PURPOSE
This Co-Stewardship (“Co-Stewardship”) Agreement for Biscayne National Park (the “Agreement”) is entered into by and between the National Park Service (the “Park” or “NPS-BISC”), a unit of the National Park Service, and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida (the “Tribe” or “MTIF”), a federally-recognized sovereign Native American tribal nation organized pursuant to the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, on this 27th day of August, 2024.
AUTHORITY
WHEREAS, NPS-BNP may enter into General Agreements such as this one pursuant to 54 U.S.C. 100101; and
WHEREAS, the Native peoples of South Florida were living in the area of Biscayne Bay, along its coast and upon its islands, at least 10,000 years ago; and
WHEREAS, the oral history of the Miccosukee peoples recalls a connection to the southern tip of Florida since time immemorial; and
WHEREAS, the Miccosukee and other Eehlaponke-speaking peoples were documented by the Indian Agent Thomas Nairne of the Carolina Colony as traveling as far as the southern tip of Florida for trade and semi-permanent settlement as early as 1708, echoing oral history indicating a long-running pattern of contact in the area; and
WHEREAS, the Miccosukee and other corn-growing peoples had become the dominant population in the Everglades by 1748 in conflict with the Spanish-aligned Native populations of the area as a consequence of the southern pressure placed on our settlements by the Carolina Colony; and
WHEREAS, at the 1819 Corn Dance the Council of the Miccosukee Tribal Town and its surrounding aligned polities presided over by Kin-Hadjo resolved to travel to the Caribbean islands to seek assistance against the expansionist American threat; and
WHEREAS, Kin-Hadjo, five affiliated town leaders, six affiliated village leaders, and seventeen attendants traveled by canoe to Tavernier on Key Largo, before boarding a ship bound for New Providence on the Isle of Nassau in the Colony of the Bahamas, the closest British port of call; and
WHEREAS, Kin-Hadjo and his peers sat in audience with the Honorable William Versey Munnings, Governor of the Bahamas, who provisioned them with 2,000 pounds of supplies and a generous allowance of sterling, after which the Bahamas became a key resupply point throughout the Seminole Wars, which would rage from the 1810s until the late 1850s; and
WHEREAS, the Miccosukee had already established settlements on the islands accessed through Little River off of upper Biscayne Bay in today’s North Miami area before the end of the First Seminole War; and
WHEREAS, travel from the mainland to the Biscayne islands and beyond would continue in earnest throughout the first half of the 19th century, with an increasing number of Black Seminoles traveling to the Bahamas to escape capture and reenslavement, while the warriors on the mainland continued to receive supplies from the islands; and
WHEREAS, Miccosukees were salvaging shipwrecks in the Bay to fund their defensive war against the United States as early as 1822, which would become a major war-time means of resupply. Abiaki-Hadjo, or Sam Jones, the Speaker of the Miccosukee Council of Warriors at the time, directly led these efforts; and
WHEREAS, one of Kin-Hadjo’s sons, Tuskaneha, settled on an island identified in 1828 as Tuscane’s Island on the Little River, which joined the Biscayne Bay to the Everglades; and
WHEREAS, Abiaki was at home at Choshi-Atalie (Pine Island) by 1828, a two-and-a-half-mile long island reaching 29 feet in elevation at its highest point, which became the heart of the Pine Island Stronghold, also known as Sam Jones’ Seven Islands, which was the center of the Miccosukee and Seminole resistance during the Second Seminole War. Today, the Seminole Hollywood Reservation sits on Big City Island, one of the seven islands nearest to the historic coastline; and
WHEREAS, almost one half of all enrolled Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida and Seminole Tribe of Florida tribal citizens descend from residents of the historic Seven Islands in the liminal zone at the border of the Eastern Everglades and Biscayne Bay; and
WHEREAS, Dr. John Strobel’s 1829 account noted that there was a permanent Miccosukee presence on the Miami River and New River, which had been established by Miccosukee bands long before Bowleg’s Alachua Seminole bands fled south during the Second Seminole War, which would begin in the next decade; and
WHEREAS, American observers by 1835 noted that Seminole and Miccosukee were operating or working at fisheries all along the South Florida coast, from Jupiter on the east to Tampa on the west; and
