[film reel rattles]
[suspenseful music]
[Narrator] When you touch them,
you can feel the coldness in them.
They used to call me Rain Keeper.
I would turn over the alligator and the buttons
on his back put some indentions in the dirt
calling the rains and calling the hurricanes.
It takes out the old and brings in the new.
It even takes out concrete buildings
and it refreshes the land.
That’s the reason they call me the rain keeper.
[suspenseful music]
[motor boat whirring]
[Narrator] The reason why the Seminole Tribe
of Florida are known as the unconquered is
because we’ve never signed a peace treaty.
Meaning that we never signed any kind of treaty
with the U.S. With the Seminole wars, we were pushed way
into the Everglades, so we had to use the alligator
as a way of food.
They would always catch the alligator alive
so back then when they were draining the Everglades
and people were coming down,
and they would see Seminoles come out
and grab the alligator,
later on that’s when they would see
that they were throwing money at them
so they would take the money and
that would feed their family within a day
rather than two weeks.
The one thing that really brought in a lot
of tourists was alligator wrestling
and Native American Seminole camps.
[Alligator wrestler sighs]
[whispering]
[alligator wrestler sighs]
When I look at that, that fear brings me back
to when I was a little kid,
watching my uncle do alligator wrestling back in the 80s.
When it does that hissing sound, it’s like hearing a song.
[clapping]
[Speaker] A man by the name of Henry Coppinger,
well he was a white guy, he saw what was going on
and he basically created these mock villages,
they were set up throughout south Florida down there
on the Tamiami Trail. He would hire Seminoles
and Miccosukees to come in and live there and work there
and make arts and crafts, make bead work,
and wrestle alligators.
And that was when it turned from just a catching
for survival to shows.
The thing I hear the most is my own heart beating,
and I’m consciously trying to calm myself down
and to focus on him, but it seems like everything else
kind of fades away and all you can kind of see is
just you and the alligator,
you know, you’re just moving with him.
There’s a synergistic energy thing going on.
It’s not just a bunch of guys trying to get a thrill,
it’s actually an art form.
[coughing]
Being able to be so close to an animal who’s so powerful
and has lasted so long, you have to show it respect,
so I think that along with all the things you have to keep
in mind about hand placement, reading the body language,
there’s all that going on and everything else
just kind of fades away.
[Announcer] This alligator again, nine feet long,
230 pounds. Oh no! Oh no! Look at that!
[audience yelling]
I don’t know where or why I did it,
but I kind of tilted my head a little bit,
and when I did, my ear touched the top of the roof
of his mouth and he just snapped shut,
he slammed my head down and he was about to roll.
He probably would’ve ripped chunks of my face off
or maybe even snapped my neck.
It was a weird moment cause I was listening
to my skull crack while I’m in there.
It’s like taking a soda can and squeezing it
as slow as you can.
All the way until you squished it all the way.
When I got out of the hospital, I went straight
to the village and I wrestled the exact same gator
that bit me on the head and I went through a show
and I put my head in there and it was something I had to do.
A lot of times gator wrestlers will get bit
and then that’ll be it for them, or they’re hesitant,
and I wanted to see if I was still hesitant, and I wasn’t.
I was still sharp and I was still on point,
so I thought I was okay.
That’s where I was saying it’s more of an adrenaline thing
if you like that kind of thing,
then gator wrestling is for you.
It’ll always keep your adrenaline pumped up.
Whether you’re trying to be methodic or slow or be cool
or whatever anybody says,
it’s going to spike your adrenaline up.
I think sometime after I guess the last Indian Wars,
and not just Seminole Wars,
it seemed like it became romantic to go see Indians
doing their thing like pow wows and stuff
where people wanted to go see Native Americans dance,
and Florida it was like new in the early 1900s.
So it just became a tourist thing
and I think it became a cool thing to see these
Native Americans do what they do, I mean I’d be amazed
if I saw a 10 year old kid wrestling an eight foot gator.
Maybe pretend you could live as hard as they were living
then because the living conditions were pretty hard.
I think people wanted to see or think what that would feel
like and that’s why they wanted to come and watch it.
[suspenseful music]
[dramatic music]
What FAWC stands for is Freestyle Alligator Wrestling
Competitions. It started back in 2009.
They wanted to start a competition with all
the different alligator wrestlers throughout the nation.
Now it’s gotten to where it is now which is an annual thing.
[Announcer] Whoa! Wow that’s what we call walking the dog.
[Speaker] Every year there’s some new kid that wants
to be an alligator wrestler.
Most of them are non tribal actually.
There’s not a whole lot of Seminole kids coming up
wanting to be a gator wrestler.
[Announcer] Oh he’s in there, head trick guys.
We had to figure out and we had to work these alligators
in order to get them a little bit tired
so we’d have a moment to be able to get onto their back.
Dead roll. Wow!
[Narrator] I always say every year that I want to retire,
but I love it. I’ll probably end up doing it until I’m 80,
90 years old.
It’s harder the older you get, it’s harder.
It’s harder on your body. I’m not in the kind of shape
I used to be in when I was doing it a lot.
After I got bit on the head,
I scared a lot of my family. It scared me.
I am no longer wrestling alligators.
I haven’t wrestled maybe for about two years.
With us doing alligator wrestling at our own place,
we’re no longer doing it for some white guy that owns
a village and decided to hire some Indians
and pay them pennies to work there.
Now we have our own villages owned by our own people.
We do our own thing now and that’s real important
considering that the government gave us shit pieces of land
and we thrived on it.
We came off as basically living off the roadsides,
and living off our alligator wrestling shows,
to owning a billion dollar industry 50 years later.
[tense music]
Before we had Indian gaming, alligator wrestling is
what put food on the table.
It’s what put clothes on our backs back in the day.
I believe we shouldn’t forget that.
[tense music]
