December 19 - Seminole Tribe of Florida

5A • The Seminole Tribune • December 19, 2012Senior profile: Hollywood resident Marcellus Osceola Sr.BY KATHRYN STOLARZCopy EditorHOLLYWOOD — World-classtrapshooter, former Councilman andfounder of the first Seminole smoke shop,Marcellus Osceola Sr. knows success.“There’s nothing I can’t do,” he said.Marcellus, 67, is a man of determinationand focus who cares deeply about his Tribeand family. He also likes to kick backand have a good time, cracking jokes anychance he gets.He didn’t have it easy growing up, andhe appreciates how far he’s come.On Oct. 22, 1945, Tribal membersCharlotte and Bill Osceola arrived atBroward General Hospital, where Charlotte,Snake Clan, delivered their first child,Marcellus.Living under an open chickee on theMcDaniels Ranch just north of Big Cypressfor his first five years, Marcellus remembersa simpler time with no air conditioning,no plumbing and no electricity. Kerosenelanterns lit the way, and fishing passed thetime.“When you don’t have anything, younever think about it,” he said.His father operated a bulldozer on theranch and his mother raised the children.She also made clothes, beaded and workedfor the Miccosukee Independent BaptistChurch in Hollywood and later as a secretaryfor the Tribe. It was a tough time for manySeminoles, and some worked alongsidethe migrant workers, picking tomatoes ororanges for little pay.By the time Marcellus turned 6, theOsceola family moved into a one-room,reconditioned bath house in Hollywood tosend their children to school nearby.“My dad never went to school, so hewanted me to be better than him,” Marcellussaid. His mother’s education ended in thesixth grade at an Indian boarding school inNorth Carolina.Pictures from the past:rich history in black and whiteBY EILEEN SOLERStaff ReporterBIG CYPRESS — A photographyexhibit at the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museumprovides a rare outsider’s glimpse intoSeminole Tribal life from more than acentury ago.For Tribal member Wanda Zepeda whoattended the Dec. 7 opening of Camera-Man: the Seminole through the lens ofJulian Dimock, the nearly two dozen duotonephotographs taken in 1910 remindedher of her own childhood not too long ago.“When I saw the canoes, so manymemories came flooding back. We usedto ride them all the time; we’d go to CornDances…It makes me want to do it all overagain,” she said.Moments captured in time depict dailycamp life before motor cars, concrete homesor store-bought conveniences; mothers andchildren washing laundry outdoors; womengrinding corn; children playing in a canoe;men repairing camp chickees.In other photos, families pose forthe camera dressed in beaded and silverjewelry and traditional Seminole garb. Menwere capped in turbans decked in feathersor European straw and felt hats. Chickeeswere surrounded by lush wetlands as far asthe eye could see.Familiar surnames like Tiger, Cypress,Tommie and Billie are included in manyphoto captions.On opening day, high school studentsfrom Ahfachkee School on the Big CypressReservation and middle school boys fromPemayetv Emahakv Charter School on theBrighton Reservation received a specialtour of the exhibit.Marcellus studied at Dania Elementary,Stirling Middle and McArthur High, wherehe graduated in 1964. He also enrolled intwo trade schools, one for auto mechanicsat Northeast High, and one for dieselmechanics in Miami.Life had its own way of educating himoutside the classroom. His father spokemostly Mikasuki to him because he onlyknew broken English, and his mother spokeMikasuki and Creek.“I know a lot of it, but I don’t use itenough,” he said.His parents also taught him aboutreligion, raising him in the MiccosukeeIndependent Baptist Church in Hollywood,where he sang in the church choir andplayed guitar.“They were hard-core Baptist,” he said.But he formed his own thoughts through theyears, deciding, “You don’t have to go tochurch to talk to God.”In addition, Marcellus learned from hisfather how to hunt, shooting his share ofdeer and hogs and grabbing alligators out ofthe water with his bare hands at night. And,he still has all his fingers.“If I needed advice, I’d always ask mydad until he couldn’t help me no more,” hesaid. He spent much of his time with hisfather, his brother, Raymond, and his uncleJimmie Osceola. He also enjoyed huntingand fishing with Howard Tommie andEugene, Truman, Paul and Dan Bowers.Being an athlete was also importantto Native Americans while Marcellus wasgrowing up, so he played baseball, softballand bowling. He said sports were howIndians gained some respect from whitesociety, even though whites discriminatedagainst them and usually refused to playthem.“They treated black people better thanthey treated Indians back then,” he said. “Itwasn’t all that great.”Marcellus experienced this firsthand,not just in sports, but also out on the streets.