Indian Pioneer Papers - Index

Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma 
Date: November 11, 1937
Name: Louiza Jane Blackwood Wright
Post Office: 
Residence Address: 502 South Second St., Hugo, OK
Date of Birth: 1865
Place of Birth: AR
Father: John Blackwood
Place of Birth: 
Information on father: 
Mother: Elizia Stinnet
Place of birth: 
Information on mother: 
Field Worker: Hazel B. Greene

I was born near Center Point, Arkansas, in 1965.

My husband, James Marion Wright, was born some place in Georgia, eighty-three years ago.

My name was Louiza Blackwood and I was born and reared on a farm near Center Point, Arkansas.

I never went to school very much and none at all until I was thirteen years old. Then I got to go three months each year. I learned my a b c's the first day I went to school.

I was nineteen years old when I married James Marion Wright, a widower with four children. He was Justice of the Peace at Gilliam, Arkansas, when we were married.

After we moved to the Indian Territory and lived a few years we returned to Gilliam, Arkansas, and he was Justice of the Peace again, about eight years in all.

I was twenty-four years old and the mother of two children when we moved to the Indian Territory. Eagletown was where we moved to and it sure seemed like the jumping off place to me. Here I was away off from my people among people whose language I could not understand nor could they understand me. I guess that was one reason I was afraid of them, until I got to know them. Then I was not afraid of them. I was not afraid of the Negroes because I was used to them.

The only white families there, besides my own, were the Dullard family and that of my brother, Bill Blackwood. There were some more white people about two miles away in another settlement. After I got to know and understand the Indians I found them to be fine people and good neighbors. I never learned their language but my husband could speak the Choctaw language well. He had to as he worked among them.

He worked for Mr. Jeff Gardner, an Indian who, besides being the governor, owned a sawmill, a store and the ferry. He had lots of Negroes working for him and a few Choctaws. After we had been in Eagletown a while, Mr. Dode Allen came and worked in Mr. Gardner's store. He could speak Choctaw and knew how to trade with the Indian. Mountain Fork River divided the town, there was East Eagletown and West Eagletown. Part of the time we lived on one side and part of the time on the other side, owing to the kind of work my husband was doing. He did a little of everything while we lived there. I remember that he and my brother made thirty thousand boards to cover the sawmill. They rived these boards by hand. Sometimes my husband worked at the grist mill. He taught school there one term in a little log room with a fireplace to keep the kids warm. I do not suppose that any of those children had ever seen a heating stove. He did lots of carpenter and mill work but he did not like indoor work. He had just enough Indian in him that he wanted to be outdoors, and feel free to hunt and fish. He was supposed to be about one-fourth Cherokee Indian but never was enrolled as one.

I worked hard, too. When court was going on I cooked for and waited on the court attendants. I made a lot of money cooking for them, because court "sat" every month, and I got ten cents a meal for each man whom I served. Each man would leave the money on the table at his place for me. We lived in a one-room log house, and I cooked on the fireplace. I had just that one room for my husband and five children and myself to eat, live and sleep in.

I had two bedsteads, piled high with bedding and I made beds down on the floor every night. It was a good sized room and the table was near the fireplace, where it would be handy to set things on it, as I would take them up. It was a long time before I learned to cook on the stove; in fact, it was years and years. I had been raised to cook on the fireplace and it seemed easier to me, than to cook on a stove and victuals tasted better to me that had been cooked on the fireplace, especially in the old iron kettles. Things that are cooked in these new fangled aluminum and granite-ware just do not have the right flavor. I worked at just anything to help to make a living. I would card and spin for the wife of Jackson Hudson, a Choctaw, and maybe she would pay me with a bucket of molasses, or with potatoes or just anything to eat. I pieced and made quilts in exchange for bedclothing. I never got any money for any of that work I did. The men handled all the money in those days and the women did not expect to have any. The woman in those days did not try to run their husbands business like they do now either.

Court was held in the school house but the teachers would always "let out" school when court was going on. I do not remember the name of the judge, but they held court once a month and the man who always called them into court was named George Thompson. Ben Pitchlyn, a Negro, was an officer of some kind. I know lots of men who would come in and give themselves up because they resented being arrested by a Negro. My husband told them that that was all foolishness, if the did not want to be arrested by a Negro officer, they should not violate the law or live in a country where there were Negro officers.

