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CONGRESSIONAL RECORD
PP. 406-407
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UNITED STATES SELECT COMMITTEE ON INDIAN AFFAIRS
Senate Hearing 95th Congress
SECOND SESSION
ON
S. 2000
Letter of
September 26, 1958
leading to
Trip to
CUBA
406
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
EXHIBIT 70 oo
407
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
EXHIBIT 70 pp
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