Max Osceola Jr. is sitting under an American Indian chickee hut, recalling his childhood in the Seminole Tribe of Florida. “There was a group of ladies from Fort Lauderdale called the Friends of the Seminoles. When it was time to go to school, they would take us to Goody’s shoe store and buy us shoes. They would take us to the clothing store and buy us, like, three pairs of jeans and three shirts so that we had clothes without holes in them,” he says.
Osceola, now 57 and a member of the Seminoles’ tribal council – its five-person ruling body – smiles at the memory. He is perched on a bench outside the Seminoles’ headquarters in Hollywood, north of Fort Lauderdale and Miami. Everything seems to have a Seminole theme, from police cars with tribal crests on their sides to a statue of a 19th-century warrior with a musket. Even Osceola’s baseball cap bears the logo “Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino”.
From the incursion of US settlers into Florida in the early 19th century to 25 years ago, the Creek Indians lived in poverty. Thousands were driven out of Florida to Oklahoma, and only a few hundred avoided this fate by retreating to the Everglades swamps. By the 1960s, they lived in federal housing on six reservations, scraping a living by raising cattle, making trinkets and wrestling alligators for tourists.
Then came casinos. The US has strict gambling laws: casinos are permitted under federal law but are barred in most states. But the US constitution gave American Indians separate legal status, and the Seminoles saw an opportunity. They claimed the right to open gaming outlets despite Florida’s prohibition.
If the 3,200 members of the Seminole Tribe of Florida have a problem with money now, it is not poverty. Since the tribe pioneered gambling (or, as it prefers it to be known, gaming) in 1979, its fortunes have been transformed. Takings from its seven casinos bring each member, defined as being at least a quarter Seminole, a reported $7,000 a month (the tribe does not disclose the figure). A family of four, in other words, receives $336,000 a year simply for being in the tribe.
In some ways, the Seminoles’ success is an accident of history. By carving up the tribe so ruthlessly, the US government unwittingly created a small, cohesive group. In the early 20th century, Florida was an unwelcoming place. But, after swamps were drained and air conditioning drew the elderly from the northern states, Walt Disney turned Orlando into a global tourist destination – and the Seminoles found themselves occupying prime commercial property.
The tribe has also made its own luck. It took the state to court to enforce its self-governance rights, which were formalised by the federal government in 1957. It has run its casinos efficiently, bringing in outside managers and attracting the young and affluent. Wealth has not been without its problems: there have been some murky internal disputes, but the current leadership appears to have cleaned things up.
In December 2006, the Seminoles announced a deal with Rank, the British leisure group, to buy the Hard Rock chain of 124 cafes, hotels and casinos in 45 countries for $965m. Suddenly everyone woke up to the fact that, in a single generation, the Seminoles had catapulted themselves to riches. The tribe is now a leading force in Indian gaming, an industry with $26bn in annual revenues (far exceeding the $6.5bn brought in by Las Vegas). Osceola is just back from an investment roadshow to sell $500m in bonds used to complete the Hard Rock purchase.
The tribe marked the acquisition at a press conference in Times Square where members dressed in modern Seminole costumes – long multicoloured woven skirts for women and waistcoats for men. Osceola, who knows the value of a sound bite, declared: “Our ancestors sold Manhattan for trinkets. We’re going to buy it back one hamburger at a time.” A medicine man made a blessing and the tribe posed for eager photographers.
“The biggest change is the pride we feel at having accomplished so much in such a short time,” says Larry Frank, the 54-year-old Seminole who heads gaming operations at the tribe’s flagship casino in Hollywood. “We are part of something great and big that stems from our forefathers, who established tribal government in the 1950s.”
The casino that transformed the Seminoles’ fortunes sits on the outskirts of Hollywood, near the Florida Turnpike. It does not look like much as you drive inland: scrappy suburbs, lined with strip malls and telephone cables. The patches of grass near the road are yellowing and scrubby. Then an oasis appears. The grass becomes a lush green and an array of palm trees lines the roadside. A sign marks the entrance to the Seminole Hard Rock Casino & Hotel. At the end of a long driveway, attendants park your car under a neon-lit guitar. You could be in Las Vegas.
