Can anyone doubt the superiority of the Indian character?
To Pocahontas, the glorification of saving Virginia from utter destruction is well known, and to this Lady Rebecca of the English courts many Americans proudly trace direct descent, to this girl princess.
To Florida belongs the first romance of American history. In this life story of U-lee-lah, the Princess of Hirrihigua, Florida’s Pocahontas, is a setting for as dramatic a recital as ever adorned the pages of literature.
In Florida, particularly, do the descendants of the old, turbanned Seminoles appeal to the people. So uniform is a kindly feeling to these Indians that the man who would show any opposition to a charity or friendliness to them would soon find himself in the minority, and discredit would reflect, not on the Indian, but on the man himself.
It is always a gala time when these brown-skinned people visit Kissimmee. When a prepaid telegram, as a forerunner of his arrival, was received from the Chieftain, a bystander remarked: “I would rather see Billie Bowlegs than the President of the United States.” When crowds gathered at the station and children lined the streets to get a glimpse of these picturesque aborigines, it looked as if the tourist’s wish voiced the thought of the community and illustrated the point that sentiment does not change with the passing of a century, for it was in 1820 that Count D., a young French nobleman, after coming all the way from France to meet Chief Red Jacket, the last of the Senecas, declared that he considered Chief Red Jacket a greater wonder than the falls of Niagara. This remark was made while standing in view of the great cataract.
A visit from these silent dwellers of the Everglades always revives interest in the race, for through living authors one may study the life story of these people—a story dating back in its traditions for more than three hundred years; brought to the doors of a sympathetic civilization, the citadel of the hardest heart is touched, for it is a narrative full of pathos.
Here, in the rich Kissimmee Valley, are the camping grounds and council seats of his ancestors. With wordless patience he looks out upon the landscape and the glittering waters of To-hope-kee-li-ga and for the time lives in spirit with the heroic deeds of his ancestors; he sees in the long ago canoes laden with men and women and little children, brown-skinned and picturesque, garbed in brilliant colors, leaving the ancestral shores of their old hunting grounds, as they escaped, terror-stricken, through the lakes and rivers to the mystic land of O-kee-cho-bee.
Today, naught remains of the Seminoles in this region save the melodious names of rivers, lakes and towns—an enduring heritage of beauty, which is one of Florida’s most cherished and priceless possessions.
To study the history of a secretive people, whose story is so closely woven into our own American history, is a research work full of difficulties, but full of happy surprises.