Walk Like A Warrior Part 2: By Mark Hatmaker

Hey crew,

As an addendum to the recent “Walk Like a Warrior” post, here are a few excerpts from an 1884 anthropological study by a man who spent 4 years among the Kanyuksa Istitcati (Seminole to most, but to them at the time the word was a term of contempt.)

Keep in mind the terrain of Southern Florida and know that each tribe-member owned moccasins, and boots purchased at the “White Man’s” store but only wore them for in-town occasions. As a rule, the tribe worked, hunted, and lived barefoot.

In a recent barefoot experiment of my own in Florida [I’m not talking beach sand either] I can vouch that these folks are far tougher than me. Saw grass, sand spurs, and other less-than-forgiving vegetation rendered my mile-long experiment a bit less than cozy.

Once you read these extracts ask yourself if their daily life sounds suspiciously like one of our 21-st Century mock-tough Workouts of the Day. Ask yourself, who’s the better man you or the not yet 12-year-old boy warrior mentioned in one of the extracts?

“Two of the warriors permitted me to manipulate the muscles of their bodies. Under my touch these were more like rubber than flesh. Noticeable among all are the large calves of their legs, the size of the tendons of their lower limbs, and the strength of their toes. I attribute this exceptional development to the fact that they are not what we would call “horse Indians” and that they hunt barefoot over their wide domain.

“But, regarded as a whole, in their physique the Seminole warriors, especially the men of the Tiger and Otter gentes, are admirable. Even among the children this physical superiority is seen. To illustrate, one morning Koihatco’s son, Tinfaiyaiki, a tall, slender boy, not quite twelve years old, shouldered a heavy “Kentucky” rifle, left our camp, and followed in his father’s long footsteps for a day’s hunt. After tramping all day, at sunset he  reappeared in the camp, carrying slung across his shoulders, in addition to rifle and accouterments, a deer weighing perhaps fifty pounds, a weight he had borne for miles. The same boy, in one day, went with some older friends to his permanent home, 20 miles away, and returned. There are, as I have said, exceptions to this rule of unusual physical size and strength, but these are few; so few that, disregarding them, we may pronounce the Seminole men handsome and exceptionally powerful.

“As a rule, they exhibit great bodily vigor. Large or small, they possess regular and agreeable features, shapely and well developed bodies, and they show themselves capable of long continued and severe physical exertion.”

Source: The Seminole Indians of Florida Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution- Clay MacCauley