Browse Items (71 total)

During the course of the 1830s and 1840s, the federal government forcibly relocated Southeastern American Indian communities—including large segments of the Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw, and Seminole Tribes––from their traditional homelands by…

Members of the Miccosukee Tribe prepare to deliver buckskin petitions to French, Spanish, and British embassies in the U.S. The Tribe hoped to rely on their acknowledgment of past treaties made with Florida Indians to support their claims to the…

Bill Osceola, a Seminole leader who would become a tribal president, requests reimbursement from the state for monies paid to appoint Florida Indian Agent Maxwell Denton with funds held in trust for the tribe. The Council voiced its disapproval when…

Out of three diverse communities, the original Seminole reservations—Big Cypress, Brighton, and Dania--would politically unify in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. From barely avoiding the termination of their federal supervision, the Seminoles…

This meeting at Dania to discuss tribal business includes two of the twelve tribal members who signed the 1949 Seminole petition for monetary compensation from the Indian Claims Commission: John Henry Gopher and Junior Cypress, along with the…

Buffalo Tiger and Mike Osceola were two of the most prominent members of the “new generation” of young spokesmen for the South Florida Indians. Their fluency in English led them to represent their respective tribal interests with important political…

By meeting with state officials in Tallahassee, the Seminole leadership began building governmental relationships that would help in the reorganization process.

This map, drawn by anthropologist Clay MacCauley, indicates the locations of some of the Florida Indian groups living in South Florida during the late 19th century. He groups them into distinct communities. One interesting observation is that most of…

Beede, who was commissioned by the federal government to investigate the condition of the Florida Indians, explains his difficulties in interacting with the widely spread indigenous camps in Florida. He notes that the Florida Indians seem well…

During the mid to late-1700s, Lower and Upper Creek Indians––as well as small groups of other diverse Indian communities, including those who spoke Miccosukee––gradually migrated south from Georgia and Alabama into the relatively unpopulated regions…