Texas Music Museum in Austin: Kickapoos & Black Seminoles

Video Transcript

"Welcome to the Texas Music Museum. This is a project that actually began in 1984. This section right here is more of the tribes that basically, the Kickapoos basically were kind of pushed into Texas from where in Minnesota, and they still, you know, they still have a big presence in Eagle Pass and then also on the other side of the border in Mexico. They, I think they have like dual citizenship; they can go back and forth. The Tijua was, of course, in El Paso, and we also, you can see some pictures here, that we also, some of our volunteers took in visiting in El Paso. And pretty impressive, you know, also the number of the cultural centers and the schools and the health centers and some of the things that the tribe has built to, because this, of course this was an extremely poor, you know, deprived tribe, you know, not too many years ago and such, but they have of course done a great job to try to. There was a time that the schools, and probably the question of how many kids were even going to school, and now what's amazing, both with the Tijuas and also this next group, the Alabama Coushatta, a large of them, because they're not only graduating from high school, but large numbers are going onto college and universities and things like this, so this is really wonderful. Of course the, what do you call, the Black Seminoles are the, this is an interesting group which was basically a mixture of African American in the south with Seminole Indians and such, and this group ended up being called, this is the famous group they call Buffalo Soldiers. And these were basically Black Seminoles, who were recruited by the Army, and they had a big presence, kind of in Texas and were really important as scouts, you know, for the Army and such. And we say of course now there are many many Native Americans, you know. We say urban Indians living throughout all the cities and such."