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Tribes in Florida's Everglades pay price of prosperity
Tribal Dance at a recent American Indian Day at the Miccosukee Resort and Gaming. Video by Guy Tubbs/news-press.com The (Fort Myers, Fla.) News-Press
Airboats scatter across the sawgrass like a flock of birds, only to gather again like metal shards to a magnet at the edge of an Indian village deep inside the Everglades.
Once at the tribal grounds, the captain parks near Michael Frank's family camp. Outsiders, mostly white people working for the tribe or U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, take samples, and measure water depth and clarity during an annual Miccosukee water quality study.
Frank takes a sip of coffee, looks out over the Everglades and takes a deep breath.
"Our way of life is gone," he says while sitting on the bow of an aluminum airboat, arms folded, chin tucked. "We lived our way in the Everglades, the happy way, the good way. When I was young, you could drink the water. You could hunt and fish, and that was your lifetime."
Indian life was uprooted more than 500 years ago when Spanish explorers claimed and named Florida. Their world was upended again in the mid-1900s when state and federal agencies learned how to efficiently drain South Florida's massive wetlands and subtropical forests.
Indians were living in remote camps in the Everglades and at tourism villages in towns such as Miami and Hollywood when the draining began. The federal government proposed cutting ties with all tribes in 1953 as a way to cut spending in the aftermath of World War II. South Florida Indians responded by forming the Seminole Tribe of Florida in 1957. A second group that refused to join the Seminole reservation incorporated in 1962 as the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida. A third group, about 100 traditionals, refused to join a tribe and still live an isolated life with no gambling dividends and little government support.
Today, Florida Indians number about 4,400, and most are members of the Seminole and Miccosukee tribes, living on reservation lands in Tampa, Immokalee, Hollywood, Fort Pierce, Brighton and Clewiston.
To get a better understanding of their lives in the Everglades, The News-Press spent the last eight months traveling through the Indian world, recording voices that have been mostly silent over the past 500 years.
Unlike the past, when children were taught to stay away from Americans and other cultures, Indians today are increasingly communicating with the outside world. It's their last resort to save the Everglades and their way of life, they say.
"It's not going to be the end of the world, just the end of us," Frank says while walking the Miccosukee museum grounds, a slight grin on his otherwise stern face. He opens the door to a building that contains photographs, clothing, tools and art and crafts, some of these things built or used by his clan. Once inside, he says, calmly: "The Earth will be just fine."
The Seminoles were the first tribe to bring extensive gambling to reservation lands in the 1970s. Bingo brought the first big influx of money in the 1980s; millions of dollars poured in each year. By 2004, the tribes were operating electronic slot machines and blackjack tables. The Seminole Tribe reports annual gambling earnings of nearly $2 billion.
The money has helped build schools, houses, fire and police stations and recreation centers.
Like trust fund babies in American society, reservation Indians want for little in the material world. Over the past 30 years, gambling dividends have grown from a few hundred dollars a year for reservation members to $100,000 or more.
"A lot of our tribal members have gotten wealthy and they don't want to do the common labor," said Mondo Tiger, a Seminole reservation member and representative for the Big Cypress reservation near Clewiston. "A lot of us have gotten used to the finer things in life. I like to talk tradition, but at the end of the day I'll go home and turn the AC on."
Indian culture was still isolated from the outside world nearly a century ago. The Tamiami Trail didn't open until 1928, bringing tourists to roadside Indian villages to watch them sew, carve dugout canoes and make traditional foods such as sofkee and fry bread.
Indians took advantage of the road as well, traveling to Naples, Fort Myers, Miami and Fort Lauderdale to trade hides, buy food staples and clothing. Clothing changed from the Seminole War era, when men wore dresslike smocks, to pants, neckties, belt buckles and blue jeans.
Everglades National Park opened in 1947 and brought more change. Park rules made it illegal for Indians to collect plants and hunt animals for medicine and food. They could fish under park restrictions but not hunt deer, ibis, alligators or even hogs, an invasive species.
By that point the reservation lands were already polluted, flooded or both, reservation and traditional Indians claim.
With parklands off-limits, and reservation lands practically devoid of animals to hunt, Indians were further encouraged to move toward a modern life, to get a job and move away from the villages and their traditional culture.
Their diet changed as well, switching from natural foods like gar fish, ibis and deer to KFC, Taco Bell and McDonald's.
