The Indians of Florida in the eighteenth century including the Seminole Indians. By the end of the seventeenth century, the Florida Indian population had already been decimated by disease, slavery, and war. During the early part of the eighteenth century, these processes continued. Henry Dobyns stated that the epidemics of disease were especially lethal because one epidemic did not immune any of the population from contracting another disease.1 The heavy Indian Slave trade, also, caused population decimation for the English supplied guns to their Indian allies for this purpose. The War of the Spanish Succession between 1702 and 1713 was the final blow that annihilated and, at the least, disrupted the Indian population of Florida. Many who lived in Northern Florida moved to be under the protection of the French. The English, also, welcomed groups of Apalache Indians who settled on the Savannah River.2 Years before the Apalache Indians took refuge with the French, these Indians had been heavily influenced by the Spanish Friars. By 1700 many attended Mass in Spanish, dressed for Mass as did the Europeans, and spoke Spanish.3 They, also, had acquired farming and husbandry skills.4 Marvin Smith wrote that in 1717 there were only about 1700 Indians in Northern Florida and by 1730 the Indian population in Southern Florida was about 1,500. This number decreased substantially as the century continued until, in 1760, it was only about 500. The total population of Indians in Florida decreased from 2,800 in 1730 to 700 in 1760.5 The non-indigenous Indian population of northern Florida, however, rose starting in the early eighteenth century. This increase was due to the formation of a group of Indians composed mainly of Lower Creeks but including fragments from other groups such as the Euchees, Hichitas, upper Creeks, etc. They represented two separate linguistic groups - those of the Muskogee language family and those of the Mikasuki language family. This non-indigenous group was to be called Seminoles which meant "Runaways;"6 however, this designation "Seminole" to the group of non-indigenous Indians living in Florida did not occur until about 1775.7 According to Charles Andrews, in an article in Tequesta, some of the almost extinct indigenous Florida tribes, also, allied themselves to the Lower Creeks and became known as Seminoles. He specifically referred to the Tequesta and Caloosa Indians.8 James Covington stated that this migration into Florida occurred in three phases: 1702-1750, 1750-1812, 1812-1820.9 During the initial phase of the migration, most of the settlements were not permanent and many of the Indians returned to Georgia and Alabama.10 The second phase resulted in more permanent settlements as the need for new hunting grounds increased so that the Indians could increase their items for trade, namely skins.11 The Indians emigrants to Florida did not establish towns that mirrored the formal arrangement of traditional Creek towns. Instead, they situated themselves in a more dispersed manner.12 During this period, most of the Lower Creeks in Florida (known as Seminoles) lost their ties with the rest of the Creeks living further north in Georgia, etc.13 By the latter third of the eighteenth century, however, the Seminoles had also began to break away from their Creek roots - politically, economically, and culturally.14 As the various individual Indians and groups of Indians settled in Florida in the early eighteenth century, there is no indication in the literature that their dress differed in their new locale nor that the various European powers that assumed control of Florida after the Spanish lost it in 1763 had much effect on their lives.15 In 1774, William Bartram grouped together the Lower Creeks and the Seminoles and stated that they wore the same type of dress, which reflected Spanish, not English, influence: "The manners and customs of the Alachuas, and most of the lower Creeks and Siminoles, appear evidently tinctured with Spanish civilization. Their religious and civil usages manifest a predilection for the Spanish customs. There are several Christians among them, many of whom wear little silver crucifixes, affixed to a wampum collar round their necks, or suspended by a small chain upon their breast."16 When the English assumed control of Florida, they treated the Indians in a different manner than did the Spaniards. Of major importance was their distribution of guns to the "friendly Indians. This act was diametrically opposite to the Spaniards who tried to keep fire arms out of the Indian's control. In addition, the British presented the Indians with many gifts. Of the presents given to the Indians at the Congress of Picolata in 1765, the majority were items of ready made clothes, of yard goods, or of accessories:
