"great heroes" of the
tribe. At this settlement, annually, a council, composed of minor chiefs
from the various settlements, meets and passes upon the affairs of the
tribe.

Tribal Officers.

What the official organization of the tribe is I do not know. My
respondent could not tell me. I learned, in addition to what I have
just written, only that there are several Indians with official titles,
living at each of the settlements, except at the one on Cat Fish Lake.
These were classified as follows:

Settlements | Chief and | War | Little | Medicine men.
| medicine man. | chiefs | chiefs |
-------------------+---------------+--------+--------+--------------
Big Cypress Swamp | | 2 | 2 | 1
Miami River | | 1 | | 1
Fish Eating Creek | 1 | | | 1
Cow Creek | | | | 2
+---------------+--------+--------+--------------
Total | 1 | 3 | 2 | 5
-------------------+---------------+--------+--------+--------------

Name Of Tribe.

I made several efforts to discover the tribal name by which these
Indians now designate themselves. The name Seminole they reject. In
their own language it means "a wanderer," and, when used as a term of
reproach, "a coward." Ko-nip-ha-tco said, "Me no Sem-ai-no-le; Seminole
cow, Seminole deer, Seminole rabbit; me no Seminole. Indians gone
Arkansas Seminole." He meant that timidity and flight from danger are
"Seminole" qualities, and that the Indians who had gone west at the
bidding of the Government were the true renegades. This same Indian
informed me that the people south of the Caloosahatchie River, at Miami
and the Big Cypress Swamp call themselves "Kaen-yuk-sa Is-ti-tca-ti,"
i.e., "Kaen-yuk-sa red men." Kaen-yuk-sa is their word for what we know as
Florida. It is composed of I-kan-a, "ground," and I-yuk-sa, "point" or
"tip," i.e., point of ground, or peninsula. At the northern camps the
name appropriate to the people there, they say, is "Tallahassee
Indians."

CHAPTER III.

Seminole Tribal Life.

We may now look at the life of the Seminole in its broader relations
to the tribal organization. Some light has already been thrown on this
subject by the preceding descriptions of the personal characteristics
and social relations of these Indians.