Browse Items (71 total)

This map was drawn by anthropologist/ethnologist Roy Nash, who was commissioned by the federal government to do field work among the Florida Indians in the late 1920s and early 1930s. When compared to Clay MacCauley’s 1880s map––which showed the…

Sons of Jimmie and Susie Billie: Frankie, Bobby C., Paul, David, Danny, and Bobby. Bobby Billie and Danny Billie, in particular, would become prominent leaders within the Independent Traditional Seminole community.

Several dozen Indians broke…

This 1960s-era promotional video was made shortly after the Seminole Tribe of Florida received federal recognition. With the creation of this film, the producers implied that the South Florida Indians needed federal assistance to be able to survive.…

When the Miccosukee Tribe was finally able to secure an official reservation along the Tamiami Trail in the early 1980s, it served as a confirmation of their existence as a separate tribe and political entity, validating their long struggle to gain…

Out of three diverse communities, the original Seminole reservations—Big Cypress, Brighton, and Dania--would politically unify in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. From barely avoiding the termination of their federal supervision, the Seminoles…

Abiaka––also known as Sam Jones––was a charismatic 19th century Mikasuki (Miccosukee) leader who inspired his people to resist white encroachment into Florida and forced removal of Indians from the state. He and his band of warriors fought a number…

During the mid to late-1700s, Lower and Upper Creek Indians––as well as small groups of other diverse Indian communities, including those who spoke Miccosukee––gradually migrated south from Georgia and Alabama into the relatively unpopulated regions…

Ingraham Billie, a Miccosukee medicine man, opposed the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. His and other leaders’ resistance spanned over two decades from the enactment of the law through the campaign to ratify a Miccosukee tribal constitution in…

This image is representative of new trends that sometimes conflicted with longstanding traditions on the Seminole reservations. The juxtaposition of the Baptist Church––a relatively recent phenomenon among the Florida Indians––with the Seminole…