The seminole nation of oklahoma. We are here at the seminole nation museum, located in the capital of the seminole nation of oklahoma, wewoka, oklahoma. What we have here today are different exhibits that portray the history of the people. As a people, before we were separated from our homes, from our original homes in florida. I am actually the twin chief. I am the assistant chief. Of the seminole nation of oklahoma. I came into office in 213. This is 219, and im in my second term. I have two more years to fulfill my term. Of over 500 native tribes in america, the seminoles are a tribe of people of interest. Part of that interest is the defiance the seminole put up during the conflicts and earlier history. To not be defeated. The only tribe in American History to Never Surrender when there was a war being fought against them. Would Never Surrender to the United States north side official peace declaration with the United States, was the seminole. That brings ambience to both people who live within the United States and internationally. I think International People know who the seminoles are because of that history. All tribes have a great story to tell. All tribes and nations of the american and the Indigenous Peoples of america have such a beautiful heritage, culture and history to share. The seminoles in this museum would be pleased for anyone to come and visit the museum. Study in the library. They have a Library Research center here. All these things are of such importance. Especially if you are doing something that is never really taught about. If youre doing a segment on slavery in america, that type of thing, you cannot portray slavery in america properly without including the african history that is aligned with the five civilized tribes, the descendents of african slaves, maroons, free people. Something the seminoles still that is have today. We still have descendents of those people that came from florida that were not indian by blood. They were of african descent, but joined in the fight of freedom and are still part of the tribe today. They still sit on the Tribal Council and are still citizens of the seminole nation. Since right after the civil war. The emancipation proclamation did not take place in the indian territory and that was the whole reason the treaties were reassigned in the 1850s 66 the 1860s, 1866 for the seminoles. They were not the best of treaties. They took a lot of things away from us. Landbased. They took many things away from us as far as seminoles are concerned. The thing of it is, we are still here. The seminole tribe in florida, which are our brothers, we are the descendents, the ancestors brought as visitors of war to the west. I want you to know even though seminoles are associated with the indian removal act of the 1830s and what is known as the trail of tears, our people, our males were shackled in chains and brought to the west. As prisoners of war. The seminoles are a very well studied native American People group and wellknown people group as well. When you think about American Indians, a lot of times people will think of the seminoles. We extend our invitation to you. Come visit us here in central oklahoma, the home of the seminole nation. Lets take a look at the map. It speaks a little bit about seminole beginnings. The eastern part of the United States was home to many tribes. As you can see in this map. What became known as seminoles. You see seminole is not the original name of the nation and the tribe that exist in florida today. But many different tribal towns, tribal bands, even small tribes like tallahassee, all these people groups amalgamated and became known as seminole, which is what we call in the english deviation of that word seminole. So the seminoles, originally, actually, most of these tribal groups and towns that became known as seminole existed in areas of alabama, certain areas of georgia and some were in the northern part of florida. By the time colonialism began to expand in the southeast, many of these people groups began to move into the northern area, what we would consider portions of the panhandle and this area to this area up north. The original tribes of florida are these names you see here. Colusa. Took a bog, colusa. Tequesta, these were the original tribes of florida. What we do know, historically, they were decimated due to disease, slavery, early on as europeans come to this part of the world. So what became known as seminoles, they begin to settle in this area here as early as the 1700s, that will become associated with those particular tribal people groups. The capital of today, as people will call it, tallahassee, is actually probably where this name cap way is. Tallahassee is right along this area, if i have the estimation of the area tallahassee is my tribal town. That is the tribal town i come from. We as seminoles have tribal towns, what we call bands today and the formation of our trouble government. We also have clans. So my clan is bird clan. All of this derives from my mothers side. So we are matrilineal. Whatever your mother is is the line you follow, especially with a your clan. Constitutionally, today, if your mother is not a member of the seminole nation, but your father is, then you can be a member of that band of your father. But traditionally you followed your mothers side and you are the same band and same clan your of mama. And the great warrior oceola was said to be of legacy in history from tallassee alabama, around the colusa river. He was bird clan as well. Our legacy of tallahassee band often associates osceola as being from that original people, before moving from alabama into florida. Here is an interesting exhibit. Because it shows areas of everyday life. Things that might have been used, especially in the 1800s. You have fishing equipment. You see a gig made of the sharp wooden spikes here that have edges so the fish cannot slip off very easily. The material is river came, which is