seminolewar

Below:
This pot found buried at the mound at Fort Walton Beach indicates an advanced culture that was here in Florida and along the upper Gulf coast.



One thing that annoys me to no end is various claims that the native people in Florida are from elsewhere than what they say of themselves. These ridiculous claims persist, even though it goes against history, archaeology, and anthropology. These are the claims that people in Florida are from the lost tribes of Israel, Moors or even from Atlantis. This infuriates me, because archaeological remains in Florida go back even ten thousand years earlier than the Hebrews or the Moors. And saying they are from Atlantis is just plain silly. They also pre-date the Mayans.

What we do know, is that they were strongly connected to the mound builders in the southeast. But evidence points to a much earlier time.

We know that there were ancient people in Florida more than 10,000 years ago. The spectacular remains dated from 8,000 years ago found at Windover Farms in Brevard County revealed ancient brain matter, the oldest example of pottery found in North America, and the oldest surviving example of a complicated weaving for a garment. These were not simple people, even back then.

Ancient mammoth kill sites found in Florida have been long known. The recent study of mammoth killed remains found in Wakulla Springs has pushed the date of humans further back in time. The recent issue of the Florida Anthropologist says that these remains are among three sites in Leon and Jefferson County that are pre-Clovis.

Named the Clovis culture for the type of spear points found in New Mexico and spread all across the continent, Clovis man was once believed to have come across the Bering Strait land bridge and populated the western hemisphere about 11,500 years ago. But over the last 30 years, anthropologists have started to doubt that Clovis man was here first.

This is significant, because as long as we have been able to go back in time in Florida, there has always been evidence of humans. The Aucilla River project in the 1990s found evidence of man in Florida that goes back 15,000 years.

Several years ago I was visiting Mary Francis Johns on Brighton Reservation. It was a great loss when she passed away in 2004, and I visit her grave often. Mary was born at Royal Palm Hammock village along the Tamiami Trail, and a member of the Miccosukee Tribe. She married Archie Johns and became a member of the Seminole Tribe. I was always totally astounded by her story telling. She would mention something off-the-cuff that would answer another question that I had not even asked yet. Mary said that her ancestors did not live in Florida. They lived in the mountains of northern Georgia. This agrees with archaeology/anthropology that says that the Seminole came from this area. Mary said that when they lived up north, nobody really lived year-round in Florida, but came down to hunt and fish because Florida was like the Africa savanna and arid.

I was totally dumbfounded. Mary had just described how Florida was about 8,000 years ago or older, during the last ice age. When the Florida land mass was twice as big as today, due to the lowering of the sea level. Mary confirmed through oral history what we know about Florida from geological and archaeological history. Oral history that has been passed down for 8,000 years!

And to confirm that, I have seen objects held by native people today, that have been tested by famous anthropologists that have dated as old as 6,000 years, and have never been buried in the ground. One of these anthropologists was the late Dr. Charles Fairbanks. (And he dropped and broke one of the objects!)

There are native people alive here today who are the descendants of people who have lived in the southeast for thousands of years. Yes, we know that people migrated around. They will tell you that about themselves as well. But they are who they say they are.

But, were the people who killed the mammoth around Wakulla Springs about 13,000 years ago related to the people who became the Seminole or Miccosukee? Were the people from Windover Pond related? Did the migration of the Muskogee / Seminole / Hitchiti / Miccosukee people have cultural relics or genetic relics of these people moving around and having contact with each other? We do not know, and probably never will. That will probably remain among the great unanswered mysteries.

One of my favorite events is at Paynes Creek State Park. We had our district volunteer appreciation lunch here in the beginning of March, so I helped out with the reenactment of the burning of the Kennedy-Darling store which happened here in 1849. So I can now say that I shot Kennedy.

I did not make it to the regular even later in March due to moving my Dad into assisted living and the estate sale at his house that he was living in since 1967. (I will miss my old room and hiding place.)