WHEREAS, the U.S. settlement which had just been founded on New River was attacked by the Miccosukee under Abiaki in January of 1836, and the fortifications on Key Biscayne were attacked and disabled that same year, after which the Miccosukee retook full control over southeast Florida and the government of Dade County retreated to the so-called Indian Key, some 32 miles off the mainland; and
WHEREAS, in 1838, Abiaki created an alliance with some 160 “Spanish Indian” warriors living in the Keys, descendants of the Tequesta or Matecumbe tribes Indigenous to the islands, who under the leadership of Chekika, Hospetarke, and Passack assimilated with the Miccosukee and moved to the Eastern Everglades; and
WHEREAS, in 1840, Chekika and his band successfully raided Indian Key, capturing quantities of lead and powder, but General Harney tracked down Chekika and his band and killed and hung a dozen leading warriors from the trees including Chekika that December, leading their remaining people to integrate further with the Miccosukee. To this day, traditional Miccosukee do not step foot on the island, which is south of Tamiami Trail in Everglades National Park, and remember it as the Hanging Island; and
WHEREAS, the U.S. Surveyor General John Westcott in 1856 described the entirety of the region in which Biscayne National Park headquarters is located, as well as the adjacent Turkey Point Nuclear Generating Station and the adjacent Mangrove Preserve, as “Indian Hunting Grounds” on a map presented to Congress; and
WHEREAS, after the informal cessation of hostilities in 1858, Miccosukee developed a vibrant economy of hunting pelts, plumes, and hides in the region, which were sold to traders such as William Brickell who lived along Biscayne Bay throughout the late 1800s, until the Audubon Plumage Law and subsequent Migratory Bird Treaty Act collapsed the plume economy; and
WHEREAS, despite the destruction of the Pine Island Stronghold and its seven islands through the drainage of the eastern estuarine Everglades, and the creation of the cities of Ft. Lauderdale and Miami, Rev. Clay MacCauley of the Bureau of Ethnology noted that the Miami River settlement in 1881 was “in Dade County, on the Little Miami River, not far from Biscayne Bay” and contained almost one third of the entire Miccosukee and Seminole population of South Florida; and
WHEREAS, a land boom in the 1920s, together with Everglades drainage, and the threat of economic disintegration with the coastal communities resulting from the ban on plume trading, led to the establishment of tourist villages along the Miami and Little Miami River, including Musa Isle, Tropical Paradise, and Happy Land, where Miccosukee and Seminole people settled and were exhibited as if in a zoo for the profit of non-Native administrators of these villages; and
WHEREAS, many of those who grew up in the tourist villages of the Miami River descend from the river island settlements at the mouth of historic Biscayne Bay, including current sitting Lawmaker Petties Osceola Jr. of the Miccosukee Business Council, recall fishing the Bay for snook, manatee, turtle, and other culturally significant foods and gathering palm fronds and medicinal plants from the isles; and
WHEREAS, the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida was formally recognized by the United States government in 1962 following a diplomatic meeting with the government of Cuba which extended international recognition to the Miccosukee as one of the sovereign nations of the Caribbean; and
WHEREAS, the first law enforcement officers in service of the Tribe received Federal BIA commissions on June 6th, 1976 and deputizations as National Park Service deputy rangers on September 16th, 1976, beginning an almost half-century of varying forms of cooperative stewardship of Tribal lands and resources with the National Park Service; and
WHEREAS, Secretary Deb Haaland of the Department of Interior and Secretary Thomas J. Vilsack of the Department of Agriculture issued Joint Secretarial Order No. 3403 on November 15th, 2021 calling for co-stewardship of federal lands and waters, supplemented by guidance issued September 13th, 2022; and
WHEREAS, the Director of the National Park Service, Charles Sams III, issued the September 12, 2022 Policy Memorandum 22-03 setting forth guidance on implementing NPS’s fulfillment of trust responsibilities to Indian Tribes in the stewardship of Federal lands and waters; and
WHEREAS, the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, Dr. Arati Prabhakar, and the Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality, Brenda Mallory, of the Executive Office of the President, released Guidance for Federal Departments and Agencies on Indigenous Knowledge and an accompanying Implementation memorandum on November 30, 2022; and
WHEREAS, the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida and Biscayne National Park have mutual interests in natural and cultural resources within the park unit’s boundaries.
