23 September: On our way through Oklahoma, we visited the Seminole Nation Museum in Wewoka to learn about the tribe’s history and culture. By the early 1500s, Non-native diseases and armed conflicts with European settlers began to decimate the indigenous populations in many parts of North America. Beginning in the early 1700s, remnants of many small tribes moved from a wide area in the future southeastern states (especially Georgia and Alabama) to resettle in northern Florida, where they eventually merged and by the 1770s had become known as Seminoles. After the American Revolution, pressure from southern states grew for relocating the native tribes to west of the Mississippi River so their former land could be acquired for white settlement. Most Seminoles refused to emigrate peacefully, resulting in three bloody Seminole Wars in Florida between 1817 and 1858. During this long period, many of the Seminoles emigrated or were forcibly relocated to what is now eastern Oklahoma, although a small number stayed hidden deep in the swamps of the Everglades and have descendants there today.
Seminoles who were relocated to Indian Territory were settled at first on the Creek Reservation and forced to live under Creek rule. Adjusting to their new home was difficult. It wasn’t until 1856 that they were given the right to self-governance and land of their own. Soon, however, they were involved in another war, with some Seminoles fighting on each side during the American Civil War. In 1866, a new treaty required Seminole Nation to sell all its land to the U.S., but allowed it to buy a different piece of land from the Creeks. This forced the Seminoles to relocate again, to what is their home today in Seminole Co., Okla.
Prominent in Seminole culture (and for many other eastern woodland and plains Indian tribes in both Canada and the U.S., from prehistorical times to the present), is the game originally called stickball (now lacrosse). As witnessed by European travelers as early as the 1600s, stickball often involved whole villages and elaborate ceremonial rituals, lasting a whole day or longer. Such contests even sometimes functioned as a surrogate for waging war in settling intertribal disputes. There have been many variations in the rules, and women sometimes participated in this rough and physically demanding sport.