“That’s my grandmother,” and “Thatlooks just like my grandfather,” could beheard in whispers as students huddled ingroups to check out Dimock’s work.More Dimock photographs from 1910are published in Hidden Seminoles, a 200-page book available in the Museum GiftShop. The book was co-written and editedby former Florida Museum of NaturalHistory curator Jerald T. Milanich and NinaJ. Root, a former director of the AmericanMuseum of Natural History.Milanich, on hand for the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki opening, said he received a call in 2008from Root encouraging him to come see 200glass negatives from the Dimock collectionof nearly 3,000 negatives that were gifted tothe American Museum of Natural Historyin the 1920s and then forgotten.“I’d put the negatives in the scanner,and it was like magic. We were seeing theimages for the first time in 100 years,”Milanich said.Dimock was the son of wealthy NewYork financier Anthony Weston Dimockwho, after several successes and failures,enlisted his son as “camera-man” foradventure-driven expeditions from 1903to 1913 in the United States’ Deep South.Much of their travels were documented inmagazine articles, which Anthony wrote andJulian illustrated using two cumbersome 6½ by 8 ½ cameras – a single-lens cameraand a tripod-view camera.In 1910, Julian was commissionedby anthropologist Alanson Skinner, of theAmerican Museum of Natural History, todocument the Unconquered Seminolesliving in the Everglades.Clothing and other artifacts collectedduring the expedition, such as silverpendants and sticks used for playing ballHe walked into a Hollywood gas station tofind two bathrooms labeled “Black” and“White” with no option for Indians. Somestores wouldn’t serve Indians either. ButMarcellus wouldn’t put up with disrespect.Kathryn StolarzMarcellus Osceola Sr., 67, ranked among thetop 50 in the world in trapshooting. He stillcompetes today.“I was always accepted because I madethem accept me,” he said.His fearlessness also came out in afew hobbies he picked up. In his early20s, he drag raced his brother’s ’57 Chevy,winning a couple trophies along the way.games, are also on display.Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki director AnneMcCudden said the show, which runsthrough Dec. 9, 2013, serves many interests,including history, photography, geographyand culture.“It’s the perfect example of what everymuseum wants to offer. Everyone wouldwant to see it,” she said.Museum curator John Moga said thephotos have inspired Tribal members tocome forward with more information thanDimock originally provided. Names ofpreviously unidentified people, locations ofcamps and cultural information have beenadded to prior descriptions.Most of the photos were taken in whatis now the Big Cypress Reservation. In fact,Brown’s Boat Landing, where the 1910expedition landed, was located less than amile from the current Big Cypress Landingstore and restaurant on Snake Road.“I bet that through oral histories passeddown from generations, all of the campsand all of the people, not only on BigCypress but on Miccosukee (Reservation),can be identified,” Milanich told Ahfachkeestudents. “It’s a project, but it’s one that canbe done today in air conditioning.”Later, when students gathered betweentwo rows of historic canoes, the Museum’sTraditional Arts and Outreach coordinatorPedro Zepeda encouraged them to honortheir heritage by learning the Seminoleways.“But when you are learning to make abasket or play stickball or stitch patchwork,don’t just learn about the object. Learnthe origins, the history, the stories, thelanguage,” he said. “There is so muchknowledge that goes with our culture.”He’s always been a sharp shooter with agun, having ranked among the top 50 inthe world in trapshooting, which he stillcompetes in today.Yet, Marcellus has a softer, romanticside. At the encouragement of his cousinMoses Osceola, he even learned ballroomdancing, swooning the ladies with hisknowledge of the Waltz and Cha-Cha.Three wives, seven kids, 13 grandkids anda couple great-grandkids later, he is singleand dating, always picking up the bill.Marcellus loves spending time with hisfamily and cherishes them. Like his father,Marcellus wanted a better education for hiskids, so he paid for their private schooling.“I went to public school, and I wantedthem to be better than me,” he said. “Youalways want your kids to be better thanyou.”Marcellus is particularly proud that fiveof his children work for the Tribe.