the Seminoles ("runaways"), who about 1750, under the leadership of a
great chieftain, Secoffee, separated from the main confederacy, which
had its center in southwest Georgia just a little south of Columbus, and
overran the peninsula of Florida. In 1808 came another band under Micco
Hadjo to the present site of Tallahassee. The Mickasukie tribe was
already on the ground in the vicinity of this town, and at first its
members objected to the newcomers, who threatened to take their lands
from them; but at length all abode peaceably together under the general
name of Seminoles. About 1810 these people had twenty towns, the chief
ones being Mikasuki and Tallahassee. From the very first they had
received occasional additions from the Yemassee, who had been driven out
of South Carolina, and of fugitive Negroes.

By the close of the eighteenth century all along the frontier the Indian
had begun to feel keenly the pressure of the white man, and in his
struggle with the invader he recognized in the oppressed Negro a natural
ally. Those Negroes who by any chance became free were welcomed by the
Indians, fugitives from bondage found refuge with them, and while
Indian chiefs commonly owned slaves, the variety of servitude was very
different from that under the white man. The Negroes were comparatively
free, and intermarriage was frequent; thus a mulatto woman who fled
from bondage married a chief and became the mother of a daughter who in
course of time became the wife of the famous Osceola. This very close
connection of the Negro with the family life of the Indian was the
determining factor in the resistance of the Seminoles to the demands of
the agents of the United States, and a reason, stronger even than his
love for his old hunting-ground, for his objection to removal to new
lands beyond the Mississippi. Very frequently the Indian could not give
up his Negroes without seeing his own wife and children led away into
bondage; and thus to native courage and pride was added the instinct of