Moving, family, language, animals, tricksters, canoes, reenactments, the furthest distance a man can travel.

Mittie

It wasn’t that Mittie didn’t want to go. 

Her brother’s wife had been sent to collect them. She would pick Mittie and her son Samuel up along 41 and take them to Big Cypress, where Mittie’s brothers were already living. Mittie would join them on the reservation, working on farms where the soil was rich and there were jobs to be had.

Living on the tree island, it had not been been easy to make money. Her father hunted garfish that Mittie and her sister cleaned and prepared to be sold in the city. Sometimes, they picked vegetables on farms in Everglades City, but it was a long way to travel and they didn’t have a car. They had tried selling handmade dresses in the villages, but that too, was logistically challenging. They had to canoe to 41 and then try to catch a ride. Mittie’s father would wait for them in the canoe to to take them home, but often they took so long that he left and they had to stay in the village.  

Waiting for the car that would take her to Big Cypress, Mittie was happy at the prospect of seeing her brothers, and happy at the prospect of work.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to go. It was that she didn’t want to stay.

Samuel

What he remembers are the sounds of frogs at night. The songs of different birds. A misty morning fog when he woke up. His grandparents would already be awake. His grandfather got up with the morning stars to sweep the camp. His grandmother tended to the garden. It was, Samuel understands now, a glimpse of what was pristine, before everything changed.

People were moving off the tree islands. They were moving to the reservations, where they lived in modern houses that separated what had always been together. Traditionally, people lived in villages with extended family or other families of the same clan. Grandparents, parents, offspring, different generations living side by side: culture preserved, values enforced.

In Big Cypress, they had their own huts. Samuel’s uncles were already there. He came with his mother and his aunt, and his grandma followed. Eventually, his grandpa came too. His two younger brothers would be born on the reservation. They would never know the songs of the frogs and the birds and how the morning mist settled over the water. The adults worked on the farms everyday. He, starting at the age of 6, went to school.

At first, he went to the school next door, on the reservation. But in 5th grade, he had to get on a bus and go an hour to Clewiston, where he had to speak English all day. It was hard. He didn’t become fluent until 7th or 8th grade. English was good for describing things in detail and in scientific terms — minutes kept, records documented. But English and his language were like night and day. In English, there were letters that didn’t exist in his language. In English, you said adjectives before nouns. In English, you could tell little white lies. In his language, you had to speak the truth. You had to be honest and keep your word. You didn’t stand there and make up stories for someone to buy something from you or sign a paper. That is what he sees in English — a lot of manipulation.

And it wasn’t just the language that was different. At school in Clewiston, everyone was for themselves. They didn’t want to work as a group or express as a group. To Samuel, they seemed mechanized. It made him uncomfortable. In the end, he got his high school diploma from a night school on the reservation. Afterwards, he moved to New Mexico to attend the Institute of Native American Arts, a government-funded school. He participated in theatrics and studied painting. The year after he started, funding was cut back. The students had to fight to save their school. This taste of politics — behind-the-scenes tactics of intimidation and manipulation — took its toll. When he came home, Samuel was under tremendous stress. He felt uncomfortable everywhere he went. He searched for a refuge.

Lately, he has found it in the wilderness. When he was young, Samuel went out to hunt. But now he goes on peaceful and spiritual terms — no pocket-knife, no razor blade, no firearms; the only tools he brings are his cameras. He will spend several days out there at a time. It has taught him a lot. Out there, he’s on equal terms with the wildlife. There are rattlesnakes and bears. There are 15-foot pythons and inter-breeded panthers that are not native and don’t belong. There animals that could take his life and it would be fair if they did. You have to surrender yourself. Out there, he is on the lands of his forefathers. He is walking on the same soil, breathing the air that’s produced by the same trees. They are a part of him and he is a part of them.

