First female leader of Seminoles dies at 88

Betty Mae Tiger Jumper, who was the first and only woman to chair the Seminole Tribal Council, died at her home in the Hollywood, Fla., Seminole Reservation on Friday. She was 88.

Tribal officials and her family also believe she was the first Seminole to graduate from high school. Born in Indiantown, Fla., she was unable to gain admission either to segregated schools for white or for black children, so as a young teenager she persuaded her mother to let her leave home for an Indian boarding school in North Carolina, said her son, Moses Jumper Jr.

She received a high school diploma and returned home with training as a nurse to help start the Indian Health Program. She became the tribe's first health director.

Jumper was extensively involved in tribal government. She was among the original group that gathered under the Council Oak in Hollywood to create the Seminole Tribe's constitutional government and helped gain federal recognition of the tribe.

She chaired the Tribal Council from 1967 to 1971.

In 1970, she was one of two women appointed by President Richard Nixon to the National Congress on Indian Opportunity. She was a founder of the United South and Eastern Tribes, which became a powerful lobbying force for Indian interests.

"Because she was mixed race - she was half Caucasian, she was half Seminole - they told her they couldn't do those things. She went against the taboos of the tribe," her son said. "It gave her more willpower and more energy."

A tribal storyteller, she was the author of the books "And with the Wagon Came God's Word" and "Legends of the Seminoles," and narrator of the video "The Corn Lady." She was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Florida State University in 1994.