La Harpe's First Expedition in Oklahoma, 1718-1719*
Chronicles of Oklahoma Volume 2, No. 4 December, 1924 La Harpe’s First Expedition into Oklahoma Anna Lewis 331 The Nineteenth Kansas Calvary in the Washita Campaign Col. Horace L. Moore 350 Bloomfield Academy and its Founder Mrs. Susan J. Carr 366 Horace P. Jones, Scout and Interpreter Joseph B. Thoburn 380 Shawnee Friends’ Mission S. Carrie Thompson 392 Oklahoma City’s Indian Scare Charles A. McNabb 395 William J. Weaver 398 Passing Pioneers 400 Semi-Centennial of the Battle of Adobe Walls 402
LA HARPE’S FIRST EXPEDITION IN OKLAHOMA, 1718-1719*
Anna Lewis
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Bernard de la Harpe is one of the interesting French explorers who came into Louisiana as a result of Law’s scheme of settling Louisiana. La Harpe had been given a grant on the Red River, and in 1718, when he went to take possession of the grant, the Council of Louisiana took advantage of this opportunity to extend French interests in the Southwest. The Council made La Harpe commandant among the Nassonites, Cadodaquious, Nadacos, and Natchitoches. He was also instructed to explore the Red River, learn about the savages in that region, establish posts among the Cadodaquious, and to do all in his power to establish commerce with the Spaniards in Texas and New Mexico.
The tribes which La Harpe had been given command over were located at this time above the big bend on the Red River. Accordng to the maps of Texas in the eighteenth century compiled from original data by Herbert E. Bolton, these tribes are located not far from the southeastern corner of Oklahoma. It was here that La Harpe decided to make an establishment.1 La Harpe says of the location, "This spot seemed to me very beautiful, having a beautiful coast spread toward the river." La Harpe chose a site two leagues above the Nassonites. The Nassonite chief sold this to him for thirty pistols and some merchandise. Two days later La Harpe, with the help of the Indians, began the construction of a house. He now had a base of operation,
*Editorial and explanatory notes were prepared by Mr. Joseph B. Thoburn, of the Oklahoma Historial Society.
1."big bend" of Red River is at the mouth of Little River, at the eastern extremity of Little River County, Arkansas, near the present town of Fulton, and approximately thirty-six miles east of the Oklahoma-Arkansas boundry line. In the letter of Dr. John Sibley, Indian Agent, to Gen. Henry Dearborn, secretary of war, dated at Natchitoches, Louisiana, April 10, 1805 (American State Papers, Vol. V, p. 729) the following statement is made concerning the Red River country immediately above the confluence of Little River:
"You now arrive at the mouth of the Little River at the right. The river is about one hundred and fifty yards wide; the water clear as crystal; the bottom of the river stony, and is boatable, at high water, up to the great prairies, near two hundred miles by the course of the river; the low (cont.)
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and from this post, he made alliances with the Indians, and explored the surrounding country. La Harpe had left New Orleans in December, 1718, and by June, 1719, was ready to explore and acquaint the surrounding tribes with his merchandise.
The following is a translation of La Harpe’s expedition into Oklahoma, which gives an interesting view of Oklahoma as seen by a Frenchman in 1719. This journal of La Harpe’s is taken from Pierre Margry’s "Decouvertes et Establessement des Francais dans l’Ouest et dans le Sud de l’Amerique." The thirteenth [June, 1719], the chief of the Canicons, with his attendants, came to see me; I showed him very much attention, invited him to eat with me, and I gave him several presents. I could have had several useful conversations with him, but I was without a good interpreter. Those who could have been of use to me on this occasion had gone with Sieur Du Rivage to discover the roving nation.
The sixteenth, there arrived several Nadacos savages who brought me some news confused on the subject of the Spanish, whom, they said, were angry with the French, that we had pursued the Adayes, and that the chief of the Assinais and his warriors had withdraw from their Presidio. I judged by this discourse that they were at war with Spain, and, in order to be more grounds generally from ten to fifteen miles wide, abounding with the most luxuriant growth of rich timber, but subject to partial inundation at particular rainy seasons. After leaving this river, both banks of Red River are cane, as before, for twenty miles, when you come to the round prairie, right side about five miles in circumference. At this place, Red River is fordable at low water; a hard stony bottom, and the first place from the mouth where it can be forded. This round prairie is high and pleasant, surrounded by handsome oak and hickory uplands; left side, cane as before, and then the same both sides for twenty miles, to the long prairie, left side, forty miles long; opposite, cane as before. Near the middle of this prairie, there is a lake of about five miles in circumference, in an oval form, neither tree or shrub near it, nor stream of water running either in or out of it; it is very deep, and the water so limpid that a fish may be seen fifteen feet from the surface. By the side of this lake the Caddoques have lived from time immemorial. About one mile from the lake is the hill on which, they say, the Great Spirit placed one Caddo family, who were saved when, by a general deluge, all the world were drowned, from which family all the Indians have originated. To this little natural eminence all Indian tribes, as well as the Caddoques, for a great distance, pay devout and sacred homage. Here the French for many years before Louisiana was ceded to Spain, had erected a small fort, kept some soldiers to guard a factory they had established for the Indians trade, and several French families were settled in the vicinity, built a flour mill, and cultivated wheat successfully for several years; and it is only a few years ago that the mill irons and mill stones were brought down. It is about twenty-five years since those French families moved down, and fourteen years since the Caddoques left it. Here is another fording place when the river is low."