We were living at Eagletown the time that five suns came up one morning. The first thing we knew, we saw five suns, all in a row. Everybody gathered in bunches to look at them, and pray. They all thought it was surely the Judgement Day. Mrs. Jeff Gardner was a Choctaw and either would not or could not talk English and she would just look at the five suns and grunt in a questioning tone of voice. Mr. Gardner said that it was the end of the world and he was the smartest man there. Well, time passed and the suns kept fading away until by eleven o'clock there were just three suns and by noon there was only one left but there was a white streak all around the world.

Those living today who saw and remember the five suns coming up, are my stepson, Dee Wright, Sobol; my brother, Bill Blackwood, Arkadelphia, Friendship route; Mr. Will Gardner, Eagletown; Mrs. Lizzie Benson, Antlers.

The appearance of five suns occurred in March, forty-eight years ago.

That would place the time as 1889.

Calvin Christy's wife, a Choctaw woman was the first woman who saw the five suns. All the white folks came to my house to look at them. That nearly ran me crazy. After that I was so nervous I would jump and cry at the least unexpected thing or noise. That fall they got a new mill whistle and I did not know it. All the mill whistles I had ever heard were shrill and k-n?. This one blew right coarse. Mother had always told us that when the end of the world should come, that Gabriel would blow his horn, coarse and loud and that the world would go in the twinkling of an eye. So when I hear this I said to myself "O Lord. That's the Angel Gabriel blowing his horn". So I got down on my knees to pray. It blew again, and I thought, "Too late" but kept on praying. It blew again. I opened my eyes and looked around and everything looked all right, so I got up and heard it blow twice more. Nothing happened so I went on about my business, but I had the weak trembles so bad I had to go to bed for a while. After a while my husband came in and asked me if I had heard the new mill whistle. I told him that I had, but did not tell him that it had scared me half to death. I did not tell him that for a long, long time because I knew he would laugh at me. I was mad too, because he had not told me that they had a new whistle.

We went ten miles to a Choctaw funeral in a wagon pulled by steers. We started early that morning and it was after dark when we got home. Nearly everybody traveled by ox-drawn wagon or by sleds then. A white woman who had come in there to teach school had married a Choctaw and she went with us. She could understand what they said and tell us. Mr. James Dyer was the preacher who officiated. The man stood in a row and sang in Choctaw to the tune of "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound", while the women huddled around the grave with red handkerchiefs, shawls and just cloths over their heads and moaned and cried so pitifully that it made everybody also cry and the saddest thing of all was that the man who had killed the one they were crying over was there, with his hands fastened together with handcuffs and guarded by an officer.

He just stood there with his hands hooked over the palings of another grave fence. That was the saddest sight I ever saw. I did not know who he was, or why he had killed the other man, but I felt sorry for him. I never did understand that funeral because they usually did not cry at the burial. They usually waited until a few weeks later and had a cry and feast. They cried over this fresh grave and had a big feast, too. I remember eating. They had all kinds of good things to eat. And we all ate and went home that night. It took a long time to go ten miles in an ox-wagon.

There was a settlement about five miles below us where they said the Indians held tribal dances. I never saw them but I was told about how the men would decorate themselves with dried terrapin shells, by tying them on their wrist, ankles and around their necks, and dance in just a breech clout. The women, I do not believe danced, because that particular dance was for the men alone.

We lived at Eagletown three or four times sometimes for a year or two or three at the time, then my husband would get restless and want to travel somewhere else. He was pretty well satisfied when he was freighting for Mr. Gardner's store because he could camp out there. He was consumptive and decided to travel for his health so we started out and traveled all over the Indian Territory. He would get a job, blacksmithing or maybe he would stop and make a crop, then he would start out again.

I thought it was awful to live in a wagon and just stop long enough at a place to get a little start and then drag out again and live up all we had saved in just a little while, But we had an afflicted son and his health seemed better when we were on the move. He had fits. He is in Vinta now.

I pieced quilts and made my children's clothing as we went along in a wagon just lots and lots of times. Sometimes my husband would get a job at a gin and work through the season, then our children would attend school. That was a terrible life to live but I could not help myself, so I said nothing.

We would try to get a place where there was a doctor, when we were expecting a baby, but if we could not, there was usually an old black woman who did such work as that. We called them old "Granny" women. They were nearly always old black women, too. Few white women practice midwifery. When we lived at Eagletown, the nearest doctor was at Ultima Thule, or at Cerro Gordo, Arkansas.

We lived at Alikchi when the World War broke out and our son, William Wylie Wright, enlisted, or was called or something, anyway he went. On December 17th, 1917, my husband died at Alikchi and his oldest son, Dee Wright, had him hauled fifteen miles down to Bismark, and my husband was buried in the cemetery there.

