Reconceptualizing the Landscape

Abstract

key w ords: Seminole, historical ecology, landscape, warfare, coalescence, human ecology, land-use patterns The Seminole Indians o f Florida are the descendants o f a great number o f prehistoric cultural groups from throughout the southeastern United States and have thus inherited a rich diversity o f traditions. They were not passive receivers o f these traditions, however; changing historical contexts enabled them to innovatively build upon their cultural repertoire to fit new ecological and social situations. The coalescence o f the Seminoles provides a useful framework fo r historical ecologists to study rapid changes in the way a cultural group adapts to an environment and, concomitantly, adapts an environment to its culture. During the course o f their history, the Seminoles faced an exceptionally long period o f warfare with the United States. The continual practice o f specific combat behaviors drastically changed their patterns o f land use and settlement. Moreover, they adapted their mode o f combat to the environment while adapting the environment to their specific tactical strategies.T h r o u g h o u t t h e c o u r se o f t h e six t e e n t h t h r o u g h n in e t e e n t h c e n tu r iesindigenous populations in the Americas suffered from devastating historical processes wrought by Europeans and, later, Americans. Diseases to which they had no immunity raged throughout the Americas, decimating populations (warfare followed on the heels of the sixteenth-century military entradas (expeditions into unknown territories) and charted the course for eighteenth-and nineteenthcentury American expansionism (Clayton et al.