tribes into their own. The Oconee were the original "Seminole," who later included the Hecete, Eufaula, Mikasuki, Horrewahle, Tallahassee, Chiaha, and Apalachicola. The Muscogee Creek Confederacy had a strong, longstanding presence in the Southeast. Fugitive runaway slaves and those freed under Spanish rule set up neighboring maroon communities and were close allies of the Indians. There was some intermarriage, but mostly the two peoples retained independent cultures, according to studies since the late 20th century. The blacks were armed and became allies in military conflicts. The African Americans became known as Black Seminoles or Seminole Maroons. The term cimarrones in Spanish was initially transliterated by the Creek as semvlonē. Semvlonē eventually morphed into Semvnole (still pronounced sem-uh-no-lee by Indigenous speakers). The United States conducted the First Seminole War beginning in 1818, to reduce Seminole raids on Georgia communities and to break up armed black communities. In 1821 the US acquire Florida from Spain, and white settlers, in search for additional fertile land, pressured government to move the Seminole. In 1823 the US forced most of the Seminole from northern areas of the territory to a reservation in central Florida under the Treaty of Moultrie Creek. Seminoles continued to leave the reservation and a second war was begun, the most expensive for the US, with many troops committed. After the Second Seminole War of the 1830s, an estimated 3,000 Seminole and 800 Black Seminoles were removed to Indian Territory, with many taken by ship across the Gulf of Mexico and up the Mississippi for part of the journey. They were first put under the Creek on their reservation. The 1830s was the period of removal for the other of the"Five Civilized Tribes" of the American Southeast. A few hundred Seminole remained in the Florida Everglades. With guerilla warfare, they resisted US forces during the Third and last Seminole War, when the US withdrew. Today their descendants have formed the federally recognized Seminole Tribe of Florida and Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida. In Indian Territory After removal, the Oklahoma and Florida Seminole developed independently and had little contact for nearly 100 years. Micanopy, who had been principal chief since 1825, led the Seminole struggle to gain an independent reservation, as they were first placed under the Creek in Indian Territory. He died in 1849, after separate lands had been promised by the US for 1855. His sister's sons, John Jumper (1849–1853)