Anyway, what I love about Paynes Creek is that it is a little known park that is out of the way; sort of a hidden gem in an area of Florida that not very many people know about. And when we have the annual Fort Chokonikla festival and store burning, some of the folks who show up are from families who have lived in this area for 100 or 150 years. So I end up learning more from them then they do from my living history.

This is our group shot. My turban band is tilted—the aggravation! The guy in the green shirt sitting down on the stairs in the bottom right is our Florida Parks Director Don Forgione. We were surprised to learn that this was the first park where he had worked, and started his career from here. Don is the first park director who came up through the ranks and is very well liked by everyone in the park system. I have even seen him a few times during my trips to Tallahassee, and he plays the guitar for the park service employee band.



The reenactment we do of the store burning is an actual event that happened here in 1849. We follow a script of what happened at that incident. It does not involve a lot of people like Dade Battle, but the nice thing is that it does involve the women and children, so they get to act out more than some of the other reenactments that we do.

Of some of the other things in the area is a lot of opportunities to canoe or kayak the Peace River. The creek in the park flows into the river, and you can walk across a suspension bridge to the other bank and see where the original store location was, and a monument or grave site for Kennedy. (Or some type of monument--it has actually been about two years since I have been able to cross over there.)

A few miles north is Fort Meade, where there is a monument hidden in a small park in the middle of the residential area to the battle of Tillis farm, which was the largest battle of the Third Seminole War in June 1856. A few miles outside of town is New Hope Cemetery with Mr. Tillis' grave. He had the misfortune of being in the first battle of the Second Seminole War (Black Point/Dec. 18, 1835) and had his farm attacked in the largest battle of the 3rd war. I guess the Seminoles didn't like him!

There is a lot of history in this area, and I my great-great-grandfather had a house and died in Ft. Meade in 1911, so I have family history there as well.

This was one of two events I am able to participate this season. The next one will be next weekend for the Volunteer Appreciation picnic at Paynes Creek. So this was the big one.

Doing the living history / reenacting at the Seminole Reservation is always different than any event. Our first time was in 1999, and they have done it every year, first at the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum, and now at the Swamp Safari. They are still looking at more ideas to improve for next year.

But I always feel odd, portraying the ancestors of the people in the crowd. I try more than ever, to make a connection with them.

I had an enjoyable weekend. Below is my smiling face, by Gordon Wareham. He is the best shooter at the shootout and has a lot of good photos from the past weekend.



I encountered a car wreck coming into the reservation on Sunday morning. I feel really sorry for the driver and know that it must be difficult.

This weekend is the shootout reenactment at Big Cypress Seminole Indian reservation. I will be setting up camp, which is something I have not done in a long time. My camp is always very modest and sparse.

The following Saturday, March 3rd, I will be helping out Ranger Neal to burn down the trading post at Paynes Creek State Park east of Tampa, near the small town of Bowling Green. This event is a volunteer appreciation picnic for all the park volunteers in our district 4. We are doing the reenactment of the 1849 incident for the enjoyment of our volunteers. The big annual reenactment at the park is also in March, but I am unable to attend it due to family obligations.

As far as I know, because of conflicting events with my work and family, these are the only two living history and reenactment events that I will be able to participate in during 2012. I wish that I could visit more, but everything else is a bust.

One subject that I have always wanted to talk about on this blog is Seminole folklore, but I have never known a good way to approach the subject. Some of the elders whom I seek guidance on such matters communicated to me that they do not want me to discuss details or specifics because this is a very sensitive subject to them. So I think that I will look at it as a cultural or social anthropologist. (That was the specialty of my Mom's anthropology work, so I have always been interested in it as well.)

For doing Seminole War historical interpretation, you need to understand the culture if you want to do living history of a particular people and culture back in time. You must take into account the entire culture and beliefs in order to understand the people. You cannot take one thing and ignore another. Do this, and you will be surprised with what answers you get to your search.

