The Havana Connection: Buffalo Tiger, Fidel Castro, and the Origin of Miccosukee Tribal Sovereignty, 1959-1962

On 26 July 1959, the new Cuban revolutionary government of Fidel Castro held a gigantic manifestacionor celebration in Havana. This national holiday was ostensibly declared to commemorate the six-month anniversary of the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista's repressive regime. The date also held strong historical significance because Castro called his revolution the "26th of July Movement" in honor of the date in 1953 when his guerrilla fighters launched an unsuccessful attack on government barracks in Santiago de Cuba.

Thousands of Cubans from the outlying provinces crowded into the capital city, along with numerous guests from the Communist bloc and Third World nations. Most of those assembled were unaware of the political undercurrents threatening the nascent Castro regime. Although radical economic and agrarian reforms during the first six months provided immediate relief to the poorest elements of Cuban society and cemented their loyalty to the revolution, support for Castro was not unanimous. As historian Louis Perez reports, "Apprehension and misgivings increased among liberals in and out of government and among property owners in and out of Cuba. Cuba was seen moving toward government by decree and rule by one man. Many were growing increasingly suspicious of the phenomenon of fidelismo,which smacked of demagoguery and over which, they sensed correctly, they could exercise little restraint." ¹ Already several of his former colleagues had resigned, and others were executed as traitors to the revolution. Thus, in the time-honored tradition of beleaguered Latin American dictators, Castro was rallying his supporters in an orgy of patriotic excess that would drown out criticism.

During the three-day affair the new prime minister delivered a number of lengthy harangues to massive gatherings at a local stadium, each lasting for several hours under a broiling tropical summer sun. In the stands seated among the cheering throngs of Cubans and foreign visitors was a delegation of Native Americans who were there as guests of the Castro government. Eleven members of this group were Miccosukee Indians from Florida led by tribal spokesman Buffalo Tiger and their Miami attorney, Morton Silver. Why this obscure group of Indian activists came to be present in Havana, and the goal of their mission, is a little known and seldom discussed tale of how the threat of foreign intervention was used as political leverage to achieve an early victory for the cause of Miccosukee tribal sovereignty in Florida.

The antecedents of this strange affair are found in the early 1950s when the federal government instituted its infamous "termination policy" for American Indian tribes. ² Following World War II, a conservative Republican-controlled Congress looked for ways to lower the national debt and reduce the size of government. A primary target of this effort was the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), which supplied services to tribes living on the federal trust lands known as reservations. When organized attempts to assimilate Indians by relocating them from reservations to urban centers were only moderately successful, Congress turned to other means to end federal relations with the tribes. First, Congress authorized an Indian Claims Commission in 1946 and encouraged it to settle all tribal claims filed within four years, thus closing the books on existing federal obligations to tribes. ³ Clearing such claims was a necessary political prelude to getting government out of the "Indian business." Second, Congress moved to terminate all services to the tribes and end the historical government-to-government relationship that had existed through treaties and court decisions since the founding of the United States.

In 1953 the Eighty-third Congress passed House Concurrent Resolution 108 expressing "the sense of Congress" that elimination of services should become the fundamental principle of federal Indian policy. ⁴ The BIA was required to prepare lists of tribes capable of running their own affairs. The Seminoles of Florida never appeared on these lists; nevertheless, they...