No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
“Savages of Southern Sunshine”: Racial Realignment of the Seminoles in the Selling of Jim Crow Florida
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2014
Abstract
In the late nineteenth century, white land and tourism promoters invested in the selling of Florida to American migrants and winter visitors began to recast the Seminoles. From being feared and denigrated as mixed-race killers, associated with runaway slaves, who had defied earlier US attempts to remove them to the West, the Seminoles were “realigned” by boosters into praiseworthy specimens of moral and racial purity. According to promoters, the Seminoles were now human emblems of the Florida wilderness, but also pure-blood primitives. As such, they fitted much better with the Jim Crow ideals of benign racial separation. Although neither smooth nor complete, this process of racial realignment transformed the Seminoles from terrifying threat to marketable curiosity, easing the incorporation of the Seminoles into the selling of south Florida.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014
References
1 Matthiessen, Richard, Shadow Country (New York: Modern Library, 2008), 78Google Scholar.
2 Hale, Grace Elizabeth, Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890–1940 (New York: Pantheon, 1998), 129Google Scholar.
3 See Giddings, Joshua R., Exiles of Florida (Columbus: Follett, Foster, and Co., 1858)Google Scholar.
4 Quotation in Presbrey, Frank, Florida, Cuba, and Jamaica (New York: Plant System, 1900), 3–4Google Scholar.
5 See also Covington, James C., The Seminoles of Florida (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993)Google Scholar. Weisman, Brent R., Like Beads on a String: A Culture History of the Seminole Indians in Northern Peninsular Florida (Tuscaloosa and London: University of Alabama Press, 1989)Google Scholar. Kersey, Harry A. Jr., The Florida Seminoles and the New Deal, 1933–1942 (Boca Raton: Florida Atlantic University Press, 1989)Google Scholar.
6 West, Patsy, The Enduring Seminoles: From Alligator Wrestling to Casino Gambling (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998)Google Scholar. See also Cattelino, Jessica R., High Stakes: Florida Seminole Gaming and Sovereignty (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006)Google Scholar.
7 West, 2–3. See also Weisman, Brent R., “Chipco's House and the Role of the Individual in Shaping Seminole Indian Cultural Responses to the Modern World”, Historical Archaeology, 46:1 (2012), 161–171CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 Mechling, Jay, “Florida Seminoles and the Marketing of the Last Frontier,” in Elizabeth Bird, S., ed., Dressing in Feathers: The Construction of the Indian in American Popular Culture (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996), 149–66, 149, 160Google Scholar.
9 McCray Pearson, Joyce A., “Red and Black – A Divided Seminole Nation: Davis v. U.S.”, Kansas Journal of Law & Public Policy, 14 (2004–5), 607–38Google Scholar.
10 Miller, Susan A., “Seminoles and Africans under Seminole Law: Sources and Discourses of Tribal Sovereignty and ‘Black Indian’ Entitlement,” Wicazo Sa Review, 20, 1 (2005), 23–47, 24CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an anthropological study of the Seminoles and blacks in Florida see Weik, Terrance M., The Archaeology of Anti-slavery Resistance (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2012)Google Scholar.
11 Pollitzer, William S. et al. , “The Seminole Indians of Florida: Morphology and Serology”, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 32, 1 (Jan. 1970), 65–81, 65CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma see Johnston, Josephine, “Resisting a Genetic Identity: The Black Seminoles and Genetic Tests of Ancestry,” Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 31, 2 (Summer 2003), 262–71, 262CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 Marchand, Roland, Advertising the American Dream: Making War for Modernity, 1920–1940 (Berkeley: University of California, 1985), xvi–xix, xix, xviiCrossRefGoogle Scholar, emphasis in original. See Lears, Jackson, Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America (New York: BasicBooks, 1994)Google Scholar.
13 Jeffrey Steele, “Reduced to Images: American Indians in Nineteenth-Century Advertising”, in Bird, 45–65.
14 Weeks, Philip, Farewell, My Nation: The American Indian and the United States in the Nineteenth Century (Wheeling: Harlan Davidson Inc., 2001), 1–6Google Scholar.
15 The show changed its name in 1893 to Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World. Slotkin, Richard, Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), 66–79, 66Google Scholar.
16 Weigle, Marta, “From Desert to Disney World: The Santa Fe Railway and the Fred Harvey Company Display the Indian Southwest,” Journal of Anthropological Research, 45, 1 (Spring 1989), 115–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
17 Silber, Nina, The Romance of Reunion: Northerners and the South, 1865–1900 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 66–92Google Scholar.
18 See Pfister, Joel, Individuality Incorporated: Indians and the Multicultural Modern (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.
19 Joel W. Martin, “‘My Grandmother Was a Cherokee Princess’: Representations of Indians in Southern History,” in Bird, 129–48, 141.
20 Hale.
21 Whitfield, Stephen, “Florida's Fudged Identity,” Florida Historical Quarterly, 71, 4 (Apr. 1993), 7–29, 11Google Scholar, emphasis in original.
22 Hesseltine, William and Smiley, David, The South in American History (Boston: Prentice-Hall, 1960), 413–14Google Scholar.
