Seminole Indian Research Articles

Seminole Food: Patterns of Indigenous Foodways in South Florida, 1855 to 1917

Few systematic historical studies of Seminole Indian foodways in Florida exist, fewer even for the critical period between Removal and World War I. This paper aims to fill the gap in related foodways and historical literature, while establishing a starting point for zooarchaeological and archaeobotanical studies on the topic. It addresses the issue from the ground up, developing an inventory of Seminole selective preferences in terms of food and tracking changes in those preferences over time. The study borrows the use of presence/absence matrices from archaeology to facilitate that analysis, treating an extensive set of related documents as a stratified matrix in which historical observations of Seminole food consumption are recorded by food type. It relies on Seminole oral histories to supplement the document index by providing additional information as to food preferences and taboos. Results of data analysis lead me to the conclusion that two complimentary channels of foodways existed among Seminole Indians in South Florida at the time: (1) a conservative channel that maintained symbolically and nutritionally important foods and, (2) a more flexible channel that allowed for the incorporation of supplementary foods of various origins.

Chipco’s House and the Role of the Individual in Shaping Seminole Indian Cultural Responses to the Modern World

The use of documentary sources resulting from late-19th-century interactions between Florida Seminole Indians and agents of the U.S. government reveals that individual Seminoles responded to the outside world favorably through the adoption of new technologies, housing styles, and other ways viewed as “progressive” by the government observers. Viewing these individuals as agents of cosmopolitanism allows archaeologists to consider the role of the individual as a source of cultural variation that can be expressed in the archaeological record. A theoretical perspective that sees the individual as a source of creative response provides for a nuanced and complex view of past human behavior; less abstract, and closer to the reality of the human experience. In the Seminole case, styles of house building labeled as desirably progressive are shown to have deeper historical roots and reappear in the late 1800s as a selective response to renewed contact with American society after a period of isolation.

The Haitian Connection in Connie May Fowler’s Sugar Cage

SUZANNE W. JONES University of Richmond The Haitian Connection in Connie May Fowler’s Sugar Cage IN HER FIRST NOVEL, SUGAR CAGE (1992), CONNIE MAY FOWLER, A WHITE Floridian with Cherokee ancestry and an early exposure to Voodoo, employs some of the narrative conventions of magical realism as a way around the impasse of Southern race relations in Florida in the 1960s. Her otherwise modernist narrative technique of nine first-person narrators emphasizes the isolation of her characters at the same time that the variety of viewpoints encourages readers to see both the interracial and international connections that elude or confuse her characters. The culturalandtransnationalcomplexitiessheexplores,especiallyasregards the importation of African and Haitian belief systems and Florida’s reliance on Haitian migrant workers, make magical realism an interesting, if perhaps contested, connective tissue between black and white worlds in Florida.1 In exploring the historical circumstances that produced South American magical realism, circumstances similar to those in the US South, Antonio Benítez-Rojo argues that Caribbean revolutionary discourses, which reacted to slavery, colonialism, and the plantation economy, inform the genre. He believes that such discourses when “passing into the genres of literature” attempt “to decenter the 1 Differing views, such as those by Arnold Krupat and Richard Fleck, about whether the term “magical realism” should be applied to Native American fiction are pertinent to Fowler’s depiction of Voodoo rituals in Sugar Cage. At the root of the debate is a question about whether the term “magical realism” devalues what westerners would identify as “magic” in such texts, thereby denying what constitutes a nonwestern reality (and so making realism a more accurate descriptor for such fiction) or whether magical realism functions as Lois Zamora and Wendy Faris argue, “as a cultural corrective, requiring readers to scrutinize accepted realistic conventions of causality, materiality, motivation” (3). Lee Schweninger presents a helpful overview of the debate in “Myth Launching and Moon Landings.” He focuses on whether the alternative “realities” in Native American fiction should be seen as parallel (and so in keeping with the conventions of realism), braided, or fused. Applying these categories to Fowler’s Sugar Cage, the answer seems to vary: her presentation of Voodoo rituals suggests a parallel coexisting reality, the clairvoyance of Inez and Soleil Marie hints at braided natural and supernatural aspects of reality, while the fantastic ending of the novel represents a fused reality employed as a “cultural corrective.” 84 Suzanne W. Jones violence of their origins with their own excess, looking for legitimation in their own illegitimacy” (212-13). In a large cast of characters, Fowler’s most compelling focus is on a young interracial couple and an old African American cleaning woman, but the novel’s many subplots manifest a palpable desire to reach a sphere of “effective equality” which Benítez-Rojo attributes to creole cultures, “where the racial, social, and cultural differences that conquest, colonization, and slavery created would coexist without violence” (52). This is just the place that several of Fowler’s characters reach by the conclusion of Sugar Cage, crossing color lines, belief systems, and national boundaries to make personal connections, although hardly to effect institutional changes. Set in the seedy central Florida town of Tiama, “Prison Capital of the World,” the novel begins in 1945, spans more than two decades, and examines the race relations of two generations of Southerners. By including a migrant worker of mixed Haitian and Seminole Indian ancestry in her story of Southern race relations, Fowler complicates the received biracial history of the South and presents the interracial romance between Soleil Marie BeauvoirandEmoryLooneyasamodelforinterpersonaltransformation. At the same time, she shows how agribusiness has produced a neo-plantation system that exploits migrant workers of color and lingers to the present day. At one time or another all nine narrators of Sugar Cage are imprisoned within their own narrow perspectives, and their individual stories are about moving beyond these “cages.” Fowler creates two exceptions, characters who because of their prescience and supernatural powers take the novel into the realm of magical realism: Soleil Marie Beauvoir, a racially mixed Haitian-Seminole cane field worker, and Inez Temple, a poor African American cleaning woman. Voodoo provides a spiritual and cultural link...