The following February, our son William Wylie was on the steamship Tuscania crossing the ocean when a German submarine torpedoed it. The Germans sank the steamship Tuscania off the coast of Scotland and because Bill was the first soldier from McCurtain County who lost his life in the World War, they changed the name of the town of Bismark to Wright in his honor. There was some town in Oklahoma that was so similar to Wright that they "City" to it and it was named Wright City in 1921. Naturally, they didn't want an American town with a German name in tome of the war with the Germans.

Wright City is not an incorporated town and has no town government, but everything there is owned by the Choctaw Lumber Company which founded the town on the railroad that they also built, the Texas, Oklahoma, and Eastern Railroad. Its business consist of a big store, where one can purchase almost anything, an ice plant, café, barber shop and everything that it takes to make up a town, including a picture show. There was a bank there once but not now. The Choctaw Lumber Company employs a peace officer to keep thing in order.

My son, Bill was born at Eagletown and would be forty-seven years old if he were living. I have a folder of pictures of the graves of the soldiers whose bodies were recovered from that shipwreck. A picture shows rows and rows of crosses and American flags and the crosses are numbered. Bill's cross is number 51 (this part is very hard to read) This booklet was put out by the Clasg--, Islay Association. A picture of his grave shows this on the cross. William W. Wright, No 51. 20th Engineers, S.D. Tuscania. February 5, 1918. He was buried on the Southwest coast of Scotland, at Kilnaughton, Islay, but his body was brought to America and laid to rest in the National Cemetery at Arlington, Virginia. I was notified of the arrival of the body in New York but did not have a dime to pay transportation for it to Wright City.

I want to tell of something that happened when we lived at Eagletown. There was an old Indian living across the Mountain Fork River. He took in an old white woman and gave her a home in return for her caring for his motherless children and teaching them the English language. He was take sick and died but before he died she did everything she could for him before sending for my husband. Mountain Fork River was -- ---- and they had to go over in a skiff. I prayed nearly all the night after they left. I was so afraid that skiff would be swamped by the rolling raging waters and the drifts coming down the river. It was winter, too, and this old man had pneumonia. My husband and brother nursed him a day or two before he died. Then when he died they made his coffin and buried him right there at the house. And that woman had them to put all of his clothes, his Winchester rifle, his bridle and - - dule and boots in his grave. The made the grave extra large, at her request, and after they had put him into his coffin, his oldest son tied up little bag of salt and put in the coffin. When asked why, the son explained that when his father arrived at the Happy Hunting Grounds he would have salt with which to season his meat.

Then after he was buried and the funeral was over, they led his favorite horse across the grave and shot it where it would fall across the grave and they left it there.

Another time, a little girl died and we were called in to prepare her body for burial. Her little playthings were buried with her. They made her coffin of walnut. They cut down a big walnut tree that stood in the yard had it sawed up and planed and made into her little coffin and they buried her in the yard. She had some new shoes and they were put in the coffin.

I lived in lots of different Choctaw cities with graves close to them. There was a little house built over each grave, but there were for tombstones.


Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma 
Date: January 1, 1938
Name:. Louiza Jane Blackwood Wright Post Office: 
Residence Address: 502 South Second St., Hugo, OK
Date of Birth: 1865
Place of Birth: AR
Father: John Blackwood
Place of Birth: 
Information on father: 
Mother: Elizia Stinnet Place of birth: 
Information on mother: 
Field Worker: Hazel B. Greene

We just lived all around in that county around Eagletown, but I didn't go about any graveyards, because one of my neighbors told me that always when she went to a graveyard to a funeral, she would have to go again in about three months to bury some of her own folks-so I would not go to a funeral. I'd go care for the sick and do all I could for the bereaved family and wash and lay out the dead, but never to see them buried, if I could help it. The most of the people just buried their dead close to the house, anyway.

There was an old full blood Choctaw, named Harrison, who died on the hill in his cabin home just across the river from Eagletown and was buried in the yard. His pony was shot and killed on his grave, and the Indian was buried with a bag of salt, so that when he reached the Happy Hunting Ground he would have salt for his meat.

The Indian had an old white woman housekeeper, by the name of Grimes who lived there just like those full bloods did. She made her pallet on the floor before the fire and slept just like they did.

I helped take care of the two year old baby of Jefferson Gardner while it was sick and when it died I washed it and laid it out. I don't know where they hauled it to bury it, but guess they took it to wherever its mother was raised. She was a Christy and was raised over across the river somewhere.

