Peace Powwow

One day last week several thousand Floridians and visitors from the North repaired to a park on the shores of Lake Worth, between Palm Beach and West Palm Beach. There they ranged themselves in specially-built boxes and bleachers around a huge central platform. On the platform bespectacled Secretary of the Interior Harold Le Clair Ickes squatted on his haunches in a circle of squatting Seminole Indians. Seminole squaws and papooses in bright beads and dresses were bunched around the platform. Loudspeakers allowed the spectators to overhear the powwow by which Secretary Ickes proposed to advance the Administration's policy of extending its New Deal to Indians. Simultaneously the 100-year war between the Seminoles and the U. S., begun by the raw deal of that first modern Democrat, President Andrew Jackson, was to be brought to a peaceful conclusion.

Spread over fertile northern Florida, the Seminoles of the early 19th Century were a proud, virile tribe of 5,000 souls, rich in cattle and Negro slaves bought from the British. In 1818, while Florida still belonged to Spain, General Jackson led his troops against them in the First Seminole War. Three years later, U. S. purchase of Florida sent a flood of white squatters over the Seminoles' lands. The Federal Government helped shunt the Indians south to swamps and sand dunes. Whites stole their cattle and Negroes, kept up a continuous outcry to have them driven out altogether. In 1832 the Government persuaded some of the Seminole chiefs to sign a treaty promising mass emigration to Arkansas within three years.

Proudest, craftiest and most daring of Seminole leaders was a brilliant-eyed, strikingly handsome young buck named Osceola. In 1835 the Government Indian Agent. General Wiley Thompson, summoned Seminole chiefs to sign a treaty of immediate emigration. Osceola advanced to the table, contemptuously drove his sheath knife through the paper. General Thompson threw him in chains. Osceola was shortly set free, slew General Thompson. President Jackson promptly launched the Second Seminole War. Quartering the tribe's women and children back in the swamps, Osceola led 1,600 braves in a guerrilla warfare which completely baffled the far larger forces of Federal troops and militia.

In September 1837, having captured a Seminole chief. Major General Thomas S. Jesup persuaded Osceola to meet one of his officers under a flag of truce, treat for peace. Trustingly Osceola advanced with several chiefs and 198 tribespeople. All threw down their guns. When the parley was well started, General Jesup's soldiers leaped from the bushes, captured the Indians without a struggle. Osceola was imprisoned in Charleston. S. C.'s Fort Moultrie where he died after three months, officially of "a quinsy." General Jesup spent the rest of his life trying to justify his black treachery.

The Second Seminole War continued actively for seven years, cost the Government 1,500 men and $40,000,000, drove most of the tribe to a miserable existence in Indian Territory. A stubborn few could not be dislodged from Florida's swamps. Their descendants, some of whom intermarried with Negroes, now number nearly 600. Routed by whites from every desirable acre, they are now scattered deep in the Everglades and Big Cypress Swamp. They live in evil-smelling thatched shacks perched on stilts, fish in the Everglades' black sluggish waters, hunt deer and wild turkey, make a little cash as vegetable pickers, hunting guides, sideshow attractions in amusement parks. Their chief recreation consists of listening to phonograph records, drinking a mixture of moonshine and Sloan's liniment. A Seminole marriage is complete when the bride's family has provided a shirt for the groom; the groom's family, a bed; and the groom has moved into the bride's house. To divorce his wife a Seminole husband simply moves out. Florida "crackers," delighted at having a few humans on whom they can look down, amuse themselves by shooting the Seminoles' hogs.

Because they still consider themselves at war with the U. S., few Seminoles have learned to speak English. Last week an interpreter translated for Secretary Ickes their terms of peace: 200,000 acres and $15 per month apiece.

Said Charlie Cypress: "Formerly I had many grounds to hunt upon."

Said Sam Tommie: "There is no game left for me."

Said Billie Stuart: "It seems I am in a pen."

Said Secretary Ickes: "The Seminoles are a proud and independent people. I do not know whether it will be possible to give them all they ask, but in cooperation with the State of Florida the Administration in Washington will do all in its power to give them the land and the game they require to live the lives of their forefathers."

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