The Seminoles of Florida

by Minnie Moore-Willson

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.

OSCEOLA—THE NAPOLEON OF 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.