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?