OSCEOLA AND THE SEMINOLES
The principal causes of Indian troubles in the South were, first, the encroachments of this class of settlers; second, the hospitable willingness of the Indians to shelter fugitive slaves. Many of these people had found an Elysium among the Creeks and Seminoles, and had even intermarried among them, their offspring becoming members of the tribe. Osceola's wife was of this class—a beautiful Indian woman with some negro and some white blood. She was dragged away from him by unholy traffickers in human flesh, and he was arrested for remonstrating. Who could tolerate such an outrage? The great chief was then a young man and comparatively unknown; but within one year he became the recognized leader of his tribe and the champion of their cause. The country was perfectly suited to the guerilla warfare which is characteristic of Indians—a country in which even an Indian of another tribe would be lost! White frontiersmen were imported to guide the army, but according to the testimony of Beckworth, the Rocky Mountain hunter and trapper, all gave up in disgust. The Government was forced to resort to pacific measures in order to get the Seminoles in its power, and eventually most of them were removed to the Indian Territory. There was one small band which persistently refused the offered terms, and still remains in the fastnesses of the Florida Everglades, perhaps the only unconquered band in the United States to-day.
While the Southern tribes were deported almost in a body to what was then the far West, the wars of the Algonquins, along the Great Lakes and the Ohio River, scattered them far and wide in fragments. Such of the Iroquois as had strong treaties with the Dutch colony secured permanent reservations in the State of New York which they still occupy, having been continuously under state control instead of that of the general government.