Talk:Seminole (tribe)

Numbers of combatants changed
Prior to 8/30/2005, this article stated that 4,000 Seminole warriors fought against as many as 200,000 U.S. soldiers during the Second Seminole War (SSW). A review of John Mahon's definitive history The Second Seminole War, or other sound sources, shows that the total population of the Seminole Indians in Florida was estimated at 4,000—this was the population of men, women, and children, not the total of the warriors. From the total population, Mahon and others have estimated a range of 900 to 1,400 Seminole allies who fought during the SSW. Of these allies, about 250 of them were estimated to be Black Seminoles.

These numbers, incidentally, do not include the 385-plus plantation slaves who joined the Black Seminoles during the war in 1836. Of those slave recruits, however, there are no firm ratios of warriors-to-non-combatants, so it is safer to stick to the known facts.

Changes were made 9/30/2005 to reflect these numbers.

Austinbirdman 21:45, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

I removed the sentence about the Seminole now being a mixture of Native American and African, and tried to highlight in the text that this was true from the very beginning.

I changed the objectives of the second Seminole War to add that the US army sought to return Black Seminole to slavery in the US as well as sending Indians to the West.

This article still implies the descendants of slaves were not proper seminole. I am rewriting slightly to make the point that escaped slaves were part of the seminole nation - not something separate 'harbored' by the seminole.

=== The Black Seminoles were kind of separate within the tribe. They had their own clan and lived in their own villages. In some cases, they were slaves of the Seminole, but they were tried quite differently from how 'white Americans' did.

I've fixed the info on the languages (Mikasuki is a modern dialect of Hitchiti, not a separate language) and it wasn't clear that many Seminole speak Muskogee-Creek.

Need to add in info on the 3rd Seminole War and why there are multiple Seminole tribes today. Seminoles are cccooooollllllllll!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!