The Palarches, Eamuses and Kaloosas, were the ancient possessors of
Florida, and are all extinct. The present Florida Indians are the
remains of that ancient and warlike tribe on the Mississippi, which
being almost extirpated by the French, retreated along the Northern
coast of the Gulf of Mexico, and united with broken bands of Biloxies,
Red Sticks, and runaway Creeks, called Seminoles. The largest portion
of these Indians are Lower Creeks, and are of the most dissolute,
daring, and abandoned of that tribe.
The word Seminole signifies a wanderer or runaway, or it means a wild
people or outsettlers, the ancestors of the tribe having detached
themselves from the main body of the Creeks, and dwelt remotely,
wherever the inducements of more game, or greater scope for freedom of
action, might casually lead them. They settled in Florida about 115
years ago.
That this is the period of their becoming a separate community, is
confirmed by the connection of their history with that of the Yemasees,
of whom there occur frequent notices in the account of the early
settlement of Georgia and South Carolina.
In a talk, which the Seminoles about the year 1820, transmitted to the
American government, they say, alluding to their ancient independence:
“An hundred summers have seen the Seminole warrior reposing
undisturbed under the shade of his live oak, and the suns of an hundred
winters have risen on his ardent pursuit of the buck and the bear, with
none to question his bounds, or dispute his range.”
The greater part of East Florida appears to have been originally in
possession of the Yemasees—a powerful people, who not only occupied
this province, but spread themselves over Georgia, and into the limits
of South Carolina, which on its first demarcation was bounded on the
South by the Altamaha. Some of the tribes resided within the present
limits of that State, in and about Beaufort and Savannah River, and
also the Sea Islands. Bartram relates that these people, after a hardy
contest, and many bloody defeats, were nearly exterminated by their
ancient enemies the Creeks, who had a tradition, that a beautiful race
of Indians, whose women they called Daughters of the Sun, resided
amidst the recesses of the great Oakefanokee wilderness, where they
enjoyed perpetual felicity, in ever blooming islands, inaccessible to
human approach.
Bartram with probability supposes, that this fable took its rise from a
fugitive remnant of the Yemasees, who found a refuge in this swamp, and
were perhaps, after a lapse of years, accidentally seen by some of the
hunters of the Creek nation.
There is frequent mention, in the early colonial history of South
Carolina, of wars between the first settlers and the Yemasees,
the latter having been excited to attack the Colony by the Spanish
authorities in St. Augustine.
A formidable war was kindled by these people, which would have
proved destructive to the infant settlement of Carolina, had not
timely intimation of the danger been obtained by means of one of the
outsettlers to whom Sanute, a chief of the hostile Indians, from a
feeling of friendship, gave notice of the impending attack. On this
occasion the Indians were defeated by Gov. Grant, and driven out of the
province. Dr. Ramsay mentions that the Yemasees retired into Florida,
to which country they seem to have been subsequently restricted by the
increasing power of the whites, and by the Creeks. No further mention
of them occurs, until the Seminoles came into notice, by whom they were
conquered, and nearly exterminated, in 1721, in the manner mentioned
by Bartram. When in the year 1715, the Yemasees were driven within the
limits of Florida, they became slaves to the Seminoles. Another account
states, that the Yemasees left St. Augustine in a body, in 1722; or
rather were expelled by the Spaniards, who essayed in vain to compel
them to labours which were regarded as degrading drudgeries by the
warriors of Yemasee.
The Yemasees were remarkably black people, and the Ocklewahaw tribe,
who are of a deeper shade than the Seminoles, are descendants of the
conquered race. The chief of the Ocklewahaws, Yaha Hadgo, who was
killed by General Shelton in the campaign of ‘36, was very dark; but
generally, the Seminole’s complexion is like that of the Creeks.
Under King Payne, grandfather of Micconope, (the present Chief) the
Seminoles invaded and achieved the conquest of the territories they
lately occupied. He lived to near 100 years of age, and married a
Yemasee woman, his slave, by whom he had the late chief Payne, who
bore, in the darkness of his complexion, a proof of his Yemasee descent.
The Indians were formerly very numerous in Florida, perhaps as much so
as in Mexico. They are now reduced to comparatively small bands, in few
villages.
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