(upbeat music)
- Welcome to The Native Village!
- High, I'm Penny, and these are the Kid Vision VPK Kids.
We're here today to find out about the Seminole Indians.
- Man, you guys are in the right place, then.
Let me tell you the first thing.
The Seminoles are the unconquered tribe.
They're the only tribe that never ever signed
a peace treaty with the United States.
They used all kinds of animals, and weapons, and tools,
to do things, like survival.
That's what we're gonna learn about.
You guys ready?
- Yeah!
- Come on, are you guys ready?
- Yes!
- Alright, come on, let's go this way.
(trumpet music)
- You guys wanna see a snake?
Let's see if I can...
(grunting)
Alright, there's one right there.
Check this out guys.
This is a native snake to Florida,
and they're actually called Rat Snakes,
'cause what do they like to eat, you think?
- [Children] Rats.
- [Ian] Rats, exactly.
Rats, and birds, and bird eggs.
- [Penny] What kind of sounds do snakes make?
- Well snakes don't make a whole lot of sounds.
For one thing, they don't have ears,
so they can't hear anything at all,
but the sounds that they will make
is sometimes a hissing noise,
and usually they make a hissing noise
'cause they're scared or afraid.
Do you guys wanna see a bigger one?
- [Children] Yeah
- Alright, let me put this guy back.
(tribal music)
- Alright, come here guys.
This snake is not native to Florida.
This guys is about,
I'd say maybe about two and a half, almost three feet long,
and look at the patterns on his back.
Isn't that beautiful?
Put your arm out, and I'll let you hold him.
Hold on guys, one person at a time.
There we go.
- How do they move?
Well see, the snake has so many muscles in his body, okay?
And he can use his muscles just to bend and curve
and push himself on top of anything.
They're excellent climbers.
- Where do they live?
- Some of them live in the water,
some of them live underneath rocks,
some of them live up in trees,
it really depends on the snake.
Now I want you guys to repeat after me.
Everybody say chen-te.
Chen-te, that is the Seminole way of saying snake.
Alright, we're gonna put this guy back.
Bye, snake!
So we got to see some snakes.
What'd you guys think of that?
Awesome, right?
You guys wanna go really meet a real live Native American?
I've got a couple of my friends here,
and they're here to talk to you more about
the Native American people, the Seminole people.
This is Everett, right here.
He's a Native American from the Seminole tribe of Florida.
- Hello, and we say chehuntamo, or we say instonko,
can you guys say istonko?
- [Children] Istonko.
- That's pretty good.
Now what we're gonna talk about today is patchwork.
This is what we call our three-row patchwork,
and on the top, this is fire and smoke,
and then this is a snowflake,
and then on the bottom, this is the four directions.
You see the different dresses and again, you see a vest,
but if you look at the Seminole Indian woman doll,
you see she's wearing a cape.
They would drape the cape over the baby,
so that way mosquitoes, and flies, and everything
wouldn't bite at the baby.
If you notice the beads, it'll show the different stages
in life for both the men and the women
in the Seminole culture.
They would also wear it over time,
from when they were little girls,
to when they became women,
to when they became elderly women,
and when they became elderly women, they had so many beads
they had hundreds and hundreds of beads
around their necks.
- You guys think the clothing is really cool?
You guys should check out where the Seminoles live.
They got all kinds of different really, really neat houses.
Come check it out with me!
(tribal music)
- Now what you see here, kids, is our traditional housing.
Now this is what we call our chickees or our chickettes.
Can you guys say chickee?
- [Children] Chickee.
- If you look underneath the chickee,
we did have a raised platform, and it was called a topa,
and it kept our heads out of the mud,
and it kept snakes and little insects
from going into our ears, or anything like that.
- That's a good question.
One of the things that we had are the Sable palm,
or the palm frond, so that's what we used as our roofing.
- Let's go up front and see some weapons,
and some tools that the Seminoles used to use.
What do you guys think about that?
(guitar strumming)
- Now we're gonna talk a little bit
about the tools the Seminoles used to use,
and also some of the weapons.
Can you guys guess what this is?
- [Children] Bow and arrow?
- Bow and arrow.
Can you guess what this is, a part of the alligator?
- The eye and the mouth
- No.
- The jaw.
Now this end, is actually where the teeth were.
So what the Seminoles used to do,
is they used to take the teeth,
and they used to put sap from the Beyon tree,
and they'll actually put the teeth in there,
and then they'll actually use that as a weapon.
(guitar strumming)
- So I also heard that they use things like antlers
off the deer, 'cause the deer ran around everywhere.
So they would take the antlers like this,
and they could attach them to a piece of Cypress
or something, and have a couple different things.
It could be used as a tool,
like a back scratcher, right?
But it also could be used as a war weapon.
- Can you guys guess what this is?
- Ax.
- An ax, or a hatchet, or what is most commonly known
with the Native Americans as the tomahawk.
It was made out of Cypress wood.
- Here's another one, this one's got some beads on it.
Colors, what do those colors mean?
- Now the colors are actually the Seminole colors.
- [Ian] What are those colors, guys?
- [Children] Yellow, red, black, and white.
- You guys ready to go see some alligators?
- Yeah!
- Come on are you guys ready?
- Yeah!
- Let's get out of here, come on, let's go!
(rock music)
- Alright, we got some alligators here.
Alligator was a great ally to the Seminole people,
like we had discussed before.
The hide, the skin, the bones,
everything was used as either a tool or a weapon.
Alright, so as James goes in there,
the alligators do make a few different noises.
Hissing noise is one of them.
(alligator growls)
Oh, they also growl.
And those growling noises are basically a warning
to let you know that you are getting too close
to the alligators.
(alligator hissing)
That hissing noise comes strictly out of his nose.
(hissing)
Now as these alligators swim through the water,
they have the ability to see very, very well.
The alligator has the ability of turning around
very, very quickly and jumping,
Just like you're showing 'em there.
They have a very, very large mouth,
and they're very, very powerful.
We have some baby alligators over here
that you guys can come over and touch one if you'd like,
so you guys can actually see what one feels like.
(rock music)
Alright, these guys have a full set of teeth in their mouth,
80 to be exact.
So, get your finger stuck in there, it hurts.
So we're gonna put some tape on his mouth,
and make sure that he can't bite you.
James?
The tape around the alligator's mouth
doesn't hurt the alligator.
Alligators only breathe out of their nose,
never ever out of their mouths,
so they don't suffocate.
One of the things that we always try to make sure
is that we do not hurt any of our animals.
- You guys can touch his back.
- [Penny] How do they feel, you guys?
- Rough, bumpy.
- And they have 70 teeth?
- [James] About 80 teeth.
- [Penny] 80 teeth!
This has been really exciting and really interesting.
How do you say "thank you" in Seminole?
- Shonabish, say shonabish.
- [Children] Shonabish
- So thank you very much.
- [Ian] See you later, alligators!
(upbeat music)