Seminole Nation of Oklahoma
The Seminole Nation of Oklahoma is a federally recognized Native American tribe based in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. It is the largest of the three federally recognized Seminole governments, which include the Seminole Tribe of Florida and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida. Its citizens are descendants of the approximately 3,000 Seminoles who were forcibly removed from Florida to Indian Territory, along with 800 Black Seminoles, after the Second Seminole War. The Seminole Nation of Oklahoma is headquartered in Wewoka within Seminole County, Oklahoma. Of 18,800 enrolled tribal citizens, 13,533 live in Oklahoma. The tribe began to revive its government in 1936 under the Indian Reorganization Act. While its reservation was originally larger, today the tribal reservation and jurisdictional area covers Seminole County, Oklahoma, within which it has a variety of properties. The few hundred Seminoles remaining in Florida fought against US forces in the Third Seminole war, and peace was made without their defeat. Today, descendants of those people have formed two federally recognized Seminole tribes. Together, the three tribes and unorganized Traditionals in Florida were awarded a land claims settlement valued in total at $16 million in 1976, for nearly 24 million acres of lands seized by the United States government in Florida in 1823 amounting to less than $0.50 an acre. History In Florida The history of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma derives from the ethnogenesis of the tribe in Florida. The Seminole were composed of Indigenous American peoples who migrated into Florida after most of the original indigenous tribes had declined or moved. The Spanish explorer Pedro Menéndez de Avilés founded St. Augustine in 1565, the first permanent settlement in Florida after at least 60 years of sporadic Spanish visitation, he discovered complex indigenous cultures whose people lived by hunting, fishing, farming and raising stock. Tribes from three different basic language groups: the Timuquan, Calusan and Muskhogean, occupied Florida and lived in small and well-organized villages. Although today the term Seminole is used, this name originated due to a European misnomer, which categorized a diverse group of autonomous tribes together under the name Seminole. The Spanish first recognized the speakers of the "core language" Mvskoke, and called them cimarrones, or "free people" (Seminole). Translated through several languages to English, this term came to apply to all of Florida's 18th-century inhabitants, and their neighbors who later fled to join them under pressure of European encroachment into their territories. The Seminole absorbed remnants of other Florida tribes into their own. The Oconee were the original "Seminole," who later included the Hecete, Eufaula, Mikasuki, Horrewahle, Tallahassee, Chiaha, and Apalachicola. The Muscogee Creek Confederacy had a strong, longstanding presence in the Southeast. Fugitive runaway slaves and those freed under Spanish rule set up neighboring maroon communities and were close allies of the Indians. There was some intermarriage, but mostly the two peoples retained independent cultures, according to studies since the late 20th century. The blacks were armed and became allies in military conflicts. The African Americans became known