Photos - Seminole (Ft. Lauderdale News/Miami Herald) [Newspaper photos incorporated into collection of Louis Capron]

The Capron Papers contain biographical materials and personal correspondence; fiction and nonfiction manuscripts; photographs, negatives, and slides by Capron; and photographs collected by Capron.

Biographical materials in the collection include newspaper clippings, blurbs from book jackets, diplomas, drawings, and personal photographs of Capron and his family. The correspondence (arranged by correspondent) spans the years from 1931 to 1967 and often includes both incoming and outgoing letters. Of special note is extensive correspondence with Smithsonian anthropologist William C. Sturtevant from 1952 to 1963.

The papers feature select typed manuscripts of several of Capron's novels, short stories, and non-fiction works on the Seminoles; several have extensive autograph revisions and outlines. The manuscripts are arranged alphabetically by title. Some also include Capron's rough sketches of suggested illustrations to accompany the text. The manuscripts in the collection are not exhaustive, but include some of his better known works like White Moccasins, The Golden Arrowhead, The Blue Witch, and others. Capron's first novel, The Red War Pole, is not included. Also absent from the collection are materials related to Capron's best known publication with the Smithsonian, "The Medicine Bundle of the Florida Seminole and the Green Corn Dance."

A significant portion of the collection is comprised of photographs taken by Capron-primarily portraits and group shots of Seminole men, women, and children in traditional attire and villages from the 1920s to 1970s. These are arranged into groupings designated by Roman numerals that he assigned. Negatives of these are keyed to their corresponding prints. People of interest featured in the photographs include the Tommie family, Toby Jones' family, John Osceola's family, the Motloe family, Dr. Tiger, and others. Furthermore, a compilation of slides from 1954 to 1967 depict canoe-making, basket-making, individual and group portraits, and landscapes. A number of these slides were incorporated by Tom King, of the UF Oral History Program, into a slide show that was in use in 1980 at the Florida Museum of Natural History.

Capron also collected the work of other photographs of the Seminoles, dated from 1926 to 1949. Included in his collection are photographs from the Works Progress Administration, the Smithsonian Bureau of American Ethnography, Silver Springs, and other unidentified sources. Among these are photographs of Billy Bowlegs III and other portraits and traditional scenes. They also include color photographs that juxtapose the architecture of traditional chickees with modern houses in the 1960s. In addition, Capron collected illustrated prints, clippings, and postcards of and about the Seminoles that are included in the collection.