Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma
Date: June 15, 1937
Name: Mary Jane McKinney*
Post Office: Poteau, Oklahoma
Residence Address: South Front Street
Date of Birth: December 1861
Place of Birth:
Father: James McKinney*
Place of Birth: North Carolina
Information on father: Superintendent of New
Hope College
Mother:
Place of birth:
Information on mother:
Field Worker: Marvin G. Rowley
My name is Mary Jane
MCKINNEY. I was born in December, 1861, at the former site of
New Hope College, about one mile north of Spiro.
My father was James
McKinney and was born in North Carolina. He was the
superintendent of the New Hope College, a minister of the
Methodist church and was a Captain in the Confederate Army. He
died in 1871 and is buried in Arkansas. New Hope College was a
school for Choctaw Indians.
After I was about eleven or
twelve years old, we moved to a farm about where Rock Island is
now. I went to school here and my first teacher was named
SWISHER. I do not remember his first name. This was a
subscription school at one dollar per month. Mr. Swisher was
the son-in-law of Jerry HACKET, a Major in the Confederate
Army. The school house was of logs and the “chinked and daubed”
type. It had split logs with logs driven into them which we
used for seats. No glasses in the windows, just wooden
shutters, plank floors, and clapboards to cover the roof.
We lived here at this one
place until I was grown. I then met and married Davis JAMES,
who was about three quarters Indian of the Choctaw and Chickasaw
Tribes. He was born in 1855 and was educated at Hacket,
Arkansas. He could speak the Choctaw and Chickasaw Indian
languages. Mr. James used to serve on the jury at the
Skullyville Court House. He served every time, it seemed to me,
that court was in session and every time it meant that he would
be gone about a month.
Mr. James used to play
Indian ball. He was a very good player, too. It was against
the rules to drink when the players were in the game but some of
them did drink anyway, and then the game took on a very exciting
appearance.
In 1876, a traveling
salesman, from Fort Smith, came to our neighborhood and got some
of the Indians to agree to go to Kansas City, Missouri, to play
Indian ball. My husband, Mr. Davis James, Elias TARBY, Willy
SIMPSON, Albert GAMBLES and about ten more players whose names I
do not remember but who were all full bloods, except my husband,
went. They got all their expenses paid and twenty-five dollars
each for the trip. They were gone about three days. I remember
that Davis James told me of a little stunt that Albert Gambles
pulled. After the game, they all got off of the street car and
the people on the streets looked at them very curiously, since
they had never seen any Indians before. The traveling salesman
who took them up there bought some red blankets for them to wear
on the trip. He told them to speak just in Choctaw as he wished
to impress the local inhabitants of Kansas City as to the
importance of the group. So, when the group of Indians got off
of the street car, and the white people were all staring at
them, Albert Gambles looked around him and said, “My goodness,
just look at the white people.” The people who heard him were
greatly surprised as they thought the Indians were just a bunch
of ignorant savages, at whom they could stare. They did not
know that these Indians had just as good an education as they,
and could very likely speak English as well, if not better, than
they. Of course, this remark that Gambles made caused lots of
laughter among the group of Indians. When they played ball they
wore breechclouts, and in the winter they wore red flannel
shirts.
Davis James worked with the
Choctaw Indian Militia at the time the white settlers were moved
out because they did not have permits to remain in the country.
Davis James died in 1877.* I married Buck DAVIS in 1880.* He
ran a ferry boat across the Poteau River at the present location
of the river bridge northeast of Poteau about a mile. This is
along the Frisco Railroad at the point where it crosses the
Poteau River. After we married we moved out on Tarby Prairie,
and there my four children by Davis JAMES, got allotments of
land. I had six children by Buck DAVIS. He died in 1901* and
is buried on Maxey Hill at the cemetery there.
DYE
Boil four or five gallons of Sumac berries,
then put in two or three tablespoons full of copperas to make it
set. Use dye while hot, and it makes a brown color.