And he continues to fight for the land the same way they did. They say there were two Seminole Wars, but Samuel believes that it has been a continuous war — one that is far from over. Currently, Florida Power & Light is trying to put a plant four miles north of the reservation. It would be the largest power plant in the United States. The property they have selected is in a sensitive part of the traditional Everglades. It is inhabited by black bears, panthers and endangered birds. Samuel believes this land should not be changed, that it should be honored, and lately he has been goings to meetings to voice this position. He has been going to meetings to let them know that he and his people are still here.

Daniel

Daniel’s grandpa was blind, but the way he told stories made Daniel see. He described the clouds and the animals and what kind of moods they were in. Daniel’s favorite animal was the rabbit, a trickster who stole and cheated and lied — and got away with it! Daniel loved that. He held his grandfather’s hand and listened to the stories and laughed.

As a kid, Daniel was something of a trickster himself. He didn’t much like school. He’d take off all the time, climb the fence and go home. But he didn’t always get away with it like the rabbit. When Daniel did something wrong, he got scratched with needles. It was his grandfather’s form of discipline. It was also his grandfather’s medicine on the needles that made the wounds heal quicker.

He considers himself lucky: the first chapters of his own life coincided with the last chapters of his grandparents’ lives. They taught by example: how to act, how not to act, how to approach a problem, how to treat people. Somewhere inside, their lessons were inscribed, though it would take him a while to find them. 

When Daniel’s grandpa passed, it was like someone knocked out a pillar from his foundation. It wasn’t fair; Daniel was not yet ten, and he needed his grandfather now more than ever. He was about to start public school in Clewiston. He was about to learn what it felt like to be brown in a white world.

It did not feel good. He was in constant fights with white kids and black kids. Even the teachers seemed to be against him. There were cuts, but no medicine to make the wounds heal quicker. Trouble followed him. He started drifting away from the village and hanging around older kids. The decision was made to send him to boarding school in Oklahoma. There, he was surrounded by other native kids. He didn’t get into so many fights, but he didn’t get much work done either — especially not after he and his friends discovered the mind-altering effects of alcohol and other drugs.

There are a lot of guys Daniel used to know who aren’t around anymore. That includes his younger brother Jerry, who died when Daniel was up in Duluth, Minnesota going to school at Lake Superior Community College. Daniel has heard different versions of the story. It’s hard to prove anything on the reservation, and the facts are sketchy. Jerry and his brand new Mustang. Two witnesses. Lights flickering as the car turned and flipped. Alcohol in the blood. Jerry’s girlfriend on the phone telling Daniel that his brother was gone.

The elders say that after death, the spirit of the individual roams around for four days, visiting people and places they’ve been before. That’s why it’s better to stay in one place while you’re mourning. Daniel was in his studio apartment in Duluth when he felt someone lift the blanket to tuck him in.

After his brother passed, Daniel struggled. College had been hard to begin with. He wasn’t prepared academically — he didn’t know what he didn’t know. He was trying hard and going to summer school, while other people were graduating. Now he was trying to do it for his brother, but It wasn’t working. He was getting frustrated. He wanted to drop out. 

There were ten feet of snow on the ground one winter night when he got to thinking. He always assumed his grandfather’s stories were just meant to put him to sleep. But maybe, they were more than that. Maybe, his grandfather been trying to tell him something. Maybe, the trickster meant something. Daniel kicked around a few ideas. Then it came to him. The trickster might steal, lie, and cheat, but he was also determined, and persistent, and had goals he wanted to achieve. The odds might be against him, but he always found a way.

A light goes on. For a moment, you can see your way. That winter night, the light shone particularly bright; Daniel graduated from Lake Superior with an AA in 1999.

But just as quickly, the light goes out, and you are forced to muddle around in the dark again, where it is all too easy to find trouble. Daniel did, and got himself locked up for 18 months in Wisconsin on driving offenses. Afterwards, he went back to Florida, where driving with a suspended license earned him enough points for a 5 years prison sentence.

He was sent to the Gainesville Correctional Institute and enrolled in a program called Behavior Modification. It was strict. At first, he fought against it, but then he got in line — literally. They’d march around and sing these little cadence songs. He took classes in drafting and masonry. He stayed off the yard except to work out and play some basketball. He completed the 12 steps of AA. He began to talk about his grandparents, the passing of brother, what it had been like to grow up without a dad. He cried. And then he cried some more. Lights began to flicker back on.

