Reservations: The Question of Autonomy

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Francis J. Scott, Superintendent of the Seminole Agency, Dedicating the First School on the Brighton Reservation, 1938.  Courtesy of the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Seminole Indian Museum.
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Village in Big Cypress Reservation, Florida, ca. 1950s. Courtesy of Florida Memory.
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A Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Achievement Record for the Glades County (Brighton) Indian Reservation, 1939.  Courtesy of the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Seminole Indian Museum.
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By the late 1930s, a substantial number of Florida Indians from various Muskogee and Miccosukee speaking communities had begun to relocate onto federal reservations set aside for them by the U.S. government: Dania, which was established in 1926, and Brighton and Big Cypress, which were established in 1936.  While the rapidly changing environment and social situation in the Everglades encouraged the relocation, the Natives still sought to control the type and extent of U.S. influence in their lives. Medicine men and the council of elders remained influential among many reservation residents.  However, the traditional Indian religious powerbase was threatened by a minority of Christian converts who began to emerge in leadership positions on the reservations.   Although there were some modern buildings constructed on the three reservations, many Native residents continued to utilize their traditional palmetto thatched dwellings called chickees.

Native people also had mixed reactions to the federal programs designed to encourage self-sufficiency and community modernization.  Some tribal elders and parents resisted attempts to enroll Native children in school, while others saw it as an opportunity for initiation into white society.  The introduction of self-sustaining commercial pursuits, such as mechanical trades and raising cattle, however, was more popular.  In general, the political interests of the different communities that settled on the three reservations varied.