MEDICINE
Take the dry scales of scaly bark hickory
trees, which grow in the river bottom lands, and boil the scales
to make strong red tea. Drink about one-half of a cup of this
tea as hot as a person can stand, once an hour. This makes the
perspiration come out on the skin, and is good for coughs, colds
and pneumonia.
NOTES by Submitter (great
granddaughter of WILLIAM M. "Buck" DAVIS):
WILLIAM "Buck" DAVIS married the former MARY "Mollie" JANE (McKINNEY)
JAMES, the widow of DAVIS JAMES, sometime around 1889, after the
death of HESTER JANE (NOE) DAVIS, Buck's first wife. In the
April 30, 1937, Indian Pioneer History Interview of MONTIE S.
(DAVIS) PAGE, she tells of the marriage of her father and MARY
JAMES, and either through mispronunciation or the Interviewer
misunderstanding, the name of McKINNEY was written as McKENNA.
The year of 1877 for the death of DAVIS JAMES should be about
1887, as MARY JANE would have been sixteen (16) years old in
1877 and this would have been before the birth of any of her
children by DAVIS JAMES.
Children born to MARY JANE (McKINNEY) and DAVIS JAMES were:
ETHA M. JAMES - b. September, 1882 - Poteau, IT -- m. 1) Arthur
DOSHIER; 2) ? WILLARD
WALTON D. JAMES - b. February, 1884 - Poteau, IT -- m. Gertrude
TRAMMELL
DAVIS JAMES - b. January 20, 1888 - Poteau, IT -- m. 1) Lillie
FOUTS; 2) Clara J. ??
DENNIS JAMES - b. January 20, 1888 - Poteau, IT -- m. Ella BROWN
Children born to HESTER JANE (NOE) and WILLIAM "Buck" DAVIS
were:
GARRET WILSON DAVIS - b. about 1864 - Marion Co., AL; d. about
1884, Poteau, IT
MARY IDA DAVIS - b. November 12, 1869 - Lamar Co., AL -- m.
Jesse NOAH
MONTIE SELLA DAVIS - b. July 22, 1869 - Lamar Co., AL. -- m.
Robert P. PAGE
LONA DELLA DAVIS - b. December, 1871 - Lamar Co., AL -- m. John
Henry Clifford RAINS
WILLIAM CLAYBOURN DAVIS - b. January 2, 1880 - Sugar Loaf, IT --
m. 1) Sarah A. MANGRUM; 2) Mattie ELDER
GRACE DAVIS - b. July 7, 1885 - Poteau, IT -- m. Isom HOLSTEAD
HESTER DAVIS - b. July 7, 1885 - Poteau, IT -- died at birth
LAURA ANNA DAVIS - b. after 1874 - Poteau, IT; died before 1889
Places of births and deaths unknown for:
WALTER DAVIS - died about 2 years of age
RUFUS DAVIS - died about 3 years of age
P. R. DAVIS - died as a young baby
Children born to MARY JANE (McKINNEY) and WILLIAM "Buck" DAVIS
were:
ELMER DAVIS - b. January 27, 1890 - Poteau, IT -- m. 1) Alma T.
COY; 2) Dora LEE
ELVIN DAVIS - b. January 27, 1890 - Poteau, IT
HARMON F. DAVIS - b. November 29, 1892 - Poteau, IT -- m. Callie
R. COGGINS
CLEVELAND M. "Dude" DAVIS - b. December 23, 1895 - Poteau, IT --
m. Elva Pearl KELL
ROY DAVIS - b. February 6, 1897 - Poteau, IT
JESSIE W. "Jeri" DAVIS - b. December, 1899 - Poteau, IT
-- 1) Robert Jackson DUCKWORTH; 2) Joe EMMY
WILLIAM M. "Buck" DAVIS was shot and fatally wounded on December
19, 1900, by a man named DAVE MASON, which was reported in the
Friday, December 28, 1900, issue of the FORT SMITH ELEVATOR
newspaper, Fort Smith, Arkansas. MONTIE DAVIS PAGE also tells of
her father's death in her Interview which is online.
Transcribed and submitted by
Peggy Joice Horton June,
1999.
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