Racial tension is at the heart of the Seminole- U.S. conflict. The Seminoles were coerced into changing the fundamentals of their lifestyle to match mainstream European ideals of culture and economy. The first to readily accept this “modernization” were the mixed blooded peoples; Mestizos quickly became the wealthiest of the Native American population in Florida. The U.S. government supported these people and their adaptation to white society and often used them as mediators for the Natives, so that when the Seminoles decided to resist white influence, they turned on the mixed-bloods who represented the changes to their society. Mestizo plantations were razed, their livestock slaughtered, and their families tormented. They represented for the Seminoles the antithesis of the classic ideologies they wished to revert back to.
1 comment:
There is always a problem when we speak about modernization in the context of past. What does modernity represent? What markers, cultural defined, are we using to mark one society as primitive and one modern. Something to consider when we talk about the struggle "towards" modernity.
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