Our History

Our story has been a story of survival through adaptation. We originally belonged to the Creek Confederacy. However, we migrated to Florida before it became part of the United States. During the Indian Wars of the 1800s most of our people were removed to the West, but a few families escaped and hid in the Everglades. Now we number about 500 people.

In order to escape the soldiers during the 1800s, our people spread out through the Everglades with only one large family to a tree island, or hammock, as we call it. Our people used to travel by dugout canoes to hunt, visit each other or trade. Some of these old canoes, each hollowed from a single cypress log, are displayed in the village. One canoe took almost two years to carve, but it sure lasts a long time.

Our people never settled in one community like the Indians on reservations in the West. Miccosukees have always been rather independent. We stayed to ourselves in the Everglades for about 1 hundred years, resisting efforts to make us like everybody else. But when the highway, Tamiami Trail, was built in the 1930s, we started to accept some of the new world’s concepts.

In 1962 we were federally recognized as an Indian Tribe, thus separating Miccosukee frtes’he Seminole Tribe. Our tribe now has complete education, health and public safety departments, which combine appropriate aspects of Indian and non-Indian practices.

Through all these changes, we have kept our own identity and language. We still celebrate our Green Corn Dance each spring. In this sacred ceremony, our clans get together and for four days we sing and dance to celebrate the gift of the corn that renews us and is the secret of our tribal strength. Our Indian medicine knowledge remains strong, and our y

For more detailed information about the Miccosukee Tribe, please visit our main web site, Miccosukee.com