Talk:Seminole Wars

longest war in US history

The Philipine-American War (1899-1913) was the longest war in US history, not the Second Seminole War.

Yes, but it was the longest of the wars fought against Native Americans. I don't know how old your comment is, but this is reflected in the present version of the article. /2019-05-07

That comment has been there for three years. I've responded to this argument somewhere (not on this talk page) before. The WP article on that war says it lasted from February 4, 1899 to July 2, 1902, a little over three years. The article does note that resistance continued for nearly a decade after the declared end of the war. Of course, most recently, the US has been fighting in Afghanistan for 18 years. - Donald Albury 22:55, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

Numbers of combatants changed

Prior to 8/30/2005, this article stated that 4,000 Seminole warriors fought against as many as 200,000 U.S. soldiers during the Second Seminole War (SSW). A review of John Mahon's definitive history The Second Seminole War, or other sound sources, shows that the total population of the Seminole Indians in Florida was estimated at 4,000—this was the population of men, women, and children, not the total of the warriors. From the total population, Mahon and others have estimated a range of 900 to 1,400 Seminole allies who fought during the SSW. Of these allies, about 250 of them were estimated to be Black Seminoles.

These numbers, incidentally, do not include the 385-plus plantation slaves who joined the Black Seminoles during the war in 1836. Of those slave recruits, however, there are no firm ratios of warriors-to-non-combatants, so it is safer to stick to the known facts.

Changes were made 9/30/2005 to reflect these numbers.

The number "200,000" was also deleted from the reference to the U.S. soldiers participating in the SSW because it was wildly inflated. Again referring to Mahon, the definitive source, he states on page 325 of The Second Seminole War that 10,169 U.S. Army regulars served in Florida and another 30,000 or so men served in the state-raised militia units, for a total estimate of 40,000 who served. This was added to the revised text.

Austinbirdman 21:32, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

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The First Seminole War

The sentence: "White settlers had previously attacked the had retaliated." is grammatically wrong and might mean "White settlers had previously attacked and the Seminoles had retailiated?" Is this what was meant? Johnor 22:26, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Third Seminole War

After performing a minor cleanup on the current section for the Third Seminole War, a little research at this site revealed that the Third war allegedly began "when a party of soldiers led by Lieutenant George Hartsuff was attacked by Seminoles led by Billy Bowlegs (Holata Micco)", and not by an American attack on the Seminole crops as stated. If there are any obvious reasons for this that I have missed, please let me know!L3p3r 13:46, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

I have discussed this at length with one of my friends and historians who works at the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum at the Big Cypress Reservation. It does seem that what is known as the destruction of Billy Bowleg's banana plants seems to be more folklore without verified documentation. (Not wanting to say that it didn't happen, just that there is nothing to verify that it happened.) What seems more likely, is that survey of designated Indian land was a violation of the agreement between the U.S. and remaining Seminoles. The attack is now seen as a retaliation against the surveyors who were not suppose to be on Indian land. (Chris Kimball)

The last battle that I have found any information on was a skirmish "near Royal Palm Hammock village" on November 28, 1857. You can find more information on my webpage at: http://www.southernhistory.us/palmhammock.htm . There is a monument commemorating the event and Captain John Parkhill who was killed in the battle, on the lawn of the old capitol building in Tallahassee. --Christopher Kimball (talk) 08:31, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Splitting the article

I've managed to make this article over 70,000 bytes long now, and there is still more to be added. I think it's time to split off the Second Seminole War into its own article. In order to carry over the edit history to that article, however, the current redirect would need to be deleted, and I'm not an admin. If anyone has any opinions on the proposed split, please let me know. -- Donald Albury 12:19, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I've split the articles, and started trimming the Second Seminole War section here down to a summary. Much remians to be done. It may be desirable to spin some of the material off into other articles, especially as there are other sources that may require modifying or expanding the current text. We are fortunate that is so much published material available on this subject, but it is a lot of work to properly include it all in WP. -- Donald Albury 14:03, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Would splitting The Patriots War of 1812 off into its own article be a good idea? I am currently reading a book (The Other War of 1812) and so I think, with the right amount of research, it could have its own article and will help shave down the size of this one. Amscheip (talk) 22:01, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

I started a draft (User:Donald Albury/Patriot War) nine years ago, but got bogged down in the preliminaries (note that the draft is over 13,000 bytes, but only covers up to 1811). @Cuchullain: also started a draft (User:Cuchullain/Patriot War) even earlier. You are welcome to plunder my draft. I would offer to help, but I have very little time available for working on article content this year. - Donald Albury 00:29, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

