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place. He bought it, or somehow I guess it's purchased, and
all his children were born there in the 1930s, They make
shirts and do little carvings, and do needlework, and they
live there. They charge white people fifty cents to come
in, and they can walk around and look and play and stuff.
The Indians treat the white people like they were chickens.
I once took a Britisher, an aging Britisher, He said, "It's
appalling that people should come in and exploit themselves
so that we can see their living life,"
I said, "Honeybunch, they think of you as a chicken.
Look at that chicken. They don't think you're important at
all or nothing!" But I was amused since they never.... One
is being poker-faced, and then if they knew you at all, or
have had a couple of drinks, they bust out in giggles and
give you a great twinkle.
I go into the Osceola camp occasionally, Now I'm getting'
older, I only get a small alligator. I'll say, "Let me show
you how to hypnotize an alligator, I reach in, I catch the
tail of a little alligator, and I pull him out and all, and
I show 'em how, So this little three year old Indian boy,
or maybe four, ran up to me--I thought, "Hey, maybe I'm
getting' to be an Indian legend'"--and said in perfectly clear
and beautiful English, "Jane Wood, you caught the littlest."
K: That's one of your accomplishments I really didn't know any-
thing about. Now, for example, this Osceola Indian Village--
does the profits from this go..,? Whatever they make in the
tourist money, the family keeps. Is that right?
R: I don't know how they work it out, but I'm gonna tell you who
lives there. It's Howard and his family, and he has a number
of children and grandchildren. Mittie Jim, the dowager
duchess of the family, she and her children and grandchildren.
Homer-I don't know whether Homer's married now--Homer is
the one that married a white woman, rented a tux and took her
to Fontainebleau [a Miami hotel] for New Year's Eve. He's
living there now...Ethel, Douglas, and Alice, So there are
six children of one father, their wives, husbands, grand-
children, and maybe some of them have got great-grandchildren.
Some of 'em may have moved around or somewhere, but they are
all living there together, and how in the hell they split up
the take, God only knows!! But they seem very happy, and these
people have withdrawn from the bit about the restaurant and
that stuff, and the houses and that stuff.
K: They have?