15
He said, "Ooh, ooh, ooh," and he got 'em all drunk and
he sent off a dispatch to Secretary of War Poinsett.
Poinsett wrote back, "Capture 'em all, and send 'em
to Oklahoma." So that was that.
K: And that's what they feel...?
R: The Lie River, that.... Well, they captured a good lot of
'em, a great many of 'em, and at the end I have been told
that there were only 300 Seminoles that finally moved back
down there and didn't go out largely to die in Oklahoma.
They have increased greatly in number. I remember in the
1950s it was 1200 here, and I don't know now, but there are
more.
Betty Mae, the councilwoman, the chieftan of the...you
know, at Dania, told me another beautiful story. She said
(Betty Mae's about fifty-five, I'd say; I think she's a little
diabetic, too), "We've only got 300 Indians. There's a good
bit of recessive genes going in. You don't marry into your
mother's clan, but you can marry your first cousin on your
father's side, because the blood goes with the mother."
And Betty Mae said, "I was born in the Big Cypress Swamp.
I'm half-white."
And I said, "You are? Your mother or father?"
She said, "My father was white, of course. I'm Indian."
Her mother was Indian. And she said, "When I was born,
they wanted to kill me. Later, I got along well enough with
Corey Osceola." Corey was an old, old Indian medicine man,
whom I believe is dead now. [As of September, 1976, he was
still alive.] But she said, "I will always remember that
Corey wanted me to be killed when I was born. And my grand-
father picked up a shotgun and said, 'Anybody bothers this
baby, I will kill them.' That's why I always loved my grand-
mother and grandfather. They were Indian. My mother's cousin
had a baby by a white man at the same time I was born, and
the tribe put it out under a pine tree and stuffed its mouth
with clay, and it died."
Betty Mae is the only Indian I know that has some college
training. She went to the Oklahoma School for Indians, and
she has some college training, and she's a very intelligent,
wonderful woman.
K: That brings me to something else. One of the questions I had
prepared to ask you was how many of the Florida Indians that
you know go to college. You say that she's the only one? The