Mixed Race in the Seminole Nation

This is a story of two hidden identities. It focuses on the family history of Phil Wilkes Fixico (aka Philip Vincent Wilkes and Pompey Bruner Fixico), a contemporary Seminole maroon descendant of mixed race who lives in Los Angeles. Phil is one-eighth Seminole Indian, one-quarter Seminole freedman, one-eighth Creek freedman, one-quarter Cherokee-freedman, and one-quarter African-American-white. His family history records that his paternal grandfather was the offspring of a Seminole Indian woman and a Seminole freedman, but that this “intermarriage” was kept secret from the Dawes Commission and the boy was enrolled as a “fullblood” Indian. This one union and the subsequent history of the family tell us a great deal about relations between Seminoles and freedmen in the Indian Territory and Oklahoma and about status and identity issues among individuals of mixed race within American society. With tragic irony, Phil's parents also hid the identity of his biological father, echoing the story of his grandfather. Sensing family secrets and lies, young Phil experienced an identity crisis. Eventually discovering his father's identity and his family history, Phil turned his life around. He has embraced his mixed-race heritage, connected with the Seminole maroon communities in Oklahoma, Texas, and Mexico, and become a creative and energetic tribal historian.

High Stakes

In this lucidly written, carefully conceived, persuasively argued and thoroughly researched book, Jessica Cattelino studies the ways that members of the Seminole Indian nation have reconfigured material and symbolic forms of their sovereignty in the casino-era. As such, High Stakes makes a valuable contribution to literature on cultural economy, cultural studies, political economy and cultural history in addition to the author’s home discipline of anthropology. It also makes an intellectual intervention at a moment which has seen Indigenous ownership of legal gambling businesses become the object of often contradictory discourses which Cattelino relates to '...more general American anxieties... about the effects of economic power upon cultural difference and the role of differential political status in a democratic multicultural nation'(8).

