Evolving Florida Indian Communities: Political and Cultural Lines Blur

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Josie Billie, Seminole Baptist Minister. Courtesy of the Florida Memory Project, ca. 1930s.
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During the late-19th and early-20th centuries, two main Native factions lived in South Florida: a community of Muskogee speaking Indians living near Lake Okeechobee and several loosely affiliated groups of Miccosukee speaking Indians living in villages south of Lake Okeechobee and in hammocks outside the Everglades.  These Miccosukee bands did not live in seclusion from one another, but the group living adjacent to the Everglades had less contact with their more northern counterparts.  By the 1930s, many Muskogees had moved onto Brighton Reservation, while a number of Miccosukee speakers had chosen to relocate to Big Cypress and Dania.  This caused a political divergence of communities on the three reservations with differing opinions with regard to the United States’ involvement in their affairs.

While the Miccosukee speakers living on the reservations would become politically affiliated with the Muskogee speaking Indians in the formation of the Seminole Tribe, they still felt culturally affiliated with the non-reservation Miccosukee living mostly along the Tamiami Trail.  The non-reservation group, however, would seek to be recognized as a separate tribe with political goals unique from those who relocated onto the reservations.