| Wright, Frank C.
Field Worker: John F. Daugherty
Date: September 16, 1937
Interview # 8529
Address: Mill Creek, OK
Born: March 1, 1858
Place of Birth: Missouri
Father: Chester C. Wright, born in Kentucky, Farmer
Mother: Lizzie Burchett, born in Ohio
My father was Chester C. Wright, born in 1820 in
Connecticut. He was a farmer.
Mother was Lizzie Burchett Wright, born in Ohio in 1825.
Father died in the Northern Army in 1825 (error here? must be
1865?). There were sixteen children in our family.
I was born March 1, 1858, in Missouri and came to the Indian
Territory in 1881 from Kirksville, Missouri. I settled on Oil
Creek near Old Mill Creek. I farmed under Scott
Hawkins and Eastman James, full blood Chickasaws. I
paid my permits to Galloway Frazier.
This was just an open range for cattle when we first came here.
In 1883 or 1884 I decided to go to Arkansas City and work for the
railroad company. In February I took my family and went.
I didn't pass a house from the South Canadian River near Purcell to
the Kansas line. I took enough feed for my team in the wagon
and we camped each night wherever we happened to be.
I forded the rivers and sometimes they would be running bank
full, but we would plunge in and swim the team across. Our
things in the wagon all got wet once and we had to stop and dry
them. We camped near the present site of Guthrie and
the panthers screamed hideously all night. We had two small
children and my wife was so afraid that they might be stolen away by
these screaming beasts that she pinned each child to her clothes,
one on each side of her, when we retired for the night.
We returned to our home in the Territory after a years absence
and have been here since.
In those days our guns were laws. When there was any kind
of a dispute it was usually settled by gun shots. The United
States Marshals were the only peace officers we had and they were
usually far away at the moment they were most needed, so each fellow
kept a gun for his own protection.
We almost had a feud around Mill Creek in the 80's. Cubby
Cutch, an Indian, died, leaving a wife and some children as well
as some cattle. Jess Brown married the widow of Cutch.
Jess was a white man and when he began gathering the Cutch cattle
from the range, it made the Indians very angry. One cold,
rainy night, some of the Indians went to Brown's home, yelled at
him, and as he opened the door, they shot him and his step-daughter
who was sitting in front of the fireplace. Feelings ran high
over this and some of the citizens decided to exterminate the bunch
of Indians who had committed such a dreadful crime. Those who
didn't have guns went to Ardmore and purchased them. There
were about five hundred boxes of cartridges sold in a very few days.
But some of the saner citizens with-drew from the situation and it
finally subsided without any lives being lost.
One day a man from Duncan came to my house and asked if I knew
any Indian girls. He was a white man and wanted to marry an
Indian girl, so he wouldn't have to pay the permit on a large herd
of cattle. I told him I knew several. He asked if I
wouldn't take him to see one. I started to take him to the
home of one who was not a full blood. I told him he would have
to court her like a white girl. He replied, "I haven't
time for that. I want one who will marry me at once".
So I took him to the home of a full blood Chickasaw girl.
Indian girls were very shy. When a stranger came, they ran.
I saw these two girls run to the woods to hide as we drive up.
I left this white man in the hut to talk to the grandmother while I
went in search of the girls. They spoke and understood some
English. When I told them that this man wanted an Indian wife,
they came back to the house to met him.
He chose the older of the two and asked her if she would marry
him. She consented and they went to Tishomingo and were
married that evening. He paid $50.00 for his license and they
were married according to the Chickasaw law. The next night
the neighbors had a big dance for them and the next day they
departed for their home at Duncan.
He bought the girl anything she wanted and was as good to her as
he could be, but she couldn't be happy away from her own people.
She would stay with him a month, then come back to Mill Creek and
stay a month or so. This continued until she finally left him
and came home to stay. Indians are very devoted to their own
people and it is very difficult for them to break their home ties.
