490 SEMINOLE INDIANS OF FLORIDA. 
Fish Lake settlement, enables me to show, in gala dress, Mele, a half 
breed Seminole, the son of an Indian, Ho-laq-to-mik-ko, by a negress 
adopted into the tribe when a child. 
Me-le sat for his picture in my room at a hotel in Orlando. He had 
just come seventy miles from his home, at Cat Fish Lake, to see the 
white man and a white man’s town. He was clothed “in his best,” 
and, moreover, had just purchased and was wearing a pair of store 
boots in addition to his home-made finery. He was the owner of the 
one pair of 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 tur- 
ban. 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 cther more important re- 
spects 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 adoor. 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 fron- 
tier of Florida’s civilized population. Next morning he was at the sta- 
tion to see the train depart, and told me he would like to go with me 
to Jacksonville. He is the only Florida Seminole, 1 believe, who had 
at that time seen a railway. 
PSYCHICAL CHARACTERISTICS. 
IT shall now glance at what may more properly be called the psychical 
characteristics of the Florida Indians. I have been led to the conelu- 
sion 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 
a a. 