an abundant plant, which is also what this blowgun that you see here and the dark rts are made out of thistle. And also the river cane as well. Even arrow shafts remain out of river cane at one point in our history. Winnowing baskets were made out of split cane as you see here. These baskets were used for winnowing, such as when you are pounding corn and winnowing it in the wind. Or maybe you are separating the corn after you have pounded it, with a tool, which is also available as one of the objects here in the museum. Of course throughout the history of the seminoles as we established ourselves here in the west, we did not have lands of our own until the year of 1856. One of the goals of the government policy at that time, was to relocate the seminoles here to be able to place them among the muskogee tribe, which was the larger tribe at that time and still is today, a lot larger in population than the seminoles. But in 1856, we acquired under the treaty of 1856 on august 7, lands that were our very own as the seminal nation of oklahoma. West of the mississippi it was our land. From that there begin to be a lot of things established within that particular area. We have our own law enforcement. As well and still to this day our Tribal Police go by the same name of the seminole light horsemen. These are the horsemen of an earlier time. They are very honorable people. They were selected because they have great courage. They have great humility. They also cared for our people. Here you see a form of punishment among the seminoles when one was found guilty by the Tribal Council for a certain offense. There could be one way of dealing with a person of that type. On the whipping tree. As you can see, the man is extended from the limb of the tree. There is a thong tied about where his ankles are. And then a poll would be taken over that song so that two men would sit on that and cause him to be stretched or add weight so he cannot cringe when he was taking his punishment from one of the horsemen that was applying the whipping for an offense he may have done in our tribe. What we see here is the last execution taken in seminal history. He was found guilty of killing another individual. And the light horse would also be called out after he was tried for the Tribal Council. At that time in history the council was the jury and that and they would pass measures and that type of arrangement. For anything that was a transgression against the nation at the time. As you can see, he is blindfolded. There would be a leaf or a piece of paper. That would be placed where his heart would be. And several light horsemen would be called out. And many, many steps back they would be given the order to fire on this man. It was known throughout the history of the seminole nation that there was never a person who ran from his appointed time with the execution. They always came back. It was an honor and their family. Once the sentence was given they came back and took whatever the sentence was. In this case it was death by firing squad. If you look at this image, this is the actual execution tree. This is that very tree. This is on loan from the state Historical Society. That an individual had this cut down back in the early 1900s. And the Historical Society of the state of oklahoma has housed it. As you can see in the image, it is the very tree that is known as the execution tree. Here we have one of the last seminole chiefs that left florida around 1856 to 1858. We know his name and his name was billy bowlegs. He was famous during the seminole wars because of his prowess in war and as a leader and as a diplomat as well. He was the last chief to leave florida and come here to the indian territory. You can see this is seminole clothing of that time period. One of the famous warriors of the United States conflicts with the seminoles was a person known as osceola. The real pronouncing nation is in the language. Here is a representation of an event that took place in history when they were talking about removing the seminoles. It was said that osceola came in there and drew his knife and he put that knife in the treaty that was being presented before the symbols at the time and he said this is how seminoles sign such treaties of this type. One of the famous warriors of the United States conflicts with the seminoles was a person known as osceola. The real pronouncing nation is in the language. Here is a representation of an event that took place in history when they were talking about removing the seminoles. It was said that osceola came in there and drew his knife and he put that knife in the treaty that was being presented before the symbols at the time and he said this is how seminoles sign such treaties of this type. In other words he was saying the seminoles want to live the life and want to remain in florida and to live the life the creator has made them to live. They did not want to move. That is called defiance. That is the name of this piece the defiant one. This is a copy of that treaty this is associated with. This is a copy. As you can see this was the tree of fort gibson because that was the treaty that the United States said the seminoles agreed to move westward. Some say that is a crease in mark and that is a mark of the knife that osceola did at that time in history. Lets take a look at this one. Throughout the history of the seminoles, there was a component of our history that dealt with people that were of african descent who were seeking freedom among the seminole people. And many of these were maroons. They were never slaves. Some of them were free people. They were not slaves. Some of them were escaped slaves from the southern plantations. But many of them would come and seek refuge in the area of the florida territory. They lived outside of the seminole camps, the seminole villages and had camps of their own. But they became very formidable allies with the seminoles throughout our history. At times they