The Park and the Seminoles

1934--Everglades National Park's formation had a major impact on the i.laponathi. (Mikasuki-speaking people, then called the Florida Seminoles) living within the future park's boundaries. While the nation applauded Congressional approval of the park on May 30, 1934, the i'lapona-thi recognized yet another threat to their land and cultural freedom. Millions of acres of their habitation and hunting area would be taken away, and the State of Florida even donated to the park a 99,000-acre reservation that had been designated in 1917 to be held in trust for the Seminoles. This cavalier attitude toward the Everglades' traditional inhabitants can be explained by a condescending Park Committee report of the time: A tribe of Indians, the Seminoles, still leads a primitive life in the area. These 350 remaining Seminoles present a valuable field for the ethnologist and one of the best available at present, and add a romantic touch to the scenery."

1935 -- Ernest Coe, Chairman of the Everglades National Park Association, was the guest speaker at the philanthropic Seminole Indian Association's annual meeting. When he was questioned about the fate of Seminoles living within the future park boundaries, Coe stated, "As far as I know, no plans have been made to move the Seminoles from their camps." Episcopal Deaconness Harriet M. Be-dell, a long-time associate of the i.laponathi., knew they were troubled over losing the Park land and urged Coe to consult the "Medicine Men" if any Seminoles had to be relocated. He assured her that the Seminoles' welfare would be a prime consideration in plans to open the Park. Meanwhile, newspapers menacingly suggested otherwise: "There are many details to be worked out, such as a transfer of Seminoles from their present reservation...But the advan-tage of establishing a national park will justify the trouble and some small expense."

Florida Governor Dave Sholtz made what looked like a good deal with the Seminoles when he swapped their 99,000 acres of State Seminole Reservation land in Monroe County with greater acreage in the adjoining eastern Big Cypress. However, they still lost all of the Park land, which had been their hunting area. In 1936, the Seminoles (both Creek and i.laponathi.) met with Governor Sholtz. It was their first formal meeting with a governmental official. Sholtz proclaimed the event "a complete success." He reported, "The first plank in their platform is that they want to be left alone. I told them I wished everybody needing state aid would be that easy on us." Then he related their poignant plea: "They are afraid that they will again be moved from the villages which they occupy deep in the Everglades. They say they fear the white men will keep on moving them until they are in the water. That was the expression they used."

Seminoles and Miccosukees: What's the difference?

One of the most often asked questions is, "What is the difference between a Seminole and a Miccosukee Indian?" The answer to this question requires an explanation on several important levels which span time from the 18th Century to today. Tribalism, language and demographics could be discussed, as well as economics, independence, modern-day governmental organization, and sovereignty issues. Perhaps the most direct answer is that the difference between members of the Seminole Tribe of Florida and those of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida is political (which of course is also idealistic). The Seminole Tribe formally organized in 1957. The Miccosukee Tribe organized in 1962. The Seminole Tribe's enrollment is over 2,000. The Miccosukee Tribe's is over 600.

Another important difference between the Seminole Tribe and the Miccosukee Tribe is linguistic. Creeks make up one-third of the Seminole Tribe. They speak the Muscogean language of both groups, but today, the common language is English. The Creek-speaking population has a reservation at Brighton, on the northwestern shore of Lake Okeechobee, and in Ft. Pierce. All of the other people, members of the Seminole Tribe, the Miccosukee Tribe, and around 200 unaffiliated Seminoles, speak Mikasuki (old records call it Hitchiti). Mikasuki (also spelled Miccosukee) was the large pre-First Seminole War town in north Florida where these people lived before it was destroyed by the Americans. The elders who speak Mikasuki, however, call their language i.laponki. and themselves i.laponathi..

Dugout Canoes

The Seminoles crafted fine canoes from bald cypress trees. Cypress canoes were the sole means of transportation for the i.laponathi. dwelling in the Everglades. They poled and sailed the canoes across the Everglades between their settlements, farms, subsistence-gathering and trading areas. Making a canoe was a lengthy task. The canoe-makers would select a bald cypress tree, cut it down, and work on it where it fell. Sometimes many months would go by before the work began, allowing the wood to season. Alternate charring and cutting with axe and adze roughed out the form. As progress was made, the canoe-making experts fine-tuned the vessel by drilling holes to check the thickness (or actually the thinness) of the walls, then replugging when the desired depth had been reached. It was not unusual to fell a tree which yielded a 30-foot canoe with a width of three to four feet.