“I taught them that the dividendshouldn’t be the only thing they should liveoff,” he said. “I want them to know it wasn’talways like this.”Marcellus has worked for the Tribemost of his life. As a teen, he ran the giftshop at the Indian Village, and he was acarpenter apprentice with Henry Gopher,learning form work and building concretecolumns in Hallandale.He feels most accomplished aboutpioneering the sale of discount cigaretteson Seminole reservations in the late ‘70s.His Seminole smoke shop was the first,once located on US-441 in what was thenconsidered Dania. He believes it contributedto the Tribe’s financial success. He alsostarted shops in California and New York.Being an entrepreneur comes naturallyto Marcellus by working hard and askingthe right people for help.“If there’s something you don’t know,somebody out there knows it,” he said.After operating cranes, he started alawn maintenance business for the Tribe.James Sweat hands over the keys to Russell Osceola’s new home.BRIGHTON — The HousingDepartment handed over the keys tosenior Russell Osceola’s new homerecently, after just a few months of thebuilding process.Osceola worked closely with theSeminole Housing Department fromstart to finish on the building process.The department helped by setting him upwith project manager Al Huggins, whosupervised the project.“He helped me with everything,”Osceola said. “He would suggest thingslike colors, door handles and lightfixtures.”Prior to his new home being built,Osceola lived at the same homesite for12-plus years in a modular home.“Before that, my mother was stillalive, so I lived with her,” Osceola said.Osceola needed a new home becausehis old house’s base started to deteriorate,he said.His new home consists of almost3,000 square feet of living space,including three bedrooms, a game room,Andrea HolataRussell Osceola getskeys to new homeBY ANDREA HOLATAStaff ReporterHe moved back to Big Cypress for afew years to head a construction projectdraining ditches and adding culvert pipes onthe rez and continued his lawn maintenancework, mowing along Snake Road with hisfather. He returned to Hollywood when hefinished the culvert job.His next venture was a debris removalcompany on the Hollywood Reservation,which he still owns today. He also startedan equipment business, Osceola LandClearing, doing earth-moving, excavationand demolition jobs on and off thereservations.Marcellus also served as HollywoodCouncilman for five terms in the ‘70s andearly ‘80s, a position his son Marcellus W.Osceola Jr. holds now.“My dad was explaining to me how theCouncil took care of the people,” he said.“That’s what it’s always about.”He said Tribal members kept votinghim into office for this reason: “They respectme because I don’t run a welfare program.”He promoted hard work, not just handouts,which wasn’t always popular.“The Tribe didn’t have money then,”he said. But that changed when HowardTommie opened the Tribe’s first bingo halland Marcellus started discount cigarettesales. He watched the money pour in, andin the late ‘80s, monthly dividends wereenacted.After his time in office, Marcellus ranthe Indian Action Team Program, teachingTribal members how to operate heavyequipment to earn a living.He is now in his second year asChairman of the Tribe’s Land UseCommittee and is a member of the GamingCommission.He takes on all this responsibility forthe benefit of the Tribe.“It’s my kids and grandkids,” he said.“I want them to see what it’s like to be amember of something special...I’m notdone yet.”two bathrooms, a large living room, adining room, an inside laundry room, acarport and a screened porch. A far cryfrom the old modular, the new house’samenities include granite countertops,solid wood cabinets, stainless steelappliances, high-efficiency heating andair conditioning to keep monthly billslow, hurricane-impact-rated windowsand doors, and a generator to power thehome, if needed.Osceola said he appreciates his newhome and the extended space it providesfor his family to visit.“I have my sisters come up everyonce in a while, and my son RussellJr. and his wife come by and cookme dinner,” Osceola said. “We are allenjoying it.”He also said he had a good experienceworking with project coordinator CarreraGopher and the Housing Department.“It’s hard when you are by yourself,so it’s nice when you got somebody withyou to suggest things,” Osceola said. “Alot of people don’t like to wait, but it’sworth waiting for. If you are getting ahome, put in for it and be patient; it willcome around.”Eileen SolerFormer Florida Museum of Natural History curator Jerald T. Milanichexamines original Seminole garb from 1910.Eileen SolerVistors to the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum discuss historical photographs fromthe exhibit.Eileen SolerStudents from Ahfachkee and Pemayetv Emahakv Charter School have achance to check out historic canoes at the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum.Andrea HolataRussell Osceola’s new home features granite countertops, solid wood cabinets and stainlesssteel appliances.