UF Researcher: Bingo Wins Help Give Native Americans American Dream

September 17, 1999

GAINESVILLE — The future is a good bet for Florida’s American Indians, who have gained clout and confidence from gambling casinos and marketing makeovers, says a University of Florida researcher and author of a new book.

“The future is bright because the Indians are no longer being taken advantage of, and their leaders know how to accommodate to the white world in a business sense,” said Kevin McCarthy, a UF English professor. “The difficulty, of course, will be how they can maintain their traditions, their language, their customs and their heritage, and still live in the white world.”

McCarthy, author of the new book “Native Americans in Florida,” said Seminole Chief James Billie has cultivated a business sense among tribe members, with Seminoles throughout the state benefitting from these operations.

“After centuries of struggling, the Seminoles are beginning to prosper financially, thanks to casinos near Alligator Alley and the Tamiami Trail that attract bingo players, in some cases operating 24 hours a day,” he said. “Billie has encouraged the Seminoles to market themselves, to become less dependent on tourism in the traditional sense and to become full-fledged taxpaying members of the community.”

Other money-making draws that Billie helped establish are a swamp safari camp, where visitors can experience the Everglades by riding airboats, and a Seminole museum on an Everglades reservation that has become a place for visitors to learn more about Native Americans’ heritage, McCarthy said.

Indian artifacts, once usually taken to the Smithsonian Institution, now are increasingly displayed at Florida venues such as the Seminole Museum, McCarthy said.

“Foreign visitors, especially the Germans and Japanese, who come to Miami flock to this museum by bus because they’re so intrigued with American Indians,” he said.

South Floridians interested in preserving American Indian archaeologic sites have so far legally stopped a developer’s proposal to build on the site of an ancient Tequestan Indian village, McCarthy said. Historians argued that the Miami waterfront property should be the site of a museum, he said.

“That wouldn’t have happened 20 years ago,” McCarthy said. “Now people are much more aware of our heritage from the Indians.”

Florida has dozens of Indian place names, including Miami, Kissimmee, Okeechobee and Micanopy. Notable Indian tribes of the past include the Apalachee near what is now Tallahassee, the Calusa of Southwest Florida, the Tequesta near Miami and the Timucua from the area between Daytona Beach and Jacksonville, McCarthy said.

McCarthy said he wrote the book at the suggestion of his son’s elementary school librarian. While there were books on individual tribes that have lived in Florida — especially the Seminoles and to some extent the Miccosukees — there was not a comprehensive one on all of the tribes that was geared to all ages, including youngsters, he said.

Even though Native Americans lived in what is now Florida as early as 12,000 years ago, many state residents still know little about their history, McCarthy said.

“When my children went through elementary schools here, they learned more about the Mohicans, the Cherokees and the Apachees outside Florida than they did about the Native Americans of Florida,” he said.

Although there were as many as 50,000 American Indians in Florida about 12,000 years ago, all were gone by the 18th century, either deported, killed in battle by the Spanish or victims of diseases brought by the Europeans, he said.

The Seminoles and Miccosukees are relatively new immigrants to the state, arriving later, in the 18th century, from Creek tribes in the Carolinas, McCarthy said. A large number were deported to Oklahoma during the bloody Seminole wars in the 1840s, but nearly 300 that escaped to the Everglades were allowed to stay and have now grown to about 3,000.