What do Indians do in Florida?

If the wind is from the Atlantic, the planes landing at Miami approach the airport from the west. They fly over the Everglades and from a plane's window one can see marshes and rivulets winding among them. The marshes are supposed to be a virgin ecosystem protected by the Everglades National Park, but in some places something that looks like vehicle tracks can be seen. What vehicles could enter those marshes? And what for? Some time ago dugouts of the Seminole fleeing the U.S cavalry moved there, but today? By the way, what happened to those Indians who hid in those marshes from the U.S. cavalry?

I landed in Miami and went straight to get the car I booked. The young man serving me asked: "Where do you want to go? To Miami Beach? No? To the Everglades? Then you have to go with the Indians. They have these flat-bottomed boats with an air prop, they take tourists to the marshes. It is like a safari, you see alligators, flamingoes. It's fantastic!"

A white American saying that Indians do something that is fantastic is not very common. In fact it is a rarity. But it seems to be the answer to the question what happened to those Indians. Their boats still move in the marshes, although now they are not paddled dugouts but motorised flat-bottoms. They seem to impress even white Americans.

The Indians here have been always masters of water transport. Indians from Florida travelled all the way to South America long before Columbus. Still in the 19th century the Seminole paddled their dugouts from Florida all the way to Bahamas to buy arms from the English. They needed the arms to fight Americans who wanted to chase them out of Florida. They fought the Yankees nail and tooth as if this was their ancient motherland, but this was not the case. In Florida the Seminole were immigrants that arrived only lately. Their ancestors contributed hugely to the elimination of Florida's original inhabitants.

An Indian boat in the Everglades

Who were the ancestors of the Seminole? They lived in the north by the mountain creeks. When in the 16th century the Spaniards came to Florida, they found there Indians named Timucua quietly growing maize there. The Spanish conquistadors looked for gold and hoped Florida would be as rich as Mexico. The Timucua did have gold but to get rid of the conquistadors they told them that there were rich principalities in the north. The principalities were there indeed, they were rich as well, though not in gold. They were also strong enough to chase the Spaniards away even thought the Spaniards had muskets and the Indians did not. There was no gold there so the conquistadores once chased away - didn't come back. However, not all Spaniards were bloodthirsty conquistadors. There were also missionaries full of good will who wanted to win souls for Christ. They founded the town of St Augustine and from there travelled inland to convert Indians. Missions were set up in villages of the Timucua. In the Spanish empire Florida was a marginal colony with few inhabitants. Those who were there made sure they had military advantage in case of conflict, which is why muskets weren't sold to Indians. Nobody here was much interested in trade in animal furs either.

In the 17th century the English colony of Carolina was founded north of Spanish Florida. At the same time in the west, in the Mississippi valley, the French colony of Louisiana was established. Both the French and the English wanted to trade with the Indians. They mostly wanted to buy furs, but not only. Both the French and the English sold firearms to Indians to make their hunt easier. The muskets could be used not only to hunt. The tribes with firearms were stronger than those without and the English bought not only furs. The Carolina colonists were planters who needed slaves to work on their plantations. Some slaves were imported from overseas but they could also be bought more cheaply from local Indians, who were ready to sell their prisoners of war for muskets and gunpowder. Armed with muskets they could get more prisoners. Where? The answer was simple - in Spanish Florida, where mission Indians had heaven guaranteed after a lost battle but did not have muskets.

The ancestors of the Seminole lived by mountain creeks therefore the Carolina colonists called them Creek Indians. They weren't really a single ethnic group, there could be several villages of peoples speaking different languages by a single creek. The English weren't interested in such details. They might call themselves Muscogee or Miccasukee or still something else but if they lives by a single creek and dressed in a similar manner, they were Creeks.

Old style Seminole house in a museum

For the Creek Indians establishment of Charles Town was initially a blessing because guns and powder greatly facilitated hunting. Soon it turned out that there is too much of this blessing, that the providers of guns and ammunition wanted to set up plantations on land where the Indians grew their corn. The Indians were not docile, they were ready to fight, but how to fight those who supplied guns and powder? For some time it was possible to get guns from the French in New Orleans but after a few wars fought in Europe it turned out that the French had to move out and the English were sole owners of the country between the Atlantic coast and the Mississippi. The Creeks and other Indians might have had a different opinion on who owned the land but the opinion did not change the fact that the English became the only providers of guns and ammunition.

