[E: This is Bob Edic interviewing Richard Coleman and his son
Raymond "Dickie" Coleman for the Florida Fisherfolk project
of the Oral History Project of the University of Florida.
Today is February 28, 1990.]
RC: Cayao Pelau, what is on that?
E: We have not really done any work on that. It is a private
island.
RC: Mound Key, how is that over there?
E: Mound Key has been dug up pretty bad through the years. Who
knows how far back the digging goes out there. I am sure
they dug in that when you were young.
RC: I guess they did. Well, not so much when I was young. They
did not bother so much with it. Usually they just had that
lime grove on it, and that is about all. Do you think they
had some way of pumping that sand out on those islands?
Like Mound Key there. Do you not think that it came out of
that whole in the back of it?
E: I think Boggess Ridge probably did. We core sampled that,
and it seems that there was a natural sand ridge there.
They added stuff to it that they probably dug out of the
bottom of Boggess Hole to make that one-level ridge all the
way around there.
RC: I think that was all swamp, and they made it, just like
Useppa. You take those high ridges there. Some were
natural, you know, on the east side of that island. There
were some deep holes there. There were some shallower than
what they used to be. They used to be deep as hell. I
think those people had some way of getting that sand out of
there and putting it up there. I do not know how they did
it.
E: Probably basketsful at a time, on their heads, on their
backs.
RC: It might have been a crude way, but they sure got it in
there.
E: They did a whole lot of earth moving.
RC: That old Faulkner Mound. I guess you have been down there.
E: I have only been down there once, and I did not get a chance
to look around too much. I am trying to get back down
there. I have the owner's address, and we are going to
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