Daniel was released from prison after 52 months, on his 46th birthday. He will be 10 years sober this July. These days, he works at the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum, where he is a demonstrator at the hunting camp. He tells visitors about the traditional clothing he wears and enumerates the many uses of the deer (meat, hides, antlers, ligaments). He explains that in Seminole tradition, a hunter has to give away his first four kills to a widow, a grandparent, or someone in need. Only then can he take one home. Daniel knows people who hunt for food and sport, but he is not a hunter himself. He likes to say that he only shoots deer with his camera. On the rare occasion he does hunt, he makes sure it’s a clean shot. He hates to see the animals suffer.

Daniel started working at the museum three years ago, which is also when he participated in his first reenactment. It was the Battle of Lake Okeechobee. He has done 10 more since then. There can be up to 50 guys on the native side and 100 on the military side, also known as the long knives or blue jackets. They follow a script. Two cannon shots might be the cue to back off. A third might mean march forward. After the battle, they line up and do gun salutes. But they can never do it on three because someone always shoots first.

He gets a kick out of it. He likes learning about Abiaki, the war chief whose strategies won battles, and whose personal determination kept his people on their land. Like the queen on a chessboard, Abiaki had stayed in the background, protecting the children and the elders while younger men like his lieutenant Osceola took the spotlight. Over the years, Daniel had heard about Abiaki, mostly from his cousin James Billie, the former chairman of the Seminole tribe — but only now does he recognize his genius. Daniel has suggested that James come play Abiaki in the reenactments; his cousin has yet to take him up. 

The reenactments are fun, but they are also a way to pay homage. When he smells the black powder smoke and hears the cannons echo, Daniel is reminded of the struggle and sacrifice of  those who came before. He often thinks about the picture that hangs in his mother’s kitchen, a replica of a painting called “Survival” by the artist Guy Labree. In the foreground, there is a group of Seminoles; in the background, there are soldiers. One of the Seminole women is holding a baby with her hand over its mouth. She is killing the baby. Because babies cry, and if it does, the soldiers will find them and kill everyone.

Daniel is keenly aware that somebody died for him to be here today. The baby in the picture didn’t grow up to fall in love; he didn’t grow up to smell the rain coming, or watch the sunrise, or get to be a parent himself.

Daniel has two children now. His son is eight, born four days before his 48th birthday. He also has a four year old girl, who he says has changed his world approximately 300-million-and-8 times. He picks her up from school everyday and is teaching her how to ride a bicycle. He tries to tell the children his grandfather’s stories, but they are hard to explain in English, and the kids don’t speak Miccosukee. He has heard that up in Brighton, they have a school that exclusively teaches Creek. He would like to see something like that in Big Cypress. He does not want this culture to be lost.

That is why he began carving canoes, which he works on as he waits for visitors at the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum. No one tells you how to carve a canoe. They encourage you and give you hints, but a canoe is the unique expression of its maker, so in the end, it’s up to you. Daniel has been carving canoes for a year now. They are miniatures, but they are getting bigger. He is on number 17 now — the biggest yet. The canoes are heavy, but as they dry and shape up, they get lighter.

Daniel has never traveled by canoe, the way his mother used to when she was a little girl living on the tree island around Tamiami. Whenever they drive out that way to see family, he catches her looking out the window at all that open land. “Kahalih,” they call the swamp in Miccosukee, which means “out in the light.” Daniel knows she longs for it. He knows she left her heart on that island. He has heard that the furthest distance a man can travel is from his heart to his head. You can go around the globe five times but never find yourself unless you make that journey. It is not easy digging around down there. Holy christ, you might say, that’s me? But your past is your past; confront it, accept it. Whether you are a warrior on the battlefield, or a man just trying to get by, the same lessons hold: Know yourself — inside and out. Believe in a greater power. Sleep well. Eat enough.