Seminole Nation
Introduction
The Seminole Nation was a formerly autonomous region inside the Republic of Florida-Caribbea. It was conquered and carved up after Presidente Francisco López's Great Reform in 1980.
History
The Seminole originated in the early 18th century from the merger of various tribes from what is today the NAL provinces of Mobile, Cherokee Nation, and Jacobia, as well as the Florida, along with escaped slaves from the NAL.
After the Castilian conquest in the 16th century, the indigenous people of Florida were decimated by disease, leaving the peninsula sparsely populated.
In the early 18th century, members of the Lower Creek Nation began migrating into Florida to remove themselves from the dominance of the Upper Creeks, and intermingled with the few remaining indigenous people there, including the Yuchis, Yamasses and a few aboriginal remnants. They went on to be called "Seminole", a derivative of "cimarrón" which means "wild" (in their case, "wild men") in Spanish. The Seminole were a heterogenous tribe made up of mostly Lower Creeks from Georgia, Mikasuki-speaking Central Musckogees, and escaped slaves, and to a lesser extent whites and Indians from other tribes. The unified Seminole spoke two languages, Creek and Mikasuki (a modern dialect of Hitchiti), two different members of the Muskogean Native American languages family, a language group that also includes Choctaw and Chickasaw.
The Seminoles slowly spread further south, into the swamps of inland Florida.
In the early 19th century, a number of skirmishes occured between the Seminoles and their black allies in East Florida and white settlers in Jacobia. The Lord Governor of Jacobia threatened to invade East Florida if the raids did not stop. This alarmed the government in Philadelphia, who feared that the entire League would be pulled into a war with the Castilian Empire, which they were by no means prepared for. This crisis was settled by the Adams-Onís Treaty, which settled border disputes between the two nations, and also resulted in English West Florida renouncing its claim to Castilian West Florida, and renaming itself Mobile. The Spanish agreed to punish Seminole raids into Jacobia, and return any future runaway slaves, and, in return, the League agreed to punish slave-raiders from Jacobia.
Over the course of the 19th century, the Seminole were gradually pushed out of first West, and then East Florida. They continued to control large portions of South Florida, however. In 1843, after the First Seminole War, the Seminole ceded their territory north of the 29th parallel (the southern border of East Florida). Castile-Leon recognized the Seminole Nation as an autonomous state within Florida. The Seminole conceded control of foreign relations to Castile, and consented to a small annual tribute. Meanwhile, Castilian settlement along the coasts of South Florida began to grow, and push against the ill-defined borders of the Seminole Nation, resulting in numerous small conflicts. When the Floridian Revolt began, the Seminole sided with the rebels, after obtaining a treaty clearly delimiting the borders of the Seminole Nation.
The Seminole fiercely defended their territory, but were forced to contribute troops to the new Republic of Florida's "Liberation campaigns". Their sovreignty within their territory was gradually eroded, but the borders remained fixed.
At the time of the 1955 revision of the Consitución de la Nación, the Seminole hoped to be recognized as a coequal state to Florida, but were rebuffed, and instead were further integrated into Florida. This resulted in an increasingly strained relationship which was only worsened in 1965 by President Villanueva's confiscation of a slice of territory in the northeast to create a new Distrito de Villanueva (later renamed Orland), with the city of Villanueva (now Orlando) to be a tourist mecca. This proved to be the breaking point, and, two years later, they Seminole Nation proclaimed its allegiance to Francisco López's Armada de la Libertad. The Seminole Nation's militia proved instrumental in the Battle of Miami (1970).
The newly-installed President López was grateful to his Seminole allies, but also wary, fearing that they could turn on him, too, and all too aware of how close the Seminole Nation's border was to Miami. And so, in 1972, he tricked the Seminole Nation into disarming, integrating their troops into the National Army. A disproportionately large number of Seminole troops were used in the invasion of Bahamas (1974) and Jamaica (1979), ensuring that their best troops were either dead or safely isolated from the peninsula in occupation duty.
In 1980, President López announced his Great Reform, officially aimed at eliminating inefficiency and corruption within the FC government, and Florida in particular. Among its provisions was the abolition of the Seminole Nation, and the division of its territory among the distritos of Orlando (formerly Villanueva), Bahía de Tampa, Ais, Bahía de Carlota, Miami (which was also merged with Los Cayos to form Miami i los Cayos), and the newly-formed Ocachobi. The Seminole revolted, but the National Army was able to defeat them (with the use of chemical and biological weapons).
Many Seminoles were forced to move to other parts of FC while Hispanic settlers took over their lands. They remain a majority, however, in much of the Everglades.
Today, many Seminole hope for the restoration of autonomy, or even outright independence.