Nativism, Resistance, and Ethnogenesis of the Florida Seminole Indian Identity

The Seminole Indians of Florida call themselves the “unconquered people,” referring to the years of the Second Seminole War (1835–1842) when the U.S. Army failed to remove them to Indian Territory. Although the Seminoles have diverse origins and a deep cultural foundation in the prehistoric Southeast, their modern identity can be traced to this era of military conflict. Nativistic resistance movements aided by a strengthening of clan ties formed an adaptive response to the threat of cultural extinction and fueled the process of Seminole ethnogenesis. Using the archaeological record in conjunction with historical and anthropological sources brings a new perspective to the study of ethnogenesis by identifying material dimensions of Seminole resistance and unity. Specifically, the presence and absence of aboriginal versus European American pottery, the presence of military buttons at Seminole sites, and evidence for the ceremonial exchange of wealth by clans are examined as material evidence for the process of identity formation.

Miami Beach: ASHA’s 2006 Convention

Miami Beach: ASHA’s 2006 Convention

Resisting a genetic identity: the black Seminoles and genetic tests of ancestry.

In July 2000, the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma passed a resolution that would effectively expel a significant portion of its tribal members. The resolution amended the Nation's constitution by changing its membership criteria. Previously, potential members needed to show descent from an enrollee of the 1906 Dawes Rolls, the official American Indian tribal rolls established by the Dawes Commission to facilitate the allotment of reservation land. The amended constitution requires possession of one-eighth Seminole Indian blood, a requirement that a significant portion of the tribe's membership cannot fulfill. The members of the Nation who fail to meet this new membership criterion all have one thing in common: they are black.Descendents of former slaves who came to live among the Seminole Indians of Florida in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the black Seminoles have been officially recognized by the U.S. government as members of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma since 1866.

The Seminole Indian Reservations: Conservation of a Subtropical Forest

The Seminole Indian Reservations: Conservation of a Subtropical Forest

Food Habits of Panthers in Southwest Florida

We examined the diet of Florida panthers (Felis concolor coryi) in southwest Florida from 1977 through 1989. Frequency of occurrence in 270 scats indicated wild hog (Sus scrofa) was the most common prey followed by white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), raccoon (Procyon lotor), and 9-banded armadillo (Dasypus novemcinctus). No seasonal variation in diet was found; however, panthers inhabiting an area of better soils consumed more large prey. J. WILDL. MANAGE. 54(3):420-423 The mountain lion is one of the most widely distributed mammals in the Western Hemisphere. In North America it is most abundant in the western United States (Young and Goldman 1946:12) where most studies of the species have been done. The Florida panther represents the only known bre6ding population in eastern North America. As few as 50 individuals inhabit a rapidly changing landscape covering less than 1.5 x 106 ha primarily in south Florida (Maehr 1990). Inasmuch as food quantity and quality are major determinants of vertebrate homerange size (Mace et al. 1984) and reproductive success (Maehr et al. 1989a), an understanding of panther food habits is essential. Published information about foods of the Florida panther is sparse. Allen and Neill (1954) and Belden and Forrester (1980) each described single observations of stomach contents of panthers from southwest Florida. Our objective was to determine the food habits of Florida panthers and to examine geographic and temporal variation in their diet based on scats and kills collected in southwest Florida. We thank W. B. Frankenberger, S. T. Schwikert, J. E. Carlson, J. R. Price, R. A. Bell, J. J. Kappes, J. C. Roboski, K. C. Alvarez, O. R. Bass, and R. T. McBride for assistance with specimen collection. J. C. Roof, J. W. McCown, R. T. McBride, and M. E. Roelke were particularly helpful in many aspects of field work. The assistance of other personnel from Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, Archbold Biological Station, Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve, Big Cypress National Preserve, Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge, Seminole Indian Reservation, and the Collier Companies also is gratefully acknowledged. C. Moore provided statistical assistance. T. H. Logan, T. E. O'Meara, J. L. Schortemeyer, K. A. Logan, and an anonymous reviewer made helpful comments on earlier drafts of the manuscript. J. L. Harris helped with manuscript preparation. This is a contribution of Federal Aid to Endangered Species Program, Florida Endangered Species Project E-l, and the Florida Nongame Trust Fund.

The Idea of Florida in the American Literary Imagination.