fought with the seminoles for the freedom that they wanted for themselves as well as the seminoles wanted. They were never true slaves in the sense of southern alabama slavery to the seminole people. They would raise crops. They would raise produce. They would give a percentage of that to the chief of a tribal town. So it was that type of was annship that exchange back in that time. And whenever you have a people that has bonded together for the sake of freedom, then you have a faux and the United States found foe and the United States found that out because of the 42 years of the indian wars in florida with the seminole people. As late as the 1890s, the seminole nation and actually earlier than that there were learning institutions that were developed to educate boys and girls. There was an early academy. There was the ramsey mission run by presbyterians. There was oak ridge Mission School in the creek nations but many seminoles went there. And later in the 1891 and 1893, there were two Large Schools developed totally under the watch of the seminole people themselves. This particular school became known as a mahogany and mission. The Architectural Design of the two schools is very similar. They look very much alike. One was a Girls Academy and one a boys academy. Eventually miccosukee became a certain period of time. There were the most modern facilities in the territory at that time. They had indoor plumbing. They had heated water and things of that nature, which was not found in the 1880s and 1890s here in the territory. They were a Majestic Building at one time that many students with acquire Education Opportunities at. This is a map most people would consider. This is an actual map, and original map of what we call an allotment map. If you are able to see all of these names written here, you would see the different tracks of land, the different acres of land that was assigned to certain individuals during the general allotment act or what we call the Dawes Commission came in and they were enrolling within that Dawes Commission. Their duty was to assign a number to every native person living at that time because they wanted to take the land out of commons of the tribe and divide it into individual land tracts. Obviously there would be surplus land because there were not as many native people as there were land to be divided up and many of those surplus tracks later in history would be settled by a nonnative people. Even these allotment lands would eventually be lost due to methods and policies that were enacted historically to the United States policy with American Indians and in this case seminoles. The original land tract of the 1856 treaty was 2,169,080 acres. That was the land the seminoles originally called their home to the mississippi. By the time the allotments began to be done, theres about 200,000 acres of land. And then an additional tract of land was purchased by the federal government. And the land extended another 180,000 acres. It still is a fraction of the land based the seminoles originally had in their original treaties. So, by the time the oil boom, oil was discovered in this area. There was measures and ways that much of this land was taken out of the individual land name and it was no longer in the oversight of the seminole nation at what point in our history. This was the 1930s, the 1940s, the 1950s. Even until now, just recently. There was specific legislation signed to the five civilized tribes, the seminole, chickasaw, choctaw and two others. The stigler act, there were components that if your bloodline ever got below half bloodline than that land would be taken out of restricted status which was restricted to the nation by the state or county or community. What that did is if the bloodline ever got below that than that land would be taken out restriction. And a lot of land was lost due to that. But recently, in the last year, that has been stricken from that particular congressional act. It was an amendment done by the efforts of the five civilized tribes, the seminoles included, that eventually got that Blood Quantum to be waived. So now, with the limited lands we still have left, about 11,000 acres of land, that are in divisional landholdings, 500 acres of land in the trust, which is not much at all really when you think about acreages of land, we will be be able to retain that as long as those families also want to retain that land in that same status because of that amendment that just took place in the last year. We have in the state capital, the state of oklahoma a large 22foot tall statue called the guardian. This guardian was constructed by a seminole man. Enoch kellyhany was a state senator. It was representative and early and then later after serving at the state level in those capacities, he becomes the chief of the seminole nation for one term. He has an outstanding, well acknowledged artist of the seminole nation in both painting and also sculpture. He did this piece. This is a miniature of that piece, the guardian. It stands in oh, city on the State Capitol dome of the capital of the state of oklahoma. If you take a look at this textile work, a lot of people associate, as far as clothing, this style of clothing with the seminoles. It is called seminal patchwork. Very colorful. What you see here is they are basically small pieces of material cut at certain angles and then resewn back together to create the beautiful designs you see on the jackets, the skirts, on some of the dolls you see represented here. In this particular case, a good example of early. Seminal bandolier bag. You can see the intricacy of the beadwork is here with southeastern designs. There are many tribes that had this style of a bandolier bag. That may vary from one tribe to the next. This most definitely is a seminole bandolier bag, which was worn by men in their traditional clothing. They would keep personal items inside the bag itself. The game of stickball is very popula