Chapter VI: Part 6

A late incident occurred, showing the childlike faith of this people. The little son of Ko-nip-pat-cho was taken very ill and when Seminole medicinal efforts failed, the father learned from other Indians that their white friend at Kissimmee City could procure for them the “hil-lis-waw.” A runner was dispatched from the Everglades to the nearest boat landing (a distance of 160 miles from Kissimmee) where a note could be sent in person. This note was given to the Captain--the Indian waiting for the return of the steamer. The Indians reported afterwards, “Boy sick ojus, arms cold--feet cold--big sleep come soon--Indian bring medicine from white friend, boy no die.”

Did not the Great Spirit, Who watches over His children, reward the childlike faith of these Indians?

Pais-haw is the name applied to a plant which the Indians regard as an antidote to the rattlesnake bite. Old settlers tell that they have known of Indians allowing themselves to be bitten by a rattler on a wager of a silver dollar. The Indians after being bitten would go to the woods, a short distance away, and procure their antidote. Returning they would apparently be no worse for the bite. Requesting an Indian to procure some of the roots, he replied, “No find ’em here--by-and-by me go to Okeechobee swamps, find ’em plenty.”

A few weeks later there came through the mail a small box full of roots, neatly done up and addressed by the Indian’s own hand, a perfect copy of name and address as he had learned to write it during his visit.

On sending the roots to the Smithsonian Institute for analysis, the secretary reports that they belong to a species of plant known as _Cyperus_, and adds, “This is one of the large number of reputed cures for snakebites, which have become so regarded from the fact that a person who has been bitten has been known to recover after taking the drug.” The use of water enters largely into the _materia medica_ of the Seminoles, bathing in cold water being one of their principal treatments for fevers. During the war with the whites a soldiers’ camp was found deserted; the Indians immediately appropriated the clothing, blankets and other things. Very soon the loathsome disease of small-pox broke out among them. Ignorant as to the nature of the malady, they immediately applied their bathing remedy. The result was a frightful mortality, few of that band were left to tell the story. In this instance, the Government army gained a victory over their foe without the firing of a gun.

FLORIDA’S ABIDING WORDS OF BEAUTY THE HERITAGE
OF THE ABORIGINAL PATHFINDERS.

All through Florida the musical softness, peculiar to the Seminole dialect, is sustained in the names of the lakes and rivers. Each having a history descriptive of its character, or some incident connected therewith.

The old names of the chiefs were very euphonious, such as Osceola, Micanopy, Tusteenuggee, Coacoochee and Tallahassee. These are being displaced by names adopted by the whites, such as Billy Ham, Tommy John and Billy Buster. Accident, too, seems to have credited the aborigines with words not really their own if it be true that “Yankee” is only an attempt made by the Indian to speak the word English, and that pappoose is the effort of the natives to say “baby.” The symphonious cadence of such words as Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Caloosahatchee and Minnehaha has often been noticed.

Tohope Ke-liga is the name of one of the most beautiful lakes in Florida, its Indian significance meaning “fort site.” All around the lake are the old hunting grounds of the Indians and memorable points in Seminole war fame. To-day the Okeechobee drainage canal connects it with the lakes south, plantations surrounding its shores; the thriving city of Kissimmee is situated on its north side and all trace of the Seminole has vanished. The only memorials he has left are his words firmly embedded in the history of his conquerors. Kissimmee river is said to have taken its name from a romantic episode. A young Spanish grandee in a moment of impulse snatched a kiss from a Seminole girl, and the frightened maiden’s childlike plaint to her mother established the name of the river on whose banks the kiss was stolen--Kiss-him-mee.

The romance attached to our beautiful Kissimmee river gives it especial interest and we give it only as a traditional meaning. The present Indians cannot give the English rendition, saying, “Indian long, long time ago named the river,” which is corroborated by the Bureau of Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution, as follows:

In reply to your letter I regret to say that it is impossible to
give you the meaning of “Kissimmee.” Several of our ethnologists
think the word dates back to the Ais Caloosa, or some other tribe
antedating the Seminoles, in which case the meaning will never be
known.

Very respectfully yours,
W. H. HOLMES,
Chief.

So many of the euphonious words abounding in Florida belong to the ancient tribes and were picked up by the Seminoles.

An interesting bit of information was gotten after much care and questioning from Chief Tallahassee as to the meaning of his name--Tallahassee being only a nickname, or white man’s name for him--his Indian name being Fo-so-wa-los-te-nock-ee, meaning chief of the Bird gens or tribe.

The origin of the name of Florida’s State capital dates back to the days that are but traditions to the Seminole.

As the Seminole interprets, “Long, long time ago,” many Indians and houses were on the site where the city of Tallahassee now stands.

One day, as the tradition goes, all the Indians left. Some time after, some Indians came along, Seminoles presumably, and seeing many houses--but Indians “hiepus” (gone), exclaimed, “Tallahassee”--“all gone or deserted.”

“Littly white birds me send.”

“Mr. Billy Bowlegs.”]

We-la-ka is the Indian name for the St. John river and describes it so graphically that the old Spaniards retrograded when they named the “river of lakes” for their patron saint. Ock-la-wa-ha, “crooked water,” appropriately describes the most crooked stream in America. Okeechobee, with her vast expanse of water and over-hanging mists, in Seminole significance means “the place of big water.” With-la-coo-chee, so memorable in Seminole war days as the place of Osceola’s strategic movements, is a long but very narrow stream, meaning, in the Seminole tongue, “Little Big river.” Alachua, “the big jug without a bottom,” We-Kiva, “mystery,” and so on all over the Peninsula do we find names preserved which mark the wanderings of the picturesque Aborigines.

