November 2001
Original Seminoles
For decades in the 1800s, Seminoles fought
to hold on to their lands in Florida. To stay alive, the Seminoles
turned into nomads, fearful that if they remained too long in
any one place, soldiers would find them and attack.
Historians report that some of those under siege even killed their young children to guarantee that no sound would give away the whereabouts of the group.
Eventually, some of the chiefs gave their consent to take their people out of Florida and move to the land the government had set aside for them in Oklahoma. Their motives were mixed: Some were wooed by the false promise of wealth; others were persuaded by trickery. A few saw the inevitability of being captured and transported to unknown lands, so they agreed to leave rather than starve or be killed in surprise attacks.
As it turned out, the emigration to the west was not much safer than the perils in Florida. It is estimated that on the boatloads of Seminoles being shipped from Tampa Bay to New Orleans and then on to Arkansas and Oklahoma, the old and young died from disease at the rate of four a day.
The last to yield was Pascofa, chief of the Ocklockonee band of Seminoles in North Florida. Pascofa and his band had resisted U. S. soldiers' attacks more than five years after the great warrior, Osceola, died in a military prison. But in 1842, the Ocklockonee band had dwindled to about 50 starving and naked people.
Pascofa's surrender was a solemn, proud occasion, made possible by Major Ethan Allen Hitchcock, who seemed to be sympathetic to the Seminole plight, yet loyal to his military duty.
According to one historical report, Pascofa brought his band to Hitchcock and saluted the officer with a Seminole toast before climbing aboard the boat which transported him first to Port Leon on the St. Marks River, and then on to Tampa, New Orleans and ultimately Oklahoma.
Hitchcock's handling of the situation and others like it earned him the credit for ending the Seminole Wars. By that time, the U.S. government had decided to withdraw troops because the cost of fighting the Seminoles was too high in dollars and deaths. Furthermore, soldiers and their officers had no desire to keep fighting for land held by the Seminoles in the swamps of South Florida. A tour of duty in Florida had long been likened to a tour of duty in hell.
Today, according to the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, the five tribes of Seminole émigrés number about 12,000. Most of them live in Seminole County in Oklahoma, one of the most depressed counties in the state. - Dana Peck
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