RACES: Which Murder?

John Billy was a bad Indian. He drank, drabbed, brawled in a way to shock his fellow Seminoles, who spend their lives manufacturing souvenirs, wrestling 'gators for Miami's winter visitors, drowsing through humid summers in the Everglades. Recently Seminole heads shook ominously. Word went out that John Billy had assaulted the daughter of John Osceola, great-grandson of a great Seminole warrior, himself the venerable chief of Pirates' Cove Village on the Miami River. Last week the heads of Miami authorities were shaking, too, as they tried to puzzle out what had happened to John Billy.

Only clear fact was that John Billy had been drilled by a shotgun at close range and buried in the Everglades 20 miles west of Miami. Shrugging Seminoles there said that he was an evildoer sent to be buried among strangers. In John Billy's home village, investigators finally learned that he had been shot on Musa Isle outside of Miami, that the killer was none other than John Osceola himself.

The gouty, 78-year-old chief was found at Pirates' Cove sitting cross-legged and barefooted in his striped finery, placidly smoking a pipe. He did not deny the story. Mindful of the Seminole law that the friends of a killer must bring him gifts within three days or be forever branded as his enemies, police searched, discovered that John Osceola had just received some $50 in gifts. Then they arrested him.

Later, John Osceola, released in custody of his white attorney, was allowed to explain himself, through an interpreter, on the radio. Said he: "He my cousin, but he bad Indian too. I kill him by cuttem belly with knife." Listeners wondered whether the police had arrested him for the wrong crime.