Letter to
President
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
September 26, 1958
leading to trip to
CUBA
Copies sent certified mail, return receipt to:
Governor Leroy Collins Tallahassee, Florida, Hon. Glenn Emmons Special Envoy to the President, Virgil Harrington, Esq., Assistant Special Envoy,
Col. Max Denton
EVERGLADES MICCOSUKEE TRIBE OF SEMINOLE INDIANS
P. O. Box 44021, Tamiami Station
Miami, Florida
September 26, 1958
The Honorable Dwight D. Eisenhower
President of the United States
The White House
Washington, D. C.
Sir:
We recently wrote to you on September 20 about the breakdown in our negotiations with you over the past four years and requested an answer to our final Compromise Offer within sixty days. We have been restrained from taking action before international forums by the advice of our attorney who persuaded us to believe that the United States and the State of Florida would negotiate in good faith if their senior executives were informed of the true facts and were presented with a reasonable offer of settlement by way of amicable compromise.
Instead, however, while we have patiently awaited the promised settlement, and have made every effort to make one concession after another, your agents have been busily organizing a puppet tribe called the Seminole Tribe of Florida and arming it with propaganda, money and other powers to fight against our Tribe on your behalf. These efforts have taken the form of bribing, coercing and intimidating our people and publicizing false and derogatory statements about our Tribe and its government. When we tried to cooperate with your tribe, we were rebuffed. When we protested these activities to your agent, in charge of your tribe, he disclaimed responsibility for these actions, ascribing the bribery and intimidation to “overzealousness” and the publicity to inadvertence. The latest publicity release and other actions emanating from Dania, however, do not bear him out.
If the United States has no intention of negotiating in good faith, then any efforts at direct settlement are pointless. We must accordingly inform you that any repetition of these bad faith activities, including the dissemination of false or misleading information about our Tribe
Page 2 – President Eisenhower
and the continued promotion of the rumor that the Miccosukee Tribe and the other Indians in Florida are represented by your puppet tribe, as well as any further attempts to intimidate or bribe our Tribe, its government, or any of its members, will necessarily be construed by us as being done with the approval of your Government and will of course be interpreted as an adverse answer by your Government to our letter of September 20. In such event we shall be forced to take appropriate action on the basis of the actions of your Government.
In this connection we noted on page 1 of The Miami Herald of September 26 that your Secretary of State, referring to the actions of Red China and Russia, is quoted as saying that the stakes involved in the Far East “are not just some more miles of real estate,” and that “What is involved is a communist challenge to the basic principle of peace that armed force should not be used for aggression.” Whether this aggression and the use of a puppet regime is a bad thing for Russia to do but is all right for the United States to do is a matter on which your various envoys might well reach some agreement regarding the conduct exhibited.
We sincerely hope that after all these years of effort the United States will finally make at least an attempt to consider our offer in good faith and to reach an amicable settlement by direct negotiation between the governments directly concerned.
Respectfully yours,
The Executive Council
By
cc. Governor Leroy Collins
Tallahassee, Florida
Hon. Glenn Emmons
Special Envoy to the
President
Virgil Harrington, Esq.
Assistant Special Envoy
Col. Max Denton
Also see Congressional Record
and
Buckskin Declaration March 1, 1954