Indian Pioneer Papers

Oscar Taylor Richey

Oscar was grandma’s brother. Both he and his wife were interviewed for this project. Here are those accounts.

Date: August 23, 1937

Name: Oscar T. Richey

Post Office: Lone Wolf, Kiowa County, Oklahoma

My parents were natives of Arkansas and grew up near Fort Smith which is just across the line from Indian Territory. Both come from pioneer families.

After they were married in the year 1872, they moved into Indian Territory and settled in either the present Sequoyah or Leflore Counties. I do not know on which side of the Arkansas River they lived, but I remember very clearly hearing my mother say that the territory was like a wilderness and that they had to go back to Fort Smith for everything they had to buy and that when they needed protection all the officers of the law had to come from Fort Smith.

Mother never ceased to tell us children of an experience which she had while living at that place. Two White men and Two Negroes committed some kind of a crime in the Indian Territory, were taken to Fort Smith tried and convicted and were sentenced to be hanged.

When the day of the hanging came, she and Father like everybody else in the country started early for the hanging was to be a public affair, and they traveled all day through the woods and across the streams and when they reached Fort Smith there were literally a thousand people which was a great number at that time, gathered as if at a picnic to witness the hanging. Mother watched the hanging and it was so horrible to her that she regretted attending such a thing all the remainder of her life.

My parents then moved to Texas where there was more settlement and I was born in Denton County, September 10, 1881.

In 1889 we came back to Indian Territory and Father bought a 10 year lease, from a Squaw-man named Clint Murcus. Our lease was east of the present town of Duncan in Stephens County, on Mud Creek.

Living was pretty hard for us as we were poor and the land had to be cleared and broken before we could plant or grow any crops. Everything had to be hauled by wagon from Nocona, in Montague County, Texas and the roads were only wagon tracks with no bridges on the streams to amount to anything and the bridges which were built would wash away every time there was a flood on the river or creek.

At first we depended for our food mostly on rabbits, squirrel, fish and other small game. These animals furnished us with meat and we raised a little corn on land which we were able to clear out. The brush had to be cut by hand or with ax and burned. The larger trees had to be girdled or out all round and left to die, so the tree could be gotten off the land and if they would not burn they had to be dragged off the land.

For plowing we used a Georgia Stock which is a walking plow drawn by one horse and in the stumps that was slow work. As we cleared more land and got it into a state of cultivation we planted other things, vegetables, some cotton, and some feed for our stock. In that way we lived much better and built more log houses and sheds and fenced in more lots.

After the rock Island Railroad came through the country living conditions improved for we could buy our necessities and sell our produce at Duncan instead of being forced to go to Nocona, Texas.

People settled in communities and built small school houses at their own expense and all teachers from one dollar and a half to two dollars per month for each pupil and the school ?year? would last from two to three ?months? a year.

The little school houses were __?__ and for churches. The first minister I remember was the Reverend Mr. White. When the Comanche Reservation was ???, Mr. White drew a claim west of the town of Comanche and built a dugout on it. The dugout was not built well and fell in killing him and his family.

I remember a Holiness Minister, we called him Stammering John. His name was John Fry. As the years passed I continued to farm using the improved machinery. I later moved into the Kiowa Country, settling North of Lone Wolf, where my family and I now live.

Transcribed in August 2003, by me, Vance Hawkins, great-nephew of Oscar.

Emma

Emma Price married my great Uncle Oscar Richey. Although we are related to her family only through marriage, her story tells another story of what life was like in Indian Territory.

Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma

Date: August 23, 1937

Name: Emma Price Richey

Post Office: Lone Wolf, Kiowa County, Oklahoma

Field Worker: Ethel B. Tackitt

Interview #:

My parents moved to Indian Territory in 1890 and settled 12 miles northeast of the present town of Duncan. in Stephens County.

My father was very fortunate as he bought a lease from a Chickasaw Indian named Belton Colbert [Vance’s note: I suspect this was Benton Colbert. I found no “Belton” Colbert, but there was a Benton Colbert. She was writing in the 1937 about what happened when she was a child in 1890. The Colbert’s were a powerful/well known Chickasaw family] which was rather well improved. He also bought a lease from an Indian woman by the name of Leewright and at last a lease from an Indian named Hahan.

Leases could be purchased very cheaply from these Indians for the white people would come in and take a ten year lease and stay as long as they wanted to or until they grew tired of the hardships of the country and then they would sell out for anything they could get. Sometimes they would sell out for a cow, horse, or wagon and then if they could not find a buyer for their claims they would simply move out and leave what improvements they had put on the land

If a person bought a lease he or she would finish out the remainder of the ten years of residence which were required. Father bought this Hahen lease and it only had two years on it. The house was a good boxed two rooms in front with a shed room running the full length. We were proud of this house for it was the best in the country and had a shingle roof. Almost everybody else lived in a log house or in a dugout.

