1780s - The "Civilization Experiment"
When Americans and Native Americans came into contact during colonial times and the early United States, most Colonial Americans felt their civilization to be superior.
Their solution was to forcibly 'share' their civilization with the Native Americans, so they would adopt Western civilization.
This acculturation was originally proposed by George Washington.
First, they would have to convert to Christianity and abandon pagan practices, such as canabalism.
The Native Americans had to adopt monogamous marriage and abandon non-marital sex.
They would also have to learn to speak and read English, although there was some interest in creating a writing and printing system for a few Native languages.
Finally, they had to accept the concept of individual ownership of land and other property.
The "Civilization Experiment" was embraced by the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek (Muscogee), and Seminole, who willingly accepted the Western customs and were considerd the Five Civilized Tribes that had been established as autonomous nations in the southeastern United States.
Trade and intermarriage between the Americans and these Native Nations was becoming common.
Thomas Jefferson's policy was similar to Washington's:
respect the Indians' rights to their homelands, and allow the Five Civilized Tribes to remain east of the Mississippi provided that they adopted behavior and cultural practices that were compatible with those of the American Colonists.
Jefferson also believed in and promoted a society based on agriculture.
1800s - Greedy Land Buyers and American Settlers Move Southward
Around this time, Spain could not afford enough soldiers to patrol the long frontiers of Florida.
This opened up the way for a mix of American and British settlers (mostly from Georgia and South Carolina), escaped slaves, and Native Americans to continue illegally immigrating into Spanish Florida.
English war ships anchored off Florida's Gulf coast and English agents encouraged the Seminoles, Creeks, and Mikisúkî to resist US settlement.
US officials, angry that the Spaniards could not oust the English or control the Indians, were particularly incensed by the protection and shelter the Seminoles offered to African slaves.
These freedom seekers had been finding refuge in Spanish Florida for over a century, but the new US government was determined to stop this practice.
Wealthy land buyers were also seeking to procure the fertile lands that were in possessed by the Native Nations.
In the late 1700s and early 1800s, conflicts, skirmishes, and ambushes erupted and cultural hatred flared into violence more and more frequently on the new frontier.
This, along with General Andrew Jackson's conflicts against the Seminoles in Spanish controlled Florida, started a series of wars with Southern Natives, during the presidency of James Madison and continued through that of James Monroe.
1813-1814 - The Creek War and The Seminoles
Later, the Maskókî tribes in Alabama (whom English speakers erroneously called "Creeks") rose up against their former allies, the British settlers, in the Creek War of 1813-14.
The Creek Indians were defeated in 1814, when Major General Andrew Jackson led an expedition against the Creek Indians climaxing in the Battle of Horse Shoe Bend (near the present day Alabama/Georgia border).
Jackson’s force soundly defeated the Creeks and destroyed their military power.
This was followed by the brutal repression and disastrous treaty forced upon them by General Andrew Jackson.
The appetite of the settlers for Southern lands would not abate, so the Indians adopted a strategy of appeasement.
They hoped that if they gave up a good deal of their land, they could keep at least some a part of it.
The remaining Creek chiefs signed away about half their lands, comprising 23,000,000 acres, covering much of southern Georgia and two-thirds of modern Alabama.
Over the next decade, Jackson led the way in the Indian removal campaign, helping to negotiate nine of the eleven major treaties to remove Indians.
Under this kind of pressure, Native American tribes—specifically the Creek, Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Choctaw—realized that they could not defeat the Americans in war.
This caused thousands of the most determined warriors and their families to migrate southward and take refuge in Spanish Florida.
Once there, they joined their earlier rivals, the last remaining tribes of Seminoles.
The Indians who constituted the nucleus of this Florida group thought of themselves as yat'siminoli or "free people," because for centuries their ancestors had resisted the attempts of the Spaniards to conquer and convert them, as well as the attempts of the English to take their lands and use them as military pawns.
Soon, the European Americans would begin to call all of the Natives in Florida as "Seminoles".
The northern lands of Florida continued to be the home of the newly amalgamated Black and Native American Seminole culture.
It had also become a haven for people escaping slavery in the southern states and territories.
Unlike the other tribes, the Seminole tribe in Florida resisted the U.S. land grabs, resulting in the Second Seminole War (1835–1842) and the Third Seminole War (1855–1858).
Neither the Native attempts of appeasement nor resistance worked.
Settlers in the Georgia Territory demanded that Spain control the Seminole population and capture any runaway slaves.
Spain, not having the manpower nor likely the desire to handle such operations, responded that the slave owners were welcome to come recapture the runaways themselves.
And the conflicts did not end there; they only escalated.
Through the Treaty of Moultrie Creek (1823), the Treaty of Payne's Landing (1832), and numerous "talks" and meetings, US Indian Agents sought to convince the Florida Indians to sell their cattle and pigs to the US government, return runaway slaves to their "rightful owners," leave their ancient homelands in Florida, and move west of the Mississippi River to Arkansas Territory.
1816-1819 - The First Seminole War
While there were threeSeminole Wars only the first occurred during Spanish rule.
The War of 1812 indirectly brought about the U.S. acquisition of Florida.
The First Seminole War began, in 1816, as a result of General Andrew Jackson's excursions into Spanish Florida to fight the Native warriors who fled south after The Creek War.
When the military and political opportunist, General Andrew Jackson, brazenly marched across Florida's international boundaries to settle the "Indian problem," he created an international furor.
Over a period of several tumultuous years, he burned Indian towns, captured Africans, and hanged one Maskókî medicine man, Francis, as well as two Englishmen whom he suspected of inciting the Indians.
This series of events is known as the First Seminole War.
Great Britain and Spain both expressed outrage over the invasion by the United States.
However, as several local uprisings and rebellions by American and british settlers had been occurring, in Spanish controlled Florida, Spain was no longer able to defend or control the territory.
During the First Seminole Indian War, the Seminoles attacked the early settlements.
Forts were built throughout East Florida to defend the settlers against the Seminoles.
Jackson's invasion into Florida (then part of New Spain), demonstrated to Spain that it could no longer control that colonial territory with their small force. In 1819, Spain agreed to cede Florida to the United States with the signing of the Adams–Onís Treaty. However, the official transfers took place in 1821.
1823 - The Case of Johnson v. M'Intosh
In the 1823 case of Johnson v. M'Intosh, the United States Supreme Court decided that Indians could occupy and control lands within the United States, but could not hold title to those lands. However, by 1823, with James Monroe still president, The United States government had already begun "treaties" that would force the Natives to "trade" their land, be removed from the Southeast, and be sent to reservations in the midwest.
[Contributors: Jason Brown]
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