23 Barbour, George, Florida for Tourists, Invalids and Settlers: Containing Practical Information Regarding Climate, Soil and Productions (New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1882), 225Google Scholar. Croix, F. W. De, Historical, Industrial, and Commercial Data of Miami and Fort Lauderdale – Dade County, Florida – The Most Progressive and Conspicuous Section of the East Coast (St. Augustine: The Record Co., 1911), 215Google Scholar.
24 Shofner, Jerrell, Nor Is It Over Yet: Florida in the Era of Reconstruction, 1863–1877 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1974), 344Google Scholar.
25 Ortiz, Paul, Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence in Florida from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 61Google Scholar.
26 Ibid.
27 McLin, B. E. (commissioner, Department of Agriculture), Florida – A Pamphlet Descriptive of Its History, Topography, Climate, Soil, Resources, and Natural Advantages, in General and by Counties – Prepared in the Interest of Immigration (Tallahassee: T. B. Hilson, 1904), 277Google Scholar.
28 Skinner, Emory Fiske, Reminiscences (Chicago: Vestal Printing Company, 1908), 282Google Scholar.
29 Mahon, John K., “The Seminole and Miccosukee Indians of Florida,” in George, Paul S., ed., A Guide to the History of Florida (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989), 153–62Google Scholar.
30 Mahon, John K. and Weisman, Brent R., “Florida's Seminole and Miccosukee Peoples,” in Gannon, Michael, ed., The New History of Florida (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1996), 183–206, 183Google Scholar.
31 Ibid., 188–89.
32 Ibid., 190.
33 Klos, George, “Blacks and the Seminole Removal Debate, 1821–1835,” Florida Historical Quarterly, 68, 1 (July 1989), 55–78, 58Google Scholar.
34 Quotation in Rogin, Michael Paul, Fathers and Children: Andrew Jackson and the Subjugation of the American Indian (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1991), 197Google Scholar, emphasis in original.
35 Ibid., 195–97.
36 The Seminoles also resisted, where others did not, because they had enjoyed relative freedom under weak Spanish rule and were thus even more angered by the new US regime. Ibid., 236–37.
37 Ibid., 236–37.
38 General Thomas Jesup quoted in ibid., 238.
39 Mahon, “The Seminole and Miccosukee Indians of Florida,” 157.
40 MacCauley, Clay, The Seminole Indians of Florida (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1887), 476Google Scholar.
41 Mahon and Weisman, “Florida's Seminole and Miccosukee Peoples,” 203.
42 MacCauley, 477, 490, 503, 493, 497.
43 Ibid., 481–503. For another important assimilation-minded piece on the Seminoles see “R. H. Pratt's Report on the Seminoles in 1879,” Florida Anthropologist, 9 (March 1956), 1–24.
44 “Indians to Be Treated Like Other People,” Chicago Tribune, 8 Dec. 1901, 53.
45 Wm. A. Pringle, “Tour through Florida,” reproduced in Bicaise, H. D., A Guide to the Land of Flowers (Charleston: Parry, Cook, 1878), 85Google Scholar.
46 Davidson referred to the “latest Government reports” on the Seminoles; although not a government report, Matthews's account was published as an ethnological guide by the Smithsonian Institute. Davidson, James Wood, The Florida of To-day: A Guide for Tourists and Settlers (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1889), 117Google Scholar.
47 Ibid., 122.
48 Live Towns and Progressive Men of Florida – Illustrated (Jacksonville: C. A. Rorhabacher, 1887), 196–97.
49 Perman, Michael, Struggle For Mastery: Disfranchisement in the South, 1888–1908 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 258–259Google Scholar.
50 Davidson, 72, 113–14.
51 Ibid., 20.
52 Ibid., 117.
53 Ibid., 19–20.
54 Brinton, Daniel G., A Guide-Book of Florida and the South (Philadelphia: Geo. Macle, 1869), 33Google Scholar. “Cattle Raising in Florida,” Florida Dispatch, 1 May 1882, 82.
55 “About Lake Okeechobee,” Atlanta Constitution, 30 June 1882, 2.
56 Advertisement in Chicago Tribune, 28 Feb. 1891, 12.
57 Long, Ellen Call, Florida Breezes (Jacksonville: Ashmead Bros. Printers, 1882), 1Google Scholar.
58 Fruit and Vegetable Growing in Manatee County, Florida (Norfolk: General Industrial Department, Seaboard Air Line Railway, 1910), 5.
59 Hill, George Canning, “Florida for the Winter,” New England Magazine, 6, 3 (March 1888), 209–21, 210Google Scholar.
60 Davidson, The Florida of To-Day, 25.
61 Crosby, Oliver M., Florida Facts Both Bright and Blue: A Guide Book to Intending Settlers, Tourists, and Investors, from a Northerner's Standpoint (New York: South Publishing Co., 1887), 124bGoogle Scholar.
62 Dimock, A. W. and Dimock, Julian A., Florida Enchantments (New York: The Outing Publishing Company, 1908), 308Google Scholar.
