Where did the Seminole Tribe come from?
The Seminole Tribe (that is, the political entity) did not exist until it was created by the Seminoles in 1957. The Seminole people (that is, the cultural group), are the descendants of many Native Americans who have inhabited Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and parts of South Carolina, Tennessee, and Mississippi for at least 12,000 years. They lived as hundreds of separate tribes when the Spaniards (the first Europeans to enter North America), arrived in 1510. But they were members of the same linguistic family, the Maskókî speakers, and they shared many of the same belief systems. Over the last almost-500 years, however, as their descendants have endured diseases and warfare, the survivors of these numerous Maskókî tribes grouped together in Florida, around a core of cimarrones — refugees from the Spanish Florida missions (see above). Only after the 1770s, when the first English speakers entered Florida, were they called Seminolies or Seminoles, Today, the entire group bears their Anglici
