Seminole Tribe of Florida

The Seminole Tribe of Florida descends from the few hundred Seminoles who held out in the Everglades and Big Cypress Swamp through three wars with the United States in the 1800s. The Second Seminole War, from 1835 to 1842, was among the longest and costliest Indian wars the U.S. ever fought, and it ended without a peace treaty, which is why the tribe calls its people the Unconquered Seminoles. The tribe organized its government and won federal recognition in 1957, and it is headquartered on its Hollywood reservation near Fort Lauderdale.

The tribe holds six reservations, the largest at Big Cypress in the Everglades and at Brighton, near Lake Okeechobee, where it runs a large cattle operation. In 1979 it opened a high-stakes bingo hall in Hollywood that helped launch the modern era of tribal gaming, and in 2007 it bought Hard Rock International for $965 million, making it the owner of a global hotel and casino brand. Its 2021 compact with Florida brought statewide online sports betting, which relaunched in 2023 after a court fight. The tribe is distinct from the Miccosukee Tribe and the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma.

• Florida
  The Sunshine State, a low subtropical peninsula located in
• Everglades National Park
  A vast subtropical wetland — a "river of grass" near
• Lake Okeechobee
  The vast, shallow "Lake O" at the heart of Florida near
• The Everglades
  Florida's slow-moving river of grass, from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay related