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Healthy Home Economist / Archives / Green Living / Traditional Foods of the Seminole Tribe of Florida

Traditional Foods of the Seminole Tribe of Florida

by Sarah Pope / Affiliate Links ✔

Table of Contents[Hide][Show]
  • Seminole Indians Ate Meat
  • Soaked Corn a Staple of the Seminole Tribe

The Native American tribe known as the Seminoles of Florida consumed a varied and interesting traditional diet with soaked corn gruel and wild animal meat primary staples.seminole tribe members preparing a meal over a fire

The Seminole tribe was the dominant Native American force in Florida during colonization of the area by European settlers during the 18th and 19th centuries.

Each year, Fort Foster at Hillsborough River State Park hosts a living history exhibit where schoolchildren can come and learn about the Second Seminole War, also called the Florida War, which occurred from 1835 -1842 between the United States and the Seminoles.

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My child’s class took a field trip to Fort Foster this week to experience the living museum firsthand and I was happy to tag along as one of the chaperones for the class.

Seminole Indians Ate Meat

Every facet of life during this period for both the American soldier and Seminole Indians was covered in detail as one walked around the Fort as well as the tribal settlement located across the pristine waters of the Hillsborough River via a wooden bridge.  While all aspects of the living museum proved interesting,

I was particularly fascinated by the traditional foods of Native Americans living in Florida at that time as demonstrated by a lady dressed in Seminole attire who thoroughly explained how the tribe nourished themselves on a daily basis.

In the picture above, you can see an animal roasting over a fire.

The kids and chaperones had a fun time trying to guess what the animal was, but we all were wrong even though the claws are a dead giveaway that the animal is a raccoon!

Raccoons supposedly taste like, you guessed it, chicken!

Not boneless, skinless chicken breasts, mind you, but the dark meat of a chicken which is mineral-rich and full of very nourishing fat.

Soaked Corn a Staple of the Seminole Tribe

corn kernels and a bowl of coarse meal

The dish that really caught my eye, however, was the soaked corn gruel that served as the mainstay of the Seminole tribe diet.

The corn was pounded into a coarse, cracked flour, soaked in weak lye water obtained from wood ash, and then cooked over low to medium heat for 3-4 hours into a soup called sofkey.

The lye increased the nutrient availability of the corn, most notably Vitamin B3 or niacin. Since sofkey was the mainstay of the Seminole diet, release of the niacin from the corn via soaking was absolutely critical to health.

Pellagra, a vitamin B3 (niacin) deficiency disease is a devastating illness that can result in death following progressively worsening symptoms of diarrhea, dermatitis, and dementia. Soaking the corn in limewater prior to cooking alleviated the risk of this illness.

Sofkey is sour to the taste indicating that the corn was fermented as well as soaked further improving digestibility and nutrient absorption for the Seminoles.

The Seminole Tribe in Florida was never completely defeated by the United States with several hundred individuals hiding out in the Everglades indefinitely eluding attempts to round them up and ship them off to an Oklahoma reservation.

Seminole woman cooking soaked corn gruel

The Seminole tribe living in Florida today is quite proud of the fact that they were never officially conquered which played a role in the recognition of the tribe’s sovereign rights by the federal government in 1957.

No doubt, the Seminole tribe’s wise and careful preparation of their grain-based foods proved a deciding and critical factor in their ability to evade and resist resettlement by the United States government for over a hundred years all the while remaining healthy and strong.

If you live in the West Central Florida area, you can still visit the living history museum at Fort Foster which is on display through the weekend.

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Category: Green Living, Healthy Living
Sarah Pope

Sarah Pope MGA has been a Health and Nutrition Educator since 2002. She is a summa cum laude graduate in Economics from Furman University and holds a Master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania.

She is the author of three books: the bestseller Get Your Fats Straight, Traditional Remedies for Modern Families, and Living Green in an Artificial World.

Her eBooks Real Food Fermentation, Ketonomics, and Ancestrally Inspired Dairy-Free Recipes are available for complimentary download via Healthy Home Plus.

Her mission is dedicated to helping families effectively incorporate the principles of ancestral diets within the modern household. She is a sought after lecturer around the world for conferences, summits, and podcasts.

Sarah was awarded Activist of the Year in 2010 at the International Wise Traditions Conference, subsequently serving on the Board of Directors of the nutrition nonprofit the Weston A. Price Foundation for seven years.

Her work has been covered by numerous independent and major media including USA Today, ABC, and NBC among many others.

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Reader Interactions

Comments (49)

  1. Janis

    Nov 18, 2019 at 11:56 am

    Grains are healthy for most people when they are grown naturally. It’s when they’re doused with herbicides and pesticides that they become unhealthy. And if you have diabetes (which is usually caused by poor diet), then carbs can be dangerous for you. If modern people ate the food of the natives, they’d be a lot healthier. Notice that obesity really only became widespread starting in the 1970s.

    Reply
  2. jordyn

    Oct 12, 2016 at 11:46 am

    what kinds of foodd did they eat? :}

    Reply
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