MICCOSUKEE INDIAN CULTURAL CENTER, Fla. – Although the gates have just opened for the morning and it’s too early for anything much to be happening, you can still pick up a lot about the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians by wandering around its annual Indian Arts Festival, which the tribe held Dec. 26 – Jan. 4.
The first thing you notice is that the craft stands where vendors are slowly getting ready for the rush are chickees, the thatch-roofed open-sided huts that provided some creative air circulation for Natives living in the hot and damp climate of the Florida Everglades.
Later, there is scheduled to be dancing by the Navajo Totem Pole Dancers and the Iroquois Indian Dancers in the now-empty auditorium, and an appearance by Tim Sampson, who won a Tony Award for his role in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” in the same role his father, Will Sampson, played in the movie. In the afternoon, there is set to be an appearance by the Tramper Dance Group of the Eastern Cherokee, or on some days a Miccosukee Fashion Show. There will be six alligator-wrestling exhibitions daily.
In a nod to more recent traditions, there is a display of an automotive promotion sponsored by the tribal casino, which is about 10 miles closer to Miami along the Tamiani Trail. There is also a wood carving of a bird on the grounds, and if the Miccosukee woodworks are not as large as those of the Northwest Indians, they had a lot less wood to work with.
Miccosukee carvers traditionally made bowls, corn grinders and sofkee spoons, along with canoes carved out of cypress trees. Now they carve toy items for the tourist trade and totems, which they took up from Northwest totems, according to a book on tribal arts and crafts.
Although the festival is just gearing itself up for another day, the tribal museum is open, and the book published by the tribe on Miccosukee arts and crafts available in the gift shop explains some of the items on display and the history of the tribe.
The Miccosukee are a Creek people who avoided the removals of the 19th century by hiding in the Everglades, according to the book, written by Dorothy Downs. When the Tamiani Trail was built in the 1920s, many Miccosukee made camps along it and began to sell souvenirs and put on alligator-wrestling exhibitions for tourists in “exhibition villages.” The tribe incorporated in 1962, and this year was their 29th Arts Festival.
In the museum, there are brightly clothed dolls made of palmetto husks and “dressed in the exotic costumes worn by Indian women and men during the late 1930s, an appropriate reminder of that period of fascinating fashion,” according to the book.
Girl dolls feature pony tails, braids, or “classic style” hairdos made of black thread or wool yarn. They are dressed in capes and long skirts, and “very well made dolls wear a sheer cape trimmed with ric rac and rows of lace.” They also feature bead necklaces and earrings. Boy dolls, according to Downs, wear traditional “big shirt” costumes and headdresses.
Other items on display feature the chickee architecture and the patchwork, beadwork and basketmaking prowess of the Miccosukee. The tribe traditionally was noted for its costume-making, according to Downs, especially the patchwork patterns sewn on by hand-cranked sewing machines in the early 20th century.
In the “classic styles” of the 1930s and 1940s, Miccosukee women “combed their long black hair over a cardboard frame, forming an elaborate coiffure. The visual effect was striking, as the line from the hairdo flowed into the many bead necklaces, which gave an elegant elongated look to the neck. This graceful line continued to the cape and colorful skirt with many rows of complicated patchwork designs.”
Miccosukee women also used “cane, cabbage palm stalks, pine needles and sweetgrass to make baskets in the plaiting and coiling techniques.” Sets of three corn sifting baskets were also traditional.
The Miccosukee Indian Cultural Center perches on the edge of one of the wildest areas on the East Coast. If you want, you can get an up close and personal look at the Everglades, which loom up dramatically behind the festival grounds. There is no sight of man for miles in any direction, just waving blades of sawgrass and small clumps of trees on the islands, called hammocks, that rise up out of these amazing rivers of grass.
