The story of Indigenous Americans can be found all throughout the national park system. In south Florida, the story of the Seminoles (Miccosukees) is deeply entwined with the history of Everglades National Park.
The Seminoles first made a home in the Everglades as a result of three wars fought with the United States. The wars were long and costly — costly enough that the government chose to ignore a small remnant of Indigenous Americans that had evaded the U.S. Army by making a home deep in the Everglades.
In the early 20th century, a 100,000 acre reservation was established for the Seminoles in Florida’s Monroe County. The reservation lacked the permanent dry ground needed for year-round occupation, but it was rich in wildlife. This made it an excellent hunting ground — and placed it in the sights of those who wanted to preserve it as a new unit in the national park system.
Could a national park benefit the Seminoles?
While many people contributed to the creation of Everglades National Park, Ernest F. Coe led the charge. A transplant from Connecticut, Coe was enraptured by the beauty of the Everglades and the unique wildlife it sheltered. In 1928, he formed the “Tropical” Everglades National Park Association, campaigning through the end of his life in 1951 for the protection of the wetlands by the National Park Service.
Being an essentially single-minded advocate for the Everglades, Coe was willing to put forward any argument that could be spun to the benefit of his cause — including the situation of the Seminoles. Coe made the case that a park in the Everglades would ultimately benefit the Seminoles: Game protected within park borders would overflow into their hunting grounds and tourism would provide new business opportunities.
As the park-making process played out, it would be revealed that Coe’s purported sympathy for the Seminoles was nothing more than a means to his own end. When it seemed necessary, Coe lobbied for them to be expelled from within proposed park boundaries — especially from the 100,000 acre reservation created by the state of Florida two decades earlier.
Section 3
While Coe’s blind fervor for Everglades protection gave him reason to turn on the Seminoles, others within the Department of the Interior remained interested in their wellbeing. Understanding their long history of warfare and hard living, Interior Secretary Harold Ickes and his Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Chief John Collier both held sympathetic views of the Seminoles. Speaking to the public in a national radio address in 1935, Ickes stated “For a considerable time to come the Seminoles ought to have the right of subsistence hunting and fishing within the proposed park, and they should always have the labor preference.” For his part, John Collier had a provision in favor of the Seminoles inserted into the Everglades Park bill. Section 3 states:
“[Nothing in this Act shall be construed to lessen any existing rights of the Seminole Indians which are not in conflict with the purpose of Everglades National Park.”
Though this provision appears to carve out a place for the Seminoles in the Everglades, its meaning is ambiguous and its practical application was unclear. Ernest Coe was certain of the effect Section 3 would have on the park: it would allow the Seminoles to hunt, destroying the very meaning of preserving the wetlands as a national park. Park managers were less certain and struggled to interpret the meaning of Section 3 over the coming decades. It set the stage for an awkward, tenuous relationship between the NPS and the Seminoles through the end of the 20th century.
Decades of unease
Though the bill authorizing Everglades National Park was passed in 1934, more than a decade would pass before the land was acquired and the park was officially established. As the land needed was slowly obtained, it was placed under the control of Daniel Beard in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Treading carefully between the law of Section 3 and the NPS preservation mandate, Beard established rules for Seminole activity in the park. The guidelines centered around Seminole settlements near U.S. Highway 41 — the “Tamiami Trail” — which connects Tampa and Miami and forms the northern border for much of Everglades National Park. Located on the south side of the highway, within park boundaries, these settlements formed the economic, residential, and cultural core of the Seminoles.
Beard declared that all camps except for those within a mile of the road must be abandoned. Hunting and frogging were banned. Fishing was permitted under state laws. Property could not be sold or exchanged and no new modern buildings could be constructed. Motorized transportation was not allowed outside of immediate camp areas. Fines would be levied for any fires lit south of the Tamiami Trail, except for those necessary for cooking or warmth.
Though the Seminoles agreed to this management plan, it did not make everything easy between the Indigenous people and the National Park Service. Above all, the NPS wished that the Seminoles would simply leave. For their part, the Seminoles wished just to be left alone and allowed to continue their way of life.
A new way
In 1962, the Seminoles that remained along the Tamiami Trail and in Everglades National Park were federally recognized as the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians. Federal recognition of the Miccosukees brought with it a new understanding between the national park and the tribe. In 1962 the NPS agreed to recognize a Miccosukee reservation within the park, along 5.5 miles of the Tamiami Trail. Over time, tensions would flair between the Park and the Tribe — particularly around the requirement that the Miccosukees must receive permission from the Park before they could construct new housing on their reservation. By the late 20th century, the issue would force the development of a new, unique relationship between the Tribe and the Park.
In 1996, legislation was introduced in Congress to permanently codify the Miccosukee right to live within Everglades National Park. The Miccosukee Reserved Area Act, which passed in 1998, offered concessions to both the Park and the Tribe. Doubling the size of their territory, the law granted the Miccosukees the exclusive right to use and develop the land forever while requiring them to maintain the proper flow and quality of water moving into the parkland.
Forward together
In the summer of last year the superintendents of Everglades and Biscayne National Parks were hosted in the Miccosukee Reserved Area. There, on August 27, a costewardship agreement was signed between the parks and the Tribe. Upon signing the agreement, Miccosukee Chairman Talbert Cypress said:
“Since the battles of Biscayne Bay during the Seminole Wars and the subsequent creation of Everglades National Park and the eviction of the Tribal villages within it, the Tribe has worked with the Service to re-establish our role in the Everglades and the Bay. We are deeply appreciative of the National Park Service’s commitment to restoring Tribal co-stewardship of these lands.”
Since the authorization of Everglades National Park, there has always been the potential for it to be a model for cooperation between Indigenous people and public land agencies elsewhere. At a time when other tribes were being removed and erased from parklands, those who influenced the 1934 Everglades Authorization Act dared to consider a different future — one in which the Seminoles were a part of the park, not as a stereotyping vignette of “savage” man in the wilderness, but as the rightful heirs of the landscape.
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