The unwritten, but highly poetical, language of the Florida Indians, should be incorporated into schoolcraft form and preserved with the archives of history for future generations. One who has heard the war shouts, their mythological tales, the words accompanying their dancing tunes, or listened in the darkness of the night, with breathless wonder to the heart-moving dirges sung by wailing women as they move around the corpse of some dead member, the whole scene lit up by the flickering flames of the lurid camp fire, cannot doubt but that the Florida Indian _has_ a literature, and the white race is to blame for its imperfect knowledge of the unwritten but priceless productions of a savage race.

The linguistic perfection of the Seminole language, with its fluent, oratorical powers, shows itself in every speech or talk ever made to the white man.

With linguistic research, the scientist readily finds that man does not invent language any more than a bird does its twittering or a tree its leaves. It requires a whole nation to produce a language.

Of the world’s famous orators we have our Demosthenes of the Greek, Cicero of the Roman, England’s great Gladstone, America with her Calhoun, Clay and Webster; but as yet has the world ever found greater eloquence than in the “talks” of the famous Indian chiefs?

Red Jacket, on the religion of the white man and the red race, is a marvel of eloquence. Then what shall we say of Tecumseh, the great Shawnee, as he delivered his famous talk to General Harrison, or Black Hawk, the captive, in his plea before General Street?

In dealing with the Seminole language we meet with long words and mammoth expressions. The Seminole greeting, “Ha-tee-eten-chee-hick-cha-hit-is-chay,” sounds formidable, yet it only means “Glad to see you.” These, with well-understood Indian phrases, such as “burying the tomahawk,” “going on the warpath,” we employ familiarly without a thought of the tribe we have dispossessed. The time for studying the aborigines of America will soon be over. Only remnants of the tribes remain among us. Old myths and customs are being displaced by new ones, and we can truly see that the red man’s inheritance is nearing the horizon of its destiny.

THE SEMINOLE’S RECESSIONAL.

When the last Seminole goes, he will in every sense be the last. He will leave no history; neither monument. His narrow path through the Savannah lasts no longer than the doe’s road to the ford of the stream. His race have had their joys, their triumphs and their defeats, and then been swept into oblivion.

Like the white plumed egret of the vast forests of the Everglades, he will pass, like the mist. As memories come up, we hear the faint rustle of the leaves and see the dusky forms of those ancient people as they glided through the leaf-carpeted aisles of the forests. We see the happy wigwam homes, gleaming in the red flames of the camp fire and hear the soft lullabies of the crooning mothers; the dusky hero of the chase returns game-laden from the hunt, and, in the picture, framed, as it were, by the boundaries of nature, we see long lines of moving life, the graceful forms of thousands of flying creatures, while the song of the forest minstrel hallows the wooded silence. _It is the land of the Seminole._

Thou, Florida, with thy laughing waters and sunny skies, art the Seminole’s elysium. Thy spreading palms form the only canopy he desires. To part from thy loved scenes would be like separating from his kindred. No, under the shadows of the live oak and the magnolia has he lived, under their shadows let him die.

As the patient Seminole, with swelling heart “moves a little farther, and yet a little farther,” he goes not willingly, but with a sad heart and a slow step. Micanopy, when told by the officers that he might choose between emigration and death, answered, “Kill me here then, kill me quickly.” The same spirit is manifested by the Seminole to-day when he says, “We have never done anything to disgrace the land of our birth, nor the honor of an Indian. For fifty years the pledge to our great father has been kept inviolate. Our tongues are not forked and our feet tread not in the white man’s path. We threw away the rifle and grasped hands with the white skin. We know the white man’s power, and though we love peace, we fear not death. We will not leave the land of our birth. The Great Spirit loves his red children, and says to them, “Your bones must rest with the dust of your fathers.” Brothers, when the pale face came to the shores of our land, our fathers made him a fire from their flint rock to warm by, and gave him hominy to stay his hunger. Brothers, the Seminole wishes no harm to the white race, but his heart heaves and surges as it says, “Let us alone; let us alone. Though you slay us, you shall not move us.”

“A kingdom as full of people as hives are of bees,” wrote the first discoverer to King Ferdinand. Where are they now?

“In their bridal veil of long silken plumes.”]

There is something intensely sad in the picture of these sons of the monarchs of that race, who, for centuries held sway on the slopes of the Atlantic. As the Stars and Stripes proudly herald liberty and independence to the comers of all nations, how can we be unmindful of that “charity which begins at home?” The panorama of Indian history passes before us, and we see nothing more tragic than the pictures of the wrongs endured by the native Americans. Let us then deal kindly with the tribes we have dispossessed, whose removal to the swamps has made room for our own enlargement. In the person of these descendants of a now disinherited race, who with shy, frightened faces still hide in the wilderness, we may yet atone in part for the tragedies of the past by making Florida a free, safe and Christian home for this patient and long-persecuted remnant of a once-powerful Indian nation.

May the almoner of justice, under the guidance of an overruling God, protect and keep and cherish these red children of the forest homes.

SUPPLEMENT

The Least Known Wilderness of America

THE LEAST KNOWN WILDERNESS OF AMERICA

TOGETHER WITH THE STORY OF THE RED INHABITANTS

Would you see the Land of the Seminole? Then visit the Everglades of Florida and in the heart of this mystic region--a very uncharted wilderness--you will find a thrilling beauty, and yet a lurking terror; the dark, cypress, laden trees are massed together, now swaying, now quivering, as the Gulf winds circle around them, and they seem like human things, crowding together like shuddering people, frightened by ghosts.

