Keywords

Warfare, native americans, seminoles, creeks, muskhogee, seminole wars, first creek war, redstick war, spanish military entradas

Abstract

Resistance to oppression is a globally recognized cultural phenomenon that displays a remarkable amount of variation in its manifestations over both time and space. This cultural phenomenon is particularly evident among the Native American cultural groups of the Southeastern United States. Throughout the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries the European and American states employed tactics and implemented laws aimed at expanding the geographic boundaries of their respective states into the Tribal Zone of the Southeast. None of these groups, however, sat passively during this process; they employed resistive tactics and strategies aimed at maintaining their freedoms, their lives, and their traditional sociocultural structures. However, the resistive tactics and strategies, primarily manifested in the medium of warfare, have gone relatively unnoticed by scholars of the disciplines of history and anthropology, typically regarded simply as guerrilla in nature. This research presents a new analytical model that is useful in qualitatively and quantitatively analyzing the behaviors employed in combat scenarios. Using the combat behaviors of Muskhogean speaking cultural groups as a case study, such as the Creeks and Seminoles and their Protohistoric predecessors, this model has shown that indigenous warfare in this region was complex, dynamic, and adaptive. This research has further implications in that it has documented the evolution of Seminole combat behaviors into the complex and dynamic behaviors that were displayed during the infamous Second iv Seminole War. Furthermore, the model used in this research provides a fluid and adaptive base for the analysis of the combat behaviors of other cultural groups worldwide.

Notes

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Graduation Date

2012

Semester

Spring

Advisor

Howard, Rosalyn

Degree

Master of Arts (M.A.)

College

College of Sciences

Department

Anthropology

Degree Program

Anthropology

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0004280

URL

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0004280

Language

English

Release Date

May 2012

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Masters Thesis (Open Access)

Subjects

Dissertations, Academic -- Sciences, Sciences -- Dissertations, Academic

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Anthropology Commons

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