These Indians were proud of their independence and disdained the Seminoles - a name they reserved for those who had opted for reservation life. Its completion in 1928 brought tourists to the wilderness and Miccosukees to the Trail in hopes of earning a livelihood. Eventually the road linked Tampa and Miami and was christened the Tamiami Trail. Tiger was six when white construction crews brought in the 'walking dredge' that dug a cross-state drainage ditch and created an elevated road with the muck. 'But the water isn't good the fish aren't good. There's going to be good water and lots of fish,'' relates 76-year-old Buffalo Tiger, a former tribal chairman. 'The Corps of Engineers told us, 'There's going to be a lot of water - water is going to stay here. Others, including members of the tribe now called Miccosukee, decided to tough it out in the Everglades. Some fled to reservations set up in Hendry, Monroe, and Glades counties. The Florida land boom had begun, and it spelled great trouble for the Indians, who now had to share their hunting territories with outsiders. Army Corps of Engineers had dug canals to the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, draining vast quantities of water from the wetlands. Historical forces, however, would change that.īy 1920 the U.S. About two-thirds of these Seminoles were of the tribe now called Miccosukee the others spoke a different language.Īs the government in Washington turned its attention to the Civil War, the Indians enjoyed nearly 50 years of unlimited and generally peaceable access to the great swamp. They had achieved what they wanted most: to be left alone. Roughly 200 unconquered Indians remained behind in the Everglades. The next year Bowlegs returned to Florida to lead 75 more Indians west. The removal efforts culminated in 1858 when Indian leader Billy Bowlegs, who had three times refused to be bribed or cajoled into moving, agreed to take a small group of followers and relocate to Oklahoma. Indians were duped, kidnapped, and otherwise driven toward Oklahoma.

But that didn't stop the burning and looting. Army signed a treaty that divided Florida along the Peace River and granted Indians rights to the land south of it, with the exception of the two coastlines. We weren't even allowed to bury our dead.' Sometimes we smothered our babies - not intentionally, but to keep them quiet. 'They hunted us with dogs,' says Virginia Poole, a tribal member who has written about Miccosukee women and at age 50 is considered an elder entrusted with responsibility for passing on Miccosukee history. But troops followed them, killed or captured the men, and burned their homes. The Indians sought refuge among the hammocks of the Everglades and the Big Cypress swamp. Treasury $30 million and drove the so-called Seminoles - which included Muskogee Creeks and the bands who would later call themselves Miccosukee - further south.

In 1835, as president of the United States, Jackson's policy of removing the Florida Indians to reservations in the Oklahoma Territory ignited the Second Seminole War, a bloody, seven-year conflict that cost the U.S. The tribe's flight south toward the wilderness had begun, with Jackson and his soldiers in bloody pursuit. Andrew Jackson ended that pastoral existence in 1818 when he invaded Spanish Florida, and in retaliation for Creek uprisings further north burned 300 Miccosukee homes, destroyed food stores, and expelled the survivors. Families kept small corn and pumpkin gardens and farmed communal vegetable plantations. Part of a southern band of Creek Indians who spoke Hitchiti, the tribe had migrated from Alabama and Georgia to North Florida by the Eighteenth Century and built log-cabin villages near present-day Tallahassee. Over the past 200 years, members of what is now called the Miccosukee Tribe have searched, fought, and finally negotiated for a permanent home.

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