While the abandoned French settlement thus mentioned by Sibley may not be identical with the establishment of La Harpe, it is not improbable that it occupied the site of the latter and, indeed, that it had been continuous from the time of La Harpe’s settlement, in 1719. If so, it was on the Texas side of the river, in the northern part of Bowie County, about twenty miles east and six miles south of the intersection of Red River by the eastern boundary of Oklahoma.
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certain, I sent the corporal of the garrison to the Nadacos with the savages of this nation. I requested him to go as far as the Assinais in order to be informed of all things, I gave him some merchandise in order to trade for some horses for me. He set out for his journey on the twentieth of June.
The twenty-fourth, there arrived a savage from the nation of the Oulchionis in order to inform our savages that the French were at war with the Spanish, and that the chiefs of the nation (Oulchionis) had sent him to solicit them (the Nassonites) to declare themselves in our favor. The chiefs of our nation replied that they did not wish to enter in our disputes, but in case the Spanish attacked us, they would join the French.
The twenty-ninth, Sieur Du Rivage arrived from his journey with two savages from the Quidehais nation; he reported to me that at seventy leagues on the west side and from the west a fourth northwest, he had encountered a party of the roving nation, who were the Quidehais, Naouydiches, Joyvan, Huanchane, Huane, Tancaoye, among whom he had been very well received. He learned from them that they had just had an encounter with a party from the Cancy nation, of whom they had had the advantage, that the Cancy nation composed a thickly populated village on the banks of the Red River, at sixty leagues from the place where Sieur Du Rivage had reached, the Spanish were established among the Cancys. He learned, also, that the Spanish extracted a very heavy substance from the earth; and that one could go by the Red River in the high water as far as three days journey of these nations; that sometimes the roving nation had pursued the Cancy by land as far as their village, but that the Spanish had drawn on them large guns (a term they used to distinguish the cannons and the swivel-guns).
Sieur Du Rivage gave these nations the presents I had intended for them. He solicited them on my behalf to maintain friendly relations with the French, and upon his asking them if they had any knowledge of the nation situated towards the North on the banks of a large river, they assured him that they were allies, and that the most important of these nations was called Touacara. He told them then that I desired to go there to make an alliance with them but that I needed a guide. Thereupon, the chiefs agreed among themselves to send two, and assured Sieur Du Rivage that they would be at my post in a moon to offer me
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their services. These people were a wandering people, having no fixed place of habitation, they followed the buffalo, which served them as their nourishment, their skins as their robes or clothing. It is in these hunts that they are subject to encountering their enemies. They make up, in all, two thousand five hundred men, but they are divided into cantons, in order to find their sustenance more easily. These nations are allied with those of the Quichuan, situated two leagues from the Red River, to the left, in the neighborhood of the place where Sieur Du Rivage had found these roving nations. These are warlike people, they have nearly always the advantage over their enemies, although inferior in number. The Tancaoyes are the most famous among them; most of the chiefs are one-eyed from the blows they have received in battle. These nations and the Cancy are so embittered against each other that the conqueors eat the conquered; they do not spare even the women or children. The weapons of both are the tomahawk and the spear. The Cancy have some swords, clothing apparel, cloth, and some hats, but they have no fire arms, there being an inviolable law among the Spaniards not to furnish them to the savages.2
2.Most of the Indians with whom La Harpe came in contact, both at his newly established post on Red River and also at and near his destination on the Arkansas, belonged to various tribes of the great Caddoan linguistic family, many of which tribes have since disappeared. His post was located among the Cadodaquious (Kadohadacho, i.e., "real Caddo"), which tribe was the head of the Caddo Confederacy. At that time there were three confederacies composed of Caddoan tribes living in the region of the Arkansas and Red rivers, namely, (1) the Hasinai, or Lower Caddo, (2) the Caddo, both of which were located on Red River, and (3) the Paniouassa (i. e., Lower Pawnee or Southern Pawnee), located in the valleys of the Arkansas and upper Red rivers. Of the first of these, but two tribes were mentioned incidentally, their range being many leagues below La Harpe’s post, namely, Amediche, Naoudiche (both identical with the Nabediche) and Dulchioni. Five tribes mentioned by him belonged to the Caddo Confederacy, namely Adayes (Adai), Cadodaquious (Caddo), Nadaco (Anadarko), Nadsoos (Natasoho), and Nassonite (Nasoni). Of the Paniouassa, or Wichita-Waco-Tawakony Confederacy, to visit whose people and leaders was the object of this expedition of La Harpe, he mentioned no less than seven tribes, namely Adero (Ardeco), Ascania (Yscania), Huanchane, Huane, and Honechas (all three identical with Waco), Wusitas and Ousita (both identical with Wichita), Quiscasqueris (Quiscat), Toayas (Tawehash) and Touacara (Tawakony). In addition to the people of the tribes composing this last mentioned confederacy, La Harpe seems also to have met representatives of the Caumuche (Comanche) and Quataquois (Plains Apache) tribes at the big village on the Arkansas, though this would seem very doubtful. In