A Terrifying Blimp

In December 1929, a group of Seminoles took a memorable blimp ride with Cory Osceola, the head of a Miami tourist attraction called Musa Isle Indian Village. Their trip was part of an early air show hosted in Opa-Locka by local Curtis Aviation/Bright interests. The event was was also geared to promote Everglades real estate and products and was appropriately called "Everglades Day." While flying in the Goodyear blimp "Defender," the most modern in the company's fleet of airships, was a fun activity for city folk, deep in the southern Everglades it was seen in quite a different light. Foreboding and threatening, the blimp approached and flew slowly over Mrs. Smallpox Tommie's isolated camp, which was accessible only by canoe. She ran from her chickee and hid in the banana patch until dark.

Seminole Agriculture

The i.laponathi. had their camps and gardens on Everglades islands of a few acres. From mid-19th Century accounts we learn that they left native vegetation in thick abundance on the islands' perimeters for concealment and an effective windbreak. Large trees in the center would be girdled, or cut around, so they would drop their leaves and eventually die, opening the lush interior to the sunlight and creating a perfect gardening situation. Corn, beans and a pumpkin unique to the Florida Seminoles were grown. Chassa howitska (Creek for "hanging pumpkin") was brought from Alabama and Georgia with the southern-migrating people who came to be called "Seminoles." This pumpkin had long been adapted to these southeastern Indians' gardening practices. They planted the seeds at the base of one of the girdled trees. The vines grew up the tree, onto the bare limbs, and the ripened fruit hung down, out of reach of livestock and rot.

Seminole Pumpkin Bread

Chassa howitska (Seminole pumpkin) was a very important part of the i.laponathi. diet. The shell was greenish and so hard that botanist Charles C. Gifford said the i.laponathi. often used an axe to crack it open. I have also heard that the pumpkins were sometimes shot out of the trees by the boys. The pumpkins were cut into strips and dried for future use, such as fried pumpkin bread:

15 oz. can of solid pack pumpkin

1 - 1 1/2 cups sugar

2 1/2 tsp baking powder

2 cups all-purpose flour

Mix well; knead with hands. Use extra flour to coat hands; dough is very soft. Lay dough ball on floured surface. Take hunk (about 1/3 cup); pat flat between floured hands, pinching edges to make fritter about 3/4" thick. Lay fritter in hot oil in skillet. When one side is slightly browned, turn over with long-handled fork or slotted spoon.

Everglades Drainage and the Seminoles

By the 1930s, three projects had altered the Seminoles' Everglades environment: drainage operations in the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth, the construction and 1928 opening of the Tamiami Trail from Tampa to Miami, and the purchase of acreage for Everglades National Park resulting in the exclusion of the Seminoles from this major hunting and habitation area. From the earliest accounts, most people of the dominant society who strayed into or purposefully entered the Ever-glades marveled at the concept of the Everglades DRAINED. Little wonder, since food (in this case agri-culture) tends to support societies. In this sense, those from the nineteenth century were no different from later decades. They just did not have the manpower, political backing or machinery to accomplish their goal. It was bound to happen.

Drainage was yet another obstacle to be met by the long-suffering Florida Seminoles that altered their environment for all time. In the 1880s, Hamilton Disston's successful drainage operation in the Kissimmee area north of Lake Okeechobee proved drainage would work in the Everglades. Seeing the threat, Minnie Moore Wilson (early activist for the Florida Seminoles) spoke out in her book The Seminoles of Florida, "...is the time not ripe for decisive action in the protection of these wards of Florida?" In the 1890s, an early drainage project in north-eastern Miami ousted i.laponthi. families from islands in the headwaters area of Snake Creek where they had maintained a continuous settlement pattern since around 1828. "Snake Warrior's Island" was named after its occupant, Snake Warrior Chitto Tustenuggee, some seven years before the Second Seminole War.

Seminole habitation dates from 1828 on Snake Warrior's Island, the oldest such site in the eastern Everglades. After the Seminole Wars the Snake Creek Islands became the seasonal home of the popular and gregarious leader Old Tiger Tail, the bitter veteran Old Alec, and the dashing Young Tiger Tail. Drainage operations drove their families out in the 1890s. In the 1850s, Pete Tiger poignantly discussed the situation with a Reader's Digest columnist: "In the old times we could paddle our canoes for many days and hunt the deer and the alligator. Now the white man has drained the Glades with his canals to make fields for his tomatoes and sugarcane. Our canoes cannot run on the sand and it is forbidden to cross the white man's fences. And the deer and the alligator each day go farther away." The now-landlocked island, just north of Pro Player Stadium in Broward County, will open as a park.

