MACCAULEY,} SOCIAL RELATIONS WITH THE WHITES. HSE 
The Indians have appropriated for their service some of the products 
of European civilization, such as weapons, implements, domestic uten- 
sils, fabrics for clothing, &e. Mentally, excepting a few religious ideas 
which they received long ago from the teaching of Spanish missionaries 
and, in the southern settlements, excepting some few Spanish words, 
the Seminole have accepted and appropriated practically nothing from 
the white man. The two peoples remain, as they always have been, 
separate and independent. Up to the present, therefore, the human 
environment has had no effect upon the Indians aside from that whieh 
has just been noticed, except to arouse them to war and to produce 
among them wat’s consequences. 
But soon a great and rapid change must take place. The large immi- 
gration of a white population into Florida, and especially the attempts 
at present being made to drain Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades, 
make it certain, as I have said, that the Seminole is about to enter a 
future unlike any past he has known. But now that new factors are 
beginning to direct his career, now that he can no longer retreat, now 
that he can no longer successfully contend, now that he is to be forced 
into close, unavoidable contact with men he has known only as enemies, 
what will he become? If we anger him, he still can do much harm be- 
fore we can conquer him; but if we seek, by a proper policy, to do him 
justice, he yet may be made our friend and ally. Already, to the dis- 
like of the old men of the tribe, some young braves show a willingness 
. to break down the ancient barriers between them and our people, and 
[ believe it possible that with encouragement, at a time not far distant, 
all these Indians may become our friends, forgetting their tragic past 
in a peaceful and prosperous future. — 
