Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma
Date: July 20, 1937
Name: Bently Beams
Post Office: Talihina,  Oklahoma
 
Field Worker: Billie Byrd
Interview # 6793

I have heard a lot of the old days from my wife's father who is Thomas Graham, who was seven years old at the time of the Civil War. His father had told of many early incidents to him and he often talks about them. Grandfather Graham owned slaves and there were only seven in the last bunch that he ever owned-two men and five women. Three of the women died while giving births and at the beginning of the war, the two remaining women and two men were returned to Paris, Texas, where they had been bought before they were brought into the Indian Territory. 

Grandfather Graham joined the Northern army but Thomas Graham and his mother remained in the Indian Territory. They sought refuge during the war by hiding by or under the large overhanging rocks or in the caves in the hills but the best hiding place was in the dense bamboo thickets in the Kiamichi Valley. 

Thomas Graham has said that sometimes only a meal a day was served because rations were so scarce and that one meal usually consisted of cornbread or bread made from the dried bark of the slippery elm pounded into a flour and some other dish. There was also the Indian potato which grew in the swampy and muddy places. This was almost the same as the sweet potato and was fixed up in the same way.