James Cobb

Field Worker:  John F. Daugherty 

Date: May 12, 1937
Interview # 4033
Address: Davis, OK
Born: March 7, 1877
Place of Birth: Davis, Indian Territory
Father: McKinney Cobb, born in Indian Territory, Stockman, Legislator, Judge
Mother: Jane Chigley, born in Indian Territory

My parents were McKinney and Jane Chigley Cobb.  They were both born in the Indian Territory, dates unknown.

Father was a stockman.  He served as a member of the Chickasaw Legislature under Governor Wolf.  He belonged to the Full-blood party.  He also served a term as County Judge of Tishomingo County. There were four children in our family.

I was born at Davis, March 7, 1877.  I attended my first school, for two years, south of Davis.  This was a log house, with a rawhide lumber floor, no windows, and one door.  We had a stove and burned wood for fuel.  Our benches were split logs with holes bored in them and wooden pegs inserted for legs.  I then went to Wynnewood and Davis until ready for high school.  These three schools were for the Indians.   My first teacher was Mr. Conway.  I attended high school for one year at Savoy, Texas.  My expenses were paid by the Chickasaw Government.  In those days there were no Male Seminaries in the Choctaw Nation for boys, so the boys who ranked the highest in grade school were selected and sent away to other states to attend high school and college and their expenses were paid by the Chickasaw Government.  These boys in turn were expected to return to the Chickasaw Nation, after completing their courses in these schools and become the leaders.  At the end of my first year, Father decided he needed me to help drive cattle.  Men would come in here and buy these cattle and I would help drive them to the Wichita Reservation near Lawton.  I did this for many years and then decided to preach.  I am now pastor of the Indian Baptist Church on Sandy Creek, north of Sulphur.

We bought our supplies in the early days at Atoka and Caddo and hauled them back home in an ox wagon.  There were no stores closer than that.  Sam Davis had a very small stock of goods at Sorghum Flat between what is now Davis and Dougherty.  This was before Davis came into existence.  Davis was built after the Santa Fe Railroad came through in 1887.

In those days we had very few matches.  When we got ready to make a fire we would get some old cotton rags and a piece of steel and flint rock.  We would strike the steel against the rock and sparks would fly onto the rags and set them afire.  Then we would take them and start our fire.  We kept an old stump burning much of the time to get a fire started.

There were no marriage laws among the Indians.  If a boy and girl decided to get married or live together, he would go build a log house somewhere and they would go to live there as man and wife.  Many times he would tire of his wife and exchange her for another.  He would tell her he was tired of living with her.  Then she must go back to her people and he would go bring another woman in to take her place.

I was married in December 1899, to Mary Ann Alexander.  We have no children.

My parents are both buried at Davis. I have lived in Murray County all my life.

Transcribed by Brenda Choate and Dennis Muncrief, January, 2001.