We then lived near Harrisburg about 12 miles southeast of Duncan. Harrisburg had a store and a post office. And the community built a little boxed school house.

The school was paid by subscription at the rate of a dollar and a half per month for each pupil. The term was usually two or three months and never more than four months. As a general thing, if it was grammar school it was a two months term and if it was taught in the winter, it was a three months term.

The first teacher I remember was Charley Davenport [Vance’s note: This is the same Charles Davenport that married Oscar’s sister, my great Aunt Ettie. Many ex-Confederate political and military officials moved into the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations after the Civil War, so many that parts of southeastern Oklahoma are called “Little Dixie” to this day. The Davenport’s were one of these families.] and later Will Metcalf taught us. A school teacher in those days did not have to have any certificate for teaching and reading, writing and spelling were about the only subjects taught unless the teacher wanted to teach arithmetic and geography too.

Later, there were camp meetings where the people would build brush arbors at some convenient place and would come and bring their families. The people would put up tents or would put up smaller brush arbors and make themselves camps where all who came for miles around were welcome and these meeting would continue two, three and four weeks. The ministers would take turns at preaching and nobody thought of its costing anything for everybody brought vegetables, fruits, chickens, and meats or anything they had to eat and nobody thought of imposing on anybody else.

I remember one summer when Father and Mother took our whole family to Sunset, in Montague County, Texas to attend a camp meeting held by the Hudson brothers.

I married Oscar Richey and when the Kiowa Country, opened up we moved to Lone Wolf community and have continued to farm and live on our claim. Here we have reared our family and have taken part in all the activities of the community. ??? enjoy the rural mail delivery, the telephone, the highways and consolidated school districts with the busses which take the children to school.

Transcribed in August 2003, by Vance Hawkins, great-nephew of Oscar and Emma.

James Harvey Gist

J. M. Gist was the son of James Harvey Gist. DNA test results and genealogical data say that my family is closely related to James Harvey Gist. His descendants also have family stories of having Indian ancestors, by the way. A descendant of his also was interviewed for IPP, Indian Pioneer Papers. Here is a transcription of his interview:

Interview #9000

Field Worker: John F. Daugherty

Date: October 23, 1937

Name: J. M. Gist

Residence: Route 1, Mill Creek, Oklahoma

Date of Birth: August 24, 1868

Place of Birth: Missouri

Father: James Gist, born in Kentucky

Mother: Annie Meek, born in Texas

My parents were James H. Gist and Annie Meek Gist, born in Kentucky [Vance’s note: These Gist’s were in the Whitley, Wayne, Pulaski County area of Kentucky before they moved to Northwestern Alabama] and Texas. Father was a farmer. There were two children. I was born August 24, 1868, in Missouri

I came to the Indian Territory in 1887. I had an uncle living at Berwyn and I came to see him. Father and Mother lived in Arkansas in the swamps and Father was in very poor health. I decided that Indian Territory was the ideal place for him. He enjoyed hunting and fishing so I saddled a horse and went home to move them here.

We moved in a covered wagon. We came through Sulphur and there was nothing there but an old log ranch house and the old Gum Springs. We camped at this spring. We had no bread and the man (Col. Froman?) who lived in the log house had his wife bake us some corn bread.

When we got to Berwyn we had no house to move into, so we camped under a large cottonwood tree until we could cut poles to make a log house. We built our house on the bank of the Washita River and drank river water. I went to the Creek Nation a short time after we moved here and went to work on the Bar-B-Q Campbell Ranch east of Okmulgee.

I was working here when the Buck Gang stole several steers and burned their brand on them. This was done by a group of six Indians and one Negro headed by Rufus Buck, a Creek Indian. They were very wicked. Human life meant nothing to them and they killed several women before they were captured.

They took these cattle near the F. S. Ranch. A posse of cowboys and ranchmen were searching for this gang when they found these steers from the Bar-B-Q Ranch and knew that the gang was not far away. They found their hiding place and a lively shooting fray ensued, without the loss of life.

Just as both sides were about out of ammunition, the Creek Light horsemen arrived on the scene and some United States Marshals arrived shortly afterwards. The Buck Gang saw that they were caught so they surrendered peaceably.

Two of the gang escaped, however. One was wounded and was hidden in the brush and couldn't be found and the other ran away. They were chained together and loaded into the prisoners' wagon and taken to Okmulgee. When they arrived everybody began shooting to signal all the parties hunting for the desperadoes to come in as the desperadoes were captured and the team hitched to the prisoners' wagon became frightened and ran away. Then there was some more excitement. But the team was stopped without the loss of a prisoner and the Buck Gang was put in jail at Okmulgee.

