The Seminoles of Florida

by Minnie Moore-Willson

Thus we have dispossessed the original owners of as goodly a land as the sun ever shone upon, a land that cost us nothing but the beads of the early adventurers and the bullets of their successors, a race, savages ’tis true, but heroes many of them, and proud and courtly as their conquerors.

The American people expend thousands of dollars annually in scientific research for antiquities and many more thousands are spent by the antiquarian for the preservation of the relics and ancient records. The North American Indian is fast vanishing from the continent. Are not the Seminoles of Florida, the descendants of the old monarchs, this race around which shadowy romance hovers, as worthy of preservation as the inanimate treasures of ancient Egypt? Are there no Rameses in American history? In the old turbaned tribe of Florida, we have a remnant of the most picturesque, deserving and moral of all the Aborigines of America, and they belong to a type that is everywhere else extinct. Are they not worth preserving and protecting to a point worthy the proud and historic name of Seminole?

Secure in the mysterious marshes, these Indians present an eloquent picture of a helpless wandering tribe.

At the close of the war, a few bands of the Indians refused to submit to banishment and, concealing themselves in the fastnesses of the Everglades, made their removal an impossibility. This part of the tribe, according to their traditions, belonged originally to the Aztec race and for this reason they claim a preëminence over all the tribes of Aborigines of America.

Though defeated in war, they never submitted to the Government of the United States, and hence regard themselves as more valiant in defense, more determined in purpose than that part of the tribe which succumbed to emigration to the Indian Territory; in fact, the old chieftains say of the Indians who emigrated, “Arkansas Indians, cowards and traitors.”

So to-day the Seminoles of Florida occupy a unique position with respect to the United States Government, as, being unconquered and unsubdued, having no legal existence nor allegiance to our Nation; in short, so far as the United States is concerned officially, there are no Indians in Florida.

The tribe to-day numbers about 600 souls, living at peace with all mankind, independent, but suspicious of Washington officials, only asking to be let alone, a homeless people in a free land, ever pushing on before the insatiable cupidity of the white man.

An inexorable decree has forced the Florida Indian into the most desolate lands of Florida. Where they once trod as masters they now fear to place foot. We cannot be unmoved by the thought that here are the tattered and poverty stricken handfuls of a tribe of warriors that held at bay a strong government for half a century, a tribe that counted their cattle, their lands and their slaves in magnificent proportions. At the present time, to avoid complications with the South Florida cattle herders none of the race are permitted to own cattle. There is a certain pathos in the Indian’s story of his relation to the white race, which arrests our attention and compels sympathy. But, it is destiny! What of the future? Touch any point in the red man’s history, where you will, or how you will, and the helpless savage always gets the worst of it.

There is no use in muck-raking about it. We are leisurely taking our time at finishing the extermination of the original American. Whether or not the future historian chronicles this as a century of dishonor, the fact remains that, since he could not withstand the white faces, the Indian will go—pass out of existence.