he will pass, like the mist. As memories come up, we hear the faint
rustle of the leaves and see the dusky forms of those ancient people
as they glided through the leaf-carpeted aisles of the forests. We
see the happy wigwam homes, gleaming in the red flames of the camp
fire and hear the soft lullabies of the crooning mothers; the dusky
hero of the chase returns game-laden from the hunt, and, in the
picture, framed, as it were, by the boundaries of nature, we see
long lines of moving life, the graceful forms of thousands of flying
creatures, while the song of the forest minstrel hallows the wooded
silence. _It is the land of the Seminole._
Thou, Florida, with thy laughing waters and sunny skies, art the
Seminole’s elysium. Thy spreading palms form the only canopy he
desires. To part from thy loved scenes would be like separating from
his kindred. No, under the shadows of the live oak and the magnolia
has he lived, under their shadows let him die.
As the patient Seminole, with swelling heart “moves a little farther,
and yet a little farther,” he goes not willingly, but with a sad
heart and a slow step. Micanopy, when told by the officers that he
might choose between emigration and death, answered, “Kill me here
then, kill me quickly.” The same spirit is manifested by the Seminole
to-day when he says, “We have never done anything to disgrace the
land of our birth, nor the honor of an Indian. For fifty years the
pledge to our great father has been kept inviolate. Our tongues are
not forked and our feet tread not in the white man’s path. We threw
away the rifle and grasped hands with the white skin. We know the
white man’s power, and though we love peace, we fear not death. We
will not leave the land of our birth. The Great Spirit loves his red
children, and says to them, “Your bones must rest with the dust of
your fathers.” Brothers, when the pale face came to the shores of our
land, our fathers made him a fire from their flint rock to warm by,
and gave him hominy to stay his hunger. Brothers, the Seminole wishes
no harm to the white race, but his heart heaves and surges as it
says, “Let us alone; let us alone. Though you slay us, you shall not
move us.”
“A kingdom as full of people as hives are of bees,” wrote the first
discoverer to King Ferdinand. Where are they now?
[Illustration: THE WHITE PLUMED EGRET IN A FLORIDA YARD
“In their bridal veil of long silken plumes.”]
There is something intensely sad in the picture of these sons of the
monarchs of that race, who, for centuries held sway on the slopes
of the Atlantic. As the Stars and Stripes proudly herald liberty
and independence to the comers of all nations, how can we be
unmindful of that “charity which begins at home?” The panorama of
Indian history passes before us, and we see nothing more tragic than
the pictures of the wrongs endured by the native Americans. Let us
then deal kindly with the tribes we have dispossessed, whose removal
to the swamps has made room for our own enlargement. In the person
of these descendants of a now disinherited race, who with shy,
frightened faces still hide in the wilderness, we may yet atone in
part for the tragedies of the past by making Florida a free, safe
and Christian home for this patient and long-persecuted remnant of a
once-powerful Indian nation.
May the almoner of justice, under the guidance of an overruling God,
protect and keep and cherish these red children of the forest homes.
SUPPLEMENT
The Least Known Wilderness of America
THE LEAST KNOWN WILDERNESS OF AMERICA
TOGETHER WITH THE STORY OF THE RED INHABITANTS
Would you see the Land of the Seminole? Then visit the Everglades
of Florida and in the heart of this mystic region--a very uncharted
wilderness--you will find a thrilling beauty, and yet a lurking
terror; the dark, cypress, laden trees are massed together, now
swaying, now quivering, as the Gulf winds circle around them, and
they seem like human things, crowding together like shuddering
people, frightened by ghosts.
This is the “Big Cypress”--the last foothold of the vanishing red man
of America.
This tropic jungle of islets, lagoons and cutting saw-grass prairies
is an unexplored treasure house for the man of research--a virgin
field for the adventurer, in short a tropic mimosa, with its secrets
closely held against the disturbing exploiter--yet awaiting, with
sphinx-like calmness, the intrepid traveller, who would dare to
explore this Least Known Wilderness of America.
Then why should the American go to the land of the Vikings or to
“Darkest Africa” for themes? Florida has the Everglades--grey,
misty, water covered.
Scientists have crossed these “weird drowned prairies” as a ship
crosses the ocean, yet no well defined lines have been made, and no
flagstaffs mark the trail of the adventurous explorer.
