|
Betty Mae Tiger Jumper, also known as ''Potackee'' (April 27, 1923 – January 14, 2011) (Seminole) was the first and so far the only female chief of the Seminole Tribe of Florida. A nurse, she co-founded the tribe's first newspaper in 1956, the ''Seminole News'', later replaced by ''The Seminole Tribune,'' for which she served as editor, winning a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native American Journalists Association. In 2001 she published her memoir, entitled ''A Seminole Legend.'' Tiger was the first Florida Seminole to learn to read and write English, and the first to graduate from high school and a nursing program. In addition to serving as editor of the newspaper, she was Communications Director for the tribe. ==Early life and education== Born Betty Mae Tiger on April 27, 1923 in a Seminole camp near Indiantown, Florida, she was the daughter of Ada Tiger, a Seminole woman of the Snake clan, and a French trapper. Her grandmother Mary Tiger picked her Seminole name of ''Potackee.'' Under the Seminole matrilineal kinship system, Betty Mae was given her mother's surname. The tribe so discouraged intermarriage with whites that sometimes they left half-breed children in the Everglades to die. When Betty Mae was five, some Seminole medicine men threatened to put her and her younger brother to death, because their father was white. Her great-uncle resisted the men and moved the family to the Dania reservation in Broward County, where the government protected the children.〔Interview, p. 4〕 At the time, her mother had to leave nearly 500 head of cattle; she sold some and offered others to the tribe for people who needed food.〔Interview, p. 11〕 Betty Mae's first languages were Mikasuki and Creek, as relatives spoke both. At night she often listened as older members of the tribe told stories passed down from their ancestors. "The stories taught you how to live," she said.〔 She would later record the stories for future generations. Tiger decided she had to learn how to read and write. In the segregated school system of Florida, neither the white nor the black schools would accept Seminole children. Tiger decided to go to a federal Indian boarding school, and enrolled at one in Cherokee, North Carolina, along with her cousin Mary and younger brother. She started learning English at age 14. She became the first formally educated Seminole of her tribe, as well as the first to read and write English; she graduated from high school in 1945.〔 Betty Tiger enrolled in a nursing program at the Kiowa Indian Hospital in Oklahoma, which she completed the following year. The Seminole then were still very traditional, and many would only accept care from Medicine Men. Her family had roles as medicine people: her mother, uncles and great-uncle Jimmy. Unlike the Medicine Men, her mother was willing also to accept white doctors and hospitals, whatever would help sick people.〔Interview, p. 7〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Betty Mae Tiger Jumper」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|