2/20/01 8:05pm EST Carolyn, It appears to me that in the following statement, you seem to be saying that the Seminoles are Cherokees who went into Florida. Is this a correct assumption? <snip> >Descendants of these people comprise the Eastern Cherokees, while >descendants of the remainder who survived the Trail of Tears comprise the >Oklahoma-centered Cherokees. Remnants of southern tribespeople also went >into Florida and became the Seminoles, who never did surrender. <snip> At the Official web page of the Seminole Tribe at: . http://www.seminoletribe.com/history/brief.shtml this can be found: >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> For thousands of years before the coming of Europeans to southeastern North America, perhaps as many as 400,000 of the ancestors of the Seminoles built towns and villages and complex civilizations across the vast area. After 1510, when the Spaniards began to explore and settle in their territory, disease killed many of these people, but they were never "destroyed" or "conquered" as so many of the white men's history books proclaim. The survivors amalgamated across the peninsula of Florida and continued their lives. When the first English speakers entered the area of the Southeast that is now Florida, in 1763, they found many of these survivors — from tribes such as the Euchee, Yamasee, Timugua, Tequesta, Abalachi, Coça, and hundreds of others, living as "free people" across the head of the Florida peninsula, on the Alachua savannah (the area now known as Alachua County). In Maskókî, the core language, istî siminolî meant that they were "free people" because they had never been dominated by the Spaniards or the English interlopers. In the Hitchíti dialect of Maskókî, today known as Mikisúkî, the same phrase was yat'siminoli. English speakers ignored their separate tribal affiliations and just called them all Seminolies, or Seminoles. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< There is a lot more Seminole history there for those interested. However, the Britannica site at: . http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/7/0,5716,68437+1+66715,00.html?query=seminole says they are of Creek origin: >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>. Seminole North American Indian tribe speaking a Muskogean language; they are of Creek origin. In the last half of the 18th century, migrants from the lower Creek towns of Georgia moved southward into northern Florida, the former territory of the Apalachee and Timucua. By about 1775 these migrants had begun to be known under the name Seminole, derived from the Creek word simanó-li meaning "separatist," or "runaway." The name may also have derived from the Spanish cimarrón, "wild." The Seminoles were joined by runaway slaves--Indian and Negro--and others fleeing the power struggles between American whites and Indians in Georgia. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< More at that site also. Larry Shahan Kodak, TN