The Florida Seminoles are widely known as “the unconquered.” They are the only Native American tribe never to have signed a peace treaty with the United States government, with which they fought three separate wars in the nineteenth century. Throughout that period, they were pushed deeper and deeper into the Everglades. In new, inhospitable territory, they started hunting alligators for sustenance. Because alligator meat spoils quickly, especially in South Florida’s climate, hunters would have to capture the animals and transport them live to their villages before slaughter. The story goes that, as highways and other infrastructure began to encroach on the swamplands, white residents and visitors began spotting Seminoles hunting gators from the road. Some started throwing tips out of their cars, believing that the sight was for their benefit. The spectacle of Native hunters “wrestling” alligators was born.
“Halpate,” co-directed by the Native American filmmakers Adam Khalil and Adam Piron, describes how white Floridians were the first to capitalize on it. Some constructed Native “villages” and camps and hired Seminoles—for “pennies,” as Holt says—to populate them and produce traditional crafts for white tourists. They also performed live gator-wrestling shows, which grew in popularity throughout the nineteen-thirties and forties. By the early sixties, Native-owned villages were established, and Seminole wrestlers started to reap the profits of their labor. In many ways, the gator villages were a precursor to the modern-day Indian gaming-and-entertainment industry, Piron, who is of Kiowa and Mohawk ancestry, told me. Ever since, the Seminoles’ business focus has grown and grown. In 2007, the Seminole Tribe of Florida purchased Hard Rock International—every Hard Rock Casino and Cafe in the world, in addition to other entities—for nearly a billion dollars.
But alligators aren’t just money-makers. (The tribe, which has a population of about three thousand, has a net worth of approximately twelve billion dollars, according to a 2016 investigation by Forbes.) What started as a means of sustenance has become a cultural touchstone—what was once a form of exploitation transformed into tradition. Shows continue today in part because “alligator wrestling kind of keeps us relevant,” Everett Osceola, a forty-one-year-old wrestler and tribe historian featured in “Halpate,” told me. (Osceola is also a producer of the film, the title of which means “alligator” in the Miccosukee language.) “A lot of people don’t realize that we have a major part of Florida in our history,” and that alligator wrestling can be a gateway to that education, he said.