We are the first original people of Florida. During the ancestral period, fifteen thousand years ago, our Seminole ancestors came to the Florida peninsula. As the ice age ended, eight thousand years later, melting ice and higher seas forced us inland; we ceased being nomads, hunters, and gathers, and began modifying inland swamps to suit our needs. Our ancestors developed settlements, hunted, fished, grew gardens, and developed a way of life long before white men came. Our people created mounds for living, cooking, crafting, for larger permanent communities, and mounds within the wetlands for needed hubs for travel and commerce. We had trade routes, connected by family and culture with others across this land from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes, as part of the Mississippian Culture, and we carry on their traditions today.

              We were here when the Spanish arrived and killed us with their diseases; Spaniards called us cimarrónes (wild ones). We were here when president Andrew Jackson broke all treaties with native peoples by ordering all indigenous people east of the Mississippi to be removed to the west. We fought for our home, our family; way of life. Throughout the years we were killed, captured, or sent west, far from our ancestral homelands.

              We followed Abiaka (Sam Jones) into the swamps, remaining free and unconquered; keeping our ways and traditions. From that two hundred, we have grown to five thousand tribal members. The battlefield of today is a courtroom, far removed from the swamps but still important to our survival. The world has changed, as it always has, we adapt as we always have while keeping our ways, our culture, and our lives. We remain the unconquered Seminole Tribe of Florida. We are the original people.

SEMINOLE

We came from the ice; found seas and sunny beaches,

Nomads, we fished and hunted windswept quiet reaches.

Ice melted, seas rose, wetlands soon became our home,

Swamps embrace the Seminole, no more shall we roam.