Autonomy Through Self-Sufficiency
During the late-19th and early-20th centuries, the Indians remaining in the swamplands of South Florida farmed, hunted, and fished to support their communities in and around the Everglades. They also traded items such as deer pelts, bird plumes, and alligator hides at rural outposts, catered to tourists, and/or worked as migrant laborers to supplement their income. Through these means, many families were able to remain largely self-sufficient through the mid-1920s.
Indian agents from the Bureau of Indian Affairs met sporadically with the various Florida Indian groups, resulting in an inconsistent relationship between the Indians and the U.S. government. While the federal government hoped for a gradual assimilation of the Florida Indians, state and federal agents––constrained by limited funding––found it difficult to implement many of the federal programs designed to introduce the Native population to western lifestyles. Governmental involvement continued to be primarily humanitarian in nature, with some Natives relying on supplementary food rations or monetary aid. The Indian communities did not readily accept programs commonly applied to the Western Indian tribes––including the division of tribal lands into individual Indian homesteads and governmentally administered communal reservations. It was due to these circumstances that many of the Indian communities in Florida continued to observe their own traditional forms of politics throughout the early-20th century.