addition to the foregoing, he mentioned three other Caddoan tribes, namely, the Pani, (Pawnee), Arricara (Arikara) and Quidehais (Keechi) none of which were included in either of the confederacies mentioned. The Cancy, who were hostile to his Caddoan guides and traveling companions and a band of whom he narrowly escaped meeting on the course of his return journey, were really Lipan, whose people were since driven from the plains of western Texas into the mountains of New Mexico and who originally constituted one of the subdivisions of the great Apache tribe. The Anahous were the Osage, being known by that name to the Caddo people. The Comanche are also mentioned as the Padouca, that being their designation among the Osage people. The Quichuan (Kiowas), Canicons (Tanico or Tunica) and the Tanoayoe (Tonkawa) and their kinsmen, the Jovvan (Yojuane) are mentioned only incidentally. The Caumuche, Quichuan and Quataquois are here listed as Comanche, Kiowa and Plains Apache, respectfuly, because (cont)
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The advantage that the Cancy have over their enemies is that they have good horses, whereas the other nations have very few, only those taken from the defeat of their enemies. In their encampment, they make houses with skins of buffalo prepared after the manner of parchment; but what is peculiar is that in their marches, there are dogs which carry these houses on their backs.
It is from observation that one learns that the range of mountains which extends as far as the Illinois, takes its origin in these districts at the altitude of thirty-five degrees, thirty minutes, and that they extend to Santa Fe, the capital city of New Mexico, which is only one hundred leagues by direct route through the prairies.
The Presidio of Paral, so famous for its richness and for its situation, only forty or fifty leagues distant from the Rio Conchas, which descends to the sea of California, is located, they say, at thirty-three degrees, thirty minutes latitude, at a few leagues west of the river of the north and in the southwest of the Cancy about eighty leagues. This shows how important it is to maintain the posts established on the Red River, particularly those of the Nassonites, which is not far distant by land from the Cancy nation, at whose territory the Spanish obtain gold, only one hundred and twenty leagues through a very beautiful country.
The first of August, the corporal arrived from the Assinais with the chiefs of that nation, who assured me of their friendship for the French, notwithstanding the rupture with the Spanish. I gave some presents to them, finally engaging them to continue their good intentions toward us; they sang to me the calumet in order to indicate their sincerity. I learned from the corporal that we were at war with the Spanish, and that M. Blondel, commandant to the Natchitoches had pursued the fathers Recollets of the mission of the Adayes. This appeared very strange to me, more so as these good fathers performed the duties of chaplain to the Natchitoches. This corporal was attacked by a savage and had to remain at the cabin of the chief of the Amedi- they have been thus listed by the bureau of American Ethnology. As the Kiowa and Plains Apache did not come south of Platte River until more than fifty years after La Harpe’s expedition, it does not seem likely that he even heard of them, let alone enumerating them as inhabiting any region adjacent to eastern Oklahoma.
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ches until the departure of the Spaniards, who, learning of our garrison and our savages, had withdrawn to the other side of the Trinite River.
Seeing that the war was an obstacle to commerce that I had attempted to make with the Spaniards and that I had nothing to fear from them for the present at my point, I thought it would be of interest to the King to go to discover the nations which hey had spoken of as being on the northwest coast and to make an alliance with them in order to shorten the way into New Mexico and the territory of the Padoucas from whom the Spanish obtained much riches. The corporal had negotiated with the Nadachos and the Assinais for twelve horses which he brought me. I bought ten more from our savages: I loaded them with luggage and provisions, and on the eleventh of August, I started with our two Quidehais guides, a savage Nassonite, the genalemen Du Rivage and de La Filoche, a soldier, two enlisted soldiers, and two negroes. The same day, I sent a message to M. de Bienville to inform him of the state of the garrison and the enterprise that I intended to make; I also sent to him for a commission to explore in this part of the West, in order to shelter myself from the events which might take place. We advanced three leaguees on the West, and Northwest this same day.3
The twelfth, we passed several meadows and some country filled with vines; we made six leagues to the West, a quarter to the Northwest.4
The thirteenth, by the point of the compass, we advanced five leagues. We passed several chestnut and walnut groves; we camped near a pond.5
The fourteenth, to the northwest, we made six leagues, at a tall forest we commenced to find some precious stones. Afterwards, we entered in a large prairie, rock in part, which continued in the West, the length of the river, to the Cancy village established in New Mexico. One discovered from that place along the North side, several ranges of mountains.6
3.La Harpe’s first camp, on the evening of August 11, 1719, was pitched northeast of Richmond, Ark., and distant not more than two or three miles from that place. 4.On the evening of the 12th, the expedition encamped near Foreman, Ark. 5.On the 13th, the expedition crossed the Arkansas-Oklahoma boundary, at or near Grassy Lake, and pitched camp that evening three or four miles southwest of Bokhoma. 6.On the evening of the 14th, the expedition camped in the immediate vicinity of the site of Idabel— possibly on the site of that town.
