LIVING HISTORY
“Champ.” His great uncle was Tommie
Tallahassee, seen in this 19th century photograph
below. The Florida Archives described
Tommie Tallahassee, son of Chief Tallahassee,
as an Indian River scout.
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Tommies would come back to the home camp to find odd
jobs while waiting for the next round of harvest.
After the deaths of Sallie and Jack Tommie in the 1970s,
their children were the last chickee-dwelling Seminole family
living on the Treasure Coast — and certainly one of the last
in Florida — when they were turned off the Midway Road
property in the early 1980s. The last holdout at the camp was
Shamy’s uncle Buster who continued living at the camp until
his chickee was bulldozed.
“Buster Tommie, who couldn’t read or write, signed a
form giving up the land with an X,’’ said historian and
author Lucille Rieley Rights, who unsuccessfully led an
Shamy Tommie astride his buckskin quarterhorse
effort in the 1980s to try to keep the
Tommies at the Midway Road property.
“Everybody else was gone.’’
While some members of the family
moved to the Brighton reservation,
many relocated to northwest Fort
Pierce. The property at Chupco’s
Landing was bought by the Seminole
Tribe in 1984. “It goes way back to
land that James Billie, chairman of the
tribe, promised my grandmother,
Sallie Chupco Tommie, and her husband,
Jack Tommie,’’ Shamy said. “
The promise lasted 10-15 years until
after Sallie and almost all of her kids
had passed on. The grandkids are
now enjoying what the elders waited
and fought for.”
In 1996, the land was deeded to the
Bureau of Indian Affairs to be put in
trust as a reservation, becoming the
sixth reservation in Florida. Under the
government the land is held in trust to
adhere to Federal and Tribal laws and
policies with limited sovereignty.
One endeavor has made the new
reservation possible more than any
other: Gaming. High stakes bingo and mechanical games have
created such a profit that the Seminole Tribe has been able to
purchase land, as well as to provide dividends to members of
the tribe. Shamy said he knows of no tribal plans for creation
of businesses such as a tobacco shop or casino for the property,
which includes 68 acres, including a 12-acre ranch. The tribe
also paid for construction of the houses at Chupco’s Landing.
LIFE AT THE CAMP
Today, as head of the Chupco Youth Ranch on the Fort
Pierce reservation, Shamy works to pass on the lessons he
learned from his elders at the Midway Road camp.
“Everything we got, we worked for or hunted for,’’ Shamy
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