So far as there is a common seat of government, it is located at Fish Eating Creek, where reside the head chief and big medicine man of
the Seminole, Tûs-ta-nûg-ge, and his brother, Hŏs-pa-ta-ki, also a medicine man. These two are called the Tus-ta-nûg-ul-ki, or “great heroes” of the tribe. At this settlement, annually, a council, composed of minor chiefs from the various settlements, meets and passes upon the affairs of the tribe.
[ TRIBAL OFFICERS.]
What the official organization of the tribe is I do not know. My respondent could not tell me. I learned, in addition to what I have just written, only that there are several Indians with official titles, living at each of the settlements, except at the one on Cat Fish Lake. These were classified as follows:
| Settlements | Chief and medicine man. | War chiefs | Little chiefs | Medicine men. |
| Big Cypress Swamp | 2 | 2 | 1 | |
| Miami River | 1 | 1 | ||
| Fish Eating Creek | 1 | 1 | ||
| Cow Creek | 2 | |||
| Total | 1 | 3 | 2 | 5 |
[ NAME OF TRIBE.]
I made several efforts to discover the tribal name by which these Indians now designate themselves. The name Seminole they reject. In their own language it means “a wanderer,” and, when used as a term of reproach, “a coward.” Ko-nip-ha-tco said, “Me no Sem-ai-no-le; Seminole cow, Seminole deer, Seminole rabbit; me no Seminole. Indians gone Arkansas Seminole.” He meant that timidity and flight from danger are “Seminole” qualities, and that the Indians who had gone west at the bidding of the Government were the true renegades. This same Indian informed me that the people south of the Caloosahatchie River, at Miami and the Big Cypress Swamp call themselves “Kän-yuk-sa Is-ti-tca-ti,” i.e., “Kän-yuk-sa red men.” Kän-yuk-sa is their word for what we know as Florida. It is composed of I-kan-a, “ground,” and I-yuk-sa, “point” or “tip,” i.e., point of ground, or peninsula. At the northern camps the name appropriate to the people there, they say, is “Tallahassee Indians.”