The Seminoles of Florida had evolved mainly from various tribes who had been driven from their homelands by European immigrants settling further north, and were boosted by refugees from slavery in the plantations. As European immigrant control spread, there were more clashes with Indians, and their refusal to return runaway slaves added to the calls by many in the north to have them removed further west, by force if necessary. In what would now be condemned as ethnic cleansing, this policy was enacted in a series of actions by the US Government, principally three Seminole Wars between 1818 and 1858, when most of the Indians were eventually transported west. Although several sets have previously depicted the Indians further west, this is the first to depict the Seminoles.

When the US sent troops into Seminole territory, the Indians soon learned that they fared poorly in a stand-up battle with them, and instead reverted to guerilla tactics, ambushing columns and patrols, attacking isolated posts and making logistics very difficult for any invader. Much of Florida made ideal ambush terrain, so a common action would see warriors firing on a column or patrol, and eventually retiring when they perceived the maximum damage had been done. As a result, you would expect a lot of firing poses, and over half of the poses here are doing just that. A couple are using pistols, which are short-range weapons, but in the dense foliage of the area they could sometimes get very close without being detected, so this makes sense. The rest are firing or reloading muskets, which would of course be from behind cover rather than in any formation, and again look good. There are just a couple that seem to be moving forward, or retiring, so for a fairly typical skirmish these poses work well in our view. Everyone has a musket or pistol, but there is also one man holding a tomahawk and another with what looks like a large knife, but no bows, which had fallen out of use by this time.

Seminole costume reflected the very diverse origins of the group, and was heavily influenced by garments bought or copied from the Europeans. A common garment was the ‘long shirt’, which might reach to the knees and could be open-fronted or of the pullover type. It could be made of cloth or animal hide, and resembled the hunting shirt famously worn in the west. It sometimes had a cape collar which might be triangular at both front and back, and many of these figures have such clothing. For legwear any of these could be wearing trousers, but much more likely is they wear leggings and moccasins. Most seem to have knee garters, and there is some evidence of the decoration often applied to Seminole costume, particularly a profusion of fringes. The headwear is particularly interesting, with half of these figures wearing a cap or turban of cloth, often surrounded by a metal headband, and sometimes decorated with feathers. That of the chief (last figure in the bottom row) is particularly splendid, as are the extra gorgets and jewellery he wears to announce his importance. Most of the rest of the figures wear a simple cloth headband, but one man wears something like a coonskin cap. All of this is completely historically authentic, but it should be mentioned that often when going into battle, warriors would strip to just a breech cloth, particularly when the summer heat was at its height. Nevertheless there is plenty of evidence that warriors also fought when fully dressed like this.

A feature of the Seminoles was the very broad bandolier they wore around the body supporting a bag in which they would carry ammunition and the other items required for their weapon. This was often heavily decorated, perhaps with intricate beadwork (not apparent at this scale of course) and might finish with tassels at the end, which again we see a lot of in this set. Other belts and bags or pouches might be worn, including captured items, which is in evidence in this set too. Some have tomahawks tucked under the belt, and of course every warrior would have a knife, though these are mostly not visible on these figures.

While the Seminole costumes could be very colourful and highly intricate, this would be very hard to reproduce at such a small scale, so only larger elements like tassels and fringes are found here. Nevertheless the sculptor has gone to some lengths to show the quite complex costume of these men, and does a pretty good job of it. The detail is good but not as sharp as some of the best on the market, and areas such as the muskets and pistols are at times a bit basic. The proportions look good to us, and while a couple of the poses are a bit flat (see the first figure in rows one and three), most are pretty natural and nicely animated. On our samples all the seams had some flash, which purists would want to trim off, but not so much as to disfigure the models if left on.

As we have said, at times warriors wore bare essentials when going into battle, which are not represented here, but these figures offer a good range of traditional Seminole clothing. Since some Seminole were runaway slaves, they might wear more European clothing, or even little else, so this is a very diverse subject to depict and Strelets can be forgiven for not trying to cover all eventualities in just one set. Instead they have produced an appealing collection that showcases many typical Seminole features, and should make fascinating and challenging figures to paint. The standard of sculpting will be plenty good enough for most we suspect, and while irregulars are always more difficult to cover completely, the 14 poses are quite a generous selection with no particularly poor examples to be seen. The Seminole and their conflicts with the US are not as well-known as other Indian wars further west, but there are more than sufficient differences to those later conflicts to appeal to modelling enthusiasts today, and this set is a great introduction to the subject.