THE FRIENDS OF THE FLORIDA SEMINOLES.
A few years ago great interest was manifested in these Florida wards, when a Society called “The Friends of the Florida Seminoles” was organized at Kissimmee, Fla., with the Rev. William Crane Gray, Bishop of the South Florida Episcopal Church, President; Rev. D. A. Dodge, Vice-president; Mr. James M. Willson, Jr., Secretary, and State Senator C. A. Carson, Treasurer. Other officers (trustees) were the late George W. Wilson, Editor-in-chief of the Florida Times-Union; Hon. J. R. Parrott, President of the Florida East Coast Railroad Co., and Capt. F. M. Hendry, Fort Myers, Fla.
This body, assisted by the active interest and sympathy of Gov. W. D. Bloxam, Mr. P. A. Van Agnew, and Mr. Kirk Munroe, made it possible for the Society to accomplish its State-wide results, numbering among its members philanthropic people from Maine to California.
The object of this society was to enlist the sympathy of the American people for these homeless people and to strenuously oppose the removal of the Seminoles from the State against their consent. No really true American, whether he be an Indian sympathizer or not, can feel any but sympathy for the Florida Seminole if he understand the true status of his condition, and when the Society of the Friends of the Florida Seminoles was established, a great wave of sympathy was felt all over the country and requests for membership came in from all ranks, the highest circles of finance, from social leaders, educational centers and government officials. It was recognized an honor to belong to the organization.
The membership list is still open and the Society earnestly appeals to the people of America to take a friendly interest in the future fate of this forlorn remnant, who are one of Florida’s most native possessions, and to aid in securing for them permanent homes in the unsettled portions of the State before it is too late.
The interest and work of the Society was greatly aided through the editorial columns of Harper’s Weekly, when Edward S. Martin made an appeal in behalf of that band of Seminoles known as the Cow Creeks. The object was to purchase a tract of land on which was located about seventy-five Indians. They had lived here for thirty years, cultivating part of the land and using the rest as a range for their hogs, but as they had no legal title to the land, they were at the mercy of squatters who coveted them. About four hundred dollars were raised, but when the attempt was made to locate these Indians, cowboys and land-grabbers had alarmed them, by telling them that the Government was getting ready to round them up and take them West, and like frightened deer they left their homes and retired again to the swamp fastnesses.
The Society purchased some fields upon which the Indians were camping with Harper’s fund—the remainder of the funds being held in trust for its original purpose. The Society secured great public sentiment in their favor, and hoped to obtain lands through legislation. Centuries of wrong from hands too powerful to be resisted have taught these red Americans the patience of despair.
Amid the blessings of Christianity, the Seminole is an outcast from sympathy and an alien to hope, yet he has never ceased to be manly. While we protect the deer and the alligator, the quail and the fish, shall we leave our brother in bronze a prey to the lawless and a helpless victim of every loafer?
The only way to protect these wards of Florida is to buy a reservation, and hold it in trust for them—forever.
Even at this writing, that trackless waste of saw-grass and water with its scattering islands and lagoons, constitutes the great political question among Florida people—the drainage of the Everglades.
A SEMINOLE CAMP-FIRE
The Indian mode of making a fire.
We cannot but admire the proud and independent spirit of the Seminole as he refuses, in firm but Indian-like measures, the proffered liberality of a Government which he believes has wronged him. And, from his high pinnacle of pride, he certainly bears the distinction of being the only American who has been found unwilling to share the spoils of the nation. So he says, “We have listened to the great father at Washington. The Great Spirit wishes no change in his red children. If you teach our children the knowledge of the white people, they will cease to be Indians. To know how to read and write is very good for white men, but very bad for red men. Long time ago, some of our fathers wrote upon a little piece of paper without the nation knowing anything about it. When the agent called the Indians together he told them the little paper was a treaty which their brethren had made with the great father at Washington, and lo! they found that their brethren by knowing how to write, had sold their lands and the graves of their fathers to the white race. Tell our great father at Washington that we want no schools, neither books, for reading and writing makes very bad Indians. We are satisfied. Let us alone.” After this speech delivered in the native tongue, the council breaks up, and the proud Seminole betakes himself to the Everglades. The Seminole is disposed to make a child’s bargain with the big white chief: “You let me alone, and I will let you alone.”
Photographs of the Carlisle Indian boys have been used to illustrate the improvement which follows education; but the Seminole youth turns away with disdain, as he notes the closely shaven head and the American dress, and says, “Indian no want books, make ’em white man, white man mean heap lie too much.” With a gesture faithful to the Indian, he refers to the “long time ago, Seminoles had lands, cattle, slaves; white man steal ’em.” This statement of the Indians is corroborated by the old white settlers of to-day, who fought the Indians. They tell that General Jessup’s army, on coming to the great cattle country of South Florida, began a systematic slaughter of all the cattle found. A body of soldiers, too large to fear an attack, would round up a herd of the Indian’s cattle and sitting on their horses, shoot them all down. Up to this time the Indians were regular stock dealers, their customers being the Cubans and Minorcans. General Jessup’s report of his march into the “Indian country,” says, “On the 28th (January, 1837), the army moved forward and occupied a strong position on ‘Ta-hop-ka-li-ga’ Lake, where several hundred head of cattle were obtained.”