From reviews of first edition: Scrupulous yet enjoyable literary criticism, and most enjoyable because it is so surefooted and so strongly practical: It helps you think about what you read about Florida.--St. Petersburg Times Suggests how our national imagination has seized upon one aspect of South and found therein a richness that it can continue to mine.--Modern Fiction Studies Highly recommended.--Choice For Ernest Hemingway, semitropics of Key West offered the last wild country; Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings recaptured a sense of home at Cross Creek that she had experienced since childhood; Henry James vacationed in Palm Beach and St. Augustine and was torn between the velvet air, colour of sea, 'royal' palms clustered here and there and his repugnance for masses who transformed great hotels into Vanity Fair in full blast. They--along with others--came to Florida, and they expressed their experiences in poems, stories, and nonfiction. Beginning with premise that Florida has been perceived in American imagination as not merely a geographic region but an image, a garden, Eden-like, Rowe analyzes representative works of writers from early national period to present who were attracted to state and who found it without parallel in rest of country. Arranged in roughly chronological order, book opens with a chapter on Ralph Waldo Emerson's soothing winter in St. Augustine in 1827 and moves on to accounts by Washington Irving of Seminole Indian wars and by Harriet Beecher Stowe on leisurely life-style she enjoyed in Florida after Civil War. It concludes with a chapter on Wallace Stevens, who found state an enchantress--erotic, willful, and seductive. Though contour of imaginative landscape gives way at times to a view of Florida as a haven for invalids and a playground for rich, Rowe discovers that a singular image of state persists and writes that the Land of Opportunity has been tempered and diverted by languors of a tropical climate washed by Gulf Stream and balm of an always warm sun. Anne E. Rowe is professor of English at Florida State University and author of The Enchanted Country: Northern Writers in South, 1865-1910.

Open-Range Cattle Herding in Antebellum South Florida (1842-1860)

Southeastern Geographer Vol. 26, No. 1, May 1986, pp. 55-67 OPEN-RANGE CATTLE HERDING IN ANTEBELLUM SOUTH FLORIDA (1842-1860)* John Solomon Otto Forty years ago, historian Frank L. Owsley first drew attention to the cattle herders of the Old South (1784—1860) who possessed little land and few slaves, but who owned sizable cattle herds. Despite their lack of land and slaves, herders were economically significant, for they raised impressive numbers of beef cattle for domestic and foreign markets. Herders owned small homesteads, but they grazed their cattle on the unfeneed public lands, or "open-range," at no charge—a practice which was safeguarded by state laws until after the Civil War. Although cattle herders were found throughout the Old South, they were especially numerous on the coastal plain, where most of the land was unfeneed public domain. From Florida to Texas, herders raised cattle on the open-range, producing beef for Southern cities as well as for the West Indies. (J) During the past two decades, geographers and historians have rediscovered the Southern cattle herders and their economic significance. (2) The economic importance of cattle herding in the Old South is reflected in the federal census of 1860. From Florida to Texas, there was a patchwork of counties in 1860 which contained three or more cattle for each person in the county. Any antebellum county with a cattle-topeople ratio in excess of three to one was capable of producing a marketable surplus of beef cattle. (3) The highest cattle-to-people ratios in the Old South were found in south Texas. In 1860, the four south Texas counties of Refugio, San Patricio , Live Oak, and Bee recorded cattle-to-people ratios of 98 to one, 83 to one, 44 to one, and 41 to one respectively. (4) Given this huge cattle surplus, south Texas was the scene of an antebellum cattle herding industry which has been studied by scholars ranging from historian Walter P. Webb to geographer Terry G. Jordan. (5) The second highest cattle-to-people ratios in the Old South were * Research funds were provided by a National Endowment for the Humanities "State, Local and Regional Studies" grant. Dr. Otto is Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742. 56Southeastern Geographer found in south Florida. By 1860, three south Florida counties of Manatee , Brevard, and Hillsborough (Fig. 1) posted cattle-to-people ratios of 37 to one, 31 to one, and 13 to one respectively. (6) And given this sizable cattle surplus, south Florida was also the scene of commerical cattle herding. But unlike south Texas, the antebellum cattle industry of South Florida has been largely overlooked by historians and geographers . (7) This scholarly neglect of antebellum south Florida is hardly surprising , since the region was the ultima Thule of the Old South. It was an isolated frontier, which attracted little attention during the antebellum years. South Florida, however, did attract some settlers, and occasionally one of them described the region in articles which were published in antebellum agricultural journals. Few antebellum settlers in south Florida failed to mention the sandy pinewoods which dominated the landscape. (8) These barren lands supported little more than scattered pine trees, "dwarf palmettos ," and "wiregrass." (9) Though pinewoods land was "worthless for agricultural purposes," it was unsurpassed "as a grazing country." Thanks to the mild south Florida winters, grass grew "most luxuriantly ," and cattle were "amply supplied" at "all seasons of the year." Consequently, the "large majority of the population on the southern portion of the [Florida] peninsula" were cattle herders, grazing their stock on the expanses of pinewoods range. (JO) SETTLEMENT OF ANTEBELLUM SOUTH FLORIDA. Cattle herders first began entering Florida in 1821, the year that the United States acquired the territory from Spain, but few settled in south Florida since this region lay within the Seminole Indian Reservation. The Treaty of Moultrie Creek (1823) had reserved the interior of Florida, south of what is now Ocala, for the Seminole Indians. Yet, disputes soon arose between the reservation Seminóles and the Florida cattle herders. Seminóles accused herders of trespassing in their reservation, while herders blamed Seminóles for stealing...

