The cavernous Seminole Hard Rock Casino rocks around-the-clock with 5,000 noisy slot machines; a couple hundred poker, blackjack and baccarat tables; and superstar artifacts such as Elvis Presley’s gold piano. But gamblers who enter through the Lucky Street entrance pass first through a quiet, dimly lit hallway of black-and-white photos revealing who owns this shrine to blind luck.
The pictures portray life among Florida’s Seminole Indians — carving dugout canoes, living in thatch-roofed chickees. Some images date back more than a century, to a time when, according to a 1913 report to Congress, gambling was “unknown among them.”
Today, this tribe of about 4,300 controls six casinos in Florida and six more in other states, Canada and the Dominican Republic, not to mention a hotel and restaurant chain with locations in 70 countries. And it’s poised to take exclusive control of the largest legal sports betting operation in the country, thanks to a deal cut this spring with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and the legislature.
