K: I'm Marcia Kanner, and I want to thank you, Jane Wood Reno,
for agreeing to be interviewed today this October 21, 1971,
on Florida Indians as part of the Oral History Project on
Indians at the University of Florida. Perhaps we ought to
begin by asking you when and how you came to know the Florida
Indians.
R: Well, the first time was in 1950. I came to Florida from
Georgia in 1925, and played cowboys and Indians as a child.
Indians were so romantic to me. Really, they were all ro-
mance, but I never really knew or met an Indian until I was
on a dark road in a place called Devil's Garden leading down
from the road that goes from Clewiston to Fort Myers into
the Big Cypress Indian Reservation. I was stuck there with
a guy named Sippi Morris in a swamp buggy, and his wife and
two children, and my two young kids; and down the road came
two truck fulls of Indians. I thought--in the middle of the
swamp--maybe they're drunk Indians: maybe I should be scared!
And that's where I first met 'em.
K: What happened?
R: Well, Sippi stepped out there, and all the Indians piled out
of the truck and beat him on the back and said, "Hey, Sippi."
The white man and his wife driving the truck got out,
and they said, "Oh Mr. Morris, if you only knew what was
happening in the Big Cypress. There are fourteen Indian
children with temperatures of 104, and we can't get any help
down here. We got them in the hospital in Clewiston, but
it's dreadful."
Sippi Morris said, "Well, ah, now this Mrs. Wood...ah,
this Mrs. Reno." (You know there was always a confusion. I
wrote under my maiden name, Jane Wood, for the Miami News.)
"And she's from the Miami News. She'll tell the world all
about it."
K: How did Sippi Morris know the Indians, and how do we spell
Sippi Morris?
R: He's from Mississippi.
K: Oh, I see.