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Show "ONLY A FEW OF THEM LEFT. The Seminoles or Florida and the Curious Customs Obtaining Among Them. A queer condition of affairs exists among the Seminole Indians in Florida or what there is left of them. Dr. S. B. Chapin, who recently returned, says a special to the Philadelphia Times, from the "Allen plaice," forty miles east of Fort Meyers, relates some highly interesting facts bearing on the question ques-tion of Indian education and development develop-ment About six months ago the United States government sent him here to superintend the erection of a saw and planing mill, a shingle factory and a sehoolhouse and cottage for the teachers, teach-ers, also to lay the foundation for an industrial school for the benefit of the Indians still inhabiting the high lands on the northern boundary of the Everglades. Ever-glades. This scheme was put on foot by the Women's National Indian association asso-ciation ef Philadelphia, of which Mrs. Quentin is president. Prior to Dr. j Chapin's coming this association sent Dr. J. E. Brecht to open a school here, and he did so, and white children were allowed to attend it with the hope that the Indians would follow their example. But so far they have evinced no intetv est whatever in the matter, and Dr. Brecht hopes that by good treatment of them and by perseverance he may induce in-duce the Indians to take advantage of the opportunity thus offered. The Seminoles, Dr. Chapin says, now number about five hundred, with perhaps per-haps two hundred, in cracker vernacular, vernac-ular, "bucks," for they are warriors no longer. When Chief Osceola, or the "Rising Sun," went down the warlike spirit of the Seminole tribe was broken forever. Three conditions limit the increase in-crease of the race their restricted hunting ground, its malarial condition and the law of the tribe as to marriage. This law forbids for-bids the marriage of any two of the tribe where there is the least known blood relation, and it is as unalterable as those of the Medes and the Persians. In consequence of this tribal ukase boys of eighteen years marry women of eighty or more. It often happens that to marry at all they have no other choice. The dress of the bucks is buckskin trousers and a turban made of as many yards of red or yellow calico as they can conveniently coil around their bronze brows. The women confine their dress almost exclusively to beads. They all have an utter repugnance for photographers, and their features can be had on paper only by the use of a kodak concealed from their sight. They live in three-sided palmetto "shacks," and they care neither to improve im-prove their minds nor to accumulate worldly goods. Around the "Allen place" the guava and many other semi-tropical semi-tropical fruits grow wild in the woods, and the very finest farming lands can be bought for two dollars and fifty cents per acre. Frost fell in this section sec-tion last winter for the first time in over thirty years, and the spring drought exhausted the usually ample supply of good water to such an extent that Dr. Chapin had to sink wells for supplying the stock with water while en route from here to the sehoolhouse site with lumber and machinery. |