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The fifteenth, in the North and Northwest, we made five leagues. We crossed the prairie and we camped near a cross-road, which formed two little pathways, one which ran in the West to the roving nations, and the other to the Northwest which was the one that we followed the next day.7
The sixteenth, on the Northwest, we made five leagues through a very beautiful sloping country, we passed the night in a forest.8
The seventeenth, we remained in camp, our guides killed for us two buffalos and some roebucks, but the heat was so great that the meat could be preserved for only two days, unless it was smoked. As time was necessary for this dressing, we did not stop.
The eighteenth, we advanced the length of several hills, and through beautiful prairies we found some slate-quarries and several pieces of rock crystal; we made during the day four leagues in the North and Northwest.
The nineteenth, we continued to wind the length of several hills; at ten o’clock, we left the shortest pathway which led to the Touacaras, because of the difficulty of the mountains, in order to follow that of the West; at six o’clock, we descended a great hill, at the bottom of which we camped after having made seven leagues in the West.9
The twentieth, we passed mountains difficult enough because of the quantity of large overturned stones that we encountered, and the heights and descents that we had to pass. At ten o’clock, we camped near a swamp, after having made seven leagues on the North and a quarter on the Northwest.
The twenty-first, we followed a little pathway which wound the length of several hills; at nine o’clock, our guides killed some venison, while they were cutting them, I killed a very large bear;
7.The route traversed during the course of the day’s march on the 15th approximated very closely that of the railway line between Idabel and Millerton, the site of the evening camp being but a short distance west of the last mentioned place. 8.On the evening of the 16th, camp was made near Rufe, in or near the valley of Pine Creek, a small tributary of Little River, in the southwestern part of McCurtain County, where the expedition rested until the morning of the 18th. 9.From the 18th to the 22nd, inclusive, the expedition followed a devious course through the mountains between the Kiamitia and Little rivers, in Pushmatha County, in the course of which it covered a marching distance of twenty-five leagues to advance a distance which did not exceed twelve leagues in an air line.
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we stopped near a brook between the rocks. At eleven o’clock, a party of thirty Nassonite and Nadsoos warriors came to join us; they were returning to their village because they feared encountering a party of the Anahous nation, whose fire they had noticed. These Nassonites had been hunting for fifteen days, during which time they had killed forty-six buffaloes; this day we advanced three leagues in the North, and Northwest. The twenty-second, our guides, alarmed by a party of Anahous, that roved in these quarters, they wished us to leave; it was necessary to use very much persuasion in order to get them to let us continue our journey. We went to the Northeast a league and a half, afterwards, we went on the left and passed several hills and prairies. At four o’clock we found a little river, which in this place falls to the West.10 It winds very much and falls finally beneath the Cadodaquious, in the Red River. We entered afterwards in a beautiful prairie, enclosed by mountains, which passed through the Illinois; they have in this place a width of thirty leagues from the North to the South, and according to all appearances, there are some metallic mines judging from the different colors of the earth, the marcasites that was found there, and the assurances that were given to us by the savages. The route for this day had been Northeast, a quarter, to the North, five leagues.
The twenty-third, we advanced in the prairie on the Northwest, quarter North, two leagues, after which we passed a little river which descends to the South, which winds among several mountains and falls into the river below the old Nadsoos village. We camped afterwards, in order to rest our horses, which had been lessened by two, as we had been forced to abondon them, they not being able to keep up.11
The twenty-fourth, we continued to advance in the plain as far as a very thick wood, near a brook that was necessary to cross, in the afternoon we entered in the mountains, very difficult to pass because of the thickness of the wood and the upturned
10.On the 20th, camp was made at a swamp, probably in the lower valley of Black Fork, a short distance west of Nashoba. Two days later, the expedition recrossed the same stream somewhere along its upper reaches. Thence traversing the easy pass to the head of the Hurd Creek, the course of the latter was followed to the valley of the Kiamitia, about two miles southeast of Clayton. 11.On the 23d, the Kiamitia was crossed about three miles west of Tuskahoma. That evening, the expedition camped in the upper valley of Anderson Creek, about three miles north of the Latimer- Pushmataha boundary line.