This is the “Big Cypress”--the last foothold of the vanishing red man of America.

This tropic jungle of islets, lagoons and cutting saw-grass prairies is an unexplored treasure house for the man of research--a virgin field for the adventurer, in short a tropic mimosa, with its secrets closely held against the disturbing exploiter--yet awaiting, with sphinx-like calmness, the intrepid traveller, who would dare to explore this Least Known Wilderness of America.

Then why should the American go to the land of the Vikings or to “Darkest Africa” for themes? Florida has the Everglades--grey, misty, water covered.

Scientists have crossed these “weird drowned prairies” as a ship crosses the ocean, yet no well defined lines have been made, and no flagstaffs mark the trail of the adventurous explorer.

The Everglades, properly christened with the red man’s name--Pay-hay-o-kee, or “Grass Water Country,” comprise a territory of more than 5,000 square miles, and, while considered a swamp, the region is more of a shallow sea or lake, thickly studded with thousands of islands, which are covered with thickets of shrubbery and vines. Aquatic flowers, brilliant butterflies and the flutter of bird life add color and animation to the scene.

Here and there in the mysterious depths of the great Florida jungle live the descendants of the bravest, purest blood American Indian--those patriots who refused, nearly a century ago, to desert their country, and, escaping capture by bloodhounds and bullets, hid themselves in the wilds of this tangled Everglade wilderness, and were for years lost to the historian.

All aboriginal history holds much interest, but none is more replete with the tragedies and romance that go to make up life wherever it is lived than the shadowy history of the self-exiled Seminoles about whom so little is known and who have lived this jungle life as lords of a conquered race--proud heroic, with blood as pure as the race who governed the territory long before Columbus sailed from Palos. Monarchs of America’s primeval continent, mystery envelops the Seminoles’ past and the historian can only catch glimpse of the fleeting figures of the ancestors of this peculiar people, who wrote no history, except by deeds.

THE LAND OF THE SEMINOLE

The Caucasian has battered at the gates of this great American Jungle for nearly four centuries, but some impregnable force, directed by a Higher Power than commercialized graft or the greed of selfish men, has kept the gates secure. _It is the Land of the Seminole!_

The Seminole knows every foot of this interminable morass. The stars are his compass; the fantastic tracery of canals, cut by his ancestors through this chaotic tangle of grass water country, are his highways. The appearance of the remote recesses of the Everglades is unlike that of any other region on the globe and is certainly the most bewildering and remarkable on this continent.

EVERGLADE SCENARIO

Were we to unroll the reel of a photo-drama of the Everglades, we would go back thousands of years, when the great billows of the ocean rolled over the space now occupied by this territory; we would see the millions of busy builders of that age, the tiny coral polyps, working on the reefs and shoals; we would look again and see the tempestuous storms and hear the thunder of the circling winds and behold the “breaking up of the great fountain of the deep,” forcing the sand from its depths, until a giant dam was built and the great ocean was excluded. Then it was that the shimmering waters of Lake Okeechobee, “the place of the Big Water” in Seminole dialect, became an inland sea.

We may turn the slide and see the animals of prehistoric days basking in the sunshine or bathing in the limpid waters. The fame of Florida as a health resort was not unknown to the animals of those ancient days, for the remains of these monsters are exhibited today in national museums, with labels reading that “they belonged to animals, probably mammoths, that lived 10,000 to 50,000 years ago.”

Film makers delight in taxing the flights of the mind and Florida’s drama was silenced for thousands of years. The reel makes another turn and we see a Twentieth Century renaissance of adventure, optimism and commercialism. Engineering expeditions entered this region to make surveys for drainage and land selling corporations--the land was sold from the enticing blue paper plat--but according to America’s best engineering corps a large area of this tropic jungle still remained terra incognita--unsurveyed--each surveying corps wisely barricading against criticism of failure by publishing to the speculative world, that upon “800 square miles of this unexplored country no white man had ever placed foot.”

COACOOCHEE

_From an old print_]

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT INVESTIGATES LAND DEALS

Like a bolt of lightning from a clear sky came the demand--from the United States Government, in 1913, to Florida’s high officials--“Investigate--investigate!”

Twenty thousand purchasers of lands in the Everglades, backed by the power of American democracy, had _demanded_ their lands or the return of their good American dollars. The Federal Government, through Congress, exposed the crooked deals (the lands still being under water and unsurveyed) made by the vampire speculator, with the result that another survey was ordered and the Florida State government put sixty men into the Everglades at an expense of $40,000. The citizens paid for the survey and “800 square miles” still remain--unsurveyed! Less is known and, it can be said without fear of contradiction, less is “told” to the reading world of inquiries in this 20th century than was given to history four hundred years ago.

For best accounts touching the interior of the Everglades we must have recourse to historical documents. From French delineations upon old maps as well as from Spanish and English authorities, we learn that more than three hundred years ago Florida’s Everglade country was cut up by large rivers, extensive ponds, lagoons and lakes which connected with each other.

That the drainage of the Everglades was contemplated by the authorities of the Spanish government, is an established historical fact and as late as 1840, during the Seminole War, a canal was found large enough to float a large craft. This piece of engineering work is credited to the Spaniards, but owing to the treacherous straits of Florida’s coast, interior navigation was abandoned and the Spaniards and the Frenchman left the country to the intrepid and enterprising Indian, whose knowledge of the water world of the Glades was then, as is now, superior to his white engineering brother; for the Indian knows every foot of this interminable morass and travels through these uncharted waters in his “dugout” canoe, with no compass but the stars overhead, as he is guided by the whispering winds brought him from the Great Spirit.