The next day before the officers started to Muskogee with the prisoners an old squaw brought one of the escaped members of the gang in. She had him rolled up in a feather bed in a wagon and he was nearly frightened to death. It was a number of days before they found the wounded outlaw. He finally came in and gave himself up. These men were taken to Fort Smith and tried. They were hung according to law and thus ended one of the worst gangs of cattle thieves in the history of territorial days.

One night a crowd of our boys went to a Creek Stomp Dance. They heard that the Buck Gang was coming so they left to avoid trouble. The cowboys hated the Buck Gang and there was always shooting when they encountered each other. I was just a boy and I stayed to see what would happen. When the Buck Gang rode up, they began shooting and tried to frighten the Indians, but the dancers paid no attention to them. They soon became tired of their sport and rode away.

When our boys started across Elk Creek there was only a small cow trail down the bank to the creek and when one started down he must go on as there was a thicket on each side and it was impossible to turn around.

Just as the leader got to the bed of the Creek he saw Rufus Buck on his buckskin horse. He couldn't turn around and he couldn't warn the boys behind him, so the cowboys proceeded across the creek without giving any sign of recognition to the Buck Gang, who stood and watched our boys ride away.

After Buck and his gang were captured he was asked why he didn't kill the Bar-B-Q boys that night and he said the gang had used all their ammunition at the dance or they would have fired at the cowboys.

The cattle on our range were very wild. If a person went across their range walking instead of riding, the whole herd would get after him. They paid no attention to anyone riding but they certainly permitted no walking on their range. Some of the cattle had horns four feet long.

One day I was in Checotah when a very funny incident occurred. An Indian man named Gentry had a store there and his brother, Bill, drank a great deal. Bill would sit on the porch of this store and his favorite pastime was shooting between the feet of cowboys and making them dance. On this day a cowboy stepped up on the porch where Bill was asleep. He suddenly awoke and began shooting at the cowboy's feet, commanding him to dance. The cowboy said that he couldn't dance, but Bill told him he would kill him if he didn't dance. So the cowboy danced until he was almost exhausted. He went into the store and purchased what he wanted. When he got ready to go home, he came out of the store and Bill was asleep again. He stepped over to his saddle, got his gun and shot between Bill's feet. Bill sat up in astonishment, asking what he meant. The cowboy took his gun and told him to dance. Bill said, "I can't". The cowboy told him that he would kill him if he didn't. Bill began to dance and the cowboy continued to shoot. He made Bill lie down and roll over like a pet dog. Then the cowboy made Bill dance some more. He had him doing all sorts of tricks with the townspeople looking on. When the cowboy got through putting Bill through these antics he had him a sober man. The cowboy got on his horse and rode away amid the cheers and whoops of the onlookers. That cured Bill of making cowboys dance. He decided it wasn't much fun when he had to do the dancing instead of the cowboys.

Bill enjoyed playing jokes. One day a drummer came into the store and Bill was drunk as usual. He had a very fine buggy and mare. He asked the traveling man to go riding with him. The man unsuspectingly climbed into the buggy and away they went up and down the street and around the town. The traveling man thought he was seeing the town. There was a lake southwest of town which covered about four acres of ground. The mare would do anything Bill told her to do. He started to the lake. Just before they reached it he gave the mare a cut with the buggy whip and commanded her to go to the lake. Then Bill rolled out of the buggy and dropped the lines on the ground. The mare jumped into the lake with the buggy and the drummer. The drummer couldn't get the lines and the water came up into the buggy and almost drowned him before he could get out.

I was married to Georgia Ray, near Center, in 1893. We have two children. I have lived in Johnston County since 1918.

There is some information online about Bill/William Gentry. Mrs. Caroline Everett was also interviewed in the same “Indian Pioneer Papers” – she was daughter of William E. Gentry – the same “Bill Gentry” mentioned in the above account, the same man who ordered the cowboys to “dance”. She also mentions same city of Checotah. As you might expect, her description of her father was far different that my relatives story about him. At the beginning of the interview it says in parentheses:

Mrs. Caroline Everett, informant Council Hill Oklahoma (daughter of Wm. E. Gentry). Interview as given to Jas. S. Buchanan, Indian Research Worker.

Mrs. Everett is recorded as saying:

By ancestry, he [note: meaning William/Bill Gentry] was a Catawba Indian adopted into the Creek Tribe . . .

His business interests, however, were not confined to the cattle business, as he owned a large share in the Gentry hotel in Checotah . . . I will have more about the Catawba Indians in Indian Territory, later. The Creek Council House still stands and is in Okmulgee, Okmulgee County, Oklahoma – which is also the town where I was born.