After several years of doing this, I was faced with something that could only be explained through Seminole beliefs and medicine. It was probably the biggest epiphany that I had since doing the Seminole living history. It totally re-wrote my whole value and belief system, and told me exactly who I was. I grew up in Florida. I am intimately connected to the land.

You also have to drop all cultural biases and beliefs that make us expect a specific outcome. If you were raised in a strict Judeo-Christian background, you are taught that everything is either good or bad; heaven or hell. In the Muskogee or Seminole universe, there are two sides to everything, or often four sides to everything. One thing may be both good and bad depending on how it is used or seen from other sides. Things that we do not like such as snakes or mosquitoes all have their place or purpose regardless of their inconvenience to us.

Stories among the Seminoles are not regarded as myths, but things that Muskogee and Seminole people believe are real, and some have even experienced. Just as we do not go around calling the Bible myths, which is full of stories of a lot of the same things in Seminole beliefs, like talking animals, witches, ghosts, or strange beings. But more important is the message the story conveys. There is a story of a woman who was visited by creator in disguise, and because she refused to feed him from her kitchen, then he turned her into a woodpecker. The story is not so much about how woodpeckers were created; but instead, to be charitable to strangers.

Folklore explains the world around us. And if you grew up in Florida camping out in the forest like I did, then I feel raised by the land and the stories do make sense to me. Occasionally I hear something in the news, like someone who died a mysterious death on Lake Istokpoga. It is no mystery to me.

The Seminole (or Muskogee and all the southeastern tribes) have a way of life or practice that this folklore encompasses. They do not think of it as a religion, but more of a way of life. They have no name for it. The closest thing to a name is Nenne Mvskoke, or the Muskogee Road/Way. It is just what they are. You can be Christian, non-Christian, Buddhist or not a believer in much of anything. It is very accommodating.

There are many things about the legends or folklore that are not widely known outside the people who practice the Seminole ways. They do not like to talk about it to outsiders anymore. They feel that over the past 200 years, the white men have taken away almost all they have. The only thing they have left is their culture, language, and medicine, and this is being lost as well. They guard it well because they are afraid that if they don't, then that will be stolen from them as well.

On the other hand, there are a lot of anthropological and historical sources out there that do cover a lot of the Seminole culture and folklore.

I want to end on a positive note and mention the good guys. Every tribe needs medicine people. They do not always do the same things. Some are experts with plants like Susie Billie, who lived to be over 120 years old, or story tellers like the late Mary Johns who I knew. Some are medicine people by virtue of their knowledge about things. Some women keep their medicine exclusively to treat women, or some will treat both men and women. We are all familiar with the full-blown medicine makers such as Jose Billie or Ingram Billie. Those ones go through an extensive training of many years under several teachers and cover all the topics that would come under the wide definition of medicine.

But remember that the medicine people are there to treat their own people or community. They do not open a doctor's office in Miami to treat people outside the tribe. And much of their medicine is preventative or used to define the nature of the illness. Illnesses are usually defined as an imbalance of something. People have written the Seminole Tribune newspaper asking help or treatment from a medicine maker because they are desperately seeking a cure to cancer that they have. Unfortunately, there is no magic elixir or ceremony for them, and that is not how medicine makers work.

Medicine people can also have behavior that is erratic or at times, even hostile. Don't take it personally; that is just the nature of who they are. There are times where they have to be very abrupt with the things they say. They will give you an answer that might not be what you want to hear, but what you need to hear. Or they will lead you through a self-discovery to find the cure yourself.

Many of my friends who read this blog also know Jimmy Sawgrass. I was looking up Jim's film credits, and found that he did a role in a movie, "All For Liberty" (2008.) The setting of this moving is one man's fight for freedom of South Carolina during the American Revolutionary War. Henry Felder was a Swiss immigrant who played a part in writing South Carolina's Declaration of Independence and forming a militia army to fight the British.

You can not find the movie on Netfilx, and will have to buy a copy through the website, http://www.allforliberty.com . I did, and it was well worth the purchase. It is a great movie, and I will say that it is probably the best historical movie that I have seen in a very long time. I would say that this is like Mel Gibson’s movie, "The Patriot," but with less money put into the production. But it is a top quality film without the big money studio.