Most of the information as to the dress of the Seminoles in the eighteenth century is from William Bartram who traveled throughout the southeast in the seventeen seventies. Bartram described a chief of Alachua as wearing simple dress, plainer than that of his slaves. His hair was worn in the Creek fashion.18 John Bartram, also traveled in Florida. In 1765, he attended an Indian congress at Picolata. He noted that the Indian chiefs received from the Spanish medals to wear around their neck19. According to John C. Ewers in his article "Symbols of Chiefly Authority in Spanish Louisiana," the Indians esteemed in a sacred manner certain articles given to them by the Europeans. One of these articles was a medal, usually silver, that was worn by the chiefs. These medals varied in size due to the importance (according to the specific European Nation involved) of the chief. They signified the chief's allegiance to a particular European country or to the American government and were an important status symbol.20 Another article that could signify allegiance, peace, etc. was the Wampum belt. In The London Magazine of 1766, Major Rogers described how the Indians made and used Wampum: "....and now it is nothing but a kind of cylindrical beads, made of shells white and black, which are esteemed among them as silver and gold are among us. The black they call the most valuable, and both together are their greatest riches and ornaments; these among them answer all the ends that money does among us. They have the art of stringing, twisting, and interweaving these into their belts, collars, blankets, mogasons, &c. in ten thousand different sizes, forms, and figures, so as to be ornaments for every part of dress, and expressive to them of all their important transactions. They dye wampum of various colours and shades, and mix and dispose of them with great ingenuity and order, and so as to be significant among themselves of almost anything they please; so that by these their records are kept, and their thoughts communicated to one another, as ours are by writing. The belts that pass from one nation to another, in all treaties, declarations, are carefully preserved in the palaces and cabbins of their chiefs, and serve not only as a kind of record or history, but as a public treasure. It must, however, be an affair of national importance in which they use collars or belts, it being looked upon as a very great abuse and absurdity to use them on trifling occasions."21 During the eighteenth century, the Seminoles most probably wore the same clothing as did the lower Creeks or some that was very similar. This conclusion can be deduced from: 1) the fact that they were from the Lower Creeks and adjacent; 2) that there was no historic or cultural reason for them to radically change their dress; and 3) that travelers like John and William Bartram, who were portrayers of details both textually and graphically, did not comment on any unusual dress forms. However, William Bartram in 1774 did identify a specific style of dress when he stated that he saw a group of young men with a prince or chief of Talahasochte who was richly ornamented with plumes on their heads, etc., dressed "after the Siminole mode".22 He, however, did not expound nor present a full picture of this dress although he did draw the bust of Mico Chlucco (Long Warrior).23 Mico Chlucco is depicted as wearing a turkey feather cape over his shoulders which is open to reveal a white shirt gathered in the front to form a low cut oval neckline. Around his neck is a band with diamond designs on it. He wears a similar band around his head decorated with both diamonds and rectangles. From the front of the band sprout four plumes. His hair is cut in a like manner to that of the Creeks including a center lock and locks of hair around the base of the skulls decorated with feathers. Hilda J. Davis, in The American Anthropologist, in 1955, wrote about her assumption as to their dress. She does not give a date nor her reference source, but by the content of the article, it appears that she was referring to the latter half of the eighteenth century. She wrote: "The first cloth clothing, mostly drab colored prints, was sewed together by hand. The women wore ground-length skirts and long sleeved blouses. Around the neck were numerous strands of colored beads. The men's clothing consisted of buckskin leggings and a cloth, smock-like shirt which extended to well above the knees. It had long sleeves fastened tightly at the wrists, and a sash was fastened about the waist. "Any further details on the early Seminole dress would be purely speculation, for there is no good description of their clothing."24 The Seminoles in the eighteenth century were not poor wanderers, as is sometimes depicted. From archeological sites and the meager literature of the period, it has been demonstrated that their trade in skins was wide spread and sufficient to keep them prosperous.25 Very Soon after the final signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783, which transferred ownership of the Floridas to the Spanish, the question of `which nation would supply the Indians with goods' was of extreme importance. Thomas Forbes wrote a letter to Bernardo del Campo requesting the protection of the future Spanish governor for the trading firm of Panton, Leslie, and Co., known in Indian country as Charles McLatchy and Company. In the letter, he stated that: "I am taking the liberty of enclosing also a list of those articles of English manufacture whose use has become so habitual to the Indians that the persons who can supply them at the best price cannot fail to establish friendship with them."26 "All the above-mentioned [listed below] English goods can be had at a better price in London than any other place in Europe, these being also more acceptable to the peculiar tastes of the Indians."27 "LIST OF GOODS NECESSARY FOR THE INDIANS List of goods of English manufacture absolutely necessary for the Indians who inhabit the western frontiers of both Floridas. Plain or black Welch cloth and flannels Cheap linens and cotton cloth with stripes, figures, or flowers Handkerchiefs of linen variegated, and of silk Osnaburg cloth made in Scotland and thread They need also the following divers articles: Saddles with complete fittings Strong leather shoes for the men Muskets with smooth and rifled barrels, very cheap Flints; copper, brass, or tin kettles; baskets, jars, crocks; pitchers and iron jars; ladles with handles; half hatches; butcher knives; carpenters' and coopers' tools; locks and hinges, nails, pins, fishhooks, scissors, knives, razors, and small augers. Silver ornaments for the ears, arms, neck, etc. Vermillion and black powder for painting Common tobacco pipesOrdinary hats for men Cheap rum and brandy, salt, and other provisions that can be bought in that continent or obtained in Havana."28 It is obvious from the above list, that even in the Floridas, the Indians had become extremely dependent on the "Whiteman"s" goods. The importation of `baskets and crockery' as well as `stout men's shoes' shows how the Indians had supplanted their own items of manufacture for those of the Whiteman. As of 1784, the Seminole bands of Indians were still considered to be part of the Creek Confederacy by both the Spaniards and the Americans.29 Two treaties were to have an effect on Seminole-White relation - the Treaty of San Lorenzo in 1795 and the Treaty of Colerain in 1796. By the Treaty of Colerain, fugitive Negro slaves who had fled into the land of the Seminoles were to be returned by them to their White masters. However, the Lower Creeks near the Florida border and the Seminoles in Florida, itself, were barely represented at the Treaty Negotiations. This fact was to form a permanent separation between the Seminoles who lived in Spanish territory and the Creeks who lived on land owned by the United States.30 The effects of the Treaty of San Lorenzo were not felt strongly until 1799 when horses and goods from the camp of the United States Survey Team that had been authorized by the above named treaty to mark the thirty-first parallel were stolen by Lower Creeks and Seminoles.31 This, though, was not the only incident during the last decade of the eighteenth century that pitted the Seminoles against the United States. Various local conflicts and raids had been taking place.32 Thus, as with the other Southeastern Indian tribes, the stage was set by the end of the eighteenth century for the actual Indian Removal to lands west of the Mississippi that was to take place during the first half of the nineteenth century. 1. .Dobyns, Their Number Become Thinned, p. 289. 2. James Covington, "Apalache Indians 1704-1763," The Florida Historical Quarterly, 1972, pp. 375-6. 5. Marvin Smith, "Aboriginal Population Movements in the Early Historic Period Interior Southeast," Powhatan's Mantle, pp. 51-56. 6. Davis and Antle, "A Historic and Archaic Study of the Tuskegee in Florida", Chronicles of Oklahoma, March 1937, p. 54. 8. Charles M. Andrews, "The Florida Indians in the Seventeenth Century". Tequesta Vol. 1, No. 3, July 1943, pp. 36-37. 9. James Covington, "Migration of the Seminoles into Florida", The Florida Historical Quarterly, vol. XLV1, April 1968, Number 4, p. 340. 10. Ibid., p 346. 13. James Covington, "Migration of the Seminoles into Florida", The Florida Historical Quarterly, vol. XLV1, April 1968, Number 4, p. 348. 14. Fairbanks, Tacachale, p. 169 & Brent Weisman, like Beads on a String, p. xi. 17. James Covington "English Gifts to the Indians: 1765-1766", Florida Anthropologist, Volume 13, Nos. 1-2, 1960. This information was taken from The Public Record Office, Colonial Office Papers 5-540:247. 20. John C. Ewers, from The Spanish in the Mississippi Valley 1762-1804, pp. 275-279, John Francis McDermott, editor. 21. Major Rogers, London Magazine, 1766, p. 89. 22. William Bartram, Travels of William Bartram, p. 206, Dover edition.23. Ibid., opposite p. 184. The drawing is labeled "Mico Chlucco the Long Warior or King of the Seminoles". |