Mrs. Gardner's brother, Nelson Christy, was the ferryman when we moved to Eagletown. I was simply scared to death-it was my first trip across a river on a ferryboat. They oared it over for they didn't have any cables those days. I begged them to take me over in a skiff, because I was used to skiffs, but they would not, so our wagon and yoke of oxen and children and two horseback riders all loaded on that ferryboat. 

I just looked to the other side and prayed to the Lord to take us safely over.

After we got over there, my husband and my brother worked for Jeff Gardner at the grist mill, the sawmill and the ferry. They didn't have to ferry Mountain Fork all the time. When it was low they could ford it, but then it was up my husband and brother would have to quit their work at the mill and set folks across. My husband was Jim Wright and my brother was Bill Blackwood. They tell me that the old burrs or grind rocks are still lying in the yard of the Gardner mansion.

I guess the reason they moved the mill to the east side of the river was because the timber gave out on the west side. The mill workers naturally followed the mill, and that built up the new town which was about two miles east of the first Eagletown. The cemetery was just about a quarter of a mile up the hill from the new town and was called the Howell Cemetery. Just any body buried there if they wanted to do so, but they "hauled" the most of the dead to the Brannan Cemetery, across the road from the Howell Cemetery and just about a mile further on the road towards Ultimathule; I believe the Brannan Cemetery is older than the Howell Cemetery.

Near the Brannan Cemetery stood a two-story log house. When I lived in it, there were several big rooms, stack chimneys, and glass windows. The rooms were lined inside with plank. It was called some sort of an Indian Academy building, but I've forgotten the name. It was said that it was haunted, because several had been killed in those rooms, and when we lived there in about 1885 an old Negro woman who lived in one of the cabins close by said she was fifteen years old when the Revolutionary War was ending and the she could remember it.

We lived further down Mountain Fork in what had been a fine house, but nobody wanted to live in it, because it was said to be haunted. They said somebody had been killed in it, too, and I know there was one door which we could never make stay shut; even though we would thumb-bolt it, it would swing open again. And at night there were sounds around the house that sounded like somebody running a spinning wheel. The house was so big that two families of us lived in it and sometimes at night I'd thing I would hear the other woman spinning and she would think she would hear me running my spinning wheel. Some Hudsons had lived there and a baby of the family died there and it was said to have been buried by the fireplace under the floor, then the Hudsons moved away. It was no uncommon thing to bury the dead under the floor or out in the yard or garden and put palings all around the grave and a roof over it.

There were lots of fine old homes around Eagletown, some of which were abandoned after the Civil War and some were deserted because the children had grown up and the older ones had died. A good many white people were coming into the Territory about that time and they would occupy those fine homesteads which were made by the more aristocratic of the Choctaw families.

In later years the white people got to taking five year leases from the Indians. They would simply dig a well, build a crib and build a log cabin and keep all they would make on the land that they would clear. After the five years were up they would have to pay rent, a fourth of the cotton and a third of the corn.

I remember once, my husband was paling in a big garden for some Choctaw not far from our house. They quit and went off to do something else for a day or so and left that paling unfinished and they could get no pay until the fence was finished. We had no meat to eat and my sister-in-law had no meal, so we went down there to finish that fence if they would let us so we could get something to eat. The Indians would not let us finish the fence. That old Choctaw woman just stood there and would look away off and shake her head. We got an old negro woman to interpret for us but the Indian would not let us nail those paling on, even after we made her understand that we were hungry. Then we asked for her washing or ironing but she said next week. However, she gave us some meat, meal and syrup to take home with us and we got our buckets and went out and picked huckleberries too. There were always lots of those and blackberries along Mountain Fork River. And bee-trees! They said that at one time there were thirteen swarms of bees in the limbs of that old big cypress tree on Mountain Fork.

There used to be a whipping tree at Eagletown, then they moved the court to Sulphur Springs, which was a desolate looking place. There I saw my first buffalo, a vicious looking thin.

Judge Jackson Hudson lived close to that old Academy building and he must have been a sort of a Circuit Judge, because he would go to other places all around and hold court. He had a fine home, too, and lots of land and lots of cattle.

James Dyer was our preacher. He was a full blood Choctaw Indian, but because there were always a few white people scatter through the congregation, he would preach in Choctaw and then in English. He was also a carpenter.

Transcribed for OKGenWeb and submitted by Bobbye Selph-Fish <mbfish@inreach.com>  January 2002.