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, however, though observing meal times with some regularity,
eats just as his appetite invites. If it happens that he has a side of
venison roasting before the fire, he will cut from it at any time during
the day and, with the piece of meat in one hand and a bit of Koonti or
of different bread in the other, satisfy his appetite. Not seldom, too,
he rises during the night and breaks his sleep by eating a piece of the
roasting meat. The kettle and big spoon stand always ready for those who
at any moment may hunger. There is little to be said about eating in a
Seminole household, therefore, except that when its members eat together
they make a kettle the center of their group and that much of their
eating is done without reference to one another.
Amusements.
But one sees the family at home, not only working and sleeping and
eating, but also engaged in amusing itself. Especially among the
children, various sports are indulged in. I took some trouble to learn
what amusements the little Seminole had invented or received. I obtained
a list of them which might as well be that of the white man’s as of the
Indian’s child. The Seminole has a doll, i.e., a bundle of rags, a stick
with a bit of cloth wrapped about it, or something that serves just as
well as this. The children build little houses for their dolls and name
them “camps.” Boys take their bows and arrows and go into the bushes and
kill small birds, and on returning say they have been “turkey-hunting.”
Children sit around a small piece of land and, sticking blades of grass
into the ground, name it a “corn field.” They have the game of “hide and
seek.” They use the dancing rope, manufacture a “see-saw,” play “leap
frog,” and build a “merry-go-round.” Carrying a small stick, they say
they carry a rifle. I noticed some children at play one day sitting near
a dried deer skin, which lay before them stiff and resonant. They had
taken from the earth small tubers about an inch in diameter found on the
roots of a kind of grass and called “deer-food.” Through them they had
thrust sharp sticks of the thickness of a match and twice as long,
making what we would call “teetotums.” These, by a quick twirl between
the palms of the hands, were set to spinning on the deer skin. The four
children were keeping a dozen or more of these things going. The sport
they called “a dance.”
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