Miccosukee and Seminole Indian Patchwork Clothes and How They're Made

It's really kind of amazing the way the Indian women make these items. They used to live in thatched roof chikees, which are a thatched roof on cyprus poles, no walls! They used old Singer treadle sewing machines because they didn't need electricity.

Most people today call these a Seminole jacket but the Indians refer to them as shirts. The traditional mens' garb was a "long shirt" down to about the knees, but eventually jeans and T-shirts became popular and the patterned "shirts" became shorter. Women wore ankle length full skirts with the patchwork bands. The skirts were gathered at the waist and had a waistband. Many of the women wore a top that was more like a cape, except that it hung down to the waist in the front as well as the back. There were no seperate sleeves; it went over the shoulders and hung down over the arms. Womens' skirts and mens' jackets had the patchwork bands. The womens' tops usually didn't, and before jeans came along the men didn't wear pants under the long shirt.

The brightly colored cotton fabric was cut into strips and sewn together to make long strips of striped material. This was then cut crosswise, either straight or on the diagonal. They were then sewn back together with the colors offset from one another, or every other piece might be turned upside down before being sewn in place. You'd end up with a long strip of cloth with the pattern. These were then sewn lengthwise with strips of solid color fabric. Various colors of rick-rack would be sewn on the solid color bands.

Usually, if you wanted the shirt to fit correctly, you'd let the woman have one of your ordinary shirts and she'd make your Indian shirt with the same dimensions and sleeve length. With all the money pouring in from casinos, bingo, and tax free cigarette sales, this is a fast dying art. Now it's just so easy to drive the SUV into town and buy a skirt at Saks or shirts at Brooks Bros. This particular shirt was made about 1974.

Into The Looking Glass ~ Tiger Tiger

Some of these page paste-ups held up well for nearly forty years while others show the effects of the sulpher in rubber cement on black and white photographs along with just the wear and tear of age and being shuffled about over the years. It's a wonder that I still have them at all! I don't remember which of the underground newspapers wanted me to shoot this one. It was either The Daily Planet or Strawberry Fields, but I got in free for three days, had a backstage pass, and had a great time!

This is one of the pages for a piece on the POW-WOW at the Hollywood Seminole Indian Reservation back in the late sixties. I think it was here that the rock group Tiger Tiger first performed. They were a talented group of young Seminoles headed up by brothers Lee and Stephen Tiger. They've released several albums, and played at Woodstock and numerous other rock festivals. Stephen died in June 2006 but the group is still around, still putting out some dynamite rock.

A quick google search will bring up a bunch of sites with links to about everything you'd want to know about them.

The Spirit Of The Tigers Lives On

Laymond Hardy introduced me to Bobby Tiger in 1973. My wife Stephanie and I spent many pleasant days visting Bobby and his family on the Miccosukee Indian Reservation on the Tamiami Trail about 30 miles west of Miami. Bobby was married to Louise, who was half Creek and half white but Bobby was full blooded Miccosukee. He wrestled alligators for the tourists and travelled around quite a bit wrestling alligators at fairs and carnivals. That's how he'd met Louise.

They had five children. When I met the Tigers the two youngest were Donna, 16, and Spencer,14. Years later I found out that Donna was adopted, a Creek I believe. They were both students at Palmetto Sr. High. The Dade County Public Schools used to bus a bunch of kids from the reservation every day. Even at 14 Spencer was pretty good at wrestling alligators, and as I got braver I went in the pit with him on several occasions to take some photographs. Then one day he said "Here! You try it!"

It looked easy enough and the 'gator was a small one, maybe six or seven feet at most. You crouch down, stick out one hand and wave it around over the 'gator's head. He'll raise up on his front legs and lift his head upward. With your other hand you come up from beneath and grab the soft flesh of his throat, all the while pushing upward, then you can grab both jaws and squeeze them together. They might be able to bite hard enough to take off a hand but the muscles that open the jaw is very weak. Within seconds I was lying in the sand, both hands holding the jaws closed, twisting the head around and pushing against one of his legs with my foot until I flipped him on his back. Once on their back the blood rushes to their brain, so I'm told, and they black out. That's when you're supposed to rub their belly and tell the tourists how much alligators just love to have their bellies tickled, but there were no tourists there. Spencer took a long pole and flipped the gator back on his feet. He looked a bit groggy, gave us what I suppose was a dirty look, then ate a couple of garfish that Spencer tossed his way.

Now Spencer and Donna are both gone. Donna had a son Robbie who now lives with Spencer's widow Flo, a nice Jewish girl in Bay Harbor Islands. In a few days I'm going to attend Robbie's 22nd birthday party on the dock of a fancy Miami Beach restaurant. I doubt that he'll ever get the chance to wrestle a 'gator.

Life Is Just One Adventure After Another...

I never much thought that I'd led much of an adventursome life. Since high school I've spent the majority of it living in the same North Miami neighborhood. I'm now living about eight blocks away from the apartment where my mom and I lived back in 1956. Unlike most of my photographer buddies from the 1960's I didn't travel the world covering wars or shooting pretty pictures of exotic far away places. No, I spent it right here, or close by anyway, and my shooting was largely for local publications, companies, governmental bodies, and a lot of politicians. Everything from the local city council to a few U.S. presidents.

In the last few years, since starting this blog, a lot of people have remarked that not only have I led an interesting and adventursome life but I've managed to do it within just a few miles of my house. That didn't really sink in until Mario Flores opened Rootz Gallery, kicked me in the butt, and forced me to come up with some prints to hang in the Gallery.

When I stand there in front of a row of pictures like this it makes me see the variety of people and things that I've photographed over the last few decades. The blog is nice but the images are small, and a computer screen doesn't do justice to a silver print. He shot this picture of me a month or so ago, right after he'd hung the framed prints. Yeah, he made me put 'em in frames too. The only two photos that you can make out in this shot consist of a couple of elderly people all dressed up for a Halloween party at a nearby retirement home which I shot in the late 1960's for the local paper, and the other photo was taken maybe ten years later at the Brighton Seminole Indian Reservation just south of Lake Okeechobee. They raised cattle, rode horses, and dressed like cowboys.