SW026 War Pressure Forges Lasting Cultural Identity Among Loosely Aligned Seminole Bands

This week we look at how the Second Seminole War forged a distinct lasting cultural identity among the loosely aligned bands of Florida Seminole in the 1830s.

In 1817, two years before the legal transfer of Florida from Spain to the United States, the Seminole Indians numbered as many as 5,000. They were organized into settled towns across North and Central Florida and thriving on an agricultural economy.  By the close of hostilities in 1858, those remaining Florida Seminole, who had not died from combat or illness or had been forcibly removed to reservations in the Oklahoma territory, numbered fewer than 200. These hearty, defiant survivors remained in scattered family camps on mostly inaccessible remote tree islands in the Everglades and Big Cypress Swamp. 

It is these Florida-based survivors whose descendants are now organized into the federally-recognized Seminole Tribe of Florida and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians.

Federal recognition depended on cultural survival and continuity of historical identity, both of which resulted from an internalized self-identity born in response to a period of cultural stress and crisis. Among the three federally recognized tribes today, distinct political identities exist.

The Seminole Tribe of Florida has about twenty-six hundred members, with most living on the three largest reservations at Hollywood, Big Cypress, and in the Everglades regions of the Florida South.

The five hundred or so members of the Miccosukee Tribe live on the Tamiami Reservation around U.S. Route 41 west of Miami in the Everglades. A small, politically independent group in Florida lives separate from these two and has resisted federal recognition in favor of maintaining a traditional identity, staying away from modern society.

The third federally recognized political entity is among the descendants of the Seminole deported to Oklahoma during the wars. They comprise the twelve-thousand member Seminole Nation of Oklahoma in the Wewoka area of Seminole county.

In this podcast, we will explore the ethno-genesis of the Florida Seminole. We will define ethno-genesis. And we will explain the continued cultural importance of the Seminole Wars to the people of Florida.

To help understand this is Brent R. Weisman. Dr. Weisman is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of South Florida. He has served as the editor of The Florida Anthropologist, president of the Seminole Wars Historic Foundation, and the Alliance for Weedon Island Archaeological Research and Education, and was a founding director of the Florida Public Archaeology Network. His research interests continue to be Seminole Indian culture and history, Florida archaeology, and North American Indians. He has written and published numerous journal articles and books about the Seminole.

Host Patrick Swan is a board member with the Seminole Wars Foundation. He is a combat veteran and of the U.S. Army, serving in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, and Kosovo, and at the Pentagon after 9/11. A military historian, he holds masters degrees in Public History, Communication, and Homeland Security, and is a graduate of the US Army War College with an advanced degree in strategic studies. This podcast is recorded at the homestead of the Seminole Wars Foundation in Bushnell, Florida. 

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