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 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 roughly $0.67 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 encountered 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". 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 as Black Seminoles or Seminole Maroons. The term cimarrones in Spanish was initially transliterated by the Creek as semvlonē. ''Semvlonē eventually morphed into Semvnole''.
The United States conducted the First Seminole War beginning in 1818, to reduce Seminole raids on Georgia communities and to break up armed black communities. In 1821 the US acquired Florida from Spain. White settlers, in search for additional fertile land, pressured government to move the Seminole. In 1823 the US forced most of the Seminole from northern areas of the territory to a reservation in central Florida under the Treaty of Moultrie Creek. Seminoles continued to leave the reservation and a second war was begun, the most expensive for the US, with many troops committed.
After the Second Seminole War of the 1830s, an estimated 3,000 Seminole and 800 Black Seminoles were removed to Indian Territory, with many taken by ship across the Gulf of Mexico and up the Mississippi for part of the journey. They were first put under the Creek on their reservation. The 1830s was the period of removal for the other of the "Five Civilized Tribes" of the American Southeast.
A few hundred Seminole remained in the Florida Everglades. With guerilla warfare, they resisted US forces during the Third and last Seminole War, when the US withdrew. Today their descendants have formed the federally recognized Seminole Tribe of Florida and Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida.
In Indian Territory
After removal, the Oklahoma and Florida Seminole developed independently and had little contact for nearly 100 years. By the terms of a 1832 treaty, Seminole people were initially forced to share a reservation with the Muscogee Nation, however in 1845 United States promised to give the Seminole people their own reservation.Micanopy, who had been principal chief since 1825, led the Seminole struggle to gain an independent reservation which succeeded in 1856. He died in 1849, after separate lands had been promised by the US for 1855. His sister's sons, John Jumper and Jim Jumper, succeeded him as principal chiefs before the US began to interfere with tribal government.
While the Seminole maintained political independence from the Creek, the two peoples became closer through the 19th and early 20th centuries, as they shared strong cultural traditions and began to intermarry. The Seminole reservation originally encompassed what is now Seminole County, a roughly 15-mile strip between the Canadian River and North Canadian River, a total of. The United States urged the Indians on reservations to adopt subsistence agriculture, but less than half the land was good for agriculture, and a third was not useful for stock raising or agriculture.
The Black Seminoles again developed towns near the Seminole as they had in the Florida frontier. Except for the struggle to protect their people against slave raiders from outside their communities, they enjoyed good relations with the Seminole.
After the American Civil War, in which many Seminole, including John Frippo Brown last Principal Chief of the Seminole Nation, had allied with the Confederacy, they were forced to make some land cessions under a new treaty with the US government. These included allocating a portion of their reservation for the Seminole Freedmen following emancipation of slaves in Indian Territory in 1866. The treaty granted the Black Seminoles who chose to stay on the reservation full citizenship in the tribe.
As they had in Florida, the Seminole strongly discouraged intermarriage with whites or adoption of European-American ways. In 1900 they were still mostly full bloods. They generally had little intermarriage with the Seminole maroons, who were recognized as having their own distinct culture. As the Seminole had a matrilineal kinship system, they believed children belonged to their mother's people. Mixed-race children belonged to the mother's people, whichever race that was.
Following the Seminole Agreement of 1909, the Seminole lands were allotted to individual households registered on the Dawes Rolls, in a federal plan to encourage subsistence farming and assimilation. Numerous interests wanted to extinguish the communal tribal lands to gain admission of Oklahoma as a state. In 1900 the Seminole Freedmen numbered about 1,000, nearly one-third of the total Seminole tribe in Oklahoma. The Dawes Commission established two separate registration rolls for Seminole Indians and Freedmen. They became United States citizens in a racially segregated state.
The Seminole Freedmen suffered extra legal discrimination and restrictions in the state. Some left for Canada or other states. The segregation of the larger society drove a wedge between the communities. The Freedmen quickly lost land through unscrupulous land sharks, as their land sales were not supervised by the Indian Bureau. The Seminole also lost land, sometimes through the actions of overseers who were supposed to help them.
Current conditions
Today the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma is located in Seminole County, Oklahoma. The entire county of Seminole is a portion of the original Seminole Nation jurisdiction, and covers approximately 633 square miles. The county is a checkerboard of tribal trust property, Indian allotments, restricted Indian lands, and dependent Indian communities. Native Americans make up 22% of the population of Seminole County.The Seminole County service population is 5,315 Tribal citizens, according to the Seminole Nation Tribal Enrollment Office. The total enrollment of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma is approximately 17,000 citizens. According to 2000 U.S. Census data for Seminole County, the self-identified Native American population is 4,328, and the Native American population is 5,485.
As of the Spring of 2022, the Chief was Lewis Johnson.
Government
, the current administration is:- Chief: Lewis J. Johnson
- Assistant Chief: Brian T. Palmer
The 1898 Curtis Act threatened the existence of the tribe's government, but Congress continued the recognition of tribal governments indefinitely in 1906. With the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, the Seminole became US citizens and received some services from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Having enjoyed a unique alliance, the Seminoles and the Seminole Freedmen became part of the segregated state of Oklahoma, which adversely affected their relations.
Under the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, the Seminoles reorganized their government. At the time, some who had been opposed to Seminole Freedmen being allocated land also opposed their participation in government. As the Seminole Nation developed its constitution, some citizens wanted to exclude Seminole Maroons from the tribe, but the Constitution of the 1950s recognizes Freedmen as citizens.
On March 8, 1969, the Seminole Nation ratified a constitution, which restructured their government along more traditional lines. The Nation has been composed since the 19th century of 14 itálwa, matrilineal town bands, including two Freedmen bands, which each represent several towns. This social structure is also the basis of the Seminole political and religious life. Each band has an elected band chief and assistant band chief and meets monthly.
Each band elects two representatives to the General Council. Each band is governed by a set of bylaws that originate from the band. This structure was approved by the Commission of Indian Affairs on April 15, 1969.
The Seminole General Council, chaired by the Principal Chief and Assistant Chief, serves at the elected governing body. The Chief and Assistant Chief are elected at large every four years.
On July 1, 2000, the Seminole Nation held a referendum for a constitutional amendment establishing new enrollment rules: it said that citizens had to have one-eighth blood quantum. The General Council prohibited representatives from the two Freedmen Bands from participating. As a result of the change, about 1,200 Freedmen were excluded from citizenship and most benefits afforded to the tribe. The BIA said the referendum was invalid. The Nation sued the government, saying in Seminole Nation of Oklahoma v. Babbitt that it had the right to determine its own citizenship. The District Court for the District of Columbia rejected the Nation's arguments and restored the Freedmen citizenship and voting rights.
Tribal headquarters are located in Wewoka, Oklahoma, the seat of Seminole County. The general council meets at the council house on the Mekusukey Mission Tribal Grounds south of Seminole. The Nation has been developing a new tribal constitution that will eliminate the role of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in tribal government operations.
Tribal government departments include administrative, executive, fiscal affairs, treasury, domestic violence, Indian Child Welfare, family and social services, enrollment, gaming, housing, education, language, communications, elder services, environmental, law enforcement, dialysis, youth, child care, roads, and Head start. Tribal departments are funded with either tribal revenue or federal/ state funding.