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Silver said to me--and I got this hunch after I had talked
to him a long, long time--Morton said, "The old women do
all the deciding. The sons go home and say to them, 'What
would you do?"' The blood flows with the mother. It is
the mother's camp. You are your mother's tribe. Buffalo's
a member of the Wind clan, which is his mother's tribe. There
were Wind, Panther, Frog, Beaver clans. The blood flows
through the mother, and the mother delegates the authority.
I believe I said earlier...Janet said to Wild Bill Osceola,
"How do you know how to deliver your babies?"
Wild Bill had just delivered his fifth. He said, "Janny,
baby, my mother taught me how."
So you cannot believe...and these women stand very tall.
The girls say if you ask 'em somethin'...Alice says, "What
about thus and so?"
"You'll have to talk to my brothers--they're taking
care of that."
But it's a matter of delegated authority. "Boys, you
take care of that, we take care of this. I take care of this,
you take care of that,"
K: Isn't that funny, because I think that the average Florida
tourist who's gone to one of these "Indian villages" gets a
very different impression when they see the Indian lady sit-
ting in the chickee with the Singer sewing machine.
R: Well, the average Florida tourist gets a very different impres-
sion from Southern ladies, but for five generations in my
family--it goes back to the Southern--the men in the family
have delegated the authority to run their lives to the women.
It goes back to my grandmother in the Civil War, who ran the
plantation, and they just delegated to their wives: "You
run the place and make the decisions for me." And when I
was married, my husband said, "You have to manage my money."
He was vain: "You have to manage my money. My mother did."
It's delegated authority. We just run the world! I felt
quite at home among Indian women.
K: Well, I can see why. What about the ladies and the Singer
sewing machines?
R: I have something This is just my own hunch on the Singer
sewing machines. I took a nice writer out there once and
looking' at those shirts...
K: Excuse me. Could I interject here that at the present time
you're employed by Hank Meyer and Associates, who are publicists,