For this book I made many trips into the River of Grass to spend time with Buffalo Tiger, a wonderful old man who had grown up in the Everglades without ever speaking to a white kid until he was 14. I spent hour after hour interviewing him. Buffalo had been the chief of the Micossukee Tribe for 35 years, and even today at 82 he still runs his own airboat service on the Tamiami Trail just west of Miami.