The official NPS history...
Now
THERE is a truly scary phrase!
"NPS history" is nothing more than "Ranger lore" -- what one ranger told another farther back than anyone can remember...and therefore is true! Unfortunately, listening to ranger lore is much easier than doing actual research to get the real picture.
The truth is, no white people have a clue about real Indian history -- among other reasons, because Indians don't either! Indian tradition is almost exclusively passed from mouth to mouth over many generations. When it then gets "translated" into English by someone with a point of view, it gets misunderstood, misinterpreted, or twisted to fit some non-Indian's worldview.
The truth is most Indians didn't know what tribes were until the white man arrived. Most of their tribal names in their own languages mean simply "the people" or "our people."
If you ask other tribes what a tribal name gets, you'll often get hilarious answers. Seminoles will tell you that "Miccosukee" translates to "pig people" because Miccosukees domesticated wild pigs. Miccosukees will tell you "Seminole" means "those who ran away," because most Seminoles abandoned Florida (contrary to popular myth) in the Second Seminole War and went to Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears. Creeks will tell you "Cherokee" means "those who speak a different language," Shawnee will tell you it means "cave people." Both are probably wrong -- "okee" for example, means water in the Muskogee language of the Creeks.
The truth is "Miccosukee" is actually derived from the language they speak -- Mikasuki or Mikasuky, or a dozen other white spellings -- which is from Hitchiti, which is an extinct dialect of the ancient Muskogee spoken by Seminoles...which in turn is derived not from
Southeastern US Indian languages but from
Plains Indian languages. Go figure.
"Seminole" actually is a corruption of the Spanish word
cimarron, meaning "wild" or "uncivilized" in the sense of non-Catholic, non-European. English speakers couldn't pronounce the Castilian "theem-er-dr-on" so they just said "Semi-nol-ees." You have to be Redneck speaking Castilian Spanish to say it right.