Indian Pioneer Papers - Index

Date: July 22, 1937
Name: Mr. Ralph Walkingstick
Post office address: Edmond, Oklahoma
Residence: 407 E. Campbell
Date of birth: August 17, 1896
Place of birth: Tahlequah, Cherokee Nation
Name of father: Simon Walkingstick 
Place of birth: 1867
Other information about father: Goingsnake District, Cherokee Nation
Name of mother: Viola Osborne Walkingstick 
Place of birth: Tahlequah
Other information about mother: Cherokee Nation, 1867
Field worker name: Mildred McFarland
Interview #

INTERVIEW WITH RALPH WALKINGSTICK

Edmond, Oklahoma

The Cherokee Indian Tribe never lived in tepees or in tents. We lived in houses made of bark or logs. Our tribes were living in that sort of house in small villages when the white man came to this country. We cooked over open fires out of doors, in pottery which we made ourselves. The log house of today is a copy of the Cherokee house of years ago.

We never moved around much, except on our yearly hunts for meat for the winter.

In 1836 the Indians were forced to migrate from Georgia and Tennessee. This journey was called the 'Trail of Tears'.

My uncle, Ben Walkingstick, was among those who finally arrived, sick, weary and half-starved. I remember the terrible tale he told of that trip. I also knew quite a few others by the names of 'Sixkiller', 'Old Man Wolf', 'Backwater', 'Terrapin', 'Ross', 'Mays', and 'Rat'.

My grandfather was a farmer. He raised practically everything. He owned great herds of paint ponies. The men wore moccasins and had feathers in their hats. We made our dyes and paints out of certain types of clay, stones and herbs. For different colors these things were mixed.

The Cherokee Tribe is the only tribe having a secret society. It is called 'Keetoowah'. It is the only one of it's kind. The Kee-too-wahs have a festival for four or five days each year. They hold their meetings in a little log cabin about ten miles from the Arkansas River at Gore. The old organization of leaders were called 'Medicine Men'. Two hundred years of more ago, a few of these old medicine men were gathered together on their knees, in a circle, praying. Suddenly a fire sprung up in their midst. This was an omen to them. That fire has been kept burning constantly ever since. Someone is there all the time to keep it going. It is located at the cabin where they hold their meetings. Everything is secret. All of them are fullblood

My father was a lawyer, the first full blood Indian to practice in the United States Courts. I attended grade school in Tahlequah. Our teachers were all Indians. No white children were allowed to attend without paying tuition. After leaving there I entered Bacone College, and later Dartmouth of Hanover, New Hampshire.

When I was a child we had our own government. Chief Harris was Chief of the tribe about the time tribal government was dispensed with.

We were friendly with all tribes except the Osages.

There was not much game in the Cherokee Nation and the men wanted to go to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.

To get there they had to cross land belonging to other tribes. These other tribes were not so favorable about that, so the government granted the Cherokee tribe a strip of land from the Western boundary of the Cherokee Nation to the Arkansas River, and due West to the Rockies. This strip was thirty or thirty-five miles wide. It was called the 'Cherokee Outlet' or Strip. I was opened for settlement in 1893.

Transcribed for OKGenWeb by Catherine Widener, September 2002.