Miccosukee Culture: MacCauley and Buffalo Tiger Compared

Introduction: Two Accounts, One Culture

This paper introduces, discusses, and analyzes two books about Seminole and Miccosukee culture: A Life in the Everglades by Buffalo Tiger and Harry A. Kersey, and The Seminole Indians of Florida by Clay MacCauley. Specifically, it compares and contrasts the two authors' views on Miccosukee culture. Written more than 100 years apart, the books present two very different perspectives on Seminole and Miccosukee life.

Essentially, the Miccosukee did not exist as a recognized entity until they split from the Seminoles in the 1960s — at least not in the eyes of the American government. Their story illustrates how Indian policies of the nineteenth century failed to represent Native Americans or their tribes in any meaningful way. Read together, these two works offer a complex portrait of southeastern Native American culture and life, and illustrate how that culture is always changing.

Clay MacCauley traveled among the Seminole Indians of Florida in 1881 and 1882, attempting to create an accurate picture of their lives and customs. This was a difficult task, as he did not speak their language and lacked a fully fluent interpreter. His account therefore relies on supposition rather than deep understanding, yet it still provides a valuable record of Seminole habits and customs despite its flaws. Buffalo Tiger, by contrast, is a Miccosukee elder and former chief — the guiding force behind his tribe's federal recognition and its ultimate control of its own budget and affairs. Tiger's book presents a modern Indian nation concerned with survival and success, and it offers a much deeper understanding of the Miccosukee people and their culture.

MacCauley's 1881 Portrait of the Seminoles

When MacCauley completed his study of the Florida Seminoles in 1881, only 208 Native Americans were living in the state. The tribe was on the verge of extinction — a fate that Chief Tiger was determined to prevent. MacCauley noted that the tribe's numbers were increasing, but with only 208 members, it could take decades before the population was large enough to ensure the tribe's continuation.

Interestingly, MacCauley specifically names the Tiger clan in his 1881 study. He writes: "The Tigers are dark, copper-colored fellows, over six feet in height, with limbs in good proportion; their hands and feet well shaped and not very large; their stature erect; their bearing a sign of self-confident power; their movements deliberate, persistent, strong" (MacCauley 481). The Tiger clan had clearly been a part of Seminole culture for generations, and it is fitting that a member of this clan would later lead the Miccosukee into a new century of Native American development. It is also worth noting that MacCauley's conjecture about the tribe surviving and multiplying proved to be correct.

MacCauley's text functions primarily as a study of the people and their daily lives. It serves as something of a cultural map, cataloguing food, clothing, and customs. Modern Miccosukee people can draw on these records to reconstruct and preserve their heritage. MacCauley writes optimistically about the region's natural abundance: "Then the abundance of food, both animal and vegetable, obtainable in that region seemed to me to do away with the necessity, on the part of the people living there, for a struggle for existence" (MacCauley 529). He could not foresee how drastically the Everglades and the surrounding environment would change, nor how those changes would threaten the very foundation of Seminole and Miccosukee life.

Buffalo Tiger and the Fight for Miccosukee Recognition

By 2002, Chief Tiger knew that the "Everglades are dying," and since the Everglades are home to his people, that meant his people could be dying too (Tiger and Kersey 3). The environmental degradation MacCauley could not have anticipated became one of the central crises of Miccosukee survival in the twentieth century. An influx of white settlers into Florida, increased population pressure, and the gradual disappearance of tribal lands altered the Miccosukee way of life drastically.

Chief Tiger understood that his people were now struggling for existence because their traditional way of life had all but disappeared, and most tribal members had been drawn into the modern world. That is why he fought so hard for federal recognition — and even traveled to Cuba to seek acknowledgment of the tribe from Fidel Castro. He knew that the Miccosukee way of life would disappear forever if the tribe did not take control of its own affairs and resources. It was a difficult fight, but the Miccosukee became one of the first tribes in the United States to gain control of their own destiny from the American government — an achievement MacCauley could never have imagined or predicted.

MacCauley's work and Tiger's work, taken together, form something of a cultural guidebook for the Miccosukee people. MacCauley documents the customs that should be preserved; Tiger advocates for their active preservation. Together, the two works show how culture is always in motion: the population has grown since MacCauley's day, as he predicted, but the way of life has been transformed by outside forces he could not foresee.