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Group: Gwichʼin
Topic: Seminole War, Third

Seminole War, Third

Years: 1855 - 1858

The Third Seminole War (1855–1858) is again the result of Seminoles responding to settlers and U.S. Army scouting parties encroaching on their lands, perhaps deliberately to provoke a violent response that will result in the removal of the last of the Seminoles from Florida.

After an army surveying crew finds and destroys a Seminole plantation west of the Everglades in December 1855, Chief Billy Bowlegs leads a raid near Fort Myers, setting off a conflict that consists mainly of raids and reprisals, with no large battles fought.

American forces again strive to destroy the Seminoles' food supply, and in 1858, most of the remaining Seminoles, weary of war and facing starvation, agree to be shipped to Oklahoma in exchange for promises of safe passage and cash payments to their chiefs.

An estimated two hundred Seminoles still refuse to leave and retreat deep into the Everglades and the Big Cypress Swamp to live on land that is unwanted by white settlers.

"History should be taught as the rise of civilization, and not as the history of this nation or that. It should be taught from the point of view of mankind as a whole, and not with undue emphasis on one's own country. Children should learn that every country has committed crimes and that most crimes were blunders. They should learn how mass hysteria can drive a whole nation into folly and into persecution of the few who are not swept away by the prevailing madness."

—Bertrand Russell, On Education (1926)