Indian Pioneer Papers - Index

Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma
Date:  [none given]
Name: Hurt M. West
Post Office:  Okay, Oklahoma
Residence Address:   
Date of Birth:  
Place of Birth:  
Father:   
Place of Birth:  
Information on father:
Mother:   
Place of birth:   
Information on mother:
Field Worker: James S. Buchanan
Interview #5151

Frank N. Smith, my grandfather, was born October 15, 1845 on the west bank of Grand River near Fort Gibson. He was the son of Frank N. Smith, who was a native of the state of Maryland, born in Baltimore in 1817. He was a graduate of West Point, and due to a family quarrel, ran away from home and came to the Indian Territory in 1839, and was engaged in some capacity at old Fort Gibson. He was married to Elizabeth Woodward of Fort Gibson in 1841. There were six children born to that union — four girls and two boys including my grandfather.

During the Mexican War in which Frank N. Smith, my grandfather, served the family went to Mexico and one of the girls was born while in Mexico City in 1846. After the close of the Mexican war the family returned to Fort Gibson where Frank N. Smith died soon after their return.

During the Civil War, Frank N. Smith joined the Confederacy and was captured by the Union soldiers in the early part of the war. He was given the privilege of going to work for the government or be taken as a prisoner of war. Having his mother and four sisters to support, he went to work for the government.

For five years he drove a freight wagon between Fort Gibson, Fort Leavenworth, Fort Scott, Fort Riley, Fort Arbuckle and other government posts. I have heard grandfather tell of driving a six-mule team across Grand River at Fort Gibson on the ice for a month or so during the severe part of the winter.

In 1871 he was married to Ella Fields, a part Cherokee, and was made adopted citizen of the Cherokee Nation. There were eight children born to that union as follows: Samuel, Wirt, Walter, Return, Richard, Belle, William, and Elizabeth. 

He always engaged in farming and stock raising. Farming was much more successful in those days than at the present time. The land was new and fertile, no crop failures due to droughts, etc., and plenty of free range for the stock. He improved different claims of land in this vicinity of the Territory; but, of course, only held title to the improvements he made thereon. It was a law in the Territory in those days that a citizen could take up a claim of land, fence and improve as much as he could cultivate and utilize for his own purposes. But, if he sold the claim, he could only dispose of the improvements and not the land. That custom existed until the Indian Land Allotment was made.

As to some of the stories grandfather told of the Civil War, I recall him telling of just after he joined the Confederacy. The Yankees raided his mother’s home on the bank of the Grand River; took everything they wanted, killed the stock they did not take and set fire to the home place and told his mother that she and the children could warm by the fire. The family then went to Fort Gibson and was spared of another raid later by a boy Mrs. Smith had reared happening to be in the Yankee raiding squad, recognizing Mrs. Smith and stopping the raid. Samuel, a brother of my grandfather also joined the Confederacy in the beginning of the War and was never seen or heard tell of after he bade the family goodbye and mounted his horse and rode away.

Another story I recall of my grandfather telling that always impressed me very much was of a raid by a band of wild Indians. He, with four companions, were riding in search of some missing cattle in the vicinity of where Gibson now stands; and all unexpected, a band of Indians dashed upon them. Seeing them approaching with their horses in a dead run, grandfather and his companions headed their horses in a run for home, in an effort to escape. The Indians shot one of his companions off his horse, killing him, while grandfather and the other three men escaped.

He lived in the most interesting periods of the history of our state. He saw the development of what is now Oklahoma from the days before the Civil War, to the present day stage of development. He lived an active outdoor life, one of hardship as well as adventure; but, I do not believe he would have exchanged it for any other, had he the privilege. He died in 1931, at the age of 86, not over six miles from the place of his birth.

During the existence of the Cherokee Government, the Cherokees had a tax law that required any citizen of the Cherokee Nation who employed a person who was not a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, to pay a tax of fifty cents per month for each month such person was employed. When the employer applied for such permit, and the tax paid, a permit would be issued by the District Clerk to the employer specifying the employees name and the number of months for which the permit was issued, and for months tax paid.

I am submitting herewith three specimens of the old permits which I found in my grandfather’s old papers. One of these permits were for the employment of George Crow as a farm hand.

(See George Crow Story in file of James S. Buchanan.)

Submitted to OKGenWeb by Marylee Jones Boyd, August 2001.