Major drainage programs began in the eastern Everglades in 1906 under Governor Napoleon Bonaparte Broward. Ironically, Broward campaigned to "save the Everglades" while stating that they "should be drained and made fit for cultivation." Dredges dug the New River and Miami Canals to Lake Okeechobee, draining the flow southeast to the ocean. All Seminoles who lived, visited or traded in southeastern Florida were impacted by drainage, including the historic Pine Island settlement six miles north of Miami's Snake Creek area. Snake Warrior's compatriot in 1828 was Sam Jones or Abiaki, who would become the most important leader of the Second Seminole War and who first settled the Pine Island Complex, possibly earlier than 1828. By 1900, more Seminoles "than people expected or believed" were living in the three-island group. Many were refugees from the Miami settlements.

Pine Island

The Pine Island Complex was a haven for Seminole refugees both in the Second Seminole War and the late 1800s, when drainage and the encroachment of settlers displaced them from Miami. The islands of Long Key, Big City and Pine Island were located in the Everglades at the headwaters of the mighty New River. In 1906 they became landlocked between the North and South New River Drainage Canals. Historic Pine Island, two and a half miles long and the highest point in Broward County (29 feet above sea level), was partially saved by deed restriction in the 1970s. In 1990, a second large parcel was purchased by Broward County, the Town of Davie and Florida's Conservation and Recreation Lands (CARL) Funding Program for $6.5 million and became the public Tree Tops Park. Enter at Orange Avenue off University Drive, where a statue of the Seminole patriot Sam Jones was recently placed.

The New Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum

The newest major resident of the Everglades is the Seminole Tribe of Florida's Ah-Tha-Thi-Ki ("to learn") Museum on a 60-acre site. On August 23 the $12 million tribal museum opens to the public with the most comprehensive exhibition of traditional Seminole lifestyle ever undertaken. Guests will see a 17-minute introductory film discussing Seminole history from the Clans' Creation Stories to today. The first gallery, "On The Land," features Seminole hunters; an interactive exhibit teaches about the making of Seminole starch from the "coontie" plant; and hunting, gathering, and farming practices are explained in the Seminole elders' own words. Artifacts on display are from the Smithsonian Institution.

Gallery two of the Ah-Tha-Thi-Ki Museum, "In The Camp," features a typical Seminole camp and canoeing scene. Interactive displays discuss children and canoeing practices. Artifacts are from the Smithsonian Institution. In "Our Native Voice," Seminole elders discuss social customs and camp life. A folklore theater introduces an animated film on the important role of storytelling in teaching traditional ways and beliefs to Seminole children. The third gallery, "At the Corn Dance," highlights this important ceremony. Visitors can view 14 lifelike dancers and their dance leader, dressed in their finest clothes, beads and silver, dancing through the night under twinkling stars.

In the "At the Corn Dance" exhibit of the Seminole Tribe of Florida's new A-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum, figures play the ceremonial stickball game, marking their scores on the 30-foot-high ball pole. Around the corner, artifacts from the museum's growing material culture collection and rare Seminole War-period artifacts are on display. The museum's Master Plan calls for additional buildings featuring other important aspects of Seminole history and culture. The museum is the vision of Seminole Tribal Chairman James E. Billie, who conceived the idea long before the Tribe had the income to produce such a large-scale cultural project. The executive director of the Museum Authority is Billy L. Cypress; David M. lackard is the museum's director and exhibit designer.

The opening of the Seminole Tribe's Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum on August 21, 1997 was a resounding success and an enthusiastic event attended by many Tribal Members, friends and dignitaries. It was a double celebration, with the Museum opening in conjunction with the 40th anniversary of the Federally-recognized Tribe. Tribal Members and guests listened to speeches about Tribal organization from speakers who graphically reiterated the trials and tribulations which the poverty-stricken, Everglades-based Tribe had suffered in the past. These hardships doubtless seemed hard for many to believe, as the now-affluent Tribe served the hundreds of well-wishers a luncheon of steak and lobster tails in an air-conditioned tent just west of the museum.

At the gala opening of the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum, someone enthusiastically said to me, "The Seminoles finally have an anchor in the Everglades!" I was taken aback. "Well, I hope so!" I started to retort. Then I realized that the tangible building, the sharing of cultural ways and information, and the Museum's own theme, "A place to learn, a place to remember," is what the Tribe has given to us, the visitors; and indeed, the Seminole Tribe now has a firm, established place in the Everglades from which it can greet the world. Two weeks after the Museum's opening, visitors had arrived from England, Spain, Puerto Rico, Belize, South Africa, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Venezuela, Switzerland, Iceland, Hungary, France, Sweden, New Zealand, Czech Republic, Romania, Holland, Belgium and Australia. The Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum has put the Seminole Tribe on the map.

Directions: Take exit 14 off Alligator Alley (I-75) and go north 17 miles on Snake Road; enter the Seminole Big Cypress Reservation and follow signs to the Museum. Phone: (954) 792-0745.