Interview #7663
Field Worker: Margaret McGuire
Date: September 25, 1937
Name: Mrs. Uppahake Watkoche
Residence:
Date of Birth: 1855
Place of Birth: Oklahoma
Father:
Mother:
I am a fullblood Creek Indian. I was born in 1855
in Oklahoma. My father and mother were driven from Alabama
to Oklahoma when the last Creeks were forced to leave.
They did not want to leave their home and everything they had. They
loved their home and country but were forced by the government to leave.
They had little to eat and suffered many hardships. They were treated very
rough. Some of the people were put in barrels and kicked down hill and they had to
wade mud and the water was up to their waist.
My parents have been dead a long time. My father built a log house
on my allotment of cedar logs a long time ago. It had a dirt floor and the ground
was hard; no dust; was white and clean all the time. We lived in it until about five
years ago.
I plowed my own ground and made and gathered my own crop then they moved
me off of my land and rented it.
I don't get much money.
I have good land in the South Canadian bottoms near Hanna.
I have about fifty or one hundred pecan trees on it but I have to pick cotton for
other people and gather corn for them to get by bread.
After the land was rented someone burned down the log house my father
built. I live now with another Indian woman who is alone. I work for her.
I work hard.
My mother worked hard. She spun thread out of cotton and made cloth
for our dresses. She made shawls and blankets on a loom. She had a hard time
when she first came to the Territory.
They had wars. The Isparhechar War was between the
North and South Creek Indians. There was a Negro boy arrested and
killed and that started the war among them.
I have lived near here all my life and the Indians would hunt all over
these hills here for game and in the river bottoms too. They killed bear, deer, and
wild turkey all in these hills.
We would dry the deer and bear meat by cutting it up into big pieces and
running a stick through it then cut a limb with forks in it and make a rack and hang it up
to dry.
We had good things to eat; wild honey, blackberries, grapes and plums for
fruit but we did not eat much fruit because we liked meat and corn best.