Physical changes can be seen in photo collections from the Florida library system and at displays in tribal museums. Before the 1900s, Indians were smallish in build, muscular and lean. Even elders dressed in little more than loincloths and had the physiques of gymnasts. Today, diabetes, obesity, heart disease and other health issues – which Indians say weren't problematic before the 20th century – are prevalent.
Seminole tribe member Frank Billie Jr. says the old way of life kept people fit and that many lived past 100.
"When you're carrying 300 or 400 pieces of wood just to make a house, and about 2,000 or 3,000 fronds that you have to carry on your back, you become a well-oiled machine. Especially the diet they had, everything was natural, no chemicals," he says. "Now we're so used to Popeyes, hamburgers, cheeseburgers, that if you lay it in front of me, give me a fork. I enjoy it. I'm going to eat it up. But it wasn't that way all my life. I didn't hardly eat any sweets until I was twenty-something, because we weren't allowed to eat sweets."
Reservation life even divides clans and families. While some Indians are millionaires, others live in chickee camps, which range in size from a single hut to modern structures and garages.
Frank Billie Jr.'s family is divided among traditional and reservation Natives. Victor Billie is Frank's brother. While they're very close in a family sense and even work together as employees of the reservation, Frank and Victor are opposites.
Frank often wears Miami Heat hats and T-shirts, jeans and a pair of work shoes or boots. Victor wears a traditional, hand-sewn Seminole shirt, several sets of colorful beads, jeans and a pair of purple cowboy boots that he bought at a flea market in Clewiston. He likes the color.
"I can't tell you what they mean," Victor says when asked what the red, yellow, black and white beads draped around his neck mean in a spiritual sense. "I can't go that far."
Some Indians struggle to find their place in the modern world. The Billie brothers grew up in a traditional village.
But Frank wanted reservation money and joined the Seminole Tribe at the age of 17.
Now 42, he recently resigned from the Seminole Tribe's cultural education department because he no longer feels comfortable sharing Indian history and culture with outsiders.
"There are a lot of things that we keep secret, and the outside world needs to recognize that," Frank Billie Jr. says. "We can talk about some things, but then there's a point where we can't. We're not supposed to go that far. And that's why we're still alive today."
And while many Indians try to keep their lives, beliefs and traditions secret, both tribes host extensive public celebrations.
American Indian Day, held last September at the Miccosukee reservation, is one of the most important public displays of song, dance, alligator wrestling and patchwork clothing – strips of colorful fabric that are sewn together in patterns to make dresses, shirts and coats.
"We'll let the public come and go ahead and share our culture and give them an opportunity to get to know us,'' says Colley Billie, chairman of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida. "To get to know that there's more than just a casino out here. We are a group of people. We're just like everybody else. We want to be respected. We want to be recognized; but, at the same time, we also want to be left alone."
These events, along with maintaining museums and libraries on the reservations, are how they try to balance their traditions while accepting parts of the modern world.
Oral stories are used to convey history and typically do not focus on a specific person. No individual is glorified or memorialized for their achievements. Traditionally, when an Indian dies, the memory of that person and his or her name fades with time.
The land is alive
The land is a living history, a reference point around which the Indian world whirs.
Frank knows the exact spot in the swamp where he was born, and uses it as a reference to where other villages and camps are located. He can point to it on a map of tribal lands, which sit between Big Cypress National Preserve, Everglades National Park and the sprawling Miami metropolis. He also knows where his mother and father were born, and where they first met and were later married.
His ancestors are buried in the Everglades. Their remains, he says, supply the nutrients and foundation on which trees and plants now grow — plants that are harvested for medicine, food, tools and building supplies. Burying people in a natural way allows their bodies to decompose. Indians often planted fruit or oak trees on top of the actual burial sites, which were typically located on cypress tree islands and near camps. The trees grew on top of the bodies of their ancestors, and the trees, in turn, provided food, fire wood and medicine.
"That's our existence. If we don't have camps and use our land, we lose our lives, our existence," says Frank, part of the last generation of Miccosukees who were born and raised in the Everglades.
Cassandra Osceola roasts corn over an oak fire that will be used to make sofkee, a common Indian breakfast drink that can be made from corn, meal, rice or dumplings. Sofkee is served warm and can be sweetened with fruit or honey. Video: Guy Tubbs. The (Fort Myers, Fla.) News-Press