The tribe to-day are taught by the chiefs to regard the whites, in general, as lacking in honor and courage, weak and insignificant, or in Seminole dialect, “white man—ho-lo-wa-gus” (no good). This is easily understood when we consider the strong attachment an Indian bears to his native hunting grounds; and when the memory runs back to the time when our Government banished their friends and relatives to the unknown wilds of the West, and they went silent and weeping toward the setting sun. Their bitterness is consistent with their ideas of injustices practiced upon them.
History, romance and poetry have held up the characteristics of the red man to our gaze from childhood. And while treachery may be a distinguishing feature of the Indian nature, yet the lowest one of them has some conception of honor when fairly approached. History shows that all through the Seminole war, misrepresentations and dishonorable schemes were practiced against them by the whites. Almost universal sympathy goes out to this remnant of people who fought so bravely and so persistently for the land of their birth, for their homes, for the burial place of their kindred. As their traditions tell them of the oppression their people suffered as they wandered in the wilderness thrice forty years, who can tell the secret of their hearts? To do this, it would be necessary to become, for the time, an Indian, to put ourselves in his place—and what white man has ever done this? Ask the waters of Tohopeliga, or the winds that waft across Okeechobee. To the elements are whispered the heart throbs of these red fawns of the forest. The present Florida Indians are descendants of that invincible tribe who were never conquered by the force of arms. Refusing in 1842 to accompany their people to the mysterious West, they ceased to exist save for themselves. Finding refuge in the almost inaccessible Everglades, they were for a time almost lost to the historian. They have no legal existence, and hence no rights that a white man is bound, by law, to respect. There are no Indian troubles in Florida at present, but every few months a cry comes from hungry land-grabbers, or from trappers and hunters, that the Seminoles are killing off the deer and plume birds. The changing conditions in the lower peninsular country will eventually lead up to difficulties; and “Where shall we locate the Indians?” becomes a serious problem.
The Florida Times-Union editorially says:
All the murderous, cut-throat, unkempt and squalid Indians in the United States whom the Government fears are provided with reservations and such luxuries as they never before had in their lives, but the Seminoles of Florida, the finest specimens of Indian manhood in this country, clean in body, pure in morals, and as brave as the lion that roams the desert, with whom so many treaties have been wantonly broken, are being driven farther and farther into the Everglades and their hunting grounds confiscated to the land grabbers. Is this justice?
Should the whites drive off the Seminoles, and thus approve their greed for land by taking the possessions the Indians now occupy, what good would it do them? Internal improvement companies, by their franchises, would sooner or later take the blood-stained acres from them. Let settlers in Florida, or in any part of the country, turn over their accounts and see how many acres have been credited to them, either from the State or from the general Government, without the equivalent of homesteading or for cash. The “Western” style of disposing of the Indian’s inheritance must not be followed in fair Florida. It seems hard that these natives who ask no aid of our nation, should be forced to the wall by the march of civilization. To the Western Indians, under the protection of the Government, and supplied in a large measure by the taxes which civilization pays, pages are devoted by philanthropists for the betterment of their condition. The rights of the Seminoles of Florida should be defended. The day is not far distant when they must be made to go to the reservation in Arkansas or to lands set apart for them in Florida. To remove them from their tropical homes to the chilling blasts of the Indian Territory would be an act of cruelty and wholly unnecessary. Those of us who have enjoyed life in this land of the palm, this land of the balmy air and life-giving sunshine, reveling in the eternal bloom of the flowers and the ceaseless song of the birds, can well picture the struggle it would cost the patient Seminole to be forced to a cold western land. No, fair Florida, the ancestors of these proud people were forced to the country of the setting sun silent and dejected. But, with the spirit of Osceola, if they must perish, it will be here—here upon the land of their birth, upon the graves of their kindred. The lands they now occupy are of little value to the white race and might be made a safe reserve for them—forever. Cowboys who hunt upon the Okeechobee plains, say the Indians are peaceably disposed and friendly, and have never yet disturbed or threatened. They are certainly not foot-sore for the warpath and are fearful of doing anything to arouse the whites. “Indian no fight,” is the answer to the questioner. They have sense enough to know that if war should come again it would mean extermination for them; and their love for the “Flower Land” is so deep that the thought of exile would cost a struggle they dare not attempt. Yet, feeble remnant that they are, with the same heroic blood coursing their veins that inspired their ancestors and made them almost invulnerable, the present Seminole would choose to die rather than submit to removal. And in their swampy fastnesses, they could maintain a contest that would cost us thousands of dollars and many precious lives.