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stone that one encounters here. Two of our horses were lost here. At five o’clock in the evening we camped in a valley, near a brook, at the foot of several mountains.12 I had taken the precaution to bring a large hammer to break the rocks, in which one might find some metal; I found in this place several black marcasites, lined within by several grains resembling gold, and some flint lined with a white metal. I picked some up, and I do not doubt by any means, that if they do not find metal in these stones that they will not fail to denote metallic mines. We made this five leagues on the Northwest.
The twenty-fifth, we mounted to the summit of a mountain. Having advanced a league, we entered in some prairies and valleys very pleasing to the sight; we killed three buffalo. This day we made three leagues toward the Northwest. The twenty-sixth, in the morning, we saw a troop of twenty savages; our guides thought themselves lost, having identified them for the Anahous. They were some Osages ...... Although they are friends of the French, this nation is treacherous, and it is good to be on one’s guard. This party approached us carrying the tomahawk; our savages wished to flee, but I assured them that if they took this action, they were lost, and that there were some other ways to extricate them. We kept our countenance and the Osages appeared, on their part, to be getting ready to attack us. In this perplexity, I advanced toward them with three Frenchmen well armed, one of which was the soldier of the garrison, who understood several languages. This hostile party, surprised by our boldness, offered us the Peace Pipe. They explained to us then that they knew of our nation and that we were their friends, but they were pretending to scalp our guides. I opposed their scheme, and I said to them if they persisted in their demands I would find myself forced to fight with them. This resolution made them change their attitude. They reflected among themselves and agreed to let us pass in peace. I gave them some presents, after which they withdrew, without approaching our guides, who remained with the rest of my people
12.On the 24th, after having marched five leagues to cover an airline distance of two leagues through a rough, mountainous country, La Harpe halted to camp at the head of a small tributary of Buffalo Creek. Descending this small creek and Buffalo Creek to the valley of Gaines Creek, the expedition encamped about three miles east of Hartshorne on the evening or the 26th.
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on their guard. This day, we found two brooks, some hills and prairies, and we made three leagues in the Northwest.13
The twenty-seventh, we entered in a beautiful country, where we saw a great quantity of roe-buck. At ten o’clock, we passed a little arid mountain, then a brook, near which we stopped to pass the heat of the mid-day. At three o’clock, we saw several camps, where there were lighted fires and evidences of horses. Our guides warned us that this as a party of Cancy. As this nation as not friendly toward our savages, and as they had fear of becoming their prey, we marched away on our guard. Having advanced a league and a half, we crossed a sunken lake, one of the horses fell into the water with his load, he drowned, but we saved the luggage that he carried. We camped near the other side of the lake. At five o’clock in the evening, a Naouydiche savage, who was making discoveries there, having taken us for allies, came to advise us on the camp that we had found, they were a party of sixty Cancy warriors, of whom it was necessary to keep on guard; that at six leagues farther on the great chief of the Naouydiche was situated on the banks of one of the branches of the Ouachitas River, and forty warriors, that he went to the Touacara village to see there the French chief. This day we made six leagues to the Northwest.
The twenty-eighth, we came into a beautiful prairie, varied by hills and thickets; we found there a prodigious quantity of wild cattle, and a great number of wolves; they are little and not at all bad. We saw there, also, some partridges, of woodcock and of plover. The evening we mounted to the summit of a rock, on descending from which we camped near a little lake; the same evening my little English dog was lost, of which I greatly regretted. We made three leagues to the North and one fourth to Northeast.
The twenty-ninth, we advanced three leagues to North and Northeast, a difficult enough woods and many little rocky mountains. We entered afterwards in the prairies next in a very thick woods, in which our guides lost us. After a thousand impediments we found ourselves on the bank of the west branch of the
13.On the evening of the 26th, camp was made near the point where the Wilburton branch of the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway crosses Gaines Creek.
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river of the Ouachitas,14 which separated itself at twenty leagues lower from the other branch which reascended from the North and Northwest; this river emptied in the Red River at fourteen leagues from its mouth. At two o’clock in the afternoon we joined the Naouydiches party. They were busy smoking some unicorn.15 It is an animal big as a middle-sized horse; he has hair of reddish color and the length of that of the she- goats, the legs rather thin and in the middle of the forehead a horn, without branches, of a half-a-foot long; the meat of it is very delicious. This discovery confirms that which M. de Bienville had been told of the savages that in the upper head waters of the Ouachitas River there were some unicorn.
The great chief Naouydiche and his warriors showed to us much friendship and sang for me in this place the Calumet; this required me to make some new presents to him; I showed them the marcasite, that I had gathered in the mountains; they assured me that in the same region to northeast where I had passed, there had been found some very precious stones.