CROSSING THE EVERGLADES BY AEROPLANE

A recent experience told by an aviator belonging to one of Uncle Sam’s flying squadrons and authorized by the War Department at Washington, graphically pictures a modern view of the Everglades, and illustrates, too, that the same hospitality extended by the Red Man to the bewildered Spaniards, as they landed on these wild and unexplored shores four centuries ago, may be found in the heart of the jungle and marsh wilderness of the Seminole camps today.

The airmen were attempting to “cross the Everglades” in order to make a shorter flight between the aviation fields of Florida. Encountering a storm, they were compelled to make a “forced landing” and headed for the nearest open space in the Big Cypress country, which proved to be soft muck, where the ship turned over on its back, wrecked and submerged in the black water.

The aviators wandered, hungry and exhausted, for two days, finally finding a camp inhabited by Seminole Indians. There they received a welcome, and food and shelter were given.

The Seminoles, lurking in their swamp-hedged wigwams, fear the intrusion of the white man, but like their ancient forbears they stand ever ready, with Samaritan-like kindness, to help the white brother in an hour of necessity. The airmen were later piloted by the red men through their hidden channels to a dredge-boat where aid was secured and they soon reached the Marine fields at Miami. With the help of the Indians, who made frequent trips to the base camps for equipments, the “fire ship of the clouds” was “launched”; the propeller took the air, droning a new tune to the silent Seminoles, who say “fire ships littly too much, to cross the West Wind of the Great Spirit.”

This aquatic jungle, whose secrets are known only to the Indian, has not changed since the day Columbus found a new world for Castile and Leon, as a brief extract from the airmen’s report verifies:

“The territory in which we made our landing is known as the Everglades (Big Cypress). Its sameness is appalling; just one small cypress hammock after another; water and mud everywhere; innumerable mosquitoes, alligators, water moccasins and black snakes. Here and there a hammock would be found with a rock base and on some of these bases Seminole Indians eke out an existence. The mosquitoes attacked us in hordes. We drank no water, for fear it might be infected with malaria germs or some other swamp fever, nor had any food been found.... We were compelled to spend the night again in the swamp, this time on ground covered with an inch or more of water, a maze of water and prairie ways, with treacherous under-currents and impregnable barriers.”

The solemn silence of this mysterious swamp is only broken by the splash of the Indian canoe, but here the Seminole lingers, giving a background of tragedy and romance to aboriginal America.

EVERGLADE GEYSER

Let the captain of an air ship rest his craft in mid-air and through his glasses gaze down upon this aquatic jungle. Near the centre of the Glades, according to public documents filed in Washington, is an immense spring rising from the earth, covering an extent of several acres and throwing up large quantities of water with great force, supplying the Everglades with torrential quantities of water.

_Taken in 1911_]

With the sun’s rays glinting on this “Everglade Geyser,” with the evaporation caused by the intense heat of this tropical land, as it meets the cooling waters of some underground cavern, a grey mist is formed and hangs over the area. As the white, wandering clouds from the fathomless cavern meet the starry skies, the Seminole sees in this phenomenon of nature the “Breath of the Great Spirit.”

When the torrential rains, a characteristic of the Everglade country, come, flooding the entire area, the Queen of the Water Kingdom picks up the rippling waters as they course over the rock-bound bottom and like an elfish sprite hurls them into the lakes and rivers, where they dash relentlessly on until they reach the subterranean outlets.

Until the white engineer finds ways and means to control subterranean flood gates, to control water forces whose source lies hundreds of miles away, or to toss away lightly the very God of Nature’s balance wheel, Everglade drainage in the heart of the Big Cypress must continue to be a stupendous operation.

The subject of the reclamation of this “The Least Known Wilderness of America” has been a “political football” for more than a score of years and has become a theme of nation-wide discussion. Until Florida populates her millions of tillable and untenanted acres, certainly she need not allure with tempting word pictures the problematical and uncertain Everglades.

Thousands of purchasers of lands in these tropical swamps--lands unsurveyed and submerged--still wait for the answer to the riddle of the Okee-cho-bee Sphinx, who alone holds fast the key to this “Egypt of America.”

Florida’s Everglade disaster, which was commercialized with land grabbers’ outfit in entering the Seminoles’ heritage, violated every humane and brotherly law of a commonwealth. The chaotic days that followed the Federal investigation, retarded the progress of the State fully a decade of years, and Florida, the land of singing birds, limpid waters and “golden apples,” learned the bitterness of the prophet’s rebuke when he said: _“Thou shouldst not have entered the Gate of my People in the day of their calamity nor have laid hands on their substance in the days of their distress_.”

SEMINOLE HISTORY REVIEWED

With the purchase of Florida from Spain in 1821 we read the death sentence of Seminole independence--a very Iliad of tragedy in American history. Prior to this, the Seminoles, as subjects of the Spanish crown, were permitted to become a nation to themselves, living and practicing the inalienable rights of independence, honor and kindliness.

For three-quarters of a century these dusky patriots prospered, owning cattle, slaves and plantations. Listen, and you may hear the tinkling bells of their little ponies as they traveled, caravan style, carrying their wares from village to village. Here, for a time, in the secluded fastnesses of the wilderness, these red aborigines lived happily because away from the white man’s power, but alas, we see a mocking travesty in our cherished ideals. Soon the alien speculator and “carpet-bagger,” with bullets and blood-hounds, entered the State, confiscating their well cultivated fields and destroying their wigwam homes. The staccato cry of “Move on--move on!” rang in the ears of this distracted, primitive people and, like sheep before the rout of grey timber wolves, the Seminoles were driven on into the more desolate regions of the great morass. Shattered hamlets and dull ashen camp fires blackened the once peaceful Indian country. Years of war and broken treaties followed, until the American Nation became the conquerors and thousands of Seminoles were forced to give up homes--life itself, and be exiled to a cold and unknown Western land.

