Day-um AARC, you started a thang here. One of my favorite pics. Taken in 1904 in the Choctaw Nation in what is now the state of Oklahoma. My grandpa on the far right with his brothers to the left. These boys grew up in the Indian Nations when there truly was no God west of Ft. Smith. Grandpa was born in 1887 in the Moshalutubbe District of the Choctaw Nation about 10 miles south of Younger's Bend. He went to school, and on the first day crawled out a window and never went back. He could not read nor write, and I remember when he had to sign his name to any sort of legal document he wrote 'X' and had two witnesses to sign. He was not proud of this. All of his descendants have learned to read and write the English language, to various degrees of proficiency, so I hope he's proud. Since I'm old I knew all these guys in the pic, but unfortunately they had reformed by the time I came along. They would drag you along to church and promise to pray for you, but not one damn word about the old days.