The thirtieth, we stayed in camp; the savages busied themselves catching some fish in the stream which flowed into the river.
The thirty-first, we placed ourselves in march with the party of Naouydiche; we found a very thick woods, at the leaving of which we entered in another woods much clearer; next in the prairies at the end of hich we passed woods, on the leaving of which we came to the edge of the northwest branch of the river
14.While the text of La Harpe’s narrative does not mention Gaines Creek, even by inference, it is evident from the distances traveled and the direction of each day’s march that he followed the course of that stream to its confluence with the Canadian River, where the expedition arrived on the 29th. The Canadian, as yet unknown and unnamed by the French, was mistakenly assumed to be a branch of the Ouachita of Arkansas and Louisiana. 15.La Harpe’s statement that he found some of the Indians curing the flesh of a unicorn by smoking is rather surprising, considering his accuracy and truthfulness in all other matters. However, he does not say that he saw the animal before it was cut in pieces preparatory to smoking. It is therefore safe to assume that he had naught to identify it save by its skin and by the statements of Indians, which may have not been fully comprehended. That it was an elk would seem probable. If so, it is apparent that he was not familiar with the animals of that species in the Red River country, where they may have been unknown at that time. It is possible, moreover, that this incident helps to explain his hasty conclusions in seeking to identify the Canadian as a branch of the Ouachita, since he was familiar with Bienville’s hearsay statement concerning the existence of unicorns near the headwaters of the last mentioned stream.
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of the Ouachita;16 that day we made six leagues in the North one-fourth Northwest.
[September, 1719.] The first, we crossed the branch of the river in which it had then only two to three feet of water;17 we followed a path to the right the length of a woods wide, which led us to some hills. Here we passed a brook full of large shells made in the fashion of "Ricadoes," in one of hich we found a pearl of a very beautiful luster. I showed it to Chief Naouydiche; he assured me that several days away from these villages where I was going, one finds some very large pearls in shells in a river. We passed near this place a brook, next we entered in a vast prairie where we lost our way. At seven o’clock in the evening we stopped close to a little lake of water. We moved forward this day some seven leagues to north.18
The second, we continued to cross a great prairie, in which are found two brooks among some thickets, after which we discovered many deposits abundant with coal. We passed the night at the bottom near a pool of water. We made this day eight leagues to the north.19
The third, we continued to advance in the prairie as far as a woods near a brook, where the great chief of the nation Touacaras, accompanied by six other chiefs of nations, waited for me, having had news of my arrival by some Naouydiches who were first in the field; they (Touacaras) were mounted on some very beautiful horses, saddled and bridled in the style of the Spanish. Our first compliments passed for some demonstrations of friendship. After which the chief of Touacara had said to me by a Naouydiche who spoke the language (Nassonite), understood by a soldier of the garrison, that it was unusual to see in their country a nation unknown to them. They assured us in all sincerity that they wished to make an alliance with us and
16.After crossing the Canadian, La Harpe’s course took him near the site of Eufaula—possibly a mile and a half west. He arrived at the "northwest branch of the Ouachita"—i. e., the North Canadian—near Fame, where it was crossed about twenty miles above its mouth. 17.The branch of the river, mentioned as having been crossed on the morning of September 1st, was the Deep Fork of the Canadian, about ten miles above its mouth. 18.On the evening of September 1st, the expedition camped near the head of Cloud Creek, about five miles north of the site of Council Hill. 19.Still continuing in a course nearly due north, on the 2d. La Harpe continued to travel over an open prairie, crossing "two brooks amoung some thickets," en route. These were the streams now known as Cane Creek and Ash Creek. During the latter part of this days journey, his discovery of "many deposits abundant with coal" was in the immediate vicinity of the small stream now known as Coal Creek. That night he encamped near the mouth of Concharty Creek.
Page 343 that our enemies would be theirs. I represented to them that the great chief of my nation of whose word I was the bearer, had sent me to them in order to assure them of his protection and of his friendship and to offer them aid against their enemies, and that I would accept, in his name, the alliance they proposed. The chiefs brought with them some bread of corn meal with some wheat and some smoked meat of which they entertained me and my company; next I mounted on a beautiful horse that they had led out to me, we went together to their village. The country through which we passed was level. Within easy musket range of their village, we crossed a beautiful brook, enclosed in woods, on the other side of which were the villages.20 They were situated upon some hills which extended the length of the southwest branch of the river of Alcansas. This village is very compact; the houses are joined together one to the other running east and west. The location is one of the most beautiful that I ever saw. The nations of this location are the Touacaras, Toayas, Caurnuches, Aderos, Wusitas, Ascania, Quataquois, Ouicaspueris, Honechas; they are able to provide for six thousand people of both sexes.
