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Indian Pioneer Papers - Index

Indian Pioneer History Project of Oklahoma
Date:
Name: J. F. Sherrill
Address: McAlester, Oklahoma
Field Worker: Charline M Culbertson

"LIFE IN INDIAN TERRITORY"

I moved to Indian Territory in 1882, bringing my wife, two children and two brothers.  I came from Franklin County, Arkansas, in a wagon driven by a horse team and settled in the Chickasaw Nation twelve miles southeast of Tishomingo where Bee is now located.  I made my first crop there; however, it was only patches as there were very few what you could say real farmers.  There were few white people in the neighborhood, mostly full-bloods and half-breeds.  To the best of my knowledge, there were only three white families in that vicinity.

I had no reason for stopping at this point.  I __________ rambling for some location to farm.

In 1884 I moved my family to the south side of the Washita river near Madill where Lynn is now located.  There were only three families living near us there, and they were Chickasaw Indians but as I have had no personal friends among them, I knew nothing much of their customs.  I have only attended their camp meetings.

I helped build the first school house which was of log construction as were most of the buildings.

At this time I did considerable buying and trading of cattle, and then cattle buyers were being bothered with a bunch of outlaws called the Callahan outfit, with headquarters at Durant.  They were caught at the time they were framing to rob the commissary house at Coalgate.  They were all white men coming from Colorado.  They would even drive out twenty-five or thirty head of horses at one time.

We had no court except at Ft. Smith, Arkansas, and really no laws.  In attending court, it sometimes took three or four years and very few could afford that.

You could go through the woods and find body after body hanging from trees or their skeletons on the ground.  They would be done away with and nothing ever said about it as folks would be afraid to say anything.  I was in the woods, deer hunting one day when I came upon an old Indian hanging from a tree with something thrown across part of the form with a sign tacked to the tree stating "anyone taking anything from this body shall hang from the same tree".  Well I didn't lose much time getting away.  I later found out he had been accused of selling liquor and of being a horse thief.  Whether he was or not I could not say but do know the white men were doing crimes on the Indians' credit.

In 1902 I moved back to Tishomingo where I lived for fifteen years.  Our trading post was at Denison, then finally at Durant where we would go by wagon, taking us three days to make the trip.

My first house in the territory was a little log hut, fourteen feet square, which I built myself.  It had no porch and we used the smoke house for a kitchen.  I killed lots of deer, taking the meat to Denison where I sold it for nine and a half cents for a roast.  The deer would weigh from one hundred and forty to one hundred and eighty pounds.  I dug a well near my little hut as the spring water that was there was not healthy.  I bought a little stove for eight dollars and had an iron bed I had brought from Arkansas.

I am in possession of a marble I played with when I was a boy, and which is about seventy-five years old.  I also have some teeth pullers as I call them, which belonged to my grandfather, that are about one hundred and fifty years old.

During the Civil War I lived with my parents in Arkansas.  For three weeks my family and I lived on nothing but tea, wheat bran and sorghum molasses.  My father couldn't stay at home.  He had to hide out all the time as they tried to kill all the old men and young boys.  They would pull the women's toe nails off and burn their feet, trying to make them tell where their husbands were.  We never got an ear of corn that we made in our fields.

Submitted to OKGenWeb by Rusty Stroup <m2759@chickasaw.com>