As a boy rising up in West Virginia, UCF historical past teacher Robert Clarke would spend his free time outdoors. In soil of the Ohio Valley, he’d use his fingers to drag stones from the bottom. Some of them had been little treasures: arrowheads.
“I thought they were the coolest things ever,” Clarke says.
The discovery of arrowheads led to journeys to museums and to household discussions about Native American historical past. “The history of native people was woven into the fabric of the area,” he says. “It was a part of life. That’s what ignited my interest in local history wherever I’ve lived.”
In Oklahoma, he realized concerning the cultures of the Osage, Chickasaw and Creek Nations. In Hawaii, he wished to know extra concerning the conventional language and customs. His curiosity piqued once more when he arrived in Central Florida and heard geographical names like Seminole County and Osceola County. And similar to the 7-year-old boy choosing up stones in West Virginia, he wished to know extra concerning the family tree of the land and the individuals who as soon as lived right here.
When UCF was constructed, initially as an area college referred to as Florida Technological University, the land regarded far completely different than what we see in the present day. The 1,227 acres had been tough and rural, with a few of the close by scrub pine forest used to assist the turpentine business.
“The more I teach history,” says UCF Professor of History Daniel Murphree, “the more important I believe it is for people to understand it — I mean really understand it.”
He doesn’t imply the social media variations of historical past and even a few of the older textbook variations of it. “Understanding requires research,” he says, “and an appreciation for the participants of history.”
Historians like Murphree estimate that as many as 350,000 Native Americans had been residing in Florida when Europeans arrived within the early 1500s. Smaller teams of native individuals had shaped tribes, and not less than 5 of these tribes would affect the inside of Florida: the Ais, Apalachee, Calusa, Timucua and Tocobago tribes.
“If you were to come here between the 1500s and 1700s, you would have seen groups encountering each other for trade and commerce,” Murphree says.
Those teams used canoes to traverse waterways. They tried to nurture the land. And at instances they fought over it. There had been wars in opposition to Europeans, colonialists and in opposition to one another. Diseases took extra lives than the conflicts. The decimation and oppression spurred a mass migration west.
“By the mid 1700s, most Native Americans who lived in this area were no longer in coherent groups,” Murphree says. “Some remnants of various tribes collectively grew to become referred to as Seminoles. They truly grew in quantity when Creeks migrated right here from Alabama and Georgia, and due to their affiliation with escaped African American slaves and free Blacks.
Then, on account of the three Seminole Wars, their numbers dwindled once more. And they left an unlimited vacuum of land.
Clarke references a e-book referred to as Ceremonial Time by John Hanson Mitchell. The e-book’s premise takes one sq. mile of land and traces its human and geological historical past 15,000 years again. Clarke says you can uncover fascinating tales about individuals teams shopping for, promoting, profitable, foreclosing and vacating a sq. mile anyplace on this planet. West Virginia. Oklahoma. Hawaii. Africa. Europe.
“And right here,” he says of Central Florida.
The first shovelfuls of sand dug on March 19, 1967, to mark the approaching of FTU had been on land that had been bought and donated. Nineteen months later, the college opened as a non-segregated establishment targeted on producing analysis and expertise for the house program. Disney World hadn’t but welcomed its first customer. There was no conference heart, no world-renown tourism, and really restricted demand for land.
“But there is a history,” Murphree says, “and the history includes people.”
Murphree’s curiosity in historical past by the eyes of individuals heightened as a pre-teen when his household moved to South Africa, throughout apartheid.
“I could never understand why people were separated by race,” Murphree says. He attended a global college with college students from Brazil, Asia, Europe and the U.S. Every individual there had a heritage story, none extra vital than one other. Later, whereas learning historical past at Auburn, considered one of his professors talked about researching colonial Florida.
“I didn’t even know there was such a thing as colonial Florida,” Murphree says. While digging into his personal analysis, he stored operating into data of council conferences that included Creek and Seminole tribes.
Murphree realized there needed to be one thing vital about these teams.
“Prior to that, as much as I wanted to learn about the perspectives of others, I had blinders on,” he says. “I’d been learning about native people the way most of us learn about them: as props. But they belong in the center of the story. They were the movers and shakers in Florida. The French, Spanish, British and colonialists didn’t dictate relationships. The Native Americans did. They were the power holders.”
And then, they weren’t. As we see with highly effective teams all through historical past, preventing and illness took a heavy toll.
“But,” Murphree says, “they didn’t disappear.”
Before instructing historical past at UCF, Clarke labored as a common supervisor for the Hard Rock Cafe, whose mum or dad firm is the Seminole Tribe of Florida. After coming to UCF, he invited Max Osceola, a tribal council chairman, to offer a visitor lecture on the Seminole Indian Wars and tribal historical past for his class.
“I wasn’t sure if the students would be interested, or if they’d even show up.”
Clarke was pleasantly shocked to see greater than 400 UCF college students and school fill a big corridor. They leaned in, listened to Osceola, and stayed to ask questions. One query stored developing: How do you need to be handled?
“Just treat us with respect,” Osceola mentioned.
“The message was obvious,” Clarke says. “Don’t marginalize us. Don’t exploit us. Don’t use us for identity politics. Remember that we’re a part of the fabric of the area.”
In April 2021, UCF’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion launched a statement recognizing land once held by five tribes and the presence of the Seminole Tribe of Florida in the state. Murphree says it was a considerate step, “and now more can be done to recognize our community’s Native American heritage on campus.”
He suggests perhaps sometime the Seminoles might construct a chickee on campus — a shelter the place college students can loosen up and replicate.
“Native Americans are not relics of the past,” Murphree says. “They’re very much a part of life today, and their influence will always be with us.”