The flame-lit reel makes a turn and we see, by the imperishable magic of the camera, a silent drama of Florida history. We see a little band of about one hundred Indians left in the Glade country in 1841. Expedition after expedition failed to corral these patriots, whose greatest crime (?) was love of country, kindred and reverence for the graves of their fathers. Like animals sorely stricken, creeping to their lair, these red mothers and little children followed the slow tread of the stoical braves and sought refuge in the secret recesses of their Glade country.

Among the archives of Government statistics, one record is enough to stir the sympathy and stimulate pity for the vanquished red dwellers of the Everglade country. The reel makes a turn and we read:

Record 5. “With 200 men we ascended Shark River into the
Everglades. Here we met Captain Burke of Artillery, with 67
men. * * * Joining forces, we proceeded to Te-at-ka-hatch-ees,
and discovered two Indians in a canoe. The Indians escaped, but
we secured their packs, cooking utensils, provisions and their
canoes. We followed them three days until the trail was lost. After
destroying the growth of their fields, consisting of 50 to 60 acres
of pumpkins, beans and peas, etc., we continued to sea.

Respectfully submitted,
JOHN T. MCLAUGHLIN,
Lieutenant Commanding Expedition.”

From the beginning of time, down through the long centuries, the conscience of man has awakened, in cycles, as it were, for the betterment and uplift of humanity.

A decade of years ago, a new spirit of quickening prevailed in America and a growing interest in Chief Osceola’s long neglected people became a nation-wide theme. Pressure from Maine to California was brought upon Florida’s state officials, and a rhythmic sympathy was felt for the destiny of the Seminole. The subject was presented to the Chief Executive and, under the beneficent ruling of the martyred McKinley, an expedition from the United States Government was sent into the trackless Everglades to select and survey lands for homes for the long persecuted native inhabitants. Belated justice seemed assured and in the year 1899 the Florida Legislature passed a bill granting the Seminoles a reservation of 835,000 acres.

This act was approved by the Governor, but between the time when President McKinley’s special government commission carefully selected these lands in 1898--an interval of less than a year--this particular tract disappeared (?) from the list of public domain _and went into private ownership_.

The bill, so inspiring in humanity, contained a clause in these days of Everglade jests called a “joker.” Like the eagle, as he sweeps down the lamb feeding at its mother’s side, so the spoils-taker, with “land grabbers’” outfit, swept down upon the inheritance of the red children of Florida, not only violating the sanctity of Florida’s citizenship but even gathering the crumbs that fell from Florida’s bounteous table, and the livid bar sinister of treachery again stained the escutcheon of Florida.

Years passed, when pressure was once more brought upon Florida’s inhumanity toward her native people, and the legislative body of 1913 passed a bill, unanimously providing 235,000 acres in the Everglades for the Seminoles. Alas! for the pathos of the story. On the very last day of the session, Governor Park Trammell, untouched by the needs of these long persecuted people, and in full sympathy and co-operation with the politicians’ strong anti-Indian feelings, vetoed the bill, not only denying the citizenry of Florida the inalienable right to uphold the dignity, honor and patriotism of Florida, but denying these oppressed natives as much as a spadeful of earth to cover their corpses. What mathematician can ever estimate the result of the power used by the Governor at this critical time? By this stroke of the pen, these aboriginal Americans again became the victims of a cowardly treason.

A great State like Florida, whose honor is far greater than her land possessions, need not vilify the history and lives of her native people; there has been much more than money involved in the handlings of the Everglade Country, and a handful of speculators, who said: “There is no land left for the Seminole--let him ‘make bricks without straw,’” found, as later records show, that a Florida democracy, quickened by the spirit of human kindness, checkmated the Everglade spoils-taker, whose fetish has been the dollar mark, and later through the Legislature gave to the native owners land upon which they may find peace and a refuge.

Again in 1915 an Indian bill was introduced, but certain active land speculators, known to be strongly opposed to the Seminoles having _any_ land in Florida, arrived at Florida’s capital on schedule time, and the bill, as per Seminole dialect, went into a “big sleep,” and the story of the Seminole came before the world as rivaling that of the “Man Without a Country.” And, throughout the country, the printed pages of journalism carried headlines which read: “Within the Bounds of America, ‘We Have a Little Belgium of Our Own.’”

At this point in Florida’s history, the white American heard, as it were, the Seminole’s wounded cry: “_Why have the lands of our fathers been taken from us?_” And as the dirge-like wail of the oppressed Seminole echoed and re-echoed through the solemn stillness of the mysterious Everglades, it was transmuted into a very symphony of sorrow. The mournful echoes of the cry of this stricken race, like ether waves, permeated every corner of America, until Democracy answered thus: “If this America of ours, by the furling and unfurling of her Star Spangled Banner, can say to the war-mad nations of Europe ‘_Touch not my people_,’ surely she will look into her galaxy of States and see to it that the banner of her own flowery Florida shall no longer be besmirched with a blot caused by the political profiteers of the State; and Humanity, dignifying brotherly kindness, challenged the white man’s hidden records and with uplifted hand pointed the way to a just solution of the Seminole’s rights.”

THE 1917 LAND BILL.

