"In 1952, when I arrived in Naples, I was fascinated by a Seminole Indian village just outside of town. The Osceola family lived here, headed by Chief Osceola, the patriarch and his tall, beautiful wife. Every Saturday afternoon, she would appear at the Naples Theater in Old Naples for the matinee dressed in full Seminole regalia.

Sixty years have passed, and the remaining Osceola's have blended into the community and the family home is long gone.

At festivals and fairs where food booths offered a variety of local treats, I became familiar with the Indian fry bread and, as a result, I became interested in the Seminole diet and authentic traditional food.

When Columbus came to these shores, he found foods that were totally unfamiliar to the European diet. The native people of both the North and South cultivated a vast variety of crops, gathered wild nuts and berries and feasted on an abundance of fish, fowl and game meats. This vast land yielded up more than a thousand different plants for food grown only on this continent."

Get the Story:
Doris Reynolds: Let's Talk Food: Make traditional bread of Seminole tribe (The Naples Daily News 10/10)