The Everglades, properly christened with the red man’s
name--Pay-hay-o-kee, or “Grass Water Country,” comprise a territory
of more than 5,000 square miles, and, while considered a swamp,
the region is more of a shallow sea or lake, thickly studded with
thousands of islands, which are covered with thickets of shrubbery
and vines. Aquatic flowers, brilliant butterflies and the flutter of
bird life add color and animation to the scene.
Here and there in the mysterious depths of the great Florida
jungle live the descendants of the bravest, purest blood American
Indian--those patriots who refused, nearly a century ago, to desert
their country, and, escaping capture by bloodhounds and bullets, hid
themselves in the wilds of this tangled Everglade wilderness, and
were for years lost to the historian.
All aboriginal history holds much interest, but none is more replete
with the tragedies and romance that go to make up life wherever
it is lived than the shadowy history of the self-exiled Seminoles
about whom so little is known and who have lived this jungle life as
lords of a conquered race--proud heroic, with blood as pure as the
race who governed the territory long before Columbus sailed from
Palos. Monarchs of America’s primeval continent, mystery envelops
the Seminoles’ past and the historian can only catch glimpse of the
fleeting figures of the ancestors of this peculiar people, who wrote
no history, except by deeds.
THE LAND OF THE SEMINOLE
The Caucasian has battered at the gates of this great American Jungle
for nearly four centuries, but some impregnable force, directed by a
Higher Power than commercialized graft or the greed of selfish men,
has kept the gates secure. _It is the Land of the Seminole!_
The Seminole knows every foot of this interminable morass. The
stars are his compass; the fantastic tracery of canals, cut by his
ancestors through this chaotic tangle of grass water country, are his
highways. The appearance of the remote recesses of the Everglades is
unlike that of any other region on the globe and is certainly the
most bewildering and remarkable on this continent.
EVERGLADE SCENARIO
Were we to unroll the reel of a photo-drama of the Everglades, we
would go back thousands of years, when the great billows of the ocean
rolled over the space now occupied by this territory; we would see
the millions of busy builders of that age, the tiny coral polyps,
working on the reefs and shoals; we would look again and see the
tempestuous storms and hear the thunder of the circling winds and
behold the “breaking up of the great fountain of the deep,” forcing
the sand from its depths, until a giant dam was built and the great
ocean was excluded. Then it was that the shimmering waters of Lake
Okeechobee, “the place of the Big Water” in Seminole dialect, became
an inland sea.
We may turn the slide and see the animals of prehistoric days basking
in the sunshine or bathing in the limpid waters. The fame of Florida
as a health resort was not unknown to the animals of those ancient
days, for the remains of these monsters are exhibited today in
national museums, with labels reading that “they belonged to animals,
probably mammoths, that lived 10,000 to 50,000 years ago.”
Film makers delight in taxing the flights of the mind and
Florida’s drama was silenced for thousands of years. The reel
makes another turn and we see a Twentieth Century renaissance of
adventure, optimism and commercialism. Engineering expeditions
entered this region to make surveys for drainage and land
selling corporations--the land was sold from the enticing
blue paper plat--but according to America’s best engineering
corps a large area of this tropic jungle still remained terra
incognita--unsurveyed--each surveying corps wisely barricading
against criticism of failure by publishing to the speculative world,
that upon “800 square miles of this unexplored country no white man
had ever placed foot.”
[Illustration: Coacoochee. (Wild Cat.)
COACOOCHEE
_From an old print_]
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT INVESTIGATES LAND DEALS
Like a bolt of lightning from a clear sky came the demand--from
the United States Government, in 1913, to Florida’s high
officials--“Investigate--investigate!”
Twenty thousand purchasers of lands in the Everglades, backed by the
power of American democracy, had _demanded_ their lands or the return
of their good American dollars. The Federal Government, through
Congress, exposed the crooked deals (the lands still being under
water and unsurveyed) made by the vampire speculator, with the result
that another survey was ordered and the Florida State government put
sixty men into the Everglades at an expense of $40,000. The citizens
paid for the survey and “800 square miles” still remain--unsurveyed!
Less is known and, it can be said without fear of contradiction, less
is “told” to the reading world of inquiries in this 20th century than
was given to history four hundred years ago.
