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R: Families. Oh, many, many families and all their children work
on them. And all their brothers and uncles work on them.
K: You know of cases where young Indians have left Florida all
together?
R: No, I don't know any. You have a sense out there...when you
go out there now in the Osceola camp, there's a sadness, be-
cause the people of my age, about fifty, in that particular
family have diabetes, and they can't drink, and it's a
sense of....
Howard, who worked for nineteen years for the Dade County
Park Department, had to retire because of a kidney thing.
He said to me, "When I retired, the guys said to me, 'Howard,
how are you gonna live? If you could hang on one more year
you could get retirement."'
He'd been running a grader for the Dade County Park Department.
And Howard said, "Well, I can live. I can live
off garfish."
It's not prospering on the Trail. The traffic has gone
off there, but still they have things they can make money
that they need. And there are so many garfish in that canal,
and you have no idea how good garfish are!
K: I'm reminded, having read the notes on your story by Buffalo
Tiger, the accounts of him as a child, and this now.... When
was this? His childhood was in....
R: Buff was born in 1920, and I'm looking' at those notes, and
this was what he told me. He said, "There was never any
reason to go hungry in the Everglades when I was a little boy.
Fish were everywhere. Indians like garfish. They prepare them
so that they taste very well. And even today it is impossible
to go hungry in the Everglades if you like garfish."
May I add, and this is Jane Wood speaking, I have had garfish
with the Indians, and if you have ever hunted 'em or
got one and broken it open, it's oily, greasy, yellowish fish.
You think it wouldn't be, but it's a delicious fish! Oh, I
like garfish.
K: But it's a mudfish, and it's a fish that white people....
R: If you cut open this scaly thing, and it looks so yellowish
and somehow greasy, you think, "Yuck! White people wouldn't
eat that." But I have eaten it and enjoyed it very much.