Betty Mae Jumper / Seminole from Hollywood, Florida
The Everglades of Florida conjures images of dark swamps, looming cedars hung with moss, and snakes, alligators and insects. The Everglades, however, were home and shelter to numerous native tribes. They lived peacefully within the boundaries of this huge swamp, resisting the white man’s ways.
Betty Mae Jumper, a Seminole woman, remembers living in a “chickee,” an open-aired, thatched structure common to her people. Her mother was a Seminole medicine woman and her father was white, a trapper and sugar cane worker that she only remembers seeing once when she was 12. She says “I ran and hid. I didn’t want to see him.” Betty Mae only spoke Creek and Miccosukee until she was forced to attend a boarding school in Cherokee, North Carolina. Later, after getting a nursing degree and working with the health needs of the scattered people of the Seminole, in 1967 Betty Mae became the first native woman to be elected tribal chairman. When she came into office, the tribe had $35.00 in a bank account which, when they went to withdraw it, couldn’t be found. When she left office, the tribal coffers had over a half-million dollar surplus. This was before tax-free cigarettes and casinos. Before we left, we bought one of Betty's Seminole dolls. When we set up a table at the American Library Association once, we brought her doll with us. We should have had 100 of them--everyone wanted to buy one. |
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