On arriving at the village the chief who had accompanied me had me dismount within easy musket range of Chief Touacara. Two (considerees) carried me upon their shoulders, their faces turned toward the ground, they put me on a buffalo hide upon the floor. Then, all the principal Indians made a circle around me, and each of them put out his hand as a sign of his friendship. While I presented some presents to Chief Touacara, which consisted of some powder, some bullets, some "hatchets," some knives, and several (anues d’estoffe). Although he was surprised to see so much merchandise, he showed only little emotion, continuing his air of dignity.
He was in age in the neighborhood of twenty-five years. In order to show me his gratitude, he gave me a crown of eagle plumes decorated with little buds of all colors, two calumet plumes, one of war and the other of peace, presenting the most valuable gift that these warriors could make.
20.On the morning of the 3d; La Harpe advanced a short distance northward over the prairie to the wooded valley of a small tributary of the Concharty, where he met the great chief of the Touacara in company with the chiefs of six other tribes. The grouped villages of all of their people were located on the higher ground immediately north of this small creek and near its confluence with the Concharty. The site of this great Indian village, or group of villages, apparently was about two miles northeast of the present town of Haskell—in the northwestern part of Muskogee County.
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The fourth, the eight nations sang to me the calumet. There were there assembled more than seven thousand persons, a part comprised the roving nation who came expressly from their villages to sing me the calumet. The Chief Toayas and Ascania, old men of more than sixty years performed the ceremony of this feast; they handled the plumes with an infinite skill. They made some speeches in which they told of the advantages of an alliance with us, that we were a warrior nation, who apprehended not at all the enemies on the way, although we were small in number, that to trade with us would be to their advantage since we could carry to them some arms in order to defend against their enemies, perhaps leaving some merchandise proper and useful for their use; that it would be necessary to treat us well, at least that we would be able to leave their homes. After they had made these discourses, all the chiefs and (considerees) of these nations told me of all their power and gave me the number of all the scalps they had taken. Bored by the ceremony which has lasted from eight o’clock in the morning—two hours after midnight, I took my departure to go to repose and to leave the Sieur Du Rivage in my place. Knowing well that this feast would not be finished until the following day, upon the second hour of the afternoon. During which time the savages never went to their cabinet, with the result that they were very fatigued by it and their voices so hoarsed that one could scearcely hear them.
The fifth, the chiefs came to take me to a place. I was placed on a buffalo hide, they carried me to a place where the calumet was sung under a (antichon) covered with foliage because of the warmth of the sun; they painted my face of a blue ultra-marine, next they threw at my feet thirty buffalo hides, several pieces of rock salt, some chunks of tobacco of grey-green and some little ultra-marine. They added to these presents a little slave of the Cancy nation of eight years, of which they had eaten a finger from each hand, a mark that one was destined to serve one day as food to these cannibals. For then, the Chief Togas [Toayas], whose nation is the most numerous told me that he was sorry to have only one (slave to present to me), that if I had arrived a noon sooner he would have given me the seventeen that they had eaten in a public feast. I thanked him for his good will, regretting that I had not arrived in time to save the lives of these
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poor unfortunates.21 By means of whom one could have made peace with their nation by returning them home again. I gave then to these nations the presents that I had intended for them approaching nearly fifeen hundred pounds.
The eighth, I called an assembly of all the principal chiefs of these nations in order to obtain information concerning the river Alcansas, of the nearest dwelling of the Spaniard, and of the commerce that they had with the Padoucas. To these inquiries they replied that their river formed two branches below their villages; that the one on which their villages were came from the west near the Spanish and Padoucas villages; that the Spanish got from this country yellow metal and that they traded some slaves and some peltry. That the country of these white men (Spaniards) was full of towns and that they had domesticated roebucks, and that their prairies were covered with horses and other animals that bore wool; that the Padoucas were a numerous nation whose villages extend much farther toward the north and northwest coast; that the Spanish were not allied with all these nations, and that when they were busy going to some village remote from the coast of the Aricauas they were often attacked by the Panis Nation, who were enemies of the Padoucas. They assured me that this river of the Alcansas was navigable in winter to just below the Spanish villages; from here it took six days to go by land but that they did not go because the Padoucas were their enemies. They told me the same things of the Anabous and Missoury, to whom they gave another name, that they made war on them, but that they were allied with the two villages Ascania and Ousita situated to northwest of their dwellings, sixty leagues distant; that they had seen these seven famous cities to the northwest of the Arricara, which were one hundred and twenty leagues journey from their allies. I believe that these Arricara were part of forty-five Panis villages.
They assured me that, in the highest place on the river a distance of several days journey, one might find sack salt of gray-green and ultra-marine blue, but that it was a risk for them to go there because of the Cancy who passed by these places to go
21.La Harpe’s statement concerning cannibalism among these Paniouassa Caddoan peoples is of interest. If it was based upon facts instead of idle boasting on the part of his Indian hosts, it was a custom which they were probably persuaded to discontinue long before they began to adopt themselves to the ways of civilization; as there is no known record of any such incident since they came in contact with English-speaking white men a century later.
