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Indian Pioneer Papers - Index

Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma
Date: July 15, 1937
Name: Mamie Bohanan Frazier
Post Office: Whitesboro, Oklahoma
Date of Birth: 1884
Place of Birth: Whitesboro, Oklahoma
Father: Unknown
Place of Birth:
Information on father:
Mother: Unknown
Place of birth:
Information on mother:
Field Worker: Lawrence A. Williams
Interview: #6710
 
MAMIE BOHANAN FRAZIER: INTERVIEW

Mrs. Frazier was born in Indian Territory in 1884 about six miles south east of Whitesboro. She lives within about two hundred yards of where she was born. Mrs. Frazier is of Irish descent. Her mother was killed in an accident when she was two years old. She was adopted and reared by Sam Bohanan who was a full-blood Choctaw who owned the Bohanon Trading Post.

Mrs. Frazier quotes:
"I never went to school very much. When I did go I studied the Blue Back Speller. It was not very easy to go to school then, as no Indian children were allowed to go to school with white children.

In those days there weren't any kinds of medicines to take except what we made ourselves.

For chills we used cherry bark, sassafras bark, and dog wood. We would boil these in equal parts; then mix them with honey.

For cough syrup we used hickory bark, sassafras and elm also mixed with honey.

For pneumonia we used sassafras, willow, plum root and peppermint weed.

For boils and feverish wounds, baked poke root and boiled peach leaves were used.

Corn and meat were our main foods. We could cook them many different ways. I can't remember very many of them now but there was Tom Fuller, sour bread, and shuck bread. We used a powder made from burnt bean hulls to make shuck bread. Everyone cooked outside. There was no certain time to eat and anyone could eat when he felt like it. We killed dozens of hogs every fall for our meat supply.

We had a camp meeting every summer. All the Indians always attended these meetings.

I was too young to remember about their stomp dances, but have heard the older people talk about them.

My foster mother used to make our clothes with a spinning wheel. She used white sumac, sweet gum and walnuts to dye the clothes.

We always traveled in a big wagon pulled by oxen.

Submitted to OKGenWeb by Sharon Olive DeLoache <deloache@intellex.com> 05-2000.