Indian Pioneer Papers - Index

Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma
Date:
Name: Harriet Self Spring
Post Office: Britton, Oklahoma
Date of Birth: 1866
Place of Birth: nine miles north of Honey Grove, TX at Self, TX
Father: Wm. Carrol Self
Place of Birth: Alabama
Information on father:
Mother: Mary Caroline Baxter Self
Place of birth: Georgia
Information on mother:
Field Worker:

“Pa and the boys had come over here in the Spring of 1882 to build houses on the ranch where we were to live and to have everything comfortable for Ma and us girls before we came over in the fall. They build our big four-room plank house with a hall, almost as big as each from room, all the way between the four rooms. The back rooms were just what we called shed rooms. One was used for a kitchen, the other for a bedroom and the hall for a dining room. There were so many of us and hired hands, too, all the time. There were Pa and Ma, and eight of us children then. It took a big table to accommodate all of us.  Other children were born there.

Our house was out of the prairie one mile north of Longview Post Office, which was in the home of George Oakes; that old house is still standing three miles east of the present town of Hugo. It was made of planks, too, and I just can’t think where they got planks to build houses with here in 1882. I guess there must have been some sawmills somewhere in the country.

A lot of the fencing was of rocks that were picked up on the banks of the Salt Creek which was only a little ways from our ranch home. We had a lot of rail fencing, too. The rails were made down on the creek.

Willie Spring had got acquainted with Pa and the boys when they came over in the Spring. He used to come over and spend nights with them. Then when we came here in the fall we had a big “house warming” and dance; everybody in the country was there including him. But he was so bashful that he pretended not to notice me. He would come on Sundays and pretend to be visiting the boys.  Then once when we went to Spring Chapel to church, the got one of the other boys to ask me if he could have my company home. I said “yes” and waited for him to come around for me. Finally the crowd came in and asked why I didn’t come on. They had been out there on their horses. I told them I was waiting for Willie to come for me. Then I found out that he had gone home to saddle his horse and would join us as we went past their place about a half-mile east of the church; he had been too timid to tell me that. Well, he rode with me but was such a “Tubby” that I had to do all the talking.

Soon after that he sat around our house a half day before the got the courage to ask me to go to a dance with him. Then when we wanted to get married he got his uncle, Jim Spring, to ask Pa for me. Uncle Jim was sheriff of the county and when he rode up to our house Ma, Sister Nannie and I were quilting.

Ma just wondered and puzzled over why the sheriff came and asked for Pa. He was down on the creek making rails and Ma blew the horn for him to come to the house but she didn’t ask Uncle Jim what he wanted. Women those days didn’t ask anything about their husband’s business. Ma never knew where here bunch of cowhands were going when they rode off in the morning unless they were going so far that they would need lunch or a chuck wagon. But I knew what Uncle Jim wanted and right away I asked Nannie to go to the spring with me after some water. Ma told us to try and get the quilt out before sundown, that there was plenty of water up for the night. I insisted that I wanted a fresh drink, and I sure did because I was so excited my mouth and throat were dry. We went to the spring and tried to stay until Uncle Jim would be gone but we couldn’t, he stayed so long.

We went back to the house and found Ma crying. Nannie asked her what was the matter and she said, “I told Bill when he wanted to move over here that some of our children would marry Indians”. And sure enough we did. Six out of the ten of us married Choctaw Indians. I married Willie Spring, Nannie married his brother Basil, Tom married Annie Usray, Dave married a full blood Choctaw girl, Ellie Fisher. Our adopted brother, Bill Russell, married Emma Usray, and our youngest brother Doss, married Sarah Spring. Dock, George, and Frank married white girls, and Walter was killed at sixteen.

I was seventeen in February and March 24, 1883, I was married to Willie Spring.  Old Parson Miller, a full blood Choctaw Indian minister up from on Long Creek, officiated at the home of my father. Nearly everybody in the country was there. Mary and Tom Hibbin, Lem and Lucy Oakes, Bob Alison who married a missionary at Goodland and Elizabeth Reed. Ben Snead was there and Oh! so many others. The house and yard were full.

The began dancing at dark and danced all night, until the sun was shining the next morning; then they all went home. I didn’t dance; I hadn’t danced since I was baptized but my husband danced three sets and my daddy danced three sets.  Willie was fiddler and had to “spell” Doc Everidge every once in a while. Doc was the fiddler for the occasion but he would get tired and have to rest.

