Second Seminole War

The Second Seminole War began after federal efforts to enforce removal from Florida under the Indian Removal Act and the Treaty of Payne’s Landing. Seminole and Black Seminole communities resisted relocation through dispersed warfare in forests, wetlands and settlements.

Osceola emerged as one of the resistance’s best-known leaders before his capture under a flag of truce and death in captivity in 1838. The conflict continued after his death and became one of the longest and most costly Indigenous wars fought by the United States in the nineteenth century.