Thatched Roofs and Open Sides: The Architecture of Chickees and Their Changing Role in Seminole Society by Carol Dilley (review)

there is architecture, and then there is architecture. This is the beginning premise postulated by non-Native, architectural historian Carrie Dilley. She draws her findings from a recent tribal survey she was hired to conduct on behalf of the Seminole Tribe by Florida’s Office of Historic Preservation Office. The book presents in a straightforward manner the evolution and cultural representation of a vernacular building called the chickee.

Most readers would dismiss this building as a crude thatched hut, reminiscent of the Hawaiian Tiki house. As the discussion unfolds, however, one gains a wider and deeper respect of the role that this traditional building has served over time and place. Superbly adapted to the ecosystem of the Everglades, it reflects the social and economic norms of the Seminole culture.

This story is far more complex and interesting than it appears at first glance. After all, a hut is a hut, right? Yet the chickee is born from necessity, survival, and resilience. As the Seminole people hid among the swamps, they endured not only military campaigns intended to eradicate them but also turn-of-the-century engineering designed to gentrify their traditional landscape.

Faced with their survival, the Seminole adapted a semipermanent, hide-and-seek habitation. So-called camps evolved in the most impassable areas of the Everglades. The camps were organized along matrilocal patterns. Their layout comprised a variety of chickees, each of which was specialized. The most important of these and the central focus of its lifeways was a detached unit used for cooking. The cook chickee with its star fire was not only the hub of camp life, it was the symbolic center of their world.

Of course, what makes this discussion most compelling are the push-and-pull factors of modernization. Whereas the camps were once camouflaged from prying eyes, families eventually succumbed to the forces of land development and the economies entrained by it. These events changed the demeanor of the camps’ people from isolationists to entrepreneurs.

The transformation occurred along the Tamiami Trail. Completed in 1928, the road is 275 miles long and links Tampa to Miami. This roadway created a corridor for exotic display and economic opportunity through the Big Cypress National Preserve and its Seminole environs. Dilley outlines the impact of this change in the chickees’ form and function. The discussion is also informed by tribal voices that lived through the transformation, some of whom positioned themselves to make a living off the new trade.

Interestingly, not only did Native entrepreneurs morph their village encampments into sightseeing venues for swamp tours and alligator wrestling, a few became invested contractors who built customized chickees for both their people and non-tribal clients. Of course, all of this was evolving during a time when do-gooders, the BIA, HUD, and the surrounding county attempted to undermine Seminole culture by forcing them on Indian reservations, replete with substandard Western housing and a suburban existence.

Finally, there are plenty of technical minutiae drawn from historical materials and newer building surveys. A great number of its chapters are dedicated to the engineering and structural design of a chickee. That aspect of the discussion will not disappoint. Interspersed within these discussions, though, are the more nuanced elements of assimilation and how the Seminole feel about this.

These aspects, however, go largely unstated. The Seminole are necessarily a private people, and the author acknowledges that the book is tempered by respecting their predisposition against revealing the spiritual and sacred values associated with the chickee.

The book finishes on a rather disquieting note as to whether the persistence of the chickee is enough to preserve their cultural identity (in all fairness, the author resolutely says yes, while the reader may still have doubts). As with many other tribes who have imbibed the casino Kool-Aid, they are faced with language loss, materialism, and a growing generation gap. Elders lament...