The Miccosukee Indians of Florida and the Red Lake Chippewas of Minnesota soon will have new agency heads, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Philleo Nash has announced.
Reginald C. Miller, the first superintendent of the four-year-old Miccosukee Indian Agency in Florida, leaves that post this month for a new assignment as superintendent of the Red Lake Chippewa Reservation.
Lawrence J. Kozlowski will succeed Miller at Miccosukee Agency headquarters in Homestead, Florida. Kozlowski formerly was assistant superintendent of the Great Lakes Indian Agency at Ashland, Wisconsin.
The Miccosukee Agency was established following organization of the Miccosukee - a band of Seminole-Creeks - into a tribal entity. This group of Indians had been the most isolated in the United States, living in the alligator-infested swamplands of southern Florida. Their forebears had fled to the area rather than be party to Seminole treaties with the United States during the era of Andrew Jackson.
Miller won a superior performance award in 1963 for helping the Miccosukees establish new homes on the dry fill bordering the Tamiami Trail and launch a business with a BIA-funded restaurant and motel. He also directed completion of a school for about 35 Miccosukee children, ranging in age from 6 to 16, who had never before attended school.
Kozlowski brings to the Miccosukee Agency a background of work of education. His 15 years of service in Indian affairs includes work among Alaska natives, a people as remote in environment as the Miccosukee have been.
At Red Lake, Minnesota, Miller replaces Jerome F. Morlock, who recently became Area Forester in the Bureau's Sacramento, Calif., Area Office.
The assignment is a return engagement for Miller. He was administrative officer of the Red Lake sawmill operations in the 1950's. A graduate of Haskell Institute, Miller's career with the Bureau began in 1938 and has taken him to numerous posts including duty tours at Albuquerque, New Mexico; Phoenix, Arizona; Billings, Montana; Aberdeen, South Dakota; Dania, Florida; and Washington, D. C.
