Interview #10244
Field Worker: Maurice R. Anderson
Date: March 17, 1938
Name: Mr. J.J. Walker
Residence: Pauls Valley, Oklahoma
Date of Birth: December 8, 1859
Place of Birth: Missouri
Father: Samuel Walker, born in Tennessee
Mother: Iona Terral, born in Tennessee
I was born in 1859 in Missouri. My father and mother moved to Texas
from Missouri in 1868 and settled near Fort Jacksboro and when the Texas
Rangers were organized, my brother, Doris Walker, joined
them and he had eight or ten Indian scalps braided on his saddle and bridle.
I went to work on the old Pickett Ranch for Mr.
Ohio Robertson when I was eleven years old and while working on this ranch, I
went through several Indian raids and when the Indians would make a raid on the ranch it
meant that everyone who was large enough to shoot a gun took part in trying to drive the
Indians off or to kill them. I can't say that I have killed any Indians but I have
done plenty of shooting at them. I remember the last raid that took place on the old
Pickett Ranch. Several Indians made a raid on a farm house located a short ways from
the Pickett Ranch. A white woman and her two little girls were killed. A
cowboy got the word about it before the Rangers did and the cowboys put in after the
Indians. I happened to be with the cowhands at the time they overtook part of the
Indians before they had gone ten miles and these Indians put up a fight but soon gave up
and the man I was working for, Ohio Robertson, had the men put their ropes around the
Indians necks and the seven who surrendered were hanged to the same tree.
Many a day Mr. Robertson would come over into the Indian
Territory and pay his permit to live here, then we would drive from a thousand to two
thousand head of cattle across Red River where there was plenty of grass.
In the early days grass was knee high and plenty of it. We would
herd the cattle around in the Indian Territory until market time, then sometimes the
cattle would be taken back to the home ranch and separated into smaller bunches and driven
to market. I have helped drive several bunches, with from three to four hundred in a
bunch to Stringtown in the Choctaw Nation. I remember
on one trip we stopped at Tishomingo on our way back to Texas. It was in the Fall of
1881. They had a whipping post at Tishomingo at that time and that was why we
stopped there that day. Three Indians had been sentenced to be whipped so we stopped
and watched this take place and believe me, the man sure did whip them.
I moved from Texas to the Indian Territory in 1906, a year before
statehood and settled near Elmore City on a farm and have lived in this
country since. I now live in Pauls Valley.
