The Seminoles

Abstract

Miss FRANCES DENSMORE, who has recently returned to Washington from Florida, reports a somewhat unusual attitude of aloofness towards the whites and their civilisation on the part of the Seminole Indians of the Everglades. Apparently they have never become entirely reconciled since the great Seminole wars at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Miss Densmore visited these Indians on behalf of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., with the view of the investigation of their music, and although she had been assured that the Seminoles had no songs, she was successful, in the end, in obtaining two hundred phonograph records. In a preliminary statement issued by the Smithsonian Institution, Miss Densmore says that the Seminoles are ruled by ‘old men’, who remain in seclusion in the Everglades and are rarely seen. A rule is imposed upon the people that they are not to learn, or at least to speak, English. Intercourse with the whites is conducted by signs, except that sometimes they will name prices for the articles they wish to sell. They pride themselves on being a full-blood tribe, and a recent count gave 17 mixed bloods only in a population of 500.