What is interesting - the British Crown considered Indians the British subjects who had to be protected, which is why the white settlers were not supposed to settle beyond the Appalachian mountains. In the eyes of the settlers this restriction was really the royal oppression. In the end the settlers rebelled and created their own country, the land of the free, where this kind of restrictions was abolished. The country was free and just and was called the United States, its citizens were free to settle by the mountain creeks. Somebody lived there already, this is true, but justice required that some wild Indians move away from places where civilised people want to settle.

The "wild Indians" weren't stupid and quickly realised that the ways of agriculture of the white man bring better crop with less work. They realised that it requires much less effort to keep beef on a meadow by the village than to chase venison through the forest. They also decided that the way white men govern themselves is more practical and so decided to create similar republics with parliaments, presidents and so on. The only thing they could not change was the colour of their skin. The fact remained: they were Creek Indians and not white people who wanted to settle by their creeks. The U.S. government did not want racial conflicts and decided to move all Indians from the creek country to a distant place called Oklahoma on the other side of Mississippi. The Creek Indians didn't want to resettle, especially as somebody lived already in Oklahoma.

The U.S. government wanted to rule by law, wanted to buy land from Indians and easily found somebody who was ready to sell it. Later somebody else claimed that those who sold it didn't have right to sell it because it wasn't their land, but the U.S. government couldn't pay too much attention to too much detail. What to do in this situation? Fight against the main supplier of guns and ammunition? After a few failed uprisings most Muscogee and Miccasukee Indians moved beyond Mississippi.

But not all. Some moved to Spanish Florida. They knew the land from the time they hunted slaves there. Later they hunted deer there as well. Nobody in Florida called them Creeks. The Spaniards called them Cimarrones (wild), which name the local Indians pronounced Seminoles. In time the U.S. aquired Florida and wanted to move the Seminoles to Oklahoma. That proved more difficult. The Seminoles of course resisted but they had independent access to guns and powder. They bought it from Cuban fishermen who sometimes came to Florida, they also paddled their dugouts to the British Bahamas. They knew how to hide in the Everglades, where the U.S. cavalry was not very operative. The war lasted long and although some Indians were moved to Oklahoma, some still hid somewhere in the marshes. In the end the U.S. government decided that keeping the army in the marshes is too expensive, created a reservation and left the Seminole in peace. The aim of the U.S. government was to move all Indians to Oklahoma, the aim of the Seminole was to stay put, so it could be argued that this was the only war of an Indian tribe against the U.S. which the Indians won.

A tourist attraction on an Indian reservation

The reservation is still there and can be visited. No crowds of tourists there, to be sure. There are no crowds of visitors in the Everglades National Park either. In Florida crowds go to Disneyland where among plastic attractions one can see plastic alligators. There are, however, some true nature lovers who prefer to see real alligators wallowing in real mud in the Everglades. The masters of water transport are, as we know, the Indians. They take the tourists to see the alligators on their water safari. They don't use dugouts any more but big flat-bottomed boats with and air prop behind, so the boat slides on the surface and does not damage underwater plants. These boats leave tracks visible from the plane.

But this is not the biggest tourist attraction on the reservation. These days the biggest attractions on Indian reservations in the U.S. are casinos. In the 1980s American courts decided that reservations are outside the state jurisdiction and state laws aimed to restrict gambling do not apply there. Ever since that ruling the Indians build casinos on their soil and ordinary Americans can go there and try their luck. This is why just outside Miami in the middle of a swamp stands Miccosukee Resort and Gaming. This particular piece of the swamp is on the reservation and this is enough. Ordinary Americans can try their luck there and dream about great fortune, for the Indians this is pure profit. Educational institutions are funded frm this profit. For example Moccosukee Indian Village, a reconstruction of old thatched houses that today serves as a museum. It stands next to the road used by tourists to drive to see live wild alligators. Indians themselves live elsewhere, the staff of the museum comes from afar in cars. In general these Indians are not very different from other Americans, they dress the same way, talk English and I am not sure they know their own language.

The old houses are built on stilts and covered with huge thatch but they have no walls. In these houses artists dressed in traditional costumes demonstrate their skills: a woodcarver making a sculpture, a tailoress sawing traditional dresses on a sewing machine. These traditional dresses have nothing in common with fringes and feathers of the prairie Indians. Seminole in the 19th century dressed very much like their white neighbours, although not exactly - Indian tailoresses sew dresses and shirts according to their own Indian fashion. These dresses can be seen on old photographs exhibited in one of the thatched houses.

With a car rented at the airport I went to see this Indian village and so I know all this. I also went for a bite to the restaurant on the other side of the road. At the neighbouring table sat a group of people talking in a language I did not understand. I asked what language it was.