For best accounts touching the interior of the Everglades we must
have recourse to historical documents. From French delineations upon
old maps as well as from Spanish and English authorities, we learn
that more than three hundred years ago Florida’s Everglade country
was cut up by large rivers, extensive ponds, lagoons and lakes which
connected with each other.
That the drainage of the Everglades was contemplated by the
authorities of the Spanish government, is an established historical
fact and as late as 1840, during the Seminole War, a canal was found
large enough to float a large craft. This piece of engineering work
is credited to the Spaniards, but owing to the treacherous straits of
Florida’s coast, interior navigation was abandoned and the Spaniards
and the Frenchman left the country to the intrepid and enterprising
Indian, whose knowledge of the water world of the Glades was then,
as is now, superior to his white engineering brother; for the Indian
knows every foot of this interminable morass and travels through
these uncharted waters in his “dugout” canoe, with no compass but the
stars overhead, as he is guided by the whispering winds brought him
from the Great Spirit.
CROSSING THE EVERGLADES BY AEROPLANE
A recent experience told by an aviator belonging to one of Uncle
Sam’s flying squadrons and authorized by the War Department at
Washington, graphically pictures a modern view of the Everglades,
and illustrates, too, that the same hospitality extended by the Red
Man to the bewildered Spaniards, as they landed on these wild and
unexplored shores four centuries ago, may be found in the heart of
the jungle and marsh wilderness of the Seminole camps today.
The airmen were attempting to “cross the Everglades” in order to
make a shorter flight between the aviation fields of Florida.
Encountering a storm, they were compelled to make a “forced landing”
and headed for the nearest open space in the Big Cypress country,
which proved to be soft muck, where the ship turned over on its back,
wrecked and submerged in the black water.
The aviators wandered, hungry and exhausted, for two days, finally
finding a camp inhabited by Seminole Indians. There they received a
welcome, and food and shelter were given.
The Seminoles, lurking in their swamp-hedged wigwams, fear the
intrusion of the white man, but like their ancient forbears they
stand ever ready, with Samaritan-like kindness, to help the white
brother in an hour of necessity. The airmen were later piloted by
the red men through their hidden channels to a dredge-boat where aid
was secured and they soon reached the Marine fields at Miami. With
the help of the Indians, who made frequent trips to the base camps
for equipments, the “fire ship of the clouds” was “launched”; the
propeller took the air, droning a new tune to the silent Seminoles,
who say “fire ships littly too much, to cross the West Wind of the
Great Spirit.”
This aquatic jungle, whose secrets are known only to the Indian, has
not changed since the day Columbus found a new world for Castile and
Leon, as a brief extract from the airmen’s report verifies:
“The territory in which we made our landing is known as the
Everglades (Big Cypress). Its sameness is appalling; just one small
cypress hammock after another; water and mud everywhere; innumerable
mosquitoes, alligators, water moccasins and black snakes. Here and
there a hammock would be found with a rock base and on some of these
bases Seminole Indians eke out an existence. The mosquitoes attacked
us in hordes. We drank no water, for fear it might be infected with
malaria germs or some other swamp fever, nor had any food been
found.... We were compelled to spend the night again in the swamp,
this time on ground covered with an inch or more of water, a maze
of water and prairie ways, with treacherous under-currents and
impregnable barriers.”
The solemn silence of this mysterious swamp is only broken by the
splash of the Indian canoe, but here the Seminole lingers, giving a
background of tragedy and romance to aboriginal America.
EVERGLADE GEYSER
Let the captain of an air ship rest his craft in mid-air and through
his glasses gaze down upon this aquatic jungle. Near the centre of
the Glades, according to public documents filed in Washington, is an
immense spring rising from the earth, covering an extent of several
acres and throwing up large quantities of water with great force,
supplying the Everglades with torrential quantities of water.
[Illustration: THE LATEST PHOTOGRAPH OF BILLY BOWLEGS,
_Taken in 1911_]
With the sun’s rays glinting on this “Everglade Geyser,” with the
evaporation caused by the intense heat of this tropical land, as it
meets the cooling waters of some underground cavern, a grey mist
is formed and hangs over the area. As the white, wandering clouds
from the fathomless cavern meet the starry skies, the Seminole sees
in this phenomenon of nature the “Breath of the Great Spirit.”