Everything was filmed in South Carolina and Georgia and it is mostly a local creation from Charleston.

Henry Felder was an interesting character. South Carolina had slavery, but Henry rescued a freedman from slave catchers and hired him as his foreman. Felder fought the Cherokee, but years later he treated them with compassion and had one as his best friend. (The part that Sawgrass plays in the movie.)

There are a lot of actors and reenactors who took part in the film. I noticed that to keep the production cost down, that many of the actors also work in the film production and are mentioned more than once in the credits. Felder is even played by Clinton Felder, one of Henry’s direct descendants

The soundtrack was a real treat as well. An orchestra that plays Rev War period music, and not any wild synthesizer music.

One thing that I found unusual was that Jimmy Sawgrass kept his own name in the movie. If it was me, I would have changed it to something like Catawba Chief or something like that. And for some odd reason, it sounded like a different voice than Jimmy, like another voice was dubbed instead of his. Don't they like his southern accent?

Still worth it, and check out the website and order a copy. My copy was mailed in an envelope where it was addressed with fancy calligraphy, as if someone in the 18th century mailed it to me. That was a nice gesture.

Being 2012 and the end of the Mayan calendar, we have seen how a lot of people have been going crazy with wild speculation of what will happen. Then there is this architect who is trying to prove that the Mayans settled Georgia, and he wrote an article on a website about Mayan pyramids in northern Georgia that everyone thinks is really great. The guy is a quack. His evidence is not from archaeological investigation, but hearsay when he asked some professor in Mexico if the mounds looked Mayan, and the Mexican professor said yes. Archaeologists who I have heard talk about the subject and who have investigated the site, say that there is nothing there that matches the claims of this architect.

Let us put this garbage to rest once and for all. I was going to write this a few weeks ago, but was missing some information. That was filled in for me last week by a Muskogee elder who also has more degrees and university teaching behind him than this quack architect.

Do not misunderstand the point that I am trying to say here. The Mayans were an impressive civilization and everyone agrees with that. But so were the Mississippian Mound builders. It is probably a good bet that these ancient civilizations knew about each other. But one does not owe its existence exclusively to the other.

People who have fallen for this theory that the mounds in Georgia were built by Mayans ignore the mountain of archaeological evidence to the contrary. Yes there was a civilization, but it was Mississippian and not Mayan.

People jump on this fringe theory ignoring their own history. This architect claims to be Muscogee descent, but he is showing total lack of knowledge to his own Muscogee heritage and oral history. This is what happens when people become totally disconnected from their native roots and ancestry. Then people start to throw out any wild theory about the origin of the Mound Builders except who they were. They were not Welsh, not the Lost Tribes of Israel, not Egyptians, and not early tribes that were enslaved by a race of god-like extraterrestrials. They should look at the evidence, and there is much, and accept the easiest theory first.

Recent articles in Science Magazine deal with some fantastic new discoveries at Cahokia, the Mound Builder city along the Mississippi in Illinois. And the articles in Science magazine certainly hold more weight than one fringe blog. Cahokia has been found to be much bigger and than originally thought. Excavations to the west of the main mound complex have found the remains and evidence of 50,000 homes. That is at least 150,000 people living in this mound city at one time. This was a huge civilization.

Below: Cahokia


Cahokia is considered the main capital for the Mississippian Mound builders that flourished after 700 AD and reached a peak about 1200 AD. These new finds are pushing the dates back even further. Mound builders in Florida such as the ones at Crystal River were there even earlier, starting around 500 BC.

One plant that is common among all tribes in Mexico, the southwest, the southeast, and even up the eastern coast into Canada, is corn. Corn has now been found in the southeast and elsewhere that is centuries older than what has been found from excavations of the Mayan civilization. Corn has been found in mounds in Florida that date 800-400 BC.

