Cowkeeper, a Headman "of the Creek Nation"

In a 1949 article for The Florida Historical Quarterly, Kenneth W. Porter rightly denominated Cowkeeper as the "Founder of the Seminole Nation," but this title is tricky. (Consult Kenneth W. Porter, "The Founder of the Seminole Nation' Secoffee or Cowkeeper," The Florida Historical Quarterly 27 (April 1949), 362-384.) Cowkeeper certainly was the headman or mico of the Gainesville-area settlement called Alachua. The residents of this village, and its 1771 successor-village of Cuscowilla, became Seminoles by the early-1800s. For most of his life, however, Cowkeeper spoke of the Creek Nation as "the Nation," his Nation.

In November 2006, Florida's St. Augustine Record published a letter I wrote on the topic:


Derived from cimarron, a Spanish-American word for feral cattle and runaway slaves, the word Seminole meant "wild'' in Creek. In his March 1774 meeting with East Florida's new Governor, Patrick Tonyn, Cowkeeper emphasized that although he was "called a Wild man by the Nation, it was not so...'' In the 1700s, the Creek Nation meant the word "Seminole'' as an insult, and Cowkeeper took it for one.