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Indian Pioneer Papers - Index

Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma
Date: September 25, 1937
Name: Uppahake Watkoche (Mrs.)
Post Office: , Oklahoma
Date of Birth: 1855
Place of Birth: Oklahoma (Indian Territory)
Father:
Place of Birth:
Information on father:
Mother:
Place of birth:
Information on mother:
Field Worker: Margaret MCGUIRE, Interviewer 

I am a full-blood Creek Indian. I was born 1855 in Oklahoma. My father and mother were driven from Alabama to Oklahoma when the last Creeks were forced to leave.

They did not want to leave their home and everything they had; they loved their home and country but were forced by the government to leave.

They had little to eat and suffered many hardships.

They were treated very rough; some of the people were put in barrels and kicked down hill and they had to wade mud and the water was up to their waist.

My parents have been dead a long time. My father built a log house on my allotment of cedar logs a long time ago.

It had a dirt floor and the ground was hard; no dust; was white and clean all the time. We lived in it until about five years ago. I plowed my own ground and made and gathered my own crop then they moved me off my land and rented it.

I don't get much money.

I have good land in the south Canadian bottoms near Hanna. I have about fifty or one hundred pecan trees on it; but I have to pick cotton for other people and gather corn for them to get my bread.

After the land was rented someone burned down the log house my father built. I live now with another Indian woman who is alone.

I work for her.

I work hard.

My mother worked hard. She spun thread out of cotton and made cloth for our dresses. She made shawls and blankets on a loom; she had a hard time when she first came to the Territory.

They had wars; the Isparhechar War was between the north and south Creek Indians. There was a negro boy arrested and killed and that started the war among them. I have lived near here all my life and the Indians would hunt all over these hills here for game and in the river bottoms too; they killed bear, deer, and wild turkey all in these hills.

We would dry the deer and bear meat by cutting it up into big pieces and running a stick through it then cut a limb with forks in it and make a rack and hang it up to dry.

We had good things to eat; wild honey, blackberries, grapes and plums for fruit but we did not eat much fruit because we liked meat and corn best.

Submitted to OKGenWeb by Gall Wall <t31892@nidlink.com> March 1999.