The Seminole Indians of Florida: Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1883-84, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1887, pages 469-532MacCauley, Clay
History
The Seminole Indians of Florida: Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1883-84, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1887, pages 469-532
MacCauley, Clay
Seminole Indians -- History; Seminole Indians -- Social life and customs
The Seminole family is industrious. All its members work who are able to
do so, men as well as women. The former are not only hunters, fishermen,
and herders, but agriculturists also. The women not only care for their
children and look after the preparation of food and the general welfare
of the home, but are, besides, laborers in the fields. In the Seminole
family, both, husband and wife are land proprietors and cultivators.
Moreover, as we have seen, all children able to labor contribute their
little to the household prosperity. From these various domestic
characteristics, an industrious family life almost necessarily follows.
The disesteem in which Tûs-ko-na, a notorious loafer at the Big Cypress
Swamp, is held by the other Indians shows that laziness is not
countenanced among the Seminole.
But let me not be misunderstood here. By a Seminole’s industry I do
not mean the persistent and rapid labor of the white man of a northern
community. The Indian is not capable of this, nor is he compelled to
imitate it. I mean only that, in describing him, it is but just for me
to say that he is a worker and not a loafer.
As a result of the domestic industry it would be expected that we should
find comparative prosperity prevailing among all Seminole families; and
this is the fact. Much of the Indian’s labor is wasted through his
ignorance of the ways by which it might be economized. He has no
labor saving or labor multiplying machines. There is but little
differentiation of function in either family or tribe. Each worker does
all kinds of work. Men give themselves to the hunt, women to the house,
and both to the field. But men may be found sometimes at the cooking
pot or toasting stick and women may be seen taking care of cattle and
horses. Men bring home deer and turkeys, &c.; women spend days in
fishing. Both men and women are tailors, shoemakers, flour makers, cane
crushers and sirup boilers, wood hewers and bearers, and water carriers.
There are but few domestic functions which may be said to belong
exclusively, on the one hand, to men, or, on the other, to women.
Out of the diversified domestic industry, as I have said, comes
comparative prosperity. The home is all that the Seminole family needs
or desires for its comfort. There is enough clothing, or the means to
get it, for every one. Ordinarily more than a sufficient quantity of
clothes is possessed by each member of a family. No one lacks money or
the material with which to obtain that which money purchases. Nor
need any ever hunger, since the fields and nature offer them food in
abundance. The families of the northern camps are not as well provided
for by bountiful nature as those south of the Caloosahatchie River. Yet,
though at my visit to the Cat Fish Lake Indians in midwinter the sweet
potatoes were all gone, a good hunting ground and fertile fields of
Koonti were near at hand for Tcup-ko’s people to visit and use to their
profit.
Food.
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