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K: What's happening to the young Indian as he grows up, and
presumably has received some schooling? By the way, maybe
it would be a good thing for ask you here: is the school
that's been set up along the Trail...? That was set up
when--in the fifties, or...?
R: No, what that was set up for was.... Finally, my good
friends the Miccosukees dropped their land claim and joined
the money claim, and they got a school built, and they got
some houses built, and they got a restaurant built, and
they got a filling station built that was supposed to employ
Indians, and it was just plain realistic of 'em. Some of
'em dropped out of participation. These benefits of the
restaurant and the school and the houses came from the
Bureau of Indian Affairs after we--by "we" I can include
myself--had sufficiently embarrassed them on the land claim
for a decade. They did set up some benefits for these
Miccosukees to make a living and some money off of, and
whatnot out on the Trail, where they don't live on reserva-
tions. But they have some Federal money, and so they joined
the land claim. Some of them just held quite aloof like the
Osceolas, Howard....
K: You mean they joined the money claim, or...?
R: They dropped their land claim and joined the money claim.
Some of them held quite aloof, and as Howard said to me,
"My daddy told me never to sign away the land I love, Jane
Wood! If we get that money, what will it be? Divided up
after this and that. Thirty or forty thousand dollars an
Indian. We'll buy cars, drive 'em in the canal, get drunk
and get cheated by white men, and it'll be all gone, all
gone, all gone." But, they saw....
K: The school...?
R: The school was part of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
K: Doesn't this go all the way through? Is it...?
R: I don't know. I think it does go all the way through.
K: And it's not like our public schools, in the sense that it is
compulsory education, or do you know?
R: I don't know. I do not believe that anybody out there will make