_The Climax of Twenty Years’ Struggle, When the Seminoles are Granted Homes in the Historic Stronghold of Their Ancestors._

Almost simultaneously with America’s entrance into the great European conflict, as the “Defender of Liberty, for the liberation of the oppressed nations,” the Florida Legislature convened. The hour had struck for the humanity of the whole world. We still feel the sobbing clutch in our throats, and we hear, as if but yesterday, the tread of our khaki-clad youths as they marched to the colors of liberty; we see the furling and unfurling of the Star Spangled Banner; the hearts of the American people wakened to the love of humanity; all these stood out like beacon lights in the springtime of 1917.

In Florida, like a star shining through a clouded sky, was the passage of the “Seminole Land Bill” without a dissenting vote, giving to the Florida Indians approximately 100,000 acres of land.

This was a fitting climax to the years of work by the Seminoles’ active white friends in Florida. The air had become vibrant all over the country for the betterment of Florida’s homeless aborigines.

The Indian Rights Association, national in its scope, had sent a special committee to the Seminole camps and learned the circumstances of Florida’s wards, reporting to the Government the true conditions. The camera pictures and search-light truths of this organization barred censorship.

Later, and just prior to the convening of the Legislature, a Congressional committee was sent by Congress to ascertain at first hand the real condition, as well as the legal status of the Seminoles, and the report of this committee gave official proof that “The Seminoles’ rights to lands in Florida were made a part of the transfer by the Spanish Government to the United States in 1821,” and that if justice were carried out as specified by the United States Government treaty rights of 1843 _all_ of the lands of Southeastern Florida (approximately 5,000,000 acres), belonged to the Seminoles.

From the famous Catlin portrait, by courtesy of the American Bureau
of Ethnology. “I painted him precisely in the costume in which he
stood for his picture, even to a string and a trinket” (CATLIN).]

Of the 100,000 acres granted by the Florida Legislature to the Indians, only about five per cent. is supposed to be tillable, but it is at this time the best available land, and the records of Florida for the calendar year of 1917 will go down into the long ages as being the most humane act ever done by a Tallahassee legislature, and the Flower State may look back upon a “Century’s Dishonor” with sorrow, yet with triumph, because she has rectified a long standing injustice and has given to the vanquished people of the Everglades a refuge, in this late hour of their direst necessity.

The reservation thus granted is the long worked for and century old home of the Seminoles--the stronghold occupied by their forefathers, situated on the Southwestern coast of Florida, near the “10,000 Islands,” including within its boundaries the beautiful, palm-fringed Shark and Harney rivers. Here many of the Indians are living today, cultivating the same hammocks from which their ancestors fled when hunted by the American expedition in 1841. Government records show that while Colonel Harney “with his marine boats and artillery and his entire force of 250 men were thrown out through this section to hunt the wily Seminoles” they came upon numerous villages, with their crude home belongings, and hundreds of acres of lima beans, pumpkins, bananas and other food products, but in every instance the camps had been recently abandoned by the Indians.

From the Gulf to the Atlantic, naught remained of Colonel Harney’s “trail” but the ashes of the wigwams, the devastated crops and the skeleton of an Indian scout here and there, lying beside his canoe where he had been attacked by the soldiers in a secreted channel in the tall saw-grass. After a fruitless search, the boats were recalled and the expedition given up. The Seminoles in their hidden recesses had made good use of their ancient signal codes.

Today, the Seminole stands upon the last sandy strip of his once vast domain, an honorable hyphenated Indian-American. With the horrors of the great European war as told to him, his instincts of liberty and freedom asserted themselves and he proved himself no “slacker” as he stood ready as a volunteer to defend his native America in the great war struggle.

The War Department at Washington, after seriously considering their application for scout duty and sharpshooting service, decided against the proffered aid.

An amusing incident, at this time, illustrates the Indian’s intense patriotism and when questioned by a white friend, as to fighting Germany, the Chieftain asked:

“You go? Yes, me go, shoot Germans like Hell. One hundred Indian men go. Indian shoot good. Indian want two Maxims,”--the Seminole’s idea of doing double service for peace and liberty. As Belgium and bleeding France stand by the colors today at every hearthstone in the land, crucified that liberty and democracy might be saved for the whole world, so the Seminole, through a century long invasion of his wigwam and his campfire by the Paleface, has come through the crucible, still true to the colors of the plumed knight of his race--the martyred Osceola--American patriots that we know would spend their last drop of blood freely and gladly in defense of their native land and sacred soil they have loved so long.

With the granting of the reservation in the Big Cypress by the State of Florida, the patient, long neglected native red people of the Everglades have had a new chapter written in their tragic life story book. Already the United States Government has come to the assistance of these Seminoles and under the supervision of the Special Florida Indian Commissioner, who, too, is an educated Seminole from the West, their lands are being fenced, the Seminole being encouraged to perform the labor, with the prospect of stocking this section with good cattle.

The Seminole is a natural stock raiser and will be allowed to buy cattle and pay for them at so much per year, using his own mark and brand. Together with the co-operative help of the Federal Government, the Southern Baptist Home Mission Board is planning to immediately enter the field with industrial and missionary workers--the teachers to be educated Oklahoma kinsmen of the Seminoles, who will in time make this people citizens worthy of the blood of their patriotic ancestry.

Can you, the friend of the down-trodden and the oppressed, not see the Seminole silhouetted against the burnished horizon, waiting for Opportunity to open her Pandora box and give him a chance with the people of America in a better civilization and Christianity?