Fearless and Free: The Seminole Indian War, 1835-1842.

Fearless and Free: The Seminole Indian War, 1835-1842.

Fearless and Free: The Seminole Indian War, 1835-1842

Fearless and Free: The Seminole Indian War, 1835-1842

Okies by Gerald Haslam

BOOK REVIEWS Okies. By Gerald Haslam. (New West Publications: Penngrove, California, 1973, reissued 1974, paperback, 113 pages, $2.95.) Gerald Haslam’s Okies captures the reader immediately. Scenes and characterization suggest a vision that is sympathetic and affirmative, realistic and unafraid. The conclusion, for this reader, is that Haslam’s short stories are both powerful and delightful. That’s an unusual combination. Usually, in so many contemporary films for example, the attempted combination is undercut by a betrayal of anyone willing to respond to the humanistic appeal: a willing suspension of disbelief is mocked with cynical violence. Not so with Haslam, who can make the humanistic overture to his readers, drive his stories on through scenes of selfishness and violence, and achieve a tough-minded realism which does not betray the reader. The subject is the second-generation Okie, those who fled the Oklahoma dust bowl of the 1930’s as children or who were born in California, many of them as another kind of “Okie,” the Chicano, the migrant farm laborer, the job-to-job laborer in the oil patch. Victims of prejudice, though in various stages of becoming middle-class themselves, these people struggle against the fearful elite, against one another, with their own capacities for love and hate. Typically, Haslam begins with an innocent situation which catches the reader, immediately, because of the remarkably concrete and effective style. Internal monologue, for example, is often used very skillfully to establish character and motivation while the plot continues to move along swiftly. Soon, in ways that are always intrinsic to the characters and their situation, the threat of violence or evil arises. The threat will be mythic in character but not in personality. Haslam does not go to books or to other cultures to find a latent power: the threat of evil or violence is always home-grown. No footnotes are needed, though connections with archetypes could be made by those who like to make them. “Rite of Passage” may be an exception. Admittedly, I once “lived” the 310 Western American Literature story myself, so did my son, and so have millions of others; but it seems a bit contrived to me, and I can only hope my reading of the story was not prejudiced by the academic title. “California Christmas” may track a bit too closely the Biblical story of the loaves and the fishes; “Smile” is an effective portrait of a wino whose internal monologue is an abuse of others for what are actually his own failings too, but it is a one-note story; “Sally Let Her Bangs Hang Down” and “Compañeros” hit as hard as any short stories I have read in a long, long time, but both, in the end, seem to hang fire, lacking a resolution strong enough to measure up to the stories them­ selves. Such reservations, however, are a comment on art and not on Haslam. Structure, I think, must be the most difficult of all the difficult things an artist must achieve to create great art. (Witness Hawthorne for example.) And such reservations — even if valid — are outweighed by excellence. This is, in my opinion, a truly fine group of short stories. “The Doll” and “Before Dishonor” are especially strong, and my personal favorites are “Wild Goose” and “Cowboys.” Although it ismost obvious in the latter two stories, Haslam often uses a joke as a powerful, complicated, and successful way of dramatizing the connection between the commonplace and the universal. In “Cowboys” for example, the most sophisticated of the stories in this selection, the reader is set up to expect a Hollywood shootout to be a practical joke in revenge for an earlier practical joke. As in “Wild Goose,” “The Doll,” and others, however, the final joke — without any tricks by Haslam — is real. And the result is that unusual combination mentioned earlier: both delight and power. MAX WESTBROOK, The University of Texas OSCEOLA: The Unconquered Indian. By Wm. and Ellen Hartley. (N.Y.: Hawthorn Books, Inc., 1973, 293 pp., $8.95.) In 1970, the Indian Claims Commission offered the Seminole Indian tribe $12,347,500 for lands taken by the LI.S. Government during the period known as...