Another article in Science Magazine says that there is now more compelling evidence that the Mississippian tribes on the lower Mississippi River were probably where Meso-American civilization originated. That means that ancient civilization started around the upper gulf coast and moved south. (And north and east.) What this is leading many anthropologists to believe is that the Mississippian Mound builders gave civilization to the Mayans, not the other way around.

Now when a civilization develops, or a religious practice spreads, the further away you get from the origin, the crazier it will become. Which is why Christianity started as a relatively simple little Jewish cult in Jerusalem without much organization, but by the time it had gotten to Rome, you now have the church full of strange rituals and secret societies, led by a single celibate guy in a funny hat and robes who practices ritual cannibalism. The further away you get, things tend to get more ritualistic and extreme.

Now back to corn. Corn is everything to these ancient civilizations. It made it possible for them to grow as a civilization. It is the survival of the people. If they have a year of bad crops and don't save any in supply, the whole community will be endangered. So it would make sense that main practices in the culture would be about planting and harvesting corn. The ancient civilizations also had a planting calendar. This calendar follows a simple mathematical formula. Even the Muskogee and Seminole people use this as their ceremonial cycle and calendar. Through astronomical observation, and close study of the growing crops, a cycle is found that works as a planting calendar, and it just so happens to work out to 365 days a year.

Now we know from both the remaining Mayan pyramids and Mississippian mounds like Serpent Mound, the ancient people were keen observers of astronomical events. Both civilizations figured out the cycle of Venus in the sky and also developed their calendar around it. It just so happens, that Venus also corresponds with the planting cycle. The ancient Egyptians would see it as a sign of the flooding of the Nile and planting time. These mathematical formulas make perfect sense. They are not really complicated. In ages past it was considered ceremonial knowledge, and I will respect it by acknowledging that it exists and not saying any more. I am not going to give out the formula here, and do not ask me for it either.

So what about the Mayan calendar? Well if you were making a calendar for planting and astronomical observations, would it be enough to project it to 500 years in the future and leaving it at that? If anyone wants to continue in the future, than they can continue the work. The Mayans just ran out of dates and stone to carve onto and saw no need to continue any further.

One more comment from my previous blog.
For the guys who were doing the hand to hand for the film crew, if you should have an accident while doing that; like bust your wrist or get slashed by a knife blade or tomahawk, then there is a good chance that the medical bill will be on you. I doubt that you would be covered by the state's workers comp. You are performing that little act for the film crew and not for the state park, without state park safety officers present who are now mandatory for all park reenactment programs.
The film crew will probably quickly disappear.
Good luck suing the state.

I will remind everyone once again, that I have been doing the living history and Seminole War research for longer than I care to admit. I will admit that the first Dade Battle reenactment that I saw, Jimmy Sawgrass (who I had already known for a few years) was there and he was younger than his son Cody is today.

Needless to say, I think that I can be classified as an authority on the subjects I talk about on my blog. I get opinionated, but am entitled to it. But I wanted to reiterate that I have been doing this a long time and feel that I have the experience and research to know what I am talking about.

When I do an event like the Dade Battle reenactment, or any other event at many of the state parks, my purpose for being there is to present living history interpretation that is relevant with that site, and with the battle reenactment. I am not there to be on history channel, discovery channel, or nat geo. I am not there as a paid actor, but as a volunteer for the park. Except in my case, I am a paid park employee, and one of the extreme few park employees who still does Seminole War living history portraying a Seminole. There used to be many more FPS employees who did Seminole, but I think that I am the only one left. But basically, I am there for the park.

Everyone who signs up for an event at a park, fills out a volunteer agreement, which is a contract to the park to provide your volunteer services. This is a contract with the Dade Battlefield and the Florida State Parks, and is not a contract with Discovery TV channel. (Just using Discovery as an example; they filmed up back in the mid-90s.) If you want to be on Discovery TV, you have to fill out a separate contract with them. If they put your likeness on their program, they need to contract with you and get your signed release. It is not the same as the agreement you sign with the park.