Can you not hear the heart of the big forests throb a tribute of praise and the glittering waters ripple a melody of love for this touch of humanity--“For inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

A VISIT TO A SEMINOLE CAMP.

Would you visit a Seminole village in the heart of America’s Least Known Wilderness? Then let us draw the curtain and, turning the slide, look upon a vision of aboriginal life with its flame encircled background.

The view of this aquatic jungle has not changed since Spanish and English invasion four centuries ago. Of the 300,000 Americans found when Columbus landed on these wild and unexplored shores, the Florida Seminoles are the only remnant left who live the old, primitive life and practice the ceremonies of their royal, barbaric ancestors.

We see the palmetto thatched wigwams glistening in the red lights from the camp fire; tall trees are silhouetted against the sky, and we see the little children playing backward and forward, their little, brown legs twinkling through the shadows cast by the lurid flames. We hear the century-old lullabies, softly crooned by the mothers as they watch with careful eyes the toddling pappooses. Let us look again on this scene from aboriginal life and see the stoical braves, as they rearrange the “red wheel” camp fire and continuously add to the ever ready Sofka kettle some new ingredient, possibly fresh from the chase. The hunting dogs scent the savory odor, while the alert and watchful squaws glide in and out amid the shadows of the royal palms, which stand like sentinel warriors, crowned with feathery head-dresses that rustle in the breeze.

We look again, and the slide shows the cypress canoe “car lines”; these are the secret channels cut through the watery saw-grass prairies by the ancestors of the present Seminole.

Silently a canoe cleaves the dark waters, with the chief of the clan in the stern. Tying up among the lily pads, the canoe is hidden from view and the red pilot with his game approaches the camp.

Beware, adventurer, for this wilderness region gives out no secrets and only the Seminole knows the hidden channels and haunts.

The shadows grow dimmer and dimmer and we look up to see the stars lift the lids of their twinkling eyes to smile down upon the sleeping pappooses; the braves and the squaws, with the faith of little children, keep afresh the mystic religion of their ancestors, while they worship before the Great Spirit, who has given this Pay-hay-o-kee country to his red children. The smoke-wreathed film blots this aboriginal picture from our view, but as we listen, we hear the monotonous chant of the Indians echoing through the solemn stillness of the night.

In this wooded silence the wild animals find a refuge; the gentle doe, with her fawn, slips through the shadows; the red fox cautiously watches for her prey; the black bear, with her chubby cub, scents the custard apple and the palmetto bud; the raccoon skulks through the tangled underbrush and the cunning otter darts through the fish-laden stream in quest of his midnight meal; the snowy egret, the heron, the eagle and the bittern, with countless migratory birds from the North American continent, find in this wild solitude a winter refuge. Gorgeously colored butterflies infest the flowers of the Everglade prairies and in their flights, ascending and descending over their island homes, form clouds shimmering with color and animation.

Today this Big Cypress is an empire of pristine wonder, prehistoric in its dramatic and weird jungle setting. Epitomized into the terse verbiage of Perley Poore-Sheehan, one of America’s rising young authors and a sympathetic friend of the Florida Seminoles, “To cut the Big Cypress up into lots and acres would be like turning the Yosemite into an onion garden; it would be like turning the Yellowstone Park into a factory town.”

As we close our eyes to this picture of primeval life in the “Land of the Seminole,” with the thought of war and famine and killing, which has so recently touched the heartstrings of every American, these questions confront one: “Who are the barbarians of the twentieth century, the Caucasian or the red man of the primeval forests?” You ask, “How long did it take to educate and civilize the Anglo-Saxon race?” According to authentic history, the work of civilizing Europe and bringing the mass of the barbarians under the subjection of the law was the work of fully one thousand years.

_Is Europe civilized today?_

VISITORS FROM THE EVERGLADES.

This is a day of “ether wave thoughts.” The “inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” are the searchlights piercing the dark corners of every cranny in the universe. Like sun motes, human sympathy has entered the Indian’s domain and is vibrating in harmony for the American red man--acting as a torch of liberty, showing the pale-face his belated duty to the original American.

If the American Indian were not worthy a place in the world’s history, would his memory be perpetuated by his white conquerors? As an idealistic type this twentieth century is rushing to pay him a tribute. Is there a white American who would dare to place before a Congressional body a bill for the erection of a colossal statue of the African to stand beside the Goddess of Liberty in New York harbor?

The American Indian, in bronze, is to have this honor, and to ex-President Taft was assigned the honor of lifting the first spadeful of soil at the dedication services, where Indian and white man stood as equals in this official function.

In the Nation’s Hall of Fame in the Capitol at Washington, the inventor of the Cherokee alphabet, Sequoyah, an Indian, is honored with a place.

An Indian head is on the five-dollar bill, as well as on the five-cent piece. To the practical mind, let us not forget that Teehee, the American Indian, must sign our currency before it is passed by the Treasury Department.

In military tactics the name of no greater genius adorns the pages of history than that of Florida’s patriot--Osceola, the Seminole.

With all due respect to the immortal Washington, who remembers that he was safely guided by a nameless red man through the pathless wilderness to Fortress Duquesne?

Without the Delaware Indians, General Washington’s advance upon the British on that eventful Christmas eve of 1777 would never have been recorded in history.

And, in the late European war, do you know that thousands of Indians volunteered--not as drafted men, not for their homes, nor their States, but for their native land of America?

Cadet Long Lance, the American Indian of our own Southland, as First Lieutenant of the Princess Pat Regiment, brought enduring fame to the Cherokees, standing his ground at the terrific assault of Vimy Ridge--bringing back the standardbearer, the only officer of his rank left in the company.

