XLVIII ANNUAL REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR 
ual benefit, or for both—still in use by many nations and 
individuals throughout the world whose philosophies cannot be 
traced to a more common origin with those of the Navajo than 
the general principles governing the evolution of human thought 
by graded stages. All who practice these observances declare 
them to have descended to them from above, that is, from 
some concept of divinity, as may be explained by the principle 
of ancientism; but the evidence shows that they all have arrived 
from below, that is, from a lower plane of humanity. 
THE SEMINOLE INDIANS OF FLORIDA, BY CLAY MACCAULEY. 
The Indians known as Seminole are of the Muskokian lin- 
euistic stock who before the present century left their con- 
geners and dwelt within the present limits of Georgia and 
Florida. A chief cause of the separation was disagreement 
among the people of the towns of the Lower Creeks and 
Hichiti concerning their relations with Europeans settling in 
the country. It is asserted that many turbulent and criminal 
Indians joined the emigrants, and thus the word ‘‘Seminole” or 
‘“Simandlé” — meaning separatist or renegade—became a term 
of opprobrium applied by the Creeks who had remained in 
their ancient seats. It is however to be noted that the present 
inhabitants of the Everglades repudiate the title and cast it 
back upon the much larger portion of their people now in the 
Indian Territory, thus impugning their courage and steadfast- 
ness, probably in allusion to the fact that the latter succumbed 
to the power of the United States in their deportation. The 
Apalachi, Timucua, and others of the earliest known inhabit- 
ants of the Floridian peninsula had been driven away and 
nearly exterminated in the wars of 1702 to 1708, leaving an 
immense tract of territory vacant for the Seminole migration, 
and some of the Muskoki were established in the southern- - 
most part of the peninsula at the middle of the sixteenth 
century. Probably the people who are the subject of this 
paper are in part their descendants, while others may be de- 
scended from comers of a century later, but they are prob- 
ably all the offspring of the determined band who, though 
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