Alligator wrestling

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Chris Gillette wrestling an American alligator at Everglades Holiday Park, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida GilletteAlligatorWrestling.jpg
Chris Gillette wrestling an American alligator at Everglades Holiday Park, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida

Alligator wrestling is an attraction, that later evolved into a sport, that began as hunting expeditions by Native Americans. [1] It has been described as "alligator capturing techniques."[ citation needed ]

Contents

Native American historical origins

Southeastern Native Americans hunted alligators as a food source for thousands of years. At the turn of the 20th century, showing off alligators as roadside attractions helped Native Americans generate revenue. Long before the first Europeans explorers wandered into the Florida Everglades, alligator wrestling existed. For tribes like the Seminole and Miccosukee, learning how to "handle" the reptiles was part of their existence.

We had to live off whatever Mother Nature provided us in the Everglades ... We'd eat the tail, the meaty part. Later on, when the alligator skin had a value, we would hunt and skin the gators and bring the skin to trading posts and trade for things we couldn't grow.

Max Osceola, a Seminole tribal councilman. [1]

In Florida

Alligator wrestling at Gatorland 022306-gatorland05.jpg
Alligator wrestling at Gatorland

A common symbol of Florida in popular culture is the American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis). The St. Augustine Alligator Farm was one of Florida's earliest themed tourist attractions that opened for business in 1893. At the St. Augustine Alligator Farm and other tourist attractions such as Gatorland and Silver Springs, "taming" or hypnotizing alligators was a popular trick, along with other performances such as alligator wrestling. [2] Alligator wrestling is a common spectator activity for people to do in Florida and is most common near the Everglades' so-called Alligator Alley.

See also

Related Research Articles

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The Everglades is a natural region of flooded grasslands in the southern portion of the U.S. state of Florida, comprising the southern half of a large drainage basin within the Neotropical realm. The system begins near Orlando with the Kissimmee River, which discharges into the vast but shallow Lake Okeechobee. Water leaving the lake in the wet season forms a slow-moving river 60 miles (97 km) wide and over 100 miles (160 km) long, flowing southward across a limestone shelf to Florida Bay at the southern end of the state. The Everglades experiences a wide range of weather patterns, from frequent flooding in the wet season to drought in the dry season. Throughout the 20th century, the Everglades suffered significant loss of habitat and environmental degradation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Seminole Wars</span> Conflicts in Florida between the US govt. and Seminole Nation (1816–58)

The Seminole Wars were a series of three military conflicts between the United States and the Seminoles that took place in Florida between about 1816 and 1858. The Seminoles are a Native American nation which coalesced in northern Florida during the early 1700s, when the territory was still a Spanish colonial possession. Tensions grew between the Seminoles and American settlers in the newly independent United States in the early 1800s, mainly because enslaved people regularly fled from Georgia into Spanish Florida, prompting slaveowners to conduct slave raids across the border. A series of cross-border skirmishes escalated into the First Seminole War, when American General Andrew Jackson led an incursion into the territory over Spanish objections. Jackson's forces destroyed several Seminole, Mikasuki and Black Seminole towns, as well as captured Fort San Marcos and briefly occupied Pensacola before withdrawing in 1818. The U.S. and Spain soon negotiated the transfer of the territory with the Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819.

The history of Florida can be traced to when the first Paleo-Indians began to inhabit the peninsula as early as 14,000 years ago. They left behind artifacts and archeological evidence. Florida's written history begins with the arrival of Europeans; the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León in 1513 made the first textual records. The state received its name from that conquistador, who called the peninsula La Pascua Florida in recognition of the verdant landscape and because it was the Easter season, which the Spaniards called Pascua Florida.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Seminole</span> Native American people originally from Florida

The Seminole are a Native American people who developed in Florida in the 18th century. Today, they live in Oklahoma and Florida, and comprise three federally recognized tribes: the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, the Seminole Tribe of Florida, and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, as well as independent groups. The Seminole people emerged in a process of ethnogenesis from various Native American groups who settled in Spanish Florida beginning in the early 1700s, most significantly northern Muscogee Creeks from what are now Georgia and Alabama.

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The Second Seminole War, also known as the Florida War, was a conflict from 1835 to 1842 in Florida between the United States and groups of people collectively known as Seminoles, consisting of Creek and Black Seminoles as well as other allied tribes. It was part of a series of conflicts called the Seminole Wars. The Second Seminole War, often referred to as the Seminole War, is regarded as "the longest and most costly of the Indian conflicts of the United States". After the Treaty of Payne's Landing in 1832 that called for the Seminoles' removal from Florida, tensions rose until fierce hostilities occurred in Dade's massacre in 1835. This engagement officially started the war although there were a series of incidents leading up to the Dade battle. The Seminoles and the U.S. forces engaged in mostly small engagements for more than six years. By 1842, only a few hundred native peoples remained in Florida. Although no peace treaty was ever signed, the war was declared over on August 14, 1842 by Colonel William Jenkins Worth.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Draining and development of the Everglades</span> Development of the Florida Everglades

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<i>The Everglades</i> (TV series) Television series

The Everglades is an American crime-adventure television series that aired in syndication for one season from 1961–62 and in reruns. Ron Hayes starred as Constable Lincoln Vail, a law enforcement officer of the fictional Everglades County Patrol who traveled the Florida Everglades in an airboat, a vehicle which was often the focus of the program. Hayes, a northern California actor and stuntman, was an avid outdoorsman and conservationist.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tahar Douis</span> Moroccan wrestler of alligators

Tahar Douis is a Moroccan wrestler of alligators known for hypnotizing them and putting his head inside their open jaws. He was born in the 1950s in Marrakech, left home at age 6 to join a group of street performers, and later began performing for the London-based Circus Hasani at age 16. In the 1980s he was taught by Bob Tiger, a great third-generation Seminole gator wrestler from the Florida Everglades. Previous to his career as an alligator wrestler, he was a snake charmer and circus strong man. As a strong man, he earned a Guinness World Record in the 1970s by carrying 12 men weighing a total of 1,700 pounds on his shoulders, forming the world's heaviest human pyramid. In the late 1980s his alligator show was a star attraction in the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus as part of their "Safari Fantasy" themed shows. By the middle of the 1990s he was wrestling gators as part of the "Splash" show at the Riviera in Winchester, Nevada on the Las Vegas Strip.

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Everglades Holiday Park is an attraction park situated on 29 acres of wetlands in the Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The park is located on the western end of Griffin Road, off U.S. 27 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Everglades Holiday Park is not affiliated with Everglades National Park.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alligator bait</span> Urban legend and racist trope

Depicting African-American children as alligator bait was a common trope in American popular culture in the 19th and 20th centuries. The motif was present in a wide array of media, including newspaper reports, songs, sheet music, and visual art. There is an urban legend claiming that black children or infants were in fact used as bait to lure alligators, although there is little evidence that children of any race were ever used for this purpose. In American slang, alligator bait is a racial slur for African-Americans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Everglades Alligator Farm</span> Zoo in Miami-Dade County, Florida

Everglades Alligator Farm is a wildlife park in Miami-Dade County, Florida, nearby the city of Homestead and the entrance of Everglades National Park. It claims to be the oldest and largest alligator farm in South Florida, along with containing over 2,000 alligators. Additionally, it provides airboat rides through the Floridian wilderness.

References

  1. 1 2 "Gator Wrestlers Endangered". 2012 BanderasNews ® all rights reserved. Retrieved June 11, 2012.
  2. "African American Man Wrestling an Alligator at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm." 17 October 2011. World Digital Library. Web 29 May 2013.