Ok, looks like you've already contributed a lot to this area. Awesome! I am new to article creation so what is the best/preferred method of working on the draft? Should I continue to edit what you started or is it better to copy and paste it over to my own Userpage? Amscheip (talk) 15:26, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

I can clean it up and move it to Draft space. I'll let you know where to look. - Donald Albury 20:30, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

@Amscheip: I have moved it to Draft:Patriot War (Florida). Besides Seminole Wars, Republic of East Florida is also relevant. I have a copy of the Patrick book (Florida Fiasco), which is quite old. I might be able to access some of the other books, but I don't know when I will have time. - Donald Albury 21:29, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

@Donald Albury: that's great, thanks. I am a librarian in South West Florida, so I have some pretty good access to materials but, like you, it's more of accessibility to time that limits me.Amscheip (talk) 21:32, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

Material on David Moniac

This material does not belong here because this article provides only a brief summary of the major events of the Second Seminole War (the main article is at Second Seminole War) and this article is already too long. Details about David Moniac could go into an article about him, as long as they are properly cited from a reliable source. You can create an article three days after you register an account. -- Donald Albury 13:02, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

There is a marker to Moniac at the National Cemetery in Bushnell, Florida, administered under the VA. Although the marker is there, the body is not. Moniac was killed at the Battle of Wahoo Swamp, and according to the Prince diary his body was buried a few miles away, next to the fallen officers at the Dade Battlefield. It is mostly likely that Moniac's final remains were removed in 1842 and taken to St. Augustine to be placed in the vault with the other remains of Dade's men & other fallen 2nd Seminole War soldiers at the cemetery at St. Francis Barracks. --Christopher Kimball (talk) 08:07, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Phillipine-American War

As the Phillipine-American War officially ended in 1902, it only lasted for 3 years. The Second Seminole War ran from 1835 until 1842, when it was officially declared to be over, but without any treaty and with the survivors of the Seminoles still in southern Florida. Conflicts continued to occur at a low level between the Seminoles and white settlers, Florida militia and US troops until the fighting flared up again in the Third Seminole War of 1856-58. By the criteria that would extend the fighting in the Phillipines until 1913, the conflict in Florida ran from 1835 until 1858 (23 years). That war also ended without a treaty. A treaty with the Seminoles was finally achieved in the 1960s. -- Donald Albury 11:04, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

There are three Seminole Wars, as the article says. You can't call three wars the longest war, any more than WWI and WWII count as one war. Erasmuse1 (talk) 20:12, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

Changes in info-box

Hi, I recently made changes to the info-box but I seen a lot of punctuation errors in the article. I see that I'm new to the article, so I'm goign to "clean-up" the English, therein. InternetHero (talk) 01:28, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

added citation for Adams-Onis Treaty Jessica.dyer (talk) 13:11, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Military Stalemate?

I think this is a philosophical issue rather than numbers of dead or territory lost/gained. We see with the impending references below that the U.S. war department saw this as a pyrrhic victory as much as any commander can win a strategic gamble that decides the fate of a nation, but fail at politik. We experience this in the Iroquois Confederacy when tobacco and guns sales impede the representation of social trends.

Photobucket: Dictionary of Wars.

Dictionary of Wars.

Pierre Berton.

[1]

State-funded library(1). The link doesn't work go to the timeline at the bottom after the 'Seminole' redirection. It's about the House of Representatives granting a seat to the Seminoles. There were many debates about Andrew Jackson's methods during the wars, but I'll leave that be. In the end, it seems they wanted to pay them and bury the hatchet than simply winning, so maybe a military stalemate like that of Pontiac's Rebellion of he British. What ya'll think? Probably going to edit later next month and hope for a discussion first.

[2] 208.96.66.213 (talk) 23:14, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

External links modified

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Recent Edit taking away credible references

"If there were a normal amount of dark matter those clusters would be speeding around at about 67,000 mph (108,000 kilometres per hour). Instead, the clusters were moving at about 18,000 mph (28,000 kilometres per hour). That's about how fast they would move if there were no dark matter at all, van Dokkum said."

Velocity is a Gross Force. Capacity as well as ATTRITION. I see no reason why the 'addition' of mass in almost every mathematical calc. doesn't apply here?

Normal Forces receive light from stars as well as NOT TOO much for life. 216.223.90.33 (talk) 20:42, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

Infobox summary

The conflict summary in the infobox should be very brief and include only the MOST important and all-encompassing facts. That's hard to do with a complicated series of conflicts such as this, but I just made an attempt, and should probably explain why I removed two factoids. 1) The state's offer of legislative representation for the Seminole took place well after the 3rd Seminole War (after the U.S. Civil War, also) and was not accepted. It belongs in the article text, of course, but not a brief conflict summary. 2) The last bullet point about paying the Seminoles to leave made it sound like they happily accepted bribes and left without much of a fight, pockets bulging with cash, which is obviously untrue. It's a complicated story that is told pretty well in the article, but again, it's far too small of a detail to be mentioned in the infobox.

