Browse Items (71 total)

Members of the Miccosukee Tribe prepare to deliver buckskin petitions to French, Spanish, and British embassies in the U.S. The Tribe hoped to rely on their acknowledgment of past treaties made with Florida Indians to support their claims to the…

During Governor LeRoy Collins’ 1957 trip to the Everglades, he encouraged the Miccosukee Trail Indians and the Seminole Reservation Indians to form one political unit. While the Seminole Tribe made an offer to include the off-reservation Indians in…

This document, written on a cured buckskin, embodied the desire of the Miccosukee speaking Indians living outside the three federal reservations to have a direct political connection with the United States government. They wanted a separate…

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.…

This 1953 newspaper article from The Miami News focuses on how two Florida Indian factions debated the best way to negotiate with the United States about maintaining sovereign land rights. The author reported that the off-reservation Miccosukee…

Bill Osceola was elected by virtue of his involvement in community matters. While he represented the collective Seminole body, he was also a reverend and a member of the growing Christian presence on the three reservations.

This map was created as part of an official report deciding whether to end federal supervision of the land held in trust for the Florida Indians by the United States. It clearly shows the placement of the three Seminole reservations, as well as the…

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…

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…

During the 1970s and 1980s, the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians made an effort to develop their own department of law enforcement, as well as other aspects of their community infrastructure. They petitioned in 1971 to the Department of the Interior to…