The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, 1908-11-07
The Florida Serlinoles in
Wilderness of Everglades
Exc Out Existence in
Their Own Peculiar WAY
Their Customs and Hab-
its as Told by A w. Dim
ock.

a. W. Dimock, in Golfers Weekly
The Florida Seminole 10 the incar-
nation of Hale's curious creation,
The Man Without a Country
Once members of the great Greek
family, the Seminoles of Florida have
lost their tribe. their traditions, and
their homes. Their own people have
forgotten them. The United States
has ignored them since the Seminole
war, when their roster was lost. Pay
ment of the government debt TO their
tribe made plutocrats of their broth
ers of the west. but never a dime
reached the members of the little band
who refused to be driven from their
ancestral home But their Spartan
courage has departed, the JugSernaut
of Civilization has crushed their splr-
it, and in the cOwed and cringing rem
nant there is no spark of the fire that
flashed in The SeminOieS' Reply
The government has no agent
among the SeminoIcs, and the last
guess at their Number, made by the
United States seven years ago, was
! 35S. That fragment of the tribe has
now shrunk to 275. We kill more
! than that number of our Iwn people
( in single firSt-claSS accident TO
steamship, on a railroad, or down IN
! a coal-mine. If the entire residue OF
( the Seminole tribe, bucks, Squaws and
| pickaninmies, were turned loose on the
| hunting grounds of Maine, Michigan
and the Adirondacks, and sportsmen
shot as many of them as hey do of
each other, the tribe would be wiped
| out in q single season. Last month
| the measles carried off fifteen Semi
noles in two weeks When one oil
these Indians gets sick he is a "gon-
err" If the disease doesn't fetch him,
, tle medicine man will. This apostle
| of mummery will treat him to draS-
| tic bleedings, purge him with poison
Gus roots, and / have heard of his
applying red-pepper poulGces to IN
! famed eyelids.
The habitat of the Seminole has
been the UNEMPLOYED wilderness which
| is passing away. Tae title of the
| white squatter to wild land IN the Big
| Cypress Everglade country is respect
| ed by everybody. That of the Indian
lhever reached the substance of a
| dream. Engineers of Civilization are
invading their country from the eaSt;
| lumber. bark and fruit-growing COM
panies crowd them on the west: hunt
! ers swarm OH their ancient preserves;
surveying parties, pioneers of other
| ENTERPRISES. are locating the land or
the Big Cypress, the state of Florida
is draining away the water of the EV-
erglades; the Anglo-Saxon aggressive
ness is humping the native American
off the map
Even missionaries. who rarely al
low a savage 10 escape them, seldom
camp long on the trail of the Seminole
of Florida One of them did settle
near an encampment at lmnokalee
| (Home). whereupon the Indians rose
like a flock of quail and moved TO
the Big Cypress swamp.
IF come Big Cypress me 'hiepus
(go), stay two years.
Another, who aspired to teach the
Indians. began by swapping Kodak
on a half-drunken member of the tribe,
DESPITE the protestations Of the vic
tim. The interference of an Indian
TRADER saved the kodaker from having
his own face spoiled. The principal
trader with the SeminoIe.s recently
sent me, with lurii comments, a copy
of a late number of a well known mag
aZine devoted to the interests of the
negro and the Indian. II contained
an illustrated article by an alleged
missionary among the SemlnoleS, ana
included an account OF an exploration
of the Everglades by the missionary
author, alone, in canoe. OF certain
Indians mentioned by name, and de-
scribed as Christian gentlemen !
could have supplied him with photo
graphs representing them as glorious
" drunken Christian gentlemen. The
missionary's Illustrations CT the Ev-
erglades represented views with
which | was familiar. but which | had
never seen in the Everglades. His
uresence of mind, however, impressed
me as phenomenal. For instance,
when. in the vicinity of Shark river,
he was in doubt as TO his exact lOca-
ton. he inflated with .lOt air, of which
he appeared to have a supply, fire
balloon which he carried III his canoe
and, ascending four hundred feet IN
the air But. as was said on SIM
liar occasion, What is the use OF
presence of mind when man can lie
like that"
Aliens in their ancient heritage, the
/ Seminoies lack the ordinary means of
out cIothing-they don't wear mUcn
now-but their food supply grows
scantier and more precarious year by
year. Snowy herOns are nearly extinct.
and the Indian must sOOA Stop selling
lis pIumes TO the women of Vanity
Fair The white traders Of the west
coast now refuse to buy these plumes,
but the half-civilized Indian VINO
trades in them finds a congenial part
white merchants in Miami. Offers
have become scarce. and alligators,
the present dependence or the Semi
noles. are fast following the trail OF
the dodo. 1t is easy to command the
Indian to work like the white man or
starVe His inherited racial limita-
lions may compel the latter alterna-
tive.
Offers versus Tomatoes
! once interviewed a Seminole who
had Just poled his duGout forty miles
10 the store of a trader to exchange a
score of alligator hides for fifteen dol
lars worth Of bacon, srits and tobacco.
to feed his family of twelve, squaws,
pickaninnies and Patriarchs- We talk
ed in the hoige-podge of lad English
and broken Seminole,~ with which the
white man holds converse with the
Indian but when l suggested that deer,
otter and alligator "bimeDy hiepus."
and asked: Think so, Indian plant
| corn. pOtatO. tomato and Sell2' the