Cession of Seminole lands in Florida began in 1821 over the issue of slavery. In previous decades, the Seminole Indians (ancestors of the Creek tribe of Alabama), fled into Spanish Florida with slaves belonging to both white and American Indian  tribes. The Seminoles were also slaveholders and utilized a system of exacting produce, such as corn, stock and animal pelts as a fee for their servitude.
The U.S. government wanted the Seminole slaves returned to their original owners and engaged in several treaties to accomplish this goal. As a backlash against the treaties, the Seminole conducted raiding parties in Georgia to take slaves, burn homes, and occasionally commit murder. The result was the First Seminole War, which ended in 1818.
In 1819, Spanish Florida was accepted as a new U.S. territory. All those living within its boundaries were subject to the laws of the U.S., including the Seminoles. Georgians petitioned to get their slaves back and the first cession of land occurred in 1821 with the signing of the Treaty of Indian Springs. The tribe lost over 5 million acres and $25,000. It was remarked that this treaty, "humbled the [Seminoles] to the dust."
White settlers poured into Florida and put pressure on the Seminoles to move to the swampy interior near Tampa Bay. Eneah Emathla was leading the tribe and negotiated a second treaty that ceded more land to the U.S. in exchange for poor swampland and $6,000 worth of cattle and hogs. The area they received, "was so poor that no settlement could ever be made on it [as] there was no part of it worth cultivation…added to the dreary poverty of the eland, it presents the most miserable and gloomy prospects…'
 In the 1830s, rounding up Seminoles for removal was difficult since they had scattered through the swamps in search of food. In 1832, they signed the Treaty of Payne's Landing . It called for organized removal from Florida within three years. The Seminoles would be moved to Indian Territory and be placed near their Creek relatives. The thought of removal, the loss of their slaves, and assimilation within the Creek tribe caused the Second Seminole War in 1836. White traders and soldiers became the target of hostilities and bloody confrontations until a Seminole warrior called Jumper the "Sense Keeper" proposed a truce. The Seminoles would move further south into Florida if the soldiers would leave them alone. The truce was short-lived and the violence resumed until a warrior named Micanopy was captured with his slave, "Ben." Ben was sent home and told the Seminoles that both sides were tired of fighting and that a truce could be reached if members of the tribe would go to Camp Dade for a peace treaty. In 1837, leaders of the Seminoles went to Tampa Bay and the Seminoles agreed to be transported west.
On the assigned date, only 200 warriors showed up for removal. With such a low turnout, the Second Seminole War flared up again. Creek, Shawnee, Delaware, Kickapoo, Sauk, and Fox Indians were brought in to subdue the Seminoles. Gradually, the army flushed out the Seminoles and the greatest prize, the famous warrior named Osceola, was sent to South Carolina. A U.S. army captain, Thomas Jesup wrote about the round-up, "The villages of the [Seminoles] have all been destroyed and their cattle, horses, and other stock, with nearly all their other property, taken or destroyed. The swamps and hammocks have been everywhere penetrated, and the whole country traversed from the Georgia line to the southern extremity of Florida; and the small bands who remain dispersed over that extensive region, have nothing left of value but their rifles."
Removal routes of the Seminole took them across the Gulf of Mexico to New Orleans. They boarded steamboats and headed up the Mississippi and Arkansas rivers to Little Rock. Only a few died on the first trip, a fact attributed to the "Indians adhering to their own peculiar treatment of the sick…frequently deluging the patient with cold water, and to a constant kneading of the body." The illnesses aboard the vessels included cough and dysentery. The water treatment of the sick caused many whites to look on the Seminoles with confusion and suspicion. One witness to their treatment commented that, "the sick [are]constantly in cold water, which was sending them rapidly to the grave…their camps were filthy."
In 1836, water levels on the Arkansas River proved too low for travel and the Seminoles had to take wagons over land. Several days into wagon travel, torrential rains resulted in swollen rivers and ill health. One observer remembered the illness, "the effluvia and pestilential atmosphere in the Waggons (sic) where some 20 sick or dying lay in their own filth, and even the tainted air of their camps is almost unsupportable and effects more or less those exposed to it." Of 372 people, 87 died in less than two months of travel.
At the last round up of Seminole, at least 1,000 came to Arkansas via New Orleans. Widespread illness, a shortage of boats, and a delay in river travel due to low water levels in created discontentment in Arkansas. The Arkansas Gazette newspaper had very little sympathy for the plight of the Seminoles, and called them "the most dirty, naked, and squalid [of the Indians] that we have seen." They did not take into account that these people were tricked into removal and did not have any personal belongings with them when they left Florida. To make matters worse, slaves were taken from the Seminoles when they reached Arkansas. Governor James Conway was asked to intervene but he declined to answer even though he had the power to make decisions regarding American Indians in his state. By 1838, the last group of emigrants arrived at their new home in Indian Territory.
The Seminoles acquired new lands taken from the Creeks in northern Oklahoma between the Canadian River and fork of the Little Red River. Today, there are approximately 1,200 Seminoles in Oklahoma and Florida.
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