Miccosukee

The Miccosukee Tribe of Indians (/ˌmɪkəˈsuki/, MIH-kə-SOO-kee) is a federally recognized Native American tribe in the U.S. state of Florida. They are Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands and related to the Seminole Tribe of Florida, the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, and the Muscogee Nation. The Miccosukee, along with the Florida Seminole, speak the Mikasuki language, also spelled Miccosukee. The language has been referred to as a descendant of Hitchiti, a dialect of Hitchiti, and as another term for Hitchiti. By the late 18th century, the British recorded the name Miccosukee, or Mikasuki, as designating a Hitchiti-speaking group centered on the town of Miccosukee, a tribal town affiliated with the Creek Confederacy. The town spanned sections of present-day Alabama, South Georgia, and North Florida. Under pressure from European encroachment into their territory during the 18th century, the Miccosukee underwent a period of increasingly frequent migration to Spanish Florida. The Miccosukee were displaced during the Seminole Wars (1817–1858), a series of three military conflicts between the United States and the Seminole people. During this period, many Seminoles were forced to relocate west of the Mississippi River to Indian Territory, forming the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma. A group of 200 or fewer Seminoles would stay in Florida. Descendants of those who remained in Florida were concentrated in the central and southern parts of the state. In the 1920s and 1930s, many Miccosukee established communities along the Tamiami Trail, a roadway completed in 1928 that ran through the Everglades and connected the cities of Tampa and Miami. The Trail Indians, as they were called, generally kept more traditional practices. They were less interested in establishing formal relations with the federal government than the Cow Creek Seminoles to the north, who started moving to reservations around the same time. In 1953, the Florida Seminoles...