles formed the Miccosukee Tribe and have a reservation along the Tamiami Trail. Five other reservations—Hollywood (formerly Dania), Brighton, Big Cypress, one at Immokalee, and one in Tampa—belong to the Seminole Tribe of Florida. Kersey and Bannan show how Seminole women’s entry into politics is a recent, twentieth-century development related to the Seminoles’ changing economy.