Also, I have no idea why the wars were listed as ending in the 1930s when fighting ended in the 1850s. I changed that, too.

On a totally different subject, I assume that the discussion above was meant for a different talk page...? Zeng8r (talk) 14:01, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

Not compelling arguements, no references, lack of Neutrality (POV). I think the Admins will have to notified. 216.223.90.33 (talk) 18:54, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

Your comments above don't make sense. If you disagree with something, explain your reasoning here and we'll come to a consensus. As I mentioned above, the text you keep inserting into the infobox summary is misleading at best, as it mentions a few small details while leaving out the big picture. Also, listing the Seminole Wars as ending in the 1930s is incorrect; Seminoles in the Everglades were already setting up souvenir stands by that time. If you want to make sure that correct details are included in the main article text, please insert them in the appropriate sections with good references. Simply re-re-inserting them in the infobox with no explanation and then making threats on the talk page is not very collaborative. Zeng8r (talk) 20:50, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

You're adding nonsense it will not be accepted. I have a reference for everything. 216.223.90.33 (talk) 22:01, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

You haven't discussed why the consensus-built text should be radically changed, and your edit summaries have been both odd and insulting. If you're not here to seriously collaborate to make articles better, then you're in the wrong place. Zeng8r (talk) 22:16, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

I've contributed to this article from the early stages... You're just not making any sense. I referenced that the Seminole Wars were -->paid<-- to leave, adding multiple authors to credit this point of view (which you must have a neutral-retrospect in order to properly contribute btw), you've used the link I provided to not only create your own point of view, but deleted the links original purpose... I will be back in a year or two and we can resolve it then. Again: "Not compelling arguements, no references, lack of Neutrality (POV). I think the Admins will have to notified." 216.223.90.33 (talk) 18:54, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm going to put aside your inexplicable claims of POV issues. The bullet points in the infobox are based closely on this timeline from the website of the official archives of the state of Florida. If you disagree with the summary, write to the folks in Tallahassee. Your encyclopedia article is not wrong, but you're trying to use it to emphasize minor details, namely negotiated payments to aid Seminole resettling in Oklahoma and a clause in Florida's short-lived post-Civil War constitution that offered representation to the Seminoles, an offer that was apparently ignored. Including those factoids into a very brief infobox summary while deleting bullet points that give a much broader view of events puts undue emphasis on relatively minor details and can be confusing for readers unfamiliar with the topic.

I still think the main issue is that you don't seem understand the purpose of an infobox, which is described in detail in the manual of style page linked earlier in this sentence. The lead/intro of a Wikipedia article provides a basic summary of the article's contents to give readers a basic understanding of the topic. Infoboxes should include only the very most important details, basically a bullet point summary of a summary. The list of bullet points in this infobox is FAR longer than average because the Seminole Wars were a complicated conflict that continued on and off for 40 years (not over a century, by the way). As it's already so long, you should not add minor details, especially details that can give a false impression of what happened, and ESPECIALLY at the expense of the big picture, which you keep trying to remove. It's very WP:UNDUE.

Again, feel free to add lots of well-referenced details to the main article text, where they can be better understood in their proper context. Zeng8r (talk) 22:40, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

addendum: You do realize that the payments are already mentioned in the lead, and both the payments and the offer of legislative representation are described in detail in the article text, right? Nobody's trying to remove valid info, just organize it. Zeng8r (talk) 12:02, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

“If the land were found suitable” is grammatically correct.

As in “if I were you”. “Were” is singular in the subjunctive. “Was” is wrong. See English subjunctive. deisenbe (talk) 17:28, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

Picture of book

Enough of this fake news, bribing, etc. Clearly stating Wiki-Rules isn't 'not making sense.' You need reference otherwise why would people believe anything you write??? They won't/don't. If this is insulting, I have news for you; the world is insulting far beyond this/that and the other thing(s) [books].Here's a picture of the book: http://i1047.photobucket.com/albums/b480/Ketto_Shi/adsda_zpswv7idxua.jpg. 216.223.90.33 (talk) 19:48, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

That's a nice photo from a good source, and it clearly states that the 3rd Seminole War ended in 1858. Why do you keep changing it to a date 80 years later, generations after the conflict was over? Besides that, as I keep saying, the items you keep inserting into the infobox are not 100% incorrect, but they're very misleading as to the big picture, especially since you keep deleting items that actually do a good job summarizing the complex events described in much more detail in the article text. And the items you marked as "citation needed" are all cited in the article (and, by the way, are extremely basic for anyone who knows Florida history). While excessive citations are usually not included in infoboxes, I went ahead and added a couple more online references in the hope that you'll improve your background knowledge before attempting to contribute again.

