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?":