red flannel
leggins of which I have spoken. These were not long enough to cover the
brown skin of his sturdy thighs. His ornaments were silver crescents,
wristlets, a silver studded belt, and a peculiar battlement-like band of
silver on the edge of his turban. Notice his uncropped head of
luxuriant, curly hair, the only exception I observed to the singular cut
of hair peculiar to the Seminole men. Me-le, however, is in many other
more important respects an exceptional character. He is not at all in
favor with the Seminole of pure blood. "Me-le ho-lo-wa kis" (Me-le is
of no account) was the judgment passed upon him to me by some of the
Indians. Why? Because he likes the white man and would live the white
man's life if he knew how to break away safely from his tribe. He has
been progressive enough to build for himself a frame house, inclosed on
all sides and entered by a door. More than that, he is not satisfied
with the hunting habits and the simple agriculture of his people, nor
with their ways of doing other things. He has started an orange grove,
and in a short time will have a hundred trees, so he says, bearing
fruit. He has bought and uses a sewing machine, and he was intelligent
enough, so the report goes, when the machine had been taken to pieces in
his presence, to put it together again without mistake. He once called
off for me from a newspaper the names of the letters of our alphabet,
and legibly wrote his English name, "John Willis Mik-ko." Mik-ko has a
restless, inquisitive mind, and deserves the notice and care of those
who are interested in the progress of this people. Seeking him one day
at Orlando, I found him busily studying the locomotive engine of the
little road which had been pushed out into that part of the frontier
of Florida's civilized population. Next morning he was at the station
to see the train depart, and told me he would like to go with me to
Jacksonville. He is the only Florida Seminole, I believe, who had at
that time seen a railway.

Psychical Characteristics.

I shall now glance at what may more properly be called the psychical
characteristics of the Florida Indians. I have been led to the
conclusion that for Indians they have attained a relatively high degree
of psychical development. They are an uncivilized, I hardly like to call
them a savage, people. They are antagonistic to white men, as a race,
and to the white man's culture, but they have characteristics of their
own, many of