Differential self-concept in American Indian children as a function of language and examiner.

The hypothesis that minority self-concept may vary as a function of implicit ethnic and nonethnic evaluative criteria was investigated by testing 40 Mikasuki Seminole Indian children in their native language (Mikasuki) with Indian examiners and in English with Anglo examiners. Two reservation groups, matched for age and sex, received four administration of a personal (Piers-Harris) and an Indian self-concept scale, in a repeated measures counterbalanced design, varying language and order. Significant tes-retest correlations indicated response stability across languages and time. Results, homogeneous for all subgroups, showed significantly higher personal self-concept in Mikasuki, significantly higher Indian self-concept in English. It was suggested that minority testing may involve culturally patterned and context-bound response tendencies.

Training Teachers in a Seminole Indian School— A Unique Experience with the Disadvantaged Child

Training Teachers in a Seminole Indian School— A Unique Experience with the Disadvantaged Child

Early California as Described by Edward O. C. Ord

EDWARD O. C. ORD, Union general of the Civil War, spent much of his long army life in service in California. The story of his career has never been adequately told. This article centers on one phase of his careerhis early experiences in California. Ord was born October 18, 1818, in Cumberland, Maryland, the third child of James and Rebecca (Cresap) Ord. He spent his youth in Washington, D.C., and was appointed to the United States Military Academy in 1835. Upon graduating in 1839 Ord was commissioned a second lieutenant and assigned to the 3rd Artillery Regiment, then serving in the Seminole Indian War in Florida. Here he gained two years of valuable experience in Indian fighting and was promoted to first lieutenant in 1841. From 1842 to 1846 he was on garrison duty along the east coast. In 1846 the war with Mexico broke out, and Company F of the 3rd Artillery to which Ord was assigned was ordered to California on the store ship Lexington by way of Cape Horn. An interesting party gathered at Fort Columbus on Governor's Island, New York, for the long passage. Ord's brother, Dr. James L. Ord, just graduated from the Medical College of the University of Pennsylvania, appeared as acting surgeon (though remaining a civilian). Lieutenant Ord had written his good friend of West Point days, Lieutenant William T. Sherman, to apply for the California voyage, but Sherman without committing himself had merely applied for any active service. Much to Ord's delight Sherman was assigned to Company F.' In due time appeared Old Brains of Ord's class at West Point, First Lieutenant Henry Wager Halleck of the Corps of Engineers, attached to Company F for the passage. After a voyage from New York of more than six months the Lexington sailed into Monterey Bay on January 27, 1847, and on January 29 Company F occupied Monterey Redoubt.2 Monterey was a beautiful place, containing, when they were all present,

Florida Place-Names of Indian Origin and Seminole Indian Names

Florida Place-Names of Indian Origin and Seminole Indian Names