Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma
Date: Aug 10, 1937
Name: George Human
Post Office: 3 miles south of Chickasha
Date of Birth: September 11, 1871
Place of Birth: Texas
Father: Henry Human
Place of Birth: Georgia
Information on father: buried at Muskogee, Oklahoma
Mother: Mary Ann Hudnell
Place of birth:
Information on mother: buried in Texas
Field Worker:
I crossed the Red River at Thackerville on a ferry boat in 1888. I was with my folks and we stopped in the Chickasaw Nation at Beef Creek.
My father rented a farm from Joe WILSON and we raised cotton and corn. The cotton made one-half to three quarters of a bale to the acre and this we ginned at Pauls Valley, selling it for seven cents per pound. The corn made thirty bushels to the acre and sold for fifteen cents per bushel, when a buyer could be found. But usually everyone raised all the corn they needed. S. J. GARVIN owned the store at Beef Creek, but some one else ran it for him. Dr. HENDRICKS owned a drug store there, but he practiced very little medicine, as Dr. Frost was a very important or prominent doctor there at that time.
My father, step-mother and I were poor people and we lived in a dugout, that had only one window and one door.
Every year my father would have to mortgage his team and twenty-five acres of cotton to S. J. Garvin for supplies to make a crop with. My father would usually buy a big bill of plain groceries, such as beans, bacon, coffee, flour and syrup and if there was any money left we would get a coupon book with that cash coupons in it.
There were lots of turkey and deer in the country. We generally went hunting on Sundays. We had what we called deer stands on Dave MAYES ranch. His ranch was covered with black jack trees, and small prairie glades. Five or six men would get near the prairie glades and watch for the deer, and someone scared them up. We never failed to get a deer for several years. I always used a forty-four saddle winchester.
Frank MURRY had a general mercantile store at Erin Springs. He was a white man, but had an Indian wife, and he controlled a great deal of land, and had lots of cattle and horses.
In 1890 several farmers near Beef Creek had begun to raise oats and our thresher crew was made up mostly of men and boys who had made the run into old Oklahoma the year before. Thresher hands at that time were only paid fifty cents per day and board.
In 1893 I came to Chickasha and got a job from Dan GARLAND, cutting corn with a corn knife, and bunching it up in shocks, and then tying a string around it. I started my shocks by crossing two stalks of corn from two different rows which hadn't been cut and tying a string around the two stalks, these were used to pile my loose corn against. Mr. Garland paid me fifteen dollars per month with board.
After my work was finished there that fall I got a job driving a freight wagon from Chickasha to Fort Sill, hauling supplies for the government for which work I was given twenty dollars a month. We forded several creeks on our route to Fort Sill but in those days they weren't boggy, the banks were hard and not covered with mud as they are today. I think this was true because there wasn't any land broke out, and the soil didn't wash away during hard rain.
Submitted to OKGenWeb by
<Wcastoe@aol.com >
06-2000.