Indian Pioneer
History Project for Oklahoma
Date: January 14, 1938
Name: Walter L. Moncrief
Post Office: Cache, Oklahoma
Date of Birth: December 23,
1879
Place of Birth: Ninnekah
Father: Sam Moncrief
Place of Birth:
Skyllyville (sic), Oklahoma
Information on father:
born January 28, 1849
Mother:
Place of birth:
Information on mother:
Field Worker: Bessie L. Thomas
Interview: 9678
I was born at Ninnekah,
December 23, 1879, and was raised in Garvin County, where I went
to school. I received most of my education by reading as school
terms in those days were short, and inherited from my father a
gift of memory which has been a great help to me during my life.
My grand-parents, Wm. and
Margaret Moncrief, moved from Alabama, where both were born and
raised, to Scullyville. The trip was made by wagon and
steamboat on the Arkansas River. They moved their household
goods, farming tools, which were few and crude, also livestock.
My grand-parents were
considered well-to-do in those days, as they were able to pay
their way on the steamship. Some friends who moved at the same
time made the long tiresome trek by wagons, alone. Even with
the help of a steamboat, it took months for the trip. My
grand-parents lived at Scullyville until 1849. Then moved to
what is now Fort Arbuckle. They built their first house, a log
one, on the west side of Washita River.
They lived there until the
Civil War, then moved to where Tishomingo now stands. At the
close of the Civil War they moved back to Fort Arbuckle and
lived there until 1869. My grandpa was one-eighth Choctaw, my
grandma was one-fourth Choctaw. I suppose the Indian blood in
them gave them their roving disposition. The first land in
Oklahoma to be given Indians who lived east of the Mississippi
River was ceded by treaty, October 18, 1820, to the Choctaws.
The next move my grand-parents made was to the mouth of the
Little Washita River.
Grandpa died at Fort Sill
in 1872, and was buried at Moncrief Cemetery, where, for years
no other person was buried except a member of the Moncrief
family. This burial ground was about six miles southeast of
what is now Chickasha.
The plains Indians would
raid my grandpa’s farm and steal horses, cattle and grain about
once or twice a year. Grandpa killed three Indians on one of
these raids. He was given a contract from the Government to
furnish beef to soldiers at Fort Cobb and Fort Arbuckle. He had
a large herd of cattle.
One time Grandfather was
sent on a scouting expedition with Captain MARCY to Salt Lake
but at Santa Fe, New Mexico, he became too ill to go on and lay
for weeks with fever.
At another time he was
taken with soldiers to a Wichita Indian village, east of Rush
Springs, on Rush Creek because he knew so many of the Indians at
the village and could talk the language. An Indian from the
village had killed a soldier at Fort Arbuckle and an uprising
was feared because friends of the soldier were on the way to the
village to kill the Indians. Excitement was running high, and
soldiers were sent to keep down trouble but reached the village
in time to see the head of the Indian, who had killed the
soldier, brought in to white friends. Further trouble was
avoided by the presence for several weeks of the soldiers at the
village.
My father, Sam Moncrief,
was born at Skyllyville, January 28, 1849. Here his boyhood was
spent. He did not receive much education but was a great
reader. After his marriage, he began to follow in the
footsteps of his father, farming and raising cattle and horses.
Life was hard in those days; some seasons they had plenty to eat
and other times food was scarce. Father moved to Ninnekah and
lived there until 1881, then moved near what is now Maysville,
in 1903, on a creek near Maysville, then called Beef Creek. He
lived there until 1918, then moved to Sulpher where he died
August 24, 1933.
When he was farming and
raising cattle, he would take herds of cattle up the Chisholm
Trail to Caldwell and Dodge City, Kansas, on trading
expeditions.
He would trade what cattle
he could not sell for groceries, buffalo hides or any other
articles that they could use. One time he brought home a
cook-stove, the first one in that part of the country, and
people came from miles around to see it. Father would take
cattle to Fort Arbuckle, too, and barter for buffalo hides from
Indians. He helped drive the first herd of cattle that ever
crossed Washita River.
The old Chisholm Trail ran
east of the Cheyenne-Arapaho Reservation and the Cherokee outlet
to Dodge City. As pasture became scarce in Texas, Chisholm
started to Western Indian Territory with great herds of cattle
to find new grazing lands; and then on to Wichita and Dodge
City, Kansas, where the cattle were sold. Thus, he established
a new trail, which bears his name today. At one time when he
had stopped to graze for several days, the cattle stampeded and
my father with the help of neighbors rounded them up and got the
bunch back together. The old trail runs from Red River in Texas
to Wichita, Kansas.
A Delaware Indian scout
named RED BLANKET helped Chisholm with the first bunch of cattle
taken through Indian Territory. A chuck-wagon and supplies were
always taken along as towns were few and far between. Herds
consisted of from two thousand to twenty-five hundred cattle.
From twenty to thirty cowboys would be taken along as helpers.
Red Blanket and my father became fast friends. The Chisholm
Trail in later years was divided to seek more and newer grazing
lands, the first fork being near Waurika. Today the old trail
in places has washed, sometimes fifteen or twenty feet deep and
formed creeks.
Transcribed
and submitted by Sandi Carter <SandKatC@aol.com>
10-1999.
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