OK, my much loved Indian Grandma lived in her later years,
about 12 mi. from where I was told that she was born. I have
never been any closer than a mile on the two-lane road, to where
her 1/2 - 3/4 Cherokee father raised his family of five children with
his Choctaw Indian wife. Both of the two places were at a safe spot
on the Chickasaw creek, in The Old Indian territory...
Her Daddy was a keen and wary man, having grown up in an
Indian settlement in Arkansas, Supposedly born about 1868,
after the Civil War and Cherokee trail of tears.
He undoubtedly observed common abuse to those of his kinfolks
that were of the full blood Eastern Cherokees of the Carolinas,
and Eastern Tennessee.
He took a sharp disliking to the treatment, and in his displeasure,
decided to fiercely decline being enrolled in The Dawes Rolls of 1907.
Grandma told me that when the bluecoat army soldiers brought a good
wagon and team, her father grabbed up his Winchester and pointing it
in there direction, angrily yelling, "My children will not be called Indians".
So he ran them off, for bringing the wagon and supplies that his wife and kids could
have handily used, and I reckon it was not a good time to be round him, his contempt
and hatred fuming, in refusing just what he could have used the most to help himself
and his family. The bitter memories of what he saw when he was a young child,
drove him to Deny who he was, and his true identity as a substantial
percentage of a Native American Indian.
This was also the case for his Choctaw wife. Though Grandma did say that when
she and her sister were young ladies, a family member apparently enrolled them
in one of the tribes, and they both received a check from the U.S. Govt., with their
names each clearly on them.
Whatever the sum it was a lot of money, and afraid they would get in trouble,
they sent them both right back...
This would honor their Daddy's stubborn pride, full of pain and ignorance
that I'm sure he must have viewed partly as a sort of nobility.
Whatever all it was that he felt, always on the move, doing some logging,
hacking (by hand with broad axes) R/R ties, or occasionally involved in
some local moonshining, he really liked cards and gambling, and was
known as a good Blacksmith. He did some time for killing a man
in Ft. Smith Ark., in self defense over poker game pot.
He could supposedly make anything of metal or wood, and it was said that
when he hunted, he always only shot once, shot and worked also ambidextrous,
with either, and worked with both hands. He lied to the feds that he was 18 at
only 16, and rode the Pony Express earning U.S. gold coin for payroll.
He rode in some of the areas that the notorious James-Younger,
Doolin-Dalton gangs moved through, and lived not far from where
the infamous outlaw Belle Star and treacherous Indian Blue Duck lived,
some 45 mile or so north of his place, on the North Canadian River.
So he and his family always worked hard, in often dangerous country.
He apparently also played hard at times, doing who knows what as he
was often gone, leaving his "safe" family for months on end, but still
refused any of his, or his families lands or moneys entitlements.
This was the early plight of Grandma's humble beginnings,
and after marrying young, and having 7 sons, of which
only 3 lived past infancy, my own father being the
youngest of the three that lived, was the baby
of the family. Her father made her get married
to a Scotchman, because someone saw her
speak to him in the outer bounds of the
Community logging camp. When she
told me about all of this, looking with those
sincere big brown Choctaw eyes, she said there
wasn't anything more to it than being made up, and
that she had been in love with another young man,
but her daddy was hard, a respected and feared man,
that few men ever tried to cross, or maybe lived afterward...
Her husband, a hardworking logger, truck driver, mill worker,
well liked and respected for his honesty, the son of a well witcher
(dowser) and well digger, was likely not as wary or keen as his blue
eyed Indian father in law, but apparently pleased him well enough,
and worked and lived around him all his life, until he passed in 1957 his 90's.
The newspaper article somehow was written in direct defiance
of what her father had declared those several decades before, and
had refused, stating in his obituary that he was "an Indian"... To be cont'd...
Ironic isn't it, that the only sock coffee that may not be laced would come from a laced sock.
The soup for the toothless came out a little weak, the jackrabbit jumped out of the pot, I think it was just stunned, and the boiling water...... well you get the picture.
