ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the social construction of the Seminoles by historians, naturalists, travelers, novelists, and ethnographers, but especially by those who were "inventing" Florida for the tourist in the middle of the twentieth century. It also examines a whole range of texts that purport to describe and interpret Florida's "Seminoles." For several decades thereafter the Florida Seminoles lived in isolated camps. Just as Frederick Jackson Turner was announcing the end of the frontier and wondering what effect that loss would have on American democratic institutions and traditions, other writers were introducing to the American public of the 1890s a "last frontier," the Florida Everglades. The Seminoles played a key symbolic role in the social construction of the meanings of Florida through tourism, and the touristic visit is the quintessential act in the modern search for "authenticity" and identity. Louis Capron, who wrote both for the popular and the scholarly audience, provides another useful example of the dilemmas of "authenticity."
