Born: 27 April 1923, United States
Died: 14 January 2011
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Pa-Tuth-Kee
Betty Mae Tiger Jumper was the first and, to date, only female chief of Florida’s Seminole tribe. She also co-founded the tribe’s first newspaper, the Seminole News, in 1956 (later replaced by The Seminole Tribune), for which she served as editor, earning the first Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native American Journalists Association. She also served as communications director for the tribe and published her memoir, A Seminole Legend, in 2001.
The daughter of a Frenchman and a Seminolee mother, her first languages were Mikasuki and Creek, and she would often listen to traditional stories told by older members of the community, which she in turn passed down to future generations. Florida’s segregated school system meant that neither the schools for African-American children nor the ones for white children would accept Seminole students, and at age 14, she began attending a federal Native American boarding school in Cherokee, North Carolina with her cousin and younger brother. Here, she began learning English and became the first formally educated Seminole from her tribe, as well as the first to learn to read and write in English. After graduating in 1945, she completed a nursing program at the Kiowa Indian Hospital in Oklahoma and returned to Florida for field training, where she married and had children. As a nurse, Tiger Jumper worked for 40 years to improve health care in her community, including vaccinating children and persuading women to go to the hospital when needed, alongside her mother, who was a midwife.
In 1967, Tiger Jumper was elected the first chairwoman of the Seminole tribe, just a decade after gaining federal recognition. Under her leadership, the tribe went from nearly bankrupt in 1967 to having $500,000 when her term ended in 1971.
Tiger Jumper also started the United South and Eastern Tribes (USET) to operate health and education programs. USET also became a powerful lobby group at the state and national level, and Tiger Jumper was one of two women appointed to the National Congress on Indian Opportunity in 1970; she would serve on the council for 16 years.