Seminole Chickee Architecture

The chickee, or chikee, from a word meaning house in the Creek and Mikasuki languages spoken by the Seminole and Miccosukee peoples, is an open-sided shelter raised on posts with a thatched roof and a floor set above ground level, built from palmetto thatch over a frame of bald cypress logs. The Seminole adopted the style during the Second Seminole War of 1835 to 1842 and the Third Seminole War of 1855 to 1858, as United States military campaigns forced them deeper into the Everglades and away from the log cabins they had previously inhabited; comparable open-sided structures had already been recorded in south Florida when Spanish explorers arrived in the sixteenth century. Within a Seminole camp, individual chickees served distinct purposes such as cooking, sleeping and eating, with several structures together forming a functioning settlement.