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Indian Pioneer Papers - Index

Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma
Date: September 14, 1937
Name: Mrs. Victoria Paul
Post Office: Pauls Valley, Oklahoma
Residence Address:
Date of Birth: 1878
Place of Birth: Mississippi
Father: J. T. Rossen
Information on Father: born in Virginia
Mother: Emily Bass,
Information on Mother: born in Alabama
Field Worker: Maurice R. Anderson
Interview #8492

I came to the Indian Territory with my father and mother.  We were moving from Mississippi to the Indian Territory in wagons, working  horses and oxen in 1889.  I was eleven years old.  I remember people telling my father that he would have to be on the lookout for horse thieves.  We had some trouble while crossing Arkansas, but after we crossed into the Indian Territory we never were bothered by anyone.  My father would buy feed from the Indians and they were the most accommodating people I ever met.  We came through Muskogee but there wasn't much of a town there then.  At that time there were but few roads and at times it looked as if it would be impossible to go any farther.  After several months of traveling over rough country we located at  Pauls Valley.  My father traded the ox team, a tent and a few horses to Mr. John BURKS for a lease that had a two room log house on it.  This lease had never been worked but there was a plowed furrow around it.   My father and brothers began putting this prairie land in cultivation.  There  was open range at that time, and you could have all the hogs and cattle you wanted to own, but you had to have  your brand and mark on them.

There was an Indian law at that time between the Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians that if anyone's cattle grazed over on the other's territory the person owning the cattle would be tried by the  Indian laws and given the death sentence.  They would carry out this sentence too but when anyone was given the death penalty for some crime under the Indian law he would be given an honor parole for a certain time in order to visit his family and straighten up his affairs.  Then on the day set for him to die, this person would be at the place set and right on time.

It cost five dollars a year permit for a family to live in the Indian Territory and two dollars and fifty cents for a single man.  There would be collectors come around and collect this fee and if the collectors did not turn in all that he had collected then he would be tried under the Indian law and given so many lashes across the back.  They had a whipping post at the place where the court was held.

The Choctaws held court at Eagle Town and the Chickasaws held court at Tishomingo.

I have heard my husband say he went to school at Cherokee town, and at that time there was a church there.  It was called a community church.  My husband was Bill PAUL, Sr., a grandson of Smith Paul, the man for whom Pauls Valley was named.

Amos WAITE built the first schoolhouse in Pauls Valley and it was a subscription school.  A Mr. MACKEY taught this school.   My father lived southwest of Pauls Valley about six miles and my sister and I had to come to Pauls Valley to school.  There were several children who lived in this community who had to come to Pauls Valley to school, so my father and several other men bought a frame building at Pauls Valley and moved it to this community.  They made a school building out of it and this school was called Red Branch school.   Today it is called Klondike.

I now live in Pauls Valley.

Submitted to OKGenWeb by Brenda Choate, November 2000.