Josie Billie, Miccosukee/Seminole Baptist Minister, ca. 1930s

Josie Billie, Miccosukee/Seminole Baptist Minister, ca. 1930s

The story of Josie Billie––the older brother of medicine man Ingraham Billie––represents the choices that many Florida Indians were facing as their political and social structures were slowly being divided between reservation and off-reservation interests. Also a prominent medicine man serving mainly Miccosukee speaking Indians along the Tamiami Trail, Josie Billie opposed the establishment of the Everglades National Park on what he considered Indian lands. After stepping down from his position on the Miccosukee General Council in the late 1930s, however, he moved onto the Big Cypress Reservation and began advocating for community improvements and better relations with white governmental entities. Billie also eventually converted to Christianity. Some members of the Miccosukee Indians moved with him onto the reservation as well, and his influence may have contributed to the upswing of Christian conversions on Big Cypress in the 1940s.

Robert Baker

Image Number PE0583, Irvin M Peithmann Collection, gift from Russell I. Peithmann, State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory.

http://floridamemory.com/items/show/164605

ca. 1930s

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