My wife was called in cases of illness many times. There
was no doctor at that time and they came from far and near to get
her to help care for loved ones who were ill. She was at the
home of a full blood Indian one night, and his oldest daughter was
at the point of death. He asked if she would live and my wife
told him no. This full blood walked out under the trees, took
a drink of whiskey, got on his horse and rode around the house many
times, yelling and whooping, supposedly to frighten away the death
spirit. He rode away and was gone for a long time and when he
returned, Elvira was dying. Again he rode around the house
many times and yelled, and once more he rode away. When he
returned the second time his daughter had passed away. He was
heart broken but very drunk. He rode away and slept in the
woods for several hours.
When the Indians buried their dead, each one passed around the
grave and threw a small clod of dirt on the coffin before the grave
was filled.
A white man and an Indian boy stole a carload of cattle from an
Indian. They kept the cattle on the range for a while and one
day they started to Dougherty to ship them. A neighbor
slipped around to the home of Felix Penner and told him what
was taking place. He got on his horse and hurried to Dougherty
and telephoned to Ardmore for the officers. They were awaiting
the arrival of the cattle and thieves and when they got to Dougherty,
the thieves were arrested. The Indian was very angry and told
Scott Hawkins, a Chickasaw, who was also in Dougherty, that if he
lived to get out of the Federal prison at Leavenworth, Kansas, he
would kill him. Sometime after t his they were digging a grave
at the penitentiary and the white man and Indian who had stolen the
cattle were helping. They grabbed the guard's gun and keys and
escaped. The white man came and got his wife and family in the
night and they were never heard of again.
One day Scott Hawkins came to my house and said, "Mebbe so
dead Indian in road. I found him. Come help bury
him." I went along with him. Several of us dug a
grave by the side of the road and buried him. Scott cut a
sixshooter on a tree near his grave. This dead Indian was the
escaped convict who had stolen the cattle and nobody ever found out
who shot him.
One bright night when the moon was shining, someone rode up to my
door and called me. I didn't have an enemy in the world that
I knew about and when I stepped out, I heard a gun begin to click.
I jumped behind a tree and finally made my way back into the house.
When I got my gun, I found it was empty and there was no ammunition
in the house. I went back outside empty handed to find out
what it was all about. This time my friend was on the ground,
trying to shoot me. I noticed he had long whiskers so I made a
grab for them with one hand and got hold of the gun with the other.
To my surprise, the whiskers came off. I pulled his hat off
and found it to be a drunk whiskey peddler whom I knew very well.
I took him in the house and put him to bed. Later, when I told
him what he had done, he was very sorry about it. He didn't
know what he was doing.
I worked with my team on the Santa Fe Railroad grade in 1885 and
1886 at $3.50 per day, between Berwyn and Dougherty.
I helped to build the first telephone line from Dougherty to Nebo
and put up the second dwelling in Mill Creek. I had a gin
here. It was a two stand gin with a progress press. I
could bale about forty bales every twenty-four hours. One year
I baled six hundred and fifty bales of cotton.
Mill Creek was the largest cow town in the Chickasaw Nation after
the Frisco Railroad was built in the early 1900's. There were
one hundred pens, some of them holding two carloads of cattle.
We had to pump water from Mill Creek for the cattle to drink and
during the heaviest shipping season, early in the Fall, the pumps
were going day and night.
There was a large tank in the pens and a large tank in the middle
of town. Cattle were drinking at these constantly.
My son bought a double headed calf from a ranch near Mill Creek.
It had one horn on the right side, three eyes and two mouths, but
ate only with one. The heads were joined by a loop attached to
each throat. She was a white-face and weighed eight hundred
pounds at the age of two years. He sold her for $1500.00,
after travelling and exhibiting her for awhile.
I married Dovie Potes, August 10, 1881, in Missouri.
We are the parents of seven children.
Transcribed by Brenda Choate and Dennis Muncrief,
July 2001.
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