The instinctive eloquence of Coacoochee, the Seminole chieftain, in his speech to our American General Worth, made him the peer of a Clay or a Calhoun, while the great Seneca chieftain, Logan, delivered the most eloquent oration ever compiled in American history.

In poetry, in romance, in legends and folk-lore literature of America, we must look to the American Indian.

It was by the blue waters of Ontario that the great Onondaga chieftain’s Hiawatha, formulated plans for the first Peace League. Today, “Peace, peace,” is not only the wounded cry of the world, but its solution is being echoed and re-echoed throughout every nation of the globe.

After looking through pages of history for a model, the youth of America, the Boy Scouts and the Camp Fire Girls, have taken the Indian for their hero.

Can anyone doubt the superiority of the Indian character?

To Pocahontas, the glorification of saving Virginia from utter destruction is well known, and to this Lady Rebecca of the English courts many Americans proudly trace direct descent, to this girl princess.

To Florida belongs the first romance of American history. In this life story of U-lee-lah, the Princess of Hirrihigua, Florida’s Pocahontas, is a setting for as dramatic a recital as ever adorned the pages of literature.

In Florida, particularly, do the descendants of the old, turbanned Seminoles appeal to the people. So uniform is a kindly feeling to these Indians that the man who would show any opposition to a charity or friendliness to them would soon find himself in the minority, and discredit would reflect, not on the Indian, but on the man himself.

It is always a gala time when these brown-skinned people visit Kissimmee. When a prepaid telegram, as a forerunner of his arrival, was received from the Chieftain, a bystander remarked: “I would rather see Billie Bowlegs than the President of the United States.” When crowds gathered at the station and children lined the streets to get a glimpse of these picturesque aborigines, it looked as if the tourist’s wish voiced the thought of the community and illustrated the point that sentiment does not change with the passing of a century, for it was in 1820 that Count D., a young French nobleman, after coming all the way from France to meet Chief Red Jacket, the last of the Senecas, declared that he considered Chief Red Jacket a greater wonder than the falls of Niagara. This remark was made while standing in view of the great cataract.

A visit from these silent dwellers of the Everglades always revives interest in the race, for through living authors one may study the life story of these people--a story dating back in its traditions for more than three hundred years; brought to the doors of a sympathetic civilization, the citadel of the hardest heart is touched, for it is a narrative full of pathos.

Here, in the rich Kissimmee Valley, are the camping grounds and council seats of his ancestors. With wordless patience he looks out upon the landscape and the glittering waters of To-hope-kee-li-ga and for the time lives in spirit with the heroic deeds of his ancestors; he sees in the long ago canoes laden with men and women and little children, brown-skinned and picturesque, garbed in brilliant colors, leaving the ancestral shores of their old hunting grounds, as they escaped, terror-stricken, through the lakes and rivers to the mystic land of O-kee-cho-bee.

Today, naught remains of the Seminoles in this region save the melodious names of rivers, lakes and towns--an enduring heritage of beauty, which is one of Florida’s most cherished and priceless possessions.

To study the history of a secretive people, whose story is so closely woven into our own American history, is a research work full of difficulties, but full of happy surprises.

Away from the jungle home, in the white man’s town, the Seminole is silent and stoical, answering to the questions put to him by the curious “Me don’t know.”

The Seminole discerns character quickly, and while seemingly indifferent, if he is with you but a few minutes, his keen powers of observation will pierce you through and through, and he has, with a keenness born of centuries of “watchful waiting,” made an understudy of your honesty or your inner self.

It is around the wigwam camp fire and the Sofka kettle that the Indian relaxes; there he is a big-souled host, extending the same hospitality that welcomed the European four hundred years ago. Laughter and jokes abound; news of the outside world is recounted; the squaws bring the prize pumpkin to be admired, and the rippling laughter of the children, as they gather firewood for the white friend, is beautiful in its soft cadenced melody.

In the friendly white man’s home, when the shyness of many moons of separation has worn off, the Indians give many unique accounts of life in the wigwam dwellings; they tell of the canals being cut through their Everglade country and the “big smoke” from the engines, and the great influx of white settlers that have come into this swamp country.

Facetiously adding: “White man, money want to make ’em too fast, rain come, water too much, money lose ’em ojus (much). Go back, say Everglades ho-lo wagus (no good). No come again.”

The Seminoles acknowledge that their hunting grounds are gone and that the pale-face has slaughtered the game, admitting, after much pressure, that the Indians sometimes go hungry. _Hungry in a land like Florida!_

A visit from these people of the darksome Glade forests is always fraught with kindly attention. Nothing but a heartfelt kindness is shown them, and a tribute paid to them, not because of any other interest in the Indian, but because they are the representatives of a proud and noble race and the American people are hero worshippers.

It is a question if any celebrity could have been treated with greater courtesy. Crowds sought to extend a greeting; parents brought their young children to shake the hands of these ambassadors of a race that is vanishing so fast. It was not an interest of idle curiosity, but a genuine, tender solicitude. This need not surprise, for an inborn and instinctive admiration must be felt for a people through whose veins flow the purest blood of any of the American Indians today, and who live and practice the same ceremonies of their ancient ancestors.

_Not a drop of the white man’s blood courses through the veins of an Everglade Seminole!_

Many small gifts were bestowed upon these silent visitors; men of capital from far-away States, tourists and old friends, took the time to go to the stores to purchase such presents as they thought would please the Indians.

Kodaks and camera men kept busy. The guests of the hotel, retired business men, as well as the women and children, vied with each other in having a souvenir picture, showing themselves in friendly relation with these red people of the forest.