The SeminolesThis tribe originated in the early 1700s from Yamasee and Lower Creeks who migrated into northern and central Spanish Florida following their defeat by the South Carolinians in the Yamasee War. Military confrontations with white settlers as well as dwindling game for food perpetuated this exodus throughout the eighteenth century. The emigrants grew increasingly autonomous from the Lower Creeks. Gradually, they took on the name “Seminole,” meaning “wild” “runaways,” or “separatists,” which reflected their watershed departure. Later in the 1700s, the Seminoles welcomed black slaves escaping Spanish masters into their company. Though apparently retaining their servile status, these descendants of Africa lived in communities near the Seminole villages, grew into a significant component of the tribe, and received treatment as virtual equals. Following the American defeat of the Creeks at Horseshoe Bend, more Creeks headed to Florida to join the Seminoles. This time, Upper-not LowerCreeks, pro-British “Red Stick” veterans of the War of 1812, comprised the majority of the migrants. The war refugees ballooned the Seminole population from thirty-five hundred to six thousand. By 1815 these disparate companies comprised a formidable though still small nation. Their resistance to removal from their Florida homelands, however, casts a large legacy in American history books. Hunting on lands in that state as well as southern Georgia and Alabama, they centered their communities in Florida and lived as town-dwellers. Unlike the other southeastern tribes, they eschewed farming. The Seminoles’ initial significant conflict as a tribe with the United States occurred in 1817 to 1818 with the first of a series of “Seminole Wars.” White Georgian slave owners, whose major (and Constitutionally protected) financial capital in the economic system of the time consisted of their black slaves, complained to the U.S. government about runaways among these folk living with the Seminoles. General Andrew Jackson, in the latest of a long series of battles (violent as well as non-violent) with Natives, led an American army into Florida to retrieve the escapees, burning down a Seminole town in the process. As they did in many other places, from the time the United States purchased Florida from Spain in 1819, American settlers began swarming onto the tribe’s land, settling it, and then urging the U.S. government to remove the resident tribes. In 1823 the powers in Washington gained the Seminoles’ agreement to the Treaty of Tampa, which required the tribe’s move south to the swampy inland Everglades region east of Tampa. Even this did not work, because the Indians accused whites of harassment and the whites accused the Seminoles of theft, property destruction, and violence. The whites demanded the tribe’s relocation to Indian Territory. The Seminoles’ toughness, geography, history, leadership, and sense of place and other cultural traditions would generate a less than cordial response from them toward federal soldiers’ efforts to force them west. An early 1800s Seminole village in Florida, prior to the tribe’s wars with the United States and the exile of most of them to Indian Territory.
Read the entire Oklahoma story in John J. Dwyer's Media The Oklahomans: The Story of Oklahoma and Its People volume 1 of a 2-part series on the 46th state and the people who make this state very special. |
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John Dwyer's Oklahoma HistoryAuthor John Dwyer takes us on a voyage through time, to discover Oklahoma is ways we've never fully understood. The hardbound pictorial of volume 1 is available for a limited time at up to 40% off, using this link.
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January 2024
Novelist and Oklahoma native Ralph Ellison said, "You have to leave home to find home", an apt description of the journey of John Dwyer, author and general editor of The Oklahomans. The Dwyer family roots were firmly transplanted from Ireland to Oklahoma by John's great-grandfather and grandfather, the latter who settled in Oklahoma City in 1909, just two years after Oklahoma achieved statehood. Although born in Dallas, TX, John was relocated to Oklahoma when his widowed mother returned to her home when he was two years old.
It would be on Oklahoma soil that his mother instilled in him his love for history, and coupled with his unusually creative imagination, it soon became apparent that John not only liked to hear great stories of legend and history, but to make up his own as well. It would be out of a sense of divine purpose that he would use that creativity in response to a higher calling in the years to come. John began a career in journalism during his high school days when he served in a variety of roles, including news and sports reporter, for the Duncan Banner, a daily newspaper in his small Oklahoma hometown. He was the youngest sports editor in the newspaper's history by the time he attended the University of Oklahoma on a journalism scholarship. He graduated in 1978 with a bachelor of arts and sciences degree in journalism. Dwyer further developed his journalistic skills in radio as a play‐by‐play football and basketball announcer for several radio stations. He won the coveted position of sports director for the University of Oklahoma's 100,000 watt KGOU‐FM radio station. For seven years, he provided live, on‐air reports to America's largest radio networks of University of Oklahoma college football games. Except for a year in England during 6th grade, John lived in the Sooner State for 28 years before returning to Dallas in 1986 to attend Dallas Theological Seminary where he earned his Master of Biblical Studies. While there, Dwyer worked part time on the sports staff of The Dallas Times Herald, which at the time owned one of the five largest circulations of any daily newspaper in Texas. It was in Texas that he also met and married his wife Grace in 1988 and settled down to start his family. In the spring of 1992, Dwyer and his wife founded the Dallas‐Fort Worth Heritage newspaper, which would grow to a circulation of 50,000 per month at the time of its sale, after nearly a decade, to new owners. The Heritage pioneered innovative features such as full color photography and graphics, an expansive web site, a cluster of informative daily radio programs, and an aggressive, uncompromising brand of investigative news reporting unprecedented for contemporary news publications holding an orthodox Christian worldview. In 2006, at the urging of his family and the Oklahoma Historical Society, John returned to Oklahoma to tackle the colossal task of writing "The Oklahomans," which was endorsed as an official project of the Oklahoma Centennial Commission. He has completed volume 1 (Ancient‐Statehood) and a portion of volume 2 (Statehood‐Present), which releases in November 2018. He is now an Adjunct Professor of History and Ethics at Southern Nazarene University. He is former history chair at Coram Deo Academy, near Dallas, Texas. His books include the non‐fiction historical narrative "The War Between the States: America's Uncivil War" (Western Conservatory), the novel "When the Bluebonnets Come" (Bluebonnet Press), the historical novels "Stonewall" and "Robert E. Lee" (Broadman & Holman Publishers), and the upcoming historical novels "Shortgrass" and "Mustang" (Oghma Creative Media). John and Grace have one daughter and one grandson and live in Norman, Oklahoma. They are members of the First Baptist Church of Norman, where they serve in a variety of teaching, mission, and other ministry roles. Categories |