63 De Croix, Historical, Industrial, and Commercial Data of Miami and Fort Lauderdale, 170–71.
64 MacCauley, 479.
65 See Samuel Proctor, “Prelude to the New Florida, 1877–1919,” in Gannon, The New History of Florida, 267–84.
66 Lookingbill, Brad D., War Dance at Fort Marion: Plains Indian War Prisoners (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006)Google Scholar.
67 Florida, Sub-tropical Exposition (brochure) (Jacksonville: The Sub-tropical Exposition, 1888).
68 Webber, Carl, Eden of the South (New York: Leve & Alden, 1883), 6Google Scholar. Robinson, A. A., Florida: A Pamphlet Descriptive of Its History, Topography, Climate, Soil, Resources, and Natural Advantages (Tallahassee: Florida Bureau of Immigration, 1882), 110Google Scholar. Casson, Herbert N., “The New Florida,” Florida East Coast Homeseeker, 12, 3 (March 1910), 80–89, 82Google Scholar.
69 Powers, S., “Florida and California,” Florida Farmer and Fruit Grower, 6 April 1887, 108Google Scholar.
70 Florida: The Gulf Coast and Cuba (Milwaukee: St. Louis & San Francisco Railroad, 1911), 11.
71 Rainbolt, Victor, The Town That Climate Built: The Story of the Rise of a City in the American Tropics (Miami: Parker Art Printing Association, n.d.), 88–93Google Scholar.
72 Jacksonville, Tampa and Key West Railway Company: The Tropical Trunk Line (1892–93), 11.
73 Jordan, J. Murray, The East Coast of Florida (Philadelphia: J. Murray Jordan, 1901), 45Google Scholar.
74 Tebeau, Charlton, A History of Florida (Coral Gables: University of Miami Press, 1971), 287Google Scholar.
75 Florida Tourist and Southern Investor's Guide (Cedar Rapids: C. F. Bates, 1898), 11.
76 Florida East Coast Hotel Company, East Coast of Florida (St. Augustine: J. D. Rahner, 1901–2), 68Google Scholar.
77 “Californian Will Raise Cane,” Florida East Coast Homeseeker, 13, 7 (July 1911), 262–63, 263. See also Cory, Charles B., Hunting and Fishing in Florida (Boston: Estes and Lauriat, 1896), 7–40Google Scholar.
78 Mechling, “Florida Seminoles,” 154.
79 Jarvis, Justin G., “Florida's Seminoles – Savages of Southern Sunshine,” Suniland, 1, 6 (March 1925), 22–25, 25Google Scholar.
80 Jacksonville, Tampa and Key West Railway Company, 11.
81 In 1911, an Everglades booster stated, “The time will soon come when [the Seminoles] will have to put on pants and go to work on the land, join his relatives in Oklahoma, or die from the effects off too much bad whiskey.” Gifford, John, The Everglades and Other Essays Relating to Southern Florida (Kansas City: Everglades Land Sales Co., 1911), 11Google Scholar.
82 From “an editorial in a leading State paper” in Bragg, Willard L., “The Picturesque Seminoles,” Florida East Coast Homeseeker, 12, 4 (April 1910), 142–47, 147Google Scholar.
83 Duncan, A. J., “Last of their Tribe,” Washington Post, 21 May 1899, 24Google Scholar.
84 Richardson, Joseph (general passenger agent), Florida, The East Coast and the Keys (Jacksonville: Florida East Coast Railway Company, 1895), 12Google Scholar. See also Rainbolt, The Town That Climate Built, 88.
85 Florida (Jacksonville: Florida Bureau of Immigration, 1930), 15.
86 Bragg, 142.
87 Florida, the East Coast, 23.
88 Ober, F. A., The Knockabout Club in the Everglades (Boston: Estes & Lauriat, 1887), 102Google Scholar.
89 Winter, Nevin O., Florida: The Land of Enchantment (Boston: The Page Company, 1918), 133, 138Google Scholar.
90 Bragg, 142.
91 Moore-Willson, Minnie, The Seminoles of Florida (New York: Moffat, Yard and Company, 1920; first published 1896), 106–8Google Scholar.
92 Ibid, 186.
93 Bragg, 144.
94 Jarvis, “Florida's Seminoles,” 24.
95 “Most of the tribe,” one guidebook reported, “still look on such employment with a haughty disdain.” Winter, 133.
96 Jarvis, 25.
97 South Florida (Tallahassee: Florida Department of Agriculture, 1935).
98 Stockbridge, Frank Parker and Perry, John Holliday, Florida in the Making (New York: The de Bower Publishing Co., 1926), 226Google Scholar.
99 Nash, Roy, Survey of the Seminole Indians of Florida (Washington, DC: United States Department of the Interior, Office of Indian Affairs, 1932), 3, 24, 46, 75Google Scholar.
100 See Kersey, Harry A. Jr., An Assumption of Sovereignty: Social and Political Transformation among the Florida Seminoles, 1953–1979 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996)Google Scholar.
101 Nash, 41, 76.
102 Hale, Making Whiteness, 129.
103 Jarvis, 22–25. See Berkhofer, Robert Jr., The White Man's Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), xvGoogle Scholar.
104 Jarvis, 22.
105 Ibid., 22.
106 Ibid., 22.