Inside, a vast marble floor leads to 2,100 slot machines, with a huge raised bar at the heart of the room and an inner sanctum of poker tables where players sit day and night. The Seminole name is above the door, and the tribe runs one of the shops and cafes where tourists can buy Seminole goods. But that is the only obvious evidence that this is Indian territory. Of the 1,800 staff employed in the hotel and gaming operations on the site, only 25 are Seminole. The tribe opened the casino in May 2004 – and another Hard Rock casino in Tampa at about the same time – as leisure venues for families rather than places where the elderly sit in front of slot machines. That strategy – modelled on the transformation of Las Vegas – also lies behind the opening of Indian casinos and resorts such as the Pequot tribe’s Foxwoods Resort Casino and the Mohegan Sun resort in Connecticut.
Rather than striking out on its own at that stage, the Seminoles licensed the Hard Rock name from Rank. “There were doubts as to whether Hard Rock would work in this kind of market but we proved otherwise,” says Frank. “We felt we could offer a variety of amenities that South Florida did not have.”
The Hard Rock venture has not been trouble-free. The tribe struck a deal with a developer to build the two Hard Rock complexes but the two sides ended up suing each other (the dispute was finally settled in April) over how revenues would be split. And there was a media frenzy when Anna Nicole Smith, a regular visitor, died in Room 607 at the casino in February.
The venues have, however, been a financial success. They now provide more than 25 per cent of Hard Rock’s global profits, which gave the Seminoles an edge when Rank put the brand and most of its properties up for sale. “A lot of people would have been afraid to go down this path,” says Jim Allen, head of the tribe’s gaming division. “But when I presented [a proposal to buy Hard Rock] to the tribal council, they saw the potential.”
Although first licensing and then buying the Hard Rock name may have surprised outsiders, the Seminoles have been gambling pioneers since 1979. That year, they opened their first gaming outlet, a bingo hall near where the Hollywood casino now stands, after previously experimenting with various businesses – from cattle-ranching to selling cheap cigarettes free of Florida’s state taxes. “In the 1970s, the Seminoles were in debt collectively and struggling at a family level, and gaming seemed just like one more in a long line of things to try,” says Jessica Cattelino, a University of Chicago anthropologist who researched the Seminoles for her forthcoming book High Stakes. “Land on the reservations was inalienable so they could not put up collateral, and the tribal government had no tax base. Gaming was the first business to break those barriers.”
The first obstacle the tribe encountered was Robert Butterworth, sheriff of the local county, who insisted that it had no right to break state law. The Seminoles eventually prevailed in the ensuing legal battle. “Bob Butterworth said: ‘I am going to enforce bingo regulations on the reservation.’ We said: ‘No you are not.’ We went up the ladder to the Supreme Court. That was when native gaming really started,” says Osceola.
The financial impact on the Seminoles was immediate, and it carried on growing. The tribe’s annual budget was $2m in 1979. It now exceeds $500m. The Seminoles’ first bingo hall forced the federal government to legitimise Indian gaming in 1988, and was copied across the country by other tribes.
But not many tribes are as well-placed as the Seminoles, who take great satisfaction in being “unconquered” – they never surrendered to the US government. That so many escaped being forced into “Indian territory”, which later became Oklahoma, was a point of pride. The Seminoles’ obstinacy got them reservations in prime spots. The Lakota Sioux of South Dakota and the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma – the descendants of those who were forced there – inhabit reservations in sparsely populated areas, far from tourists. Ciara Billie Guerue, a 28-year-old trainee in the Seminoles’ gaming arm, is married to a member of the Sioux. “My goodness. Their reservation is in the middle of nowhere,” she says.
The closest the Seminoles get to the middle of nowhere is Big Cypress, a reservation in the Florida Everglades founded in 1936. This is where they retreated after the three Seminole wars of the 19th century, and it is easy to see why Florida’s governor Andrew Jackson, who went on to become US president, could not dig them out.
Big Cypress is the most traditional of the Seminoles’ reservations but elements of the old world are disappearing. Most of the tribe used to live in plain bungalows provided by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and many still do: since they cannot sell the land they are allocated, they invest in second homes elsewhere. But the bulldozers have been out in Big Cypress and colourful mansions have sprung up. Nearby lies a small airport, where the tribe’s two fixed-wing aircraft, including a 13-seat Gulfstream GIV, can land. Further along is a day centre for the elderly, built last year, and a building site that will soon be a new police and fire station. The Seminoles run a welfare state that would be generous even by Scandinavian standards. They pay for all members’ college tuition, for example.