When the torrential rains, a characteristic of the Everglade country,
come, flooding the entire area, the Queen of the Water Kingdom picks
up the rippling waters as they course over the rock-bound bottom and
like an elfish sprite hurls them into the lakes and rivers, where
they dash relentlessly on until they reach the subterranean outlets.
Until the white engineer finds ways and means to control subterranean
flood gates, to control water forces whose source lies hundreds of
miles away, or to toss away lightly the very God of Nature’s balance
wheel, Everglade drainage in the heart of the Big Cypress must
continue to be a stupendous operation.
The subject of the reclamation of this “The Least Known Wilderness
of America” has been a “political football” for more than a score of
years and has become a theme of nation-wide discussion. Until Florida
populates her millions of tillable and untenanted acres, certainly
she need not allure with tempting word pictures the problematical and
uncertain Everglades.
Thousands of purchasers of lands in these tropical swamps--lands
unsurveyed and submerged--still wait for the answer to the riddle of
the Okee-cho-bee Sphinx, who alone holds fast the key to this “Egypt
of America.”
Florida’s Everglade disaster, which was commercialized with land
grabbers’ outfit in entering the Seminoles’ heritage, violated every
humane and brotherly law of a commonwealth. The chaotic days that
followed the Federal investigation, retarded the progress of the
State fully a decade of years, and Florida, the land of singing
birds, limpid waters and “golden apples,” learned the bitterness of
the prophet’s rebuke when he said: _“Thou shouldst not have entered
the Gate of my People in the day of their calamity nor have laid
hands on their substance in the days of their distress_.”
SEMINOLE HISTORY REVIEWED
With the purchase of Florida from Spain in 1821 we read the death
sentence of Seminole independence--a very Iliad of tragedy in
American history. Prior to this, the Seminoles, as subjects of the
Spanish crown, were permitted to become a nation to themselves,
living and practicing the inalienable rights of independence, honor
and kindliness.
[Illustration: BILLY BOWLEGS AND HIS SISTER, STEM-O-LA-KEE]
For three-quarters of a century these dusky patriots prospered,
owning cattle, slaves and plantations. Listen, and you may hear the
tinkling bells of their little ponies as they traveled, caravan
style, carrying their wares from village to village. Here, for
a time, in the secluded fastnesses of the wilderness, these red
aborigines lived happily because away from the white man’s power,
but alas, we see a mocking travesty in our cherished ideals. Soon the
alien speculator and “carpet-bagger,” with bullets and blood-hounds,
entered the State, confiscating their well cultivated fields and
destroying their wigwam homes. The staccato cry of “Move on--move
on!” rang in the ears of this distracted, primitive people and,
like sheep before the rout of grey timber wolves, the Seminoles
were driven on into the more desolate regions of the great morass.
Shattered hamlets and dull ashen camp fires blackened the once
peaceful Indian country. Years of war and broken treaties followed,
until the American Nation became the conquerors and thousands of
Seminoles were forced to give up homes--life itself, and be exiled to
a cold and unknown Western land.
The flame-lit reel makes a turn and we see, by the imperishable magic
of the camera, a silent drama of Florida history. We see a little
band of about one hundred Indians left in the Glade country in 1841.
Expedition after expedition failed to corral these patriots, whose
greatest crime (?) was love of country, kindred and reverence for the
graves of their fathers. Like animals sorely stricken, creeping to
their lair, these red mothers and little children followed the slow
tread of the stoical braves and sought refuge in the secret recesses
of their Glade country.
Among the archives of Government statistics, one record is enough to
stir the sympathy and stimulate pity for the vanquished red dwellers
of the Everglade country. The reel makes a turn and we read:
Record 5. “With 200 men we ascended Shark River into the
Everglades. Here we met Captain Burke of Artillery, with 67
men. * * * Joining forces, we proceeded to Te-at-ka-hatch-ees,
and discovered two Indians in a canoe. The Indians escaped, but
we secured their packs, cooking utensils, provisions and their
canoes. We followed them three days until the trail was lost. After
destroying the growth of their fields, consisting of 50 to 60 acres
of pumpkins, beans and peas, etc., we continued to sea.