"Mikasuki", one of them said. "We can't let the language die out".

You will find this text, 
and many more on the subject, 
in my book "DO THEY STILL LIVE IN WIGWAMS?":

Where can you meet your Maker (and come back)?

Mount Baboquivari

San Xavier Le Bac Mission lies almost on the outskirts of Tuscon. Looking east from there one can see the motorway and the city beyond, looking west one sees a desert covered in cacti. Beyond the desert, in the distance, one can see a mountain ridge, whose highest peak towers above the crest like a finger sticking up. This is Baboquivari mountain, home of...

A few more words about the mission before I elaborate on that. First the temperature. This is the very south of Arizona, the area lower than the rest of the state and consequently hottest, at the end of September (when I am here) the temperature drops to about 40ºC. Of course there are more places in the state where temperature drops to 40ºC. What is remarkable here is the church: an authentic 18th century baroque church with proper baroque interior. It may look a bit provincial if compared to Rome, but when it was built this was really the very frontier of civilisation. In Mexico there are more magnificent churches but in the U.S. this is an exception. There is also another reason why this church is exceptional. Its patron is Saint Francis Xavier, a Jesuit missionary to the Far East, whose figure stands in the main altar. Local Indians come here to pray to Saint Xavier because the mission is in the grounds of Papago Indian Reservation.

(How did I write? Papago Indians? How could I do that? The name Papago is politically incorrect in the U.S. because some pen-pushers decided that in English it is derogatory and now the name "Tohono O'odham" should be used. I have to inform my readers about this in case they want to check on a map where the Papago Indian Reservation is. On newer maps they will not find it, they will find the Tohono O'odham instead. I will, however, continue to be politically incorrect and use the name Papago, especially as south of the border the name is still happily used, nobody sees anything wrong with it and the Indians there don't seem to be concerned about decisions of some Gringo pen-pushers. Back to the subject...)

The local Papago Indians come to pray at the figure of St Xavier, but not the one standing at the main altar. In the left transept there is a laying figure of the saint and it is there that the Indians come to pray. After the finished prayer they lift the laying figure by the head. St Francis Xavier was one of those saints whose body did not disintegrate, which is why he is sometimes shown as a figure laying on a pier. This is how he appears in the sanctuary in Magdalena del Kino in northern Mexico. For the Papagos, who live on both sides of the border, the Magdalena sanctuary is a holy place, their own equivalent of Lourdes. They make pilgrimages there and its main figure is replicated in many chapels in lands inhabited by the Papago.

However. However.

The first however is this: in the beginning of the 20th century there was a revolution in Mexico, the people who were in power were not friendly towards the Catholic Church and officially banned the cult of saints. In 1934 the Magdalena sanctuary was closed, all figures from its church chopped to pieces and used as fuel in a local brewery.

All of them?

Well, so THEY think. They think they chopped up the figure of St. Xavier, but the Indians know better. They Indians know that the figure at San Xavier le Bac is the one that used to be in the sanctuary in Magdalena before the Mexican revolution. The figure in Le Bac has no legs because one night it got up and walked all the way until it reached the place where it is now. The legs wore off in the process. A legend? Well, this is the way WE see it, but the Indians know better. Anyway there is also another legend, that the figure in Magdalena hid for the time of persecutions and returned to its old place afterwards. According to still another legend the figure fled to a place called San Francisquito, near the U.S. border, where it sill lies today in a chapel.

San Xavier le Bac

I have never been to the Mexican Magdalena but I did go to San Xavier le Bac (at the end of September, when the temperature mercifully drops to 40ºC) and I saw the figure of St Francis there. I noticed there were two kinds of people visiting the place. Guide books say that this is an authentic 18th century baroque church, something very unusual in the U.S., so some people there are tourists with cameras (like myself), taking a lot of pictures. Some of them are Catholics and genuflect when they enter the church. Most talk in English but there also some who speak Spanish or French. The guide books don't mention the horizontal figure of St. Francis in the transept, so the tourists are not aware of its importance. But there are also other visitors for whom the figure in the transept is the most important one in the church. Visually these people are not very different from other visitors, they dress just like other Americans, although they have Indian features and sometimes talk in a language i don't recognise. They genuflect as they enter and then immediately go to the left transept to pray by the horizontal figure of St Francis. After the prayer they all lift the figure by the head. Whole families come, little children are lifted up so they, too, can lift the head of the saint.

