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    The Seminole and Miccosukee Tribes of Southern Florida
    The Seminole and Miccosukee Tribes of Southern Florida
    The Seminole and Miccosukee Tribes of Southern Florida
    Ebook201 pages51 minutes

    The Seminole and Miccosukee Tribes of Southern Florida

    By Patsy West

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    The history of the Seminole and Miccosukee tribes dates back to the 1500s, when most of Florida as well as much of the United States was uninhabited. During the early 19th century, the tribes moved into the South Florida interior, living on remote tree islands throughout the Everglades and Big Cypress Swamp. These self-reliant people kept mostly to themselves. Their struggles have included disease, poverty, relocation, and three wars with the U.S. Army. Nevertheless, these resilient tribes survived and have become a vital part of the country's history and a unique and highly popular feature of South Florida tourism. Today, these tribes are busy creating economic opportunity for members, preserving their heritage and culture, and protecting their homeland. The powerful and engaging story of these remarkable people is brought to life in Images of America: Seminole and Miccosukee Tribes of Southern Florida. Captivating images from the Seminole / Miccosukee Photographic Archive highlight and preserve their story for future generations. Readers will appreciate this up-close and personal look at their way of life. The descendants of famed Native Americans such as Osceola, Jumper, Micanopy, and Sam Jones are seen in this distinct photo perspective working, resting, playing, and celebrating their customs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 18, 2012
    ISBN9781439629284
    The Seminole and Miccosukee Tribes of Southern Florida
    Author

    Patsy West

    In this comprehensive visual history, the first of its kind, author and ethno historian Patsy West celebrates the Seminole and Miccosukee tribes of Southern Florida through words and images. A fourth-generation South Floridian, she serves as director of the Seminole / Miccosukee Photographic Archive, which has a collection of more than 10,000 images.

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      Book preview

      The Seminole and Miccosukee Tribes of Southern Florida - Patsy West

      Tiger.

      INTRODUCTION

      The Seminole/Miccosukee Photographic Archive has been actively engaged in accumulating its collection since 1972. Before that time, the Seminole and Miccosukee tribes had no photograph collections at their disposal. A singular collection of great significance had been systematically accumulated by Dr. William C. Sturtevant, Curator of North American Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution, as he had conducted his doctoral dissertation on the Florida Indians during the early 1950s. Otherwise, the majority of photos representing these highly identifiable tribal peoples were scattered across the country in public and private, but mostly non-catalogued, collections.

      The impetus to organize a comprehensive collection of Seminole/Miccosukee photos arose from my initial position as librarian, and then curator, at the Historical Museum of Southern Florida in Miami. Three large file folders of photographs were labeled Florida Seminoles, but none of the predominant portraits were identified. Additionally, information on the photographers, who attempted to record the Seminole and Miccosukee with frequent difficulty and hardship, was not available. Their work was dispersed throughout the public and private collections alike, often with little cohesion or provenience available.

      My grandmother, Ethel Freeman West, was born in Little River, North Miami, in 1888. The Seminoles were close to her father, William Freeman, and frequented the family yard and boat landing. He hunted with them while a recognized leader, Old Motlow (Wind clan), carried my grandmother around on his shoulders. When the ornithologist Charles Barney Cory, of the Chicago Field Museum, came to the area on one of his many specimen-collecting trips in the early 1890s, he was told to seek out Freeman. My great-grandfather personally introduced him to Robert Osceola (Panther clan) and Cory later credited him with making his tryst with the Seminoles possible. Cory’s published work, considered a benchmark in accuracy, was published as Hunting and Fishing in Florida and accompanied by his own photographs.

      Ironically, the first Seminole family I met as I began my professional career was that of Cory Robert Osceola (Big Towns clan), the son of Robert. Cory Osceola had been named for the scientist that visited them at their camp on the North Fork of New River when he was just a boy. Coincidentally, I have lived on North Fork all my life, only a few miles from the Osceola campsite.

      When I began collecting and identifying Seminole photographs, my grandmother was 84 years old. She provided me with the first identifications of Seminoles that were found on glass negatives in the attic of the family house on Little River. Photographs had been taken on that property in 1892 by a Norwegian immigrant, Otto Sonstebo. She told me that my Great Aunt Beck had stood on the back row with the Seminoles to show them they would not be harmed, and ducked out of the way as the shutter was snapped.

      My next project was to obtain other identifications. I made identification cards and photocopies of the museum’s photographs. I then asked Seminole tribal chairman Howard Tommie if I might set up a table at the Seminole Fair in February. The response at my impromptu booth was great! The late Goby Tiger stands out as an avid resource, as does my longtime friend, Jimmie O’Toole Osceola. Both pondered for many hours over the photograph books at my table, and Jimmie has continued to use the collection ever since.

      When the primary photographers’ compendium of works and dates was finally organized, the photographs themselves required interpretation. They depicted events, personages, cultural activities, locations, and unique economic endeavors, but most of these had never been discussed in the available popular or scholarly literature. A great deal of data was located in archives or questioned in oral history interviews in order to interpret the photographs. In the case of the tribes’ important economic involvement with tourism (depicted in the bulk of the photos), there was the need for primary research and interpretation, which resulted in a serious revision of thought for this important period of economic endeavor. Thus, I began my 30 years of ethnographic studies based on the need to interpret a growing collection of photographs.

      The archive’s photograph collection now contains well over 10,000 images and dates from 1852 to the present. Seminole and Miccosukee Tribes of Southern Florida will provide tribal members and other readers with an organized visual and historical resource. Though brief, it will nevertheless serve as a valuable introduction to the unique culture of two sovereign tribal nations that continue to flourish in southern Florida today.

      Author’s Note: There are two distinct, unintelligible languages spoken by Florida Indians: Mikasuki (i:laponathli:), and Creek (or Muscogee). These distinctions of language divide the two groups of culturally similar people. Approximately two-thirds of the total population (regardless of tribal membership) reflect a Mikasuki linguistic background; the remaining third, Creek.

      There are, as the book title suggests, two distinct tribes in southern Florida: the Seminole Tribe of Florida, federally recognized in 1957, and the Miccosukee Tribe of

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