To Americans he was "Wild Cat," to Mexicans, "Gato del Monte." But
to his own people he was Coacoochee, a warrior and diplomat who led
the Seminole resistance to American injustice in their home
territory of Florida and through the Spanish borderlands of North
America. In the first in-depth study of this dramatic figure, Susan
A. Miller, a historian and a Seminole, sorts out discrepancies
between American history-where Coacoochee remains in the
background-and Seminole tradition-where he stands as a great
leader.
Relocated in 1841 to the Indian country in what is now Oklahoma,
the Seminoles under Coacoochee resisted colonization. Coacoochee
instead led his people to Mexico, along with a community of black
fugitives from slavery and another of Kickapoos, where they secured
land in exchange for military assistance. Coacoochee's Bones tells
the dramatic story of that migration, a story of armed resistance
and diplomatic intrigue that ranges across the Indian country,
Texas, and Mexico. It also portrays the extraordinary leadership
displayed by this man, in order to restore him to his rightful
place in history.
A man born to an elite family, Coacoochee used the power of his
status in creative ways, and Miller uses his career to explain his
leadership in terms of Seminole knowledge and governmental
structure, showing that Coacoochee's concept of leadership was
linked as closely to spiritual as to political or military
imperatives. Her account offers a more nuanced understanding of the
Seminole cosmos-particularly the reality governing Coacoochee's
awareness of his own tribe's circumstances-and of long-standing
borderlands disputes. She draws on Seminole, American, and Mexican
sources to help untangle the histories of various emigrant tribes
to the borderlands. She also examines the status of Seminoles today
in light of the suppression of Coacoochee's story, including modern
Seminoles' attempts to recover their lost homeland at El
Nacimiento.
By telling Coacoochee's story from a Seminole perspective,
Miller presents a work of decolonization, reexamining Seminole
history to affirm that people's centrality and sovereignty.
Coacoochee's Bones restores a significant historical figure to his
rightful place in history and is a work that cannot be ignored by
anyone who wishes a fuller understanding of this continent's
diverse and storied past.
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