I asked some Indians why they do this. One young man in a shop explained: only if you come with a pure heart you can lift his head. If you can't do this, your prayers will not be heard. Another Indian, a hitchhiker whom we gave a lift as we drove through the reservation, said: You mean the one in San Xavier le Bac? This is Francisco Kino, who was a missionary there.

Wait, wait.

Francisco Kino? Is there a saint of that name? As far as I know Francisco Kino, a Jesuit and a missionary in northern Mexico, has not been canonised.

Perhaps the secret is hidden in the meaning of the word "canonisation". To be "canonised" means to be included in a canon, which means that the Church authorities accept that somebody actually is a saint. Nobody becomes a saint as a result of canonisation. In the middle ages people decided that somebody was a saint and made pilgrimages to his tomb without interference from the Church. Sometimes it happened that the Church could not accept a saint, which is why the whole idea of "canonisation" started. For example in mediaeval France there was a cult of St Guinefort, but the Church could not accept him as a saint because Guinefort was a dog. According to the doctrine of the Church a dog has no soul and cannot go to heaven (that is - be a saint). Anyway the Church does not make anybody a saint, only accepts that a dead person is in heaven already. For a canonisation procedure one has to prove there was a miracle which was a result of a prayer to that person. Only a saint, who already is in heaven, is in direct contact with God and can ask Him for favours. Consequently one not only can but should pray to people who died but have not been canonised. This is exactly what the Papago Indians do when they pray to Francisco Kino.

Indians praying by the lying figure of St Francis

Eusebio Francisco Kino was a Jesuit priest who in the 17th century travelled in the region called then Pimeria Alta, spreading the Gospel among Indians. He travelled around the region and set up missions, one of which was Magdalena, another San Xavier le Bac. He died in 1711 in Magdalena and he is buried there. In the main altar of the church in Magdalena there is a reclining figure of a saint whose name is also Francisco. Is it surprising that some people get confused a bit? After all St Francis Xavier was a distant figure who never came to Mexico, let alone Pimeria Alta, whereas Francisco Kino travelled in Sonora and met many people. He also must have made a huge impression on them if as a result of those meetings they became Christians. It is only natural that the Indians consider him a saint. To add some more confusion: the great fiesta in Magdalena falls on the day of St Francis, but... the one of Assisi.

Pimeria Alta was a part of the country ignored by the Spanish authorities in Mexico. There were no legends of fabulous treasures hidden there, there were even no villages with solid houses as in Rio Grande valley. Pimeria Alta was a desert inhabited by Indians who lived in simple huts. If they lived in huts, they must have been primitive. This judgement based on superficial appearances was (as is often the case) misleading. The local Indians, called Pima and Papago, lived off agriculture. One needs some solid knowledge to live off agriculture in a desert. From times immemorial they cultivated their maize watering their fields carefully. Nevertheless they were semi-nomadic, coming down from the mountains only when temperature dropped to about 40ºC, spending hotter months in higher regions. The Papago did not enter the popular Wild West literature because they were at odds with the brave Apaches, who (as a young man in a souvenir shop told me) came to their villages to kill men and steal women. Fighting the common enemy the Papago served as scouts for the U.S. troops chasing Geronimo. They managed to negotiate a big reservation for the tribe and in this reservation they build chapels of their saint Francisco and light candles there. Thousands of candles; when you enter one of these chapels you feel like stepping into an oven even though the temperature outdoors is 40ºC. What is more important - Baboquivari mountain is also on the grounds of the reservation. It is important because the person who lives there is no other than...

No guide books mention it at all but I asked the Indians I met and the answer was always the same: the person who lives on the mountain is I'toi, the Creator of the world. He lives in a cave close to the summit and the Indians bring Him flowers and offerings. Some people can meet Him, He appears as a very old hunchback. Could I go to that cave? Yes, I could, but I would need a permit from the reservation authorities. Unfortunately we would have to wait two weeks for this permit. We had a flight in a week so it could not be done. still I can say that I have seen a mountain on which the Creator lives in a cave. I even took a picture of the mountain. I didn't go to the cave only because I had no time to wait for the permit.

This is an interesting idea, though. It could be a perfect tourist attraction. Walk to the cave where your Maker lives - this would be something! The reservation authorities could earn money selling permits and the local Indians could also sell their handicrafts, or perhaps T-shirts with an appropriate design.

The only problem could be with actually meeting your Maker in person (and come back). They say that to meet Him one needs to have a pure heart. This is something one cannot buy from any authorities.

Papago Indian Reservation

You will find this text, 
and many more on the subject, 
in my book "DO THEY STILL LIVE IN WIGWAMS?":