From 1835 to 1842, the United States government for the second time directed its military might against a small band of Indians settled in the wilderness of Florida. During those years the Seminoles were pursued by almost every regiment of the regular army, and more than fifty thousand volunteers and militiamen. By the time it was over, the Second Seminole War had cost the United States an estimated thirty million dollars, a mountainous sum in that era, and more than three thousand lives.
The toll was all the more astounding because, at the peak of its strength, the Seminole tribe had no more than a thousand warriors.
Absurdly outnumbered, braves would lure the white infantry deep into the boggy swamps and pine barrens, then attack in lightning flurries. The strategy proved effective at first, but in the end the Indians were overrun. Their home camps were razed, hundreds of families were wiped out and nearly four thousand tribal members were deported to Indian Country, the bleak plains of Oklahoma. Nevertheless, the small number of Seminoles who remained in Florida refused to surrender, and to this day their descendants have never signed a peace treaty with Washington, D.C.
--Carl Hiaasen (1953- ) in Nature Girl
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