Indian Pioneer Papers - Index

Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma
Date: May 11, 1939 (or 1937)
Name: George Shakingbush
Post Office: Short, Oklahoma
Date of Birth: 1869 
Place of Birth: on Little Lees Creek near Nicut, Oklahoma
Father: John Shakingbush
Place of Birth: Muldrow, Oklahoma 
Information on father: (Cherokee descent)
Mother: Akie Vann? Shakingbush
Place of Birth: Hanson, Oklahoma 
Information on mother: (Cherokee descent)
Field Worker: George Littlejohn
Interview #:

I was born in 1869 on Little Lees Creek near what is now called Nicut, Oklahoma. I am of Cherokee descent.

LIFE AND CUSTOMS
Church houses, also other houses, were of log construction without any nails at all. The logs would be notched to stay in place in the construction; therefore they could build a house without nails. The fireplace were made of weed coated very heavily with mud to keep it from catching fire; but the bottom part of it, where the fire was placed, was of flat rock.

Church
Church in summertime was in the woods under a large tree. Sometimes Arbors would be built. Logs were used for seats but most of the time the people just made themselves comfortable on the ground. Of course, in wintertime, they held the meetings in a log building.

Social Affairs
Ball games were played very differently. One kind of game they played then, took twenty-four players, twelve on each side. They were two pegs driven into the ground to make goals forty feet apart. The two pegs were four feet apart. The field was 50 x 50 feet. The players kicked the ball. The team that kicked the ball through the two pegs the most or more times, won the game. They would bet on the game. The side that got defeated would have to hunt and fish and keep up the food for one week until the next game. They would play only on Sunday. This was called Old Indian ball game.

All the Indians loved to hunt and fish. For hunting they would use their bows and arrows. For fishing they used lines of twisted horsehair.

There was little farming done. The chief product was corn. It was raised chiefly for bread, and cord meal. There were few water mills. The closest mill to Mr. Shakinbush’s was at Wefar Creek near the Arkansas line. Sometimes they would have to go ten or twenty miles to mill. In wintertime if it was too cold to go to mill, they would soak the corn in boiling water for half an hour and then grit it. They had grits made out of buckets or tin with lots of holes in it. Sometimes they would crush it by rocks.

Cooking and baking
Cooking was done by roasting. They would take a stick and burn it a little to toughen it. Then they would run the stick through the meat they were to roast, and place it close to the fire. Baking was done with stones. They would place a flat stone on the fireplace, put plenty of fire under it, and then bake on top of the stone.

Dye
They would use walnut bark for black, and maple bark for brown, red oak for red, etc. They made the dye by boiling the inner part of the bark. Then they put their cloth in the boiling water and in no time was colored.

Transcribed for OKGenWeb by Catherine Widener <catz@kcisp.net>  March 2002.