All this has attracted a degree of hostility from outsiders. “There are children in the tribe whose parents were teased at school for being poor who are now teased for being rich,” says Cattelino.
An image of exploitative Indian tribes has leached into popular culture. Cattelino cites an episode of the cartoon comedy series South Park called “Red Man’s Greed” in which a tribe bulldozes white people’s homes to clear the way for a highway to its casino. The recent scandal over the Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff highlighted the millions tribes spend lobbying politicians.
But dealing with outsiders’ attitudes is only one challenge. A bigger one for some tribal elders is preserving their culture and the loyalty of young members who no longer need to work for a living. “When you suddenly find yourself with things you did not have before, it is easy to forget what got you there,” says Jim Shore, the Seminoles’ general counsel and deal-maker.
Osceola says that most of the tribe’s adult members work – the tribal government is now so large that it provides many jobs – but admits there are some who do not see the need. “Like in any society, there are some who will not work no matter what. You can be Seminole or Irish or British or French.”
It is not yet clear how successful the tribe’s leaders will be in encouraging young people. Shore says that more are interested in customs such as traditional methods of cooking and gardening than they were 10 years ago, and more are going on to college. But Seminoles such as Ciara Billie Guerue, who are in the casino’s management training scheme, are the exception.
“A long time ago, when we lived out in the Everglades, our elders taught us when to plant, what to hunt,” says Osceola. “They taught us how you salt the meat so a month later, when there is no game, you can still eat. So our job is to educate young Seminoles in how to manage a different commodity: instead of birds and corn, it is money.”
That is what they are doing at the Ahfachkee School at Big Cypress. The principal, Terry Porter, is an Oklahoma Seminole who previously taught at a Lakota Sioux school in South Dakota. He has plenty of resources: the school is expanding and classrooms are being rebuilt. We walk by a classroom where technicians are installing a bank of computers. Porter says that money will get the Seminoles only so far. “[The Sioux] are one of the poorer tribes in the nation – and this is one of the most prominent – but you run into similarities,” he says. “We must promote our children to gain a higher education, to keep moving forward. People say the Seminoles have it made now. No they haven’t. It is still a struggle.”
This year, as the Seminoles’ tribal leaders were adjusting to being the owners of a global leisure business, a figure from their past reappeared. James Billie was a young tribal leader who had helped push the Seminoles into gaming. In 2001, he was ejected from tribal leadership. “We do not like to air our dirty laundry but it was to do with managing funds,” says Osceola.
After Billie stepped down, tensions persisted until, one night, they flared up dangerously. Shore, who had made the case against Billie, was at home one evening when someone shot him three times in the arm and chest, leaving him badly wounded. The culprit was never found. Billie was cleared of any involvement but Shore’s shooting showed how deep some grievances run.
In May, Billie stood for election to the tribal council of the Brighton Reservation, but the council voted by three to two that he had not lived long enough on the reservation. Another council member who tried to unseat Mitchell Cypress as chairman of the council was also defeated. The group of men that led the tribe into the Hard Rock era retained their positions without too much of a fight.
They have big ambitions. They want to open casinos at some Hard Rock venues around the world that have only a cafe or a hotel. “This is a big acquisition to anybody’s way of thinking. We are used to running little operations here and there but we are talking about an international organisation now,” says Shore.
Can the Seminoles pull it off? The tribe is not used to buying billion-dollar companies. Its leaders have succeeded up to now but it could all fall apart.
Yet those who know the Seminoles say being thrust into wealth is less daunting than the challenges they faced in the past. They survived the 19th-century campaign to wipe them out and endured poverty in the 20th century. When Osceola graduated from college in 1974, he was only the second Seminole to do so.
This August, the Seminoles celebrate the 50th anniversary of formal recognition by the US government. “Our elders saved our tribe,” says Osceola. “They did not know exactly what would happen but they knew we had been on this land forever and nature had provided for us to live. So they knew that something would be provided.”
John Gapper is the FT’s chief business commentator
