Archeological evidence places some of Florida’s earliest migrants around 500 A.D., including the Deptford, Weeden Island, St. John’s, and Timican peoples. In early 1803, after General Andrew Jackson defeated Upper Creek warriors at the Battle of Tohopeka in Alabama and their lands were taken for white settlers, some Creek Indians moved into Florida, while between 1830 and 1840 the federal government sought to remove all Indians from southeastern tribal lands to areas west of the Mississippi River. Some Creek Indians escaped to Florida before being forced toward Oklahoma Territory, and at about the same time black slaves called Maroons fled plantations in the southeastern states and came there as well. Federal anti-Indian policies and several wars pushed Indians farther south into central Florida around Ocala and Lake Okeechobee, where former slaves were accepted as allies in war but lived separately. The eight tribes that combined as the Seminoles were farmers who raised cattle, corn, beans, tobacco, squash, and other crops, and they traded cow and deer hides and honey for manufactured goods. As they moved farther south, they adapted to wetlands by changing their villages and building chickees, open-sided dwellings with thatched palmetto roofs and floors raised two to three feet above possible water levels. The name Seminole comes from the Spanish cimarron, meaning wild one or runaway, and referred to Indians who escaped slavery in British-controlled colonies of North America and came to the Spanish-controlled Florida peninsula, where the Spanish had no interest in returning slaves to the British. Seminoles came from many tribes, including Creek, Hitchiti, Yamasee, and Apalachee. They originally lived in large villages of chickees arranged around a village square with central buildings such as a meeting hall and a sports field, but as they moved south into remote places like the Everglades they lived in smaller groups and built homes on wooden stilts. Historians traditionally identify three Seminole Wars from 1816 to 1858, though hostile actions by French, Spanish, and American governments lasted longer. Beginning in the early 1500s, European arrival sharply reduced indigenous populations in La Florida as diseases such as smallpox, influenza, measles, and chicken pox spread. The three official wars between the United States Army and the Seminoles aimed to clear land for European settlers by moving Native Americans west of the Mississippi or killing those who resisted, and over time enslavement, war, isolation, attrition, and starvation reduced the Seminole population to a few hundred in small communities by the 1870s. In modern times, Seminole tribal territories include six reservations in southern Florida with about 2,000 registered members. Seminole Indians reportedly began carving totems and miniature replicas for sale about 1935 to meet tourist expectations in the Everglades. Florida cattle culture also connected Seminole Indians and Florida Crackers: Spanish conquistadors brought the first cattle to North America, Ponce de Leon brought Andalusian cattle to Florida in 1521, and native people were among Florida’s earliest cowmen, known as cow hunters who used long braided leather whips to drive free-ranging cattle.