Spanish Colonial (cont.)
Throughout the 1700s, small bands of Creek Indians from Georgia and Alabama joined with escaped black slaves and other displaced Indians to forge a new identity in Florida known as the Seminole.

From 1835 to 1842 vastly outnumbered Seminole war parties fought the U.S. Army to a stalemate in the longest, bloodiest and most expensive Indian war in U.S. history. A chain of forts along the fringes of Collier County were reactivated when a third and final fight with the Seminole broke out in 1855. The few surviving Seminole found refuge deep in the Everglades and Big Cypress Swamp where they developed a culture uniquely suited to the climate and terrain of south Florida.