For the Shootout reenactment at Big Cypress Reservation, we are filmed by the Seminole TV network for their news or documentary programs. This is a little different. As a participant of the Shootout, you sign a contract with the Seminole Tribe of Florida. The Seminole TV network is also with the tribe. So when you agree to do the event and sign a contract with the tribe, you are also agreeing to let the tribal network film you. At the shootout, the tribe will allow no other network or production to film you, except this previous year they made an exception with the Swamp Men program.

This past weekend at Dade, I saw several photos of some of you being filmed in a hand-to-hand combat scenario. When I said that it never happened at Dade Battle, I was told that they were filming for a different program that was not part of the battle reenactment. This was a company filming separate footage for another program.

TV programs that are being filmed for the cable TV networks like Discovery, History, or Nat Geo, are not non-profit organizations like the parks. They are Hollywood. They are people who are in the business of making TV and they profit from it. I know several reenactors who have worked with TV and movies and have been paid for doing programs. Some of them are members of the Screen Actors Guild. For myself, I am not a SAG member, but have been paid for TV and documentary programs in the past.

When these cable networks come to the park to film in the park, they are required to get approval from Tallahassee, and to pay the park $500 a day filming fee. They are paying the state to come there and film. Do not allow them to play you for the fool and film you for free. They owe you money for filming, which is a separate service than what you have contracted with the park for the event.

Will a professional actor allow themselves to be in a film production and do it for free? Usually not! If you are getting filmed for free, you are doing a disservice to other reenactors who do this professionally and get paid for it. You should, too! If you are in their film, you are just being fooled to work for free, and they will take advantage of you. Don't be played the fool.

Seems that the false belief still persists in our times that the Native people in Florida were dumb savages. This is not supported by any evidence. From what we know from the wealth of the archaeological evidence, was that the native people of Florida flourished as many large, complex societies. The state historical and archaeological site files are now up to about 180,000 historic and archaeological sites in Florida. This is one of the richest places in the world for archaeological evidence of human habitation and civilization. Artist Hermann Trappman seeks to portray this in his art. His wife Elizabeth had this to say about their recent encounter with ignorant people at a past festival:

Elizabeth wrote: "...there are some renowned scholars who have not renounced their long held racist beliefs that the prehistoric native people were savages. Hermann and I are not welcome in some circles because we tend to rock their boats.

1. By any definition native people in the Americas were organized into nations, not tribes.
2. Native people lived in large cities not villages and their population numbers must be figured on the resources available to them, not on the myth of someone's guess.
3. Native people had international trading partners.
4. Native people were multi-lingual.
5. Native people lived longer, ate better, and had better medical practices than Europeans.
6. Native people practiced a sustainable lifestyle based on an understanding of the environment in which they lived.
7. Native peole did not organize themselves into kingdoms but practiced an egalitarian style of government.
8. Native people practiced a superior form of agriculture based on mimicry, not the soil depleting monoculture that emerged out of the Middle East and spread to Europe then to America.
9. Natve people did not rely on "subsistance living," an anthropological term that demeans the cultures to which it refers.
10. Caciques and caciquas were honored men and honored women, who were chosen because of their skills in leadership, not as a hereditary right.
11. Native women did not run around with Spanish moss draped around their private parts. LeMoyne's drawing are simply is pornography to attract men to settle La Florida. Textiles have been found in archaeological sites dating back over 9,000 years.
12. Native people had sailing craft. Columbus said they did.

So much evidence has been lost to parking lots, we may never know the extent of the great civilizations that lived here. While biblical archaeologists are out in the "Holy Land" trying to find evidence to perpetuate their long held myths, archaeologist here spend a lot of time trying to perpetuate their myth that Native Americans were somehow an inferior race."

You may not agree with all of Elizabeth's points. But even if you agree with half of them, it is still enough evidence to show that they were a significant culture and not a bunch of savages like people mistakenly think.

Just my honest opinion!