We had supper at midnight. It had taken two Long Creek Negroes and their wives a whole day to cook and bake for that supper. Pa always had lots of sheep so he had one barbecued and a couple of big hams baked. One ham was a fresh one and one was cured. Then there were stacks of custard and crust pies, a half dozen stacked on each plate and, I guess, there were a dozen plates of those pies scattered all along that long table of Pa’s. It was not long enough and we added the long cook table from the kitchen. There were numbers of cakes on that table besides the pickles and relishes. There was a haunch of venison in the middle of the table, it had been barbecued too.

Nobody sat down to eat. Everybody got a plate and got whatever he or she wanted as they passed the table. Some stood around the table but they were all over the place. Coffee was made in big old two gallon pots and tea kettles and was served all night long.

The Negroes washed the dishes and sliced the meats, cakes and pies before going to the table and then everything was left on the table so guests could go in and “snack” when they got ready. Coffee was hot and ready all night. So much for our wedding. We lived forty five years and had fourteen children, then of whom are living. My husband was a good fiddler and played for dances all over the country for years and years. For forty years, I guess, and when he got older he was called “Uncle Willie”. He died in 1927.

Of course every girl wore home knit woolen stockings then when the weather was cold. It was in March when we were married and I had on mine. When we got over to Willie’s father’s house I discovered that he had on thin cotton socks. I was so afraid that his feet would freeze that I went back to Pa’s and got some wool and carded, spun and knitted him a couple of pairs of socks within the week. His folks thought that was wonderful. They were just “Tubbies” and didn’t do anything that they could get out of doing. They didn’t even piece quilts or pick geese and ducks to make feather beds or milk a cow. They had worlds of cattle and a store, so they always just bought blankets and made comforts for covers.

I had been raised to work and make everything that we used. We girls knitted our own stockings and made our own quilts and clothes. We had picked geese and ducks and made feather beds and pillows for ourselves and each of the boys.

Willie and I moved into a little house out by the lots there at his father’s.  I told the boys that they would pen some of those cows I would milk them. They penned several and it was not long before we had plenty of milk and butter.  They boys had to help me for a while because we had to tie some of the cows by their horns and had to tie their legs together and stand by with sticks, too, sometimes, but I soon got them broke and kept cows in the pen from then on.

There was a house full of “Uncle Billy” children and they didn’t work. Manny, my husband’s mother, was a Leflore and they had always had slaves to wait upon them. She didn’t know how to work or to teach her girls to work and they never did learn either. I had quilts that I had made at home and Manny admired them, so she bought goods and I pieced and quilted quilts for her. Uncle Billy had a store there at the place so it was easy for her to get pretty bright colored pieces. I carded the cotton to pad them with.

After I moved away from there and was on a place of our own I got a flock of geese and went to making feather beds and pillows for my fast increasing family. I sold a few feathers along. I got 50c a pound all the time. We never saved any kind but geese or duck feathers. The feather money and the wool money always was the pin money for the woman of the family. That was understood. She even had to pay for the shearing of the sheep with her “wool money”. My mother furnished her home with her wool, feather, and egg money. I heard her say once that she was married forty years before my father bought her a dress, she had plenty of clothes, too, nice ones.

Ma smoked a pipe. My father’s mother was blind for seventeen years and she would have us to light her pipe by getting coals of fire out of the fireplace, then we would have to get it going for her. Ma and I both got the smoking habit. She always had those little clay or stone pipes. I still have my mother’s little old pipe and smoke it until I broke the stem the other day.  Every day at ten o’clock Ma smoked. She sat down and smoked for one hour and read. I mattered not what there was to do. Ma smoked and read for one hour each morning, beginning at ten o’clock. She arranged her work just that way.  One funny thing was that Ma had false teen and never wore them at home. She said they bothered her, so when she would go to church on Sunday she would smoke on the way over while she could have her teeth out. Then she would have to have some of us girls go down in the bushes with her short after dinner smoke. She went to the bushes when she could take out her teeth. She said she could not hold her pipe with them. We would take big baskets of good things to church and stay and have dinner on the ground, whatever was left we snacked on it for supper and stayed for night services. Some of the boys would be sent home to feed the stock, then they would come back.

Here I want to mention the reason that “Granny” always had us to light her pipe with coal of fire was to save matches. We saved everything then. Wrapping paper was carefully cut in strips and rolled into a spiral, then flattened and the end turned down to hold it; a whole vase full was always to be found on the mantles of nearly every home and they were used to light lamps and sometimes pipes, but nearly everybody lighted the pipe with coals of fire. So carefully conserving things was perhaps one reason why we needed so little money. We made and saved so much at home.

Submitted to OKGenWeb by Jami Hamilton <Jamialane@aol.com> 02-1999.