Respectfully submitted,
JOHN T. MCLAUGHLIN,
Lieutenant Commanding Expedition.”
From the beginning of time, down through the long centuries, the
conscience of man has awakened, in cycles, as it were, for the
betterment and uplift of humanity.
A decade of years ago, a new spirit of quickening prevailed in
America and a growing interest in Chief Osceola’s long neglected
people became a nation-wide theme. Pressure from Maine to California
was brought upon Florida’s state officials, and a rhythmic sympathy
was felt for the destiny of the Seminole. The subject was presented
to the Chief Executive and, under the beneficent ruling of the
martyred McKinley, an expedition from the United States Government
was sent into the trackless Everglades to select and survey lands for
homes for the long persecuted native inhabitants. Belated justice
seemed assured and in the year 1899 the Florida Legislature passed a
bill granting the Seminoles a reservation of 835,000 acres.
This act was approved by the Governor, but between the time when
President McKinley’s special government commission carefully selected
these lands in 1898--an interval of less than a year--this particular
tract disappeared (?) from the list of public domain _and went into
private ownership_.
The bill, so inspiring in humanity, contained a clause in these days
of Everglade jests called a “joker.” Like the eagle, as he sweeps
down the lamb feeding at its mother’s side, so the spoils-taker, with
“land grabbers’” outfit, swept down upon the inheritance of the red
children of Florida, not only violating the sanctity of Florida’s
citizenship but even gathering the crumbs that fell from Florida’s
bounteous table, and the livid bar sinister of treachery again
stained the escutcheon of Florida.
Years passed, when pressure was once more brought upon Florida’s
inhumanity toward her native people, and the legislative body of
1913 passed a bill, unanimously providing 235,000 acres in the
Everglades for the Seminoles. Alas! for the pathos of the story. On
the very last day of the session, Governor Park Trammell, untouched
by the needs of these long persecuted people, and in full sympathy
and co-operation with the politicians’ strong anti-Indian feelings,
vetoed the bill, not only denying the citizenry of Florida the
inalienable right to uphold the dignity, honor and patriotism of
Florida, but denying these oppressed natives as much as a spadeful
of earth to cover their corpses. What mathematician can ever estimate
the result of the power used by the Governor at this critical time?
By this stroke of the pen, these aboriginal Americans again became
the victims of a cowardly treason.
A great State like Florida, whose honor is far greater than her land
possessions, need not vilify the history and lives of her native
people; there has been much more than money involved in the handlings
of the Everglade Country, and a handful of speculators, who said:
“There is no land left for the Seminole--let him ‘make bricks without
straw,’” found, as later records show, that a Florida democracy,
quickened by the spirit of human kindness, checkmated the Everglade
spoils-taker, whose fetish has been the dollar mark, and later
through the Legislature gave to the native owners land upon which
they may find peace and a refuge.
Again in 1915 an Indian bill was introduced, but certain active land
speculators, known to be strongly opposed to the Seminoles having
_any_ land in Florida, arrived at Florida’s capital on schedule time,
and the bill, as per Seminole dialect, went into a “big sleep,” and
the story of the Seminole came before the world as rivaling that of
the “Man Without a Country.” And, throughout the country, the printed
pages of journalism carried headlines which read: “Within the Bounds
of America, ‘We Have a Little Belgium of Our Own.’”
At this point in Florida’s history, the white American heard, as it
were, the Seminole’s wounded cry: “_Why have the lands of our fathers
been taken from us?_” And as the dirge-like wail of the oppressed
Seminole echoed and re-echoed through the solemn stillness of the
mysterious Everglades, it was transmuted into a very symphony of
sorrow. The mournful echoes of the cry of this stricken race, like
ether waves, permeated every corner of America, until Democracy
answered thus: “If this America of ours, by the furling and unfurling
of her Star Spangled Banner, can say to the war-mad nations of
Europe ‘_Touch not my people_,’ surely she will look into her galaxy
of States and see to it that the banner of her own flowery Florida
shall no longer be besmirched with a blot caused by the political
profiteers of the State; and Humanity, dignifying brotherly kindness,
challenged the white man’s hidden records and with uplifted hand
pointed the way to a just solution of the Seminole’s rights.”