Seminole Doll
This male doll carries a child in a sling on his back. The sling is the traditional way Seminole women carried their children. However, Maggie Osceola, who made this doll, remembered that when she was a child, her father once carried her little brother in this manner on a long journey.
Osceola was born in the Everglades around 1920. Her family moved to the Tamiami Trail to sell crafts to tourists. They made patchwork clothing, sweetgrass baskets, and Seminole dolls. Osceola began making dolls in the 1930s. She later settled at the Okalee Indian Village near Fort Lauderdale, a traditional Seminole village attraction on the Hollywood Reservation. (Man and child doll, 1998, Collection of the Museum of Florida History)
