A few minutes later, little Mop-o-hatch-ee sat on a chair, her feet swinging, and rubbing her eyes to stay the tears. “She ’fraid you keep her,” the older Indian explained, and the boy with the same fear had slipped off to his sleeping quarters.
Love for their Everglade home is instilled into every Seminole. They love the country bequeathed by their ancestors—the gift of the Great Spirit to his red children of Florida, with a love that is, at times, frenzied in its demonstration.
To see to it, that these native people have protection, education and Christianity, must be the duty of this America of ours, this America which stands ready to protect the weak and the oppressed of all nations.
When the citizenship of this liberty loving country awakens to the needs of the stranded red race of 600 souls in the heart of the Big Cypress, then, and not till then will these original owners be led out of the darkness of a conquered people into the light of progress and civilization.
It is not surprising that thousands of our Florida tourists make efforts to see the descendants of America’s primeval people. Many times attempts are made by the adventurous tourist to visit a Seminole village in the secluded cypress region of the Glade Wilderness; but alas! after dragging themselves over the marshy, cutting saw-grass prairies, they find what? A deserted camp, possibly the coals still burning in the camp fire, but the Indians, hie-pus (all gone) hiding in some secret haunt.
Still, it is a common sight, particularly at Miami to see a Seminole family as they pole the rude craft, a dugout cypress canoe, along the river.
Dressed in a way, bizarre and ludicrous, to our white man’s way of thinking, still strikingly dignified.
The brave poles the boat while the squaws watch the family belongings. At the other end of the boat, a group of round faced and exceedingly quiet little Seminoles brightly garbed in red and blue calico, sit, much more interested in the shadows in the water, than in the people on shore.
It is but natural that Americans, who know the Seminole, should feel an innate respect for them, especially if we reflect that the strain of the old Aztec runs through their veins and produces the same heroic fortitude that made Guatemotziu, the last of the Aztec Emperors, under the torture of fire by Cortez, reply with ironical stoicism to his persecutors, “Am I on a bed of roses?”