| Unsell, T.M.
Field Worker: John F. Daugherty
Date: December 28, 1937
Interview # 9525
Address: Sulphur, OK
Born: January 3, 1871
Place of Birth: Kentucky
Father: Henry T. Unsell, born in Kentucky, Farmer
Mother: Sallie Donaldson, born in Kentucky
My father was Henry T. Unsell, born March 30, 1849, in
Kentucky. He was a farmer. Mother was Sallie
Donaldson Unsell, born October 12, 1850, in Kentucky.
There were four children. I was born January 3, 1871, in
Kentucky.
I came to the Indian Territory in 1887 in a prairie schooner.
We crossed Red River at Delaware Bend and stopped at Ardmore.
There was nothing in Ardmore but tents and shacks and the Iron
Store. The streets were very muddy and at times it was
almost impossible for a team to pull even an empty wagon through
them. Father had some cattle and after a year we moved to the Antelope
Springs, near the present site of Sulphur. Father
sold his cattle to traders who shipped them.
Our house was a place of welcome for travelers. We were
always glad to have company. One night a man rode up to our
house. He was well dressed and rode a fine horse. He
asked if he might spend the night with us. Father told him he
might and he slept with me. The next morning when he started
to leave he asked Father what he owed for his nights lodging.
Father replied that he never charged strangers for the privilege of
staying with us. He asked the man his name. The man
looked queer and said, "You may find out some day", and
away he galloped on his horse. He frequently stayed with us
after that but he always withheld his identity. In about a
year he no longer came our way and I found out that I had been
sleeping with Bill Dalton.
The stage line from Caddo to Fort Sill crossed Rock Creek
near our home near Sulphur. It was the custom of stage lines
to follow high ground and ridges. There were no bridges across
creeks and desperadoes had a better chance to hold the stage up in
low places.
One day we were hunting deer on Mill Creek in the
Chickasaw Nation and an Indian youth about seventeen years of age,
went into a thicket to drive a deer out and the rest of us were
stationed around the thicket to shoot it when it appeared.
Soon we heard the biggest commotion and the boy came galloping out
spurring his horse furiously. Upon questioning him we found
that he had seen the body of a dead man whom somebody had killed and
thrown into the thicket. We dug a hole near where the dead
body lay and buried him. It was not uncommon to find a dead
body in those days.
Hunting panthers was great sport among the boys of our
neighborhood. They were very difficult to catch. They
always stayed on hills. When we sighted one and tried to creep
cautiously upon it, we found that it was on another hill, by the
time we got to the hill where we had first seen it.
We got our mail at Buckhorn, south of Sulphur. It
came from Daugherty once a week. We went to the Iron Store at
Ardmore, twice a year for our supplies.
I went to the Comanche Opening in 1901 and drew a blank.
I was very interested in some of the customs of the Comanche tribe.
They were very different from the Chickasaws among whom I had lived
for several years. They killed beef cattle for meat. The
women always skinned them.
I always enjoyed watching the Comanches drink from the creeks.
They waded into the water and with their hands they threw water into
their mouths in a stream, just as if it came from a pump. Each
morning the creeks would be full of babies being bathed by their
mothers.
The United States Government gave plow tools to the Comanches and
tried to encourage them to farm. They often removed the plow
parts of the riding cultivators, leaving only the seats, wheels and
tongue. They hitched their ponies to these and used them for
buggies. It was not uncommon to see the Comanches riding in
these cultivators.
I served on the Federal Police force for four years.
Horse and cattle thieves were our greatest law breakers. We
seldom had occasion to arrest an Indian. I often acted as
guard for the Santa Fe passenger trains which went through the
Arbuckle Mountains, north of Ardmore at night. I went north to
Davis and returned on the south-bound passenger which met the
north-bound at Davis. There was always danger of a hold up as
they passed through the mountains and they asked for a guard through
the dangerous territory.
We used to buy cottonseed for 5 cents a bushel. There was
no demand for it, often the gin engines were fired on it.
There were no oil mills and people rarely used it for cow feed
I was married to Eddie Vandiver at Elmore City
in 1900. I bought my license at Pauls Valley. Before the
Federal Court was established at Paris, Texas, people were married
without licenses. After the court was established at Paris,
there were commissioners at Ardmore, Pauls Valley and Purcell, in
the Chickasaw Nation.
I have heard my wife tell of a flood which occurred on their
place at Terral on the Comanche and Chickasaw line near Red River in
1891. Her father moved here from Missouri, and put in a crop
at Terral.
They were living in a tent and a sixteen foot log house.
Her father and mother had been on the upland to buy a load of corn
for their horses. The children were at home alone. Their
nearest neighbor was an old bachelor who lived in a log house up the
river from them. He came hurrying by and told the children
that there was a head rise coming down the river and they had better
leave their home for higher land. The children wanted to wait
for their parents. When they came, they could see the water
rolling toward their home and the father loaded the family in the
wagon and started to leave but they were too late. They met a
wall of water. They all jumped from the wagon and climbed to
the roof of their shed. Here they clung from five o'clock one
evening until about the same time the next day. All night they
sat there not knowing when the shed would be carried along with
trees, houses, horses, cattle and numerous other things, down the
river. As they were peering into the darkness they discovered
the home of the old bachelor floating along with a lighted lamp
inside it. He had forgotten to blow the light out in his
haste to escape. The next morning they found snakes and
chickens on the roof of the shed with them. They were hungry,
thirsty and frightened.
Toward the evening they saw a skiff coming to their rescue.
By this time they had seen their household effects float through
their doors and down the river. But there was no time to
grieve over the loss of these. To save their lives was their
great problem now. At last the skiff reached them. They
were loaded into it as it could be rowed up to the shed roof.
They had to dodge trees and drift wood as they rowed back to higher
land, but they arrived safely. After the water had subsided
they returned to their home to find that everything had gone down
the river, but a pigeon feather bed, which was embedded in mud near
the house. They were glad to save this.
My wife's father had been a great pigeon hunter and this bed was
made of the feathers pulled from the wild pigeons which he killed.
In spite of this flood, they made eight bales of cotton and many
bushels of corn. In the fall they decided to moved to higher
ground and they moved to a farm on the present site of Waurika.
Here they experienced a terrific sand storm in the spring.
They lived in a log cabin but cooked in a half dugout. One
night they were awakened by a hard wind and by pebbles blowing
against the house. They quickly left the log house and went
into the half dugout. The wind continued to blow in this
manner for three days. They couldn't open the door.
They crawled in and out of the dugout through a shuttered window and
when they went to the well for water they had to take a covered
vessel. The wind blew all the water from an open bucket and
filled it with sand.
When they came out after the wind had ceased, the rail fences
were completely submerged under sand. Their crops were ruined.
Mr. Vandiver was quite despondent over his move from their old
Missouri home by this time, so the next year they moved to Elmore
City in the Chickasaw Nation, old Pickens County, now Garvin, and
here Mr. Vandiver resided until his death.
Transcribed by Brenda Choate and Dennis Muncrief,
July 2001.
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