that Amistad link. wow i could literally get lost in there for days soaking that up
With respect to Indians in popular perception our own famous White guys can wander freely all over the map but we have a tendency to nail our Indians in place, so it comes as a surprise when they show up all over also.
For example a party of Crows, down from the Northern Plains, accompanied a group of Kiowas into Mexico and got far enough south to see parrots and monkeys.
One group that gets me is the Potawatomi, originally from the friggin’ Great Lakes but in the Texian period on the Texas High Plains.
Among the most remarkable tho are the Florida Seminoles and in particular a leader named Wildcat. Second Seminole War in Florida, in the dense swamps of Southern Florida they fight the US to a standstill (As an aside, Wildcat has been credited by some as being the author of the US Army’s “hooagh!”, that being Wildcat’s toast when invited to Army celebrations.)
1842 (??) the Seminoles agree to removal to the Indian territory along with their Black Seminole allies but things do not go well for them there, the Indian Nations was a rough place.
Within ten years Wildcat, the former swamp guerilla fighter, was roaming all across the Texas Plains, alternately fighting and seeking to unite the tribes, greatly alarming US and Texan officials.
Finally he brokers a deal in the 1850’s wherein return for land in Mexico south of Eagle Pass/Piedras Negras a mixed group of Seminoles, Black Seminoles and Kickapoo agree to interdict Apache, Comanche and Kiowa war parties
This they commence to do with an efficacy that likely far eclipsed that of the contemporary Texas Rangers. Wildcat died of smallpox 1857, after which most of his Seminole followers returned to Oklahoma.
The Black Seminoles, for obvious reasons, chose to remain in Mexico where, going on 20 years later they were invited to move to Texas and serve as scouts for the US Cavalry.
