Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma
Date: July 14, 1937
Name: Frank Dugan
Post Office: Morrison, Oklahoma
Residence address: 9 miles west of Watchorn Oil Field
Date of Birth: May 21, 1867
Place of Birth: Ohio
Father: Samuel Dugan
Place of Birth: Ireland
Information on father:
Mother: Martha Groves
Place of birth: New York
Information on mother:
Field Worker: Ida A. Merwin
I am the son of Samuel and Martha Dugan and I was born in Ohio in 1867 and am now past seventy years of age. I reside in the Watchorn oil field, nine miles north of Morrison.
My parents moved from Ohio to Indiana when I was very young. I was reared and educated (what little education I have) in Indiana, living there until I came to Oklahoma in 1904.
When I came to Oklahoma I located on a farm which my brother-in-law had secured in the Run of 1895. This farm was about three miles northwest of Morrison. One year later I moved about twelve miles north of Morrison in the Otoe reservation on the farm that had been allotted to Richard ROUBIDEAUX, an Otoe Indian; however, he had sold his farm and it was now deeded land.
During the first years of farming this land I raised good crops and received fair prices for what I had to sell. The seasons were more favorable than they are now, and when we planted our crops we depended on their growing. Many of my neighbors were Indians of the Otoe tribe. Some of them had nice homes with good furnishings but seemed to enjoy the out-door life. They preferred to do their cooking over camp fires rather than to use stoves. They would often leave their homes and go to some camp where several tribes would gather and they would stay there for weeks and sometimes months, holding meetings or pow wows.
There was a camp ground near the town of Red Rock where they often gathered, some coming from quite a distance. They did not care to do much farm work and often when they did have any crops, and it was time for their camp they would let all else go and "take out" for the camp. I have known the Otoe Indians to butcher beef and hang it in trees - leaving it there until it was all used. I have seen them cut pieces of this beef after it was partly dried and eat it without cooking it.
One time I overheard an Indian say he wanted to sell his allotted land, and someone asked him, "How would you get along?" and "What would you do?" His answer was this - "Washington know, God Almighty, He know."
In those days there were no cemetery plots as they have today, and many a body was buried or left on the farm on which the family lived and sometimes a small house was built and the body placed in it (often times in a sitting position) together with articles belonging to the dead person and sometimes the house would be placed over a shallow grave.
On the farm on which I lived, the wife of Richard Roubideaux had been buried in a grave in a place about the center of the farm and around the grave was a fence. I have seen Richard Roubideaux go to this place many times and leave different articles, always placing them inside this fence.
At one time he asked a neighbor of mine if he would get him two pints of whiskey and made special request that it be put in two bottles and when he got these bottles of whiskey he went to the grave and put one inside the fence just as he had placed many other things and this bottle of whiskey remained there for several days and then disappeared. (I thought maybe someone stole it). Richard Roubideaux always seemed to want to put things on his wife's grave to equal what he had. I think his wife's grave is still there but the fence is gone and I think the land is farmed over it now. Richard Roubideaux is buried in the Indian cemetery at the Otoe Agency.
I quit farming about 1920 and have worked some in oil fields.
Submitted to OKGenWeb by
Donald L. Sullivan
<donald.l.sullivan@lmco.com>
04-2000.