And though I hardly ever play the expert card, I can't help mentioning that I have lots of books on Florida history myself; an entire six-foot tall bookshelf full of them, actually. That's because I have a history degree from the University of Florida and have taught history and written related educational materials for 15 years, in Florida. So, there's that. Zeng8r (talk) 23:24, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

You're also using the link I provided and NOT using a Neutral Point of View? While You're allowed to edit in Wikipedia, you can't make up facts. The 'timeline' doesn't say anything remotely to what you posted... I will be back in a few months. Thanks for your time. As for your 'degree' in history; diploma-politics is not my thing as history is written by people who hanged heros (BraveHeart). Also, I don'[t know why you chose to distinguish my edits from the link provided (which I found) about Representative Government.I'm willing to work with you on this and I admit I thought you were vandalizing the page.

Not compelling arguements, no references, lack of Neutrality (POV). I think the Admins will have to notified. 18:54, 5 April 2018 (UTC).

216.223.90.33 (talk) 19:30, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

Length of the article and its results

Howdy. Well first off I'd like to point out this article's excessive length, mentioning every detail of what happened in the results section year-by-year is impractical to say the least and unnecessary. That's what the description section is for. Not to mention the amount of references used, some of which contradict one another. Aside from that, a military stalemate doesn't end in one belligerent forcing the other out of their territory and occupying it. Given that the Seminoles lost their territory, I hardly see that as an accurate ending result for the conflict. Could someone weigh in on this? Much obliged. MarkMcCain (talk) 07:49, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

The article covers four wars (the Patriot War in East Florida has recently been added) which extended from 1812 to 1858, so there is a lot to cover. I carved out the Second Seminole War to its own article 12 years ago. That is now about 74,000 bytes long. Perhaps it is time to move the First and Third Seminole Wars to their own articles, shorten the Second Seminole War section, and reduce this article to a summary of the wars. As for contradictory sources, we need to note where reliable sources disagree. That does happen. I personally think the infobox is overstuffed, but I don't usually edit infoboxes. - Donald Albury 14:42, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

As Mr. Albury pointed out, this is quite a complicated article topic, with lots of convoluted background and three distinct periods of conflict along with smaller flare-ups that were more or less related. Making a separate article about the 2nd Seminole War was a good idea, but I'm not sure if the other two would work independently, especially the third war. You'd have to give so much background about earlier events to make it understandable that it may be best to just leave it here.

The lead does a pretty good job summarizing everything, and while the infobox was probably overstuffed, now it's understuffed, imo. There should be at least one bullet point for each of the three Seminole Wars, with dates and a very brief summary of what happened.

I don't know what "conflicting" sources you're referring to. A lot of early Florida history (especially before the 1830s) is not well documented, and the main text of the article includes some (cited) conjecture and uncertainty, which can vary slightly from source to source. Don't know of any direct contradictions, but I haven't worked on some sections of the main text so I may have missed something. Different possibilities should definitely be highlighted.

Finally, the overall conflict was a stalemate from a very narrow military viewpoint, as neither side was able to decisively defeat the other on the battlefield; the Seminoles (most of them, anyway) gave up the fight because the US Army attacked their food supply. Since the current description is misleading, feel free to come up with something better. --Zeng8r (talk) 15:58, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

Alright, I appreciate everyone taking the time to weigh in on the topic here. MarkMcCain (talk) 00:30, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

Is this one of the places you saw contradictory references?

There is no consensus about the beginning and ending dates for the First Seminole War. The U.S. Army Infantry indicates that it lasted from 1814 until 1819. The U.S. Navy Naval Historical Center gives dates of 1816–1818. Another Army site dates the war as 1817–1818. Finally, the unit history of the 1st Battalion, 5th Field Artillery describes the war as occurring solely in 1818.

The cites are all to US military web sites. They disagree. All we can do is quote reliable sources, and attribute variants to the proper sources. Short of finding a number of reliable sources that agree on one beginning date and one ending date, I don't known how else to handle a situation like that. - Donald Albury 18:19, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

References

Flagicons for commanders and leaders

Adding flagicons to Alexander Arbuthnot and Robert Ambrister given that they represented arms of the British armed forces (Royal Marines and Colonial Marines, respectively). If anyone has any objections, please feel free to say so here. MarkMcCain (talk) 20:13, 4 January 2019 (UTC)