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to war with the Padoucas. One of the chiefs assured me that there was there a little hill six days journey from the village where there was yellow metal which the Spanish esteemed much. He gave me a stone of it that he had by chance in his cabin. My intention was to leave with this nation three of my men until the council of Louisiana should decide upon an establishment here, but I changed my mind, having learned that these people quit all of their villages in the month of October to go hunting to which they return only in the month of March to sow their maize, beans and pumpkins which they eat in the summer. The lands of these quarters were very fertile, black and light, the country is open and it is only by little canyons that one can perceive some thickets of oak, chestnuts, and of mulberry; the prairies are high and fitted to the culture of wheat and other grains. The savages cultivate their prodigious quantities of tobacco which they press into flat loaves after having pounded it. The hunting there is abundant not only for beef, bears and roebuck but generally for all other animals. The river furnishes very good fish and although the water is sometimes very low, it never fails to remain two or three feet in depth.
These nations raise very good horses being unable to do without them either in war or hunting. They have saddles, bridles which are very well made and even wear breastplates of leather to protect their flesh; their cabins are raised higher the most part built of straw and of reeds covered with earth forming a dome; over each door each of the nation has his arms painted on a piece of brown leather. Some represent the sun, moon, or stars, or other different animals. The Chief of the nation of Touacaras is the most respected of all nations. When his food was carried to him to eat he takes a part of it and gives the rest to his (considerees). The plates are made of reed but so well worked that the water does not penetrate.
These savages are people of good sense, cleverer than the nations of the Mississippi but the fertility of the country makes them lazy. They are always sitting around their chief and usually they think only of eating, smoking and playing. They are also libertines but generous in their love affairs, giving to their mistresses all that they have. The women are pretty enough, they have nothing to find fault with but their olive color. They push the gallantry farther than the men. During our sojourn in their
Page 347 villages they never quit carrying us plates of greens and of maize, prepared with the marrow of beef and smoked meat. They exerted themselves to outdo each other as to which should carry the best meat. We could not eat all they brought to us. These people could not cease admiring my two negroes, the women made them advances and the men hoped that they would remain among them.
In regard to their religion I am not very well informed, but it appears to me that they have little of it, and that the greatest good consists in the pleasure of the body. They recognize, however, a great spirit whom they worship under different forms. They present him with the first fruits of the land and believe when they are dead they will embark in a great pirogue guided by a black man with horns who puts ashore those who have lived well, in a prairie country full of cattle, those who have not been warriors and who have badly served their country are left on arid lands on which they live miserably. There is not in the whole colony of Louisiana an establishment more useful to make than on the branch of this river not only because of the mild climate, the fertility of the land, the richness of the minerals, but also because of the possibility of trade that one might introduce with Spain and New Mexico. If one could control the trade which the Spanish carry on with the Padoucas and Arricaras, one could become master of this region. It isn’t necessary to add to that that one could handle a quantity of cow hides and other peltry that would be easily obtained from the Spanish. And as many cows and sheep as the establishment on this river would need, that they could be transported by land easily to the post that we have established on the Mississippi and as far as the Illinois.
From the sixth to the tenth of September, I employed Sieur Du Rivage to carve on a post the arms of the king and the company and the day and the year of taking possession. It was planted in the middle of the village. The savages asked us what it signified, I told them it was to mark the alliance we had made with them.
The eleventh, there arrived a savage from the Chicachas Nation with merchandise. He appeared troubled to see me in
Page 348 these villages, he told me that he was returning to the Yasous. I gave him a letter to M. Bienville.22
My two Quidehais guides having left me with these nations, there remains only twenty Nassonites who came with me. When it was necessary for me to leave in order to return, they (Nassonites) begged me to leave before they did, and that they would come to join me in a few days. Having taken leave of these nations by preparing some provisions of beans and maize, I began my journey the thirteenth of September. It was observed that from the Nassonites to the Touacaras it is one hundred and ten leagues and that their location is southeast and northwest. We made today three leagues in the southeast as far as the woods, near a spring where I had met the chiefs of these nations.
The seventeenth, we arrived at the northwest branch of the Ouachita river, where we rested until the twenty-first. When I sent some of my people to the village, from which I came, to get information concerning my guide and to bring me some food, there remained no more than twenty pounds of beans and having still seventy-four leagues of journey to make, which made me regulate these beans to half a liter a day to each person.
The twenty-third, the night was very cold, the wind being in the north. We continued our little entrenchment, for fear of surprise. We fished the same day for fish in the river.
The twenty-fourth, the cold continued. We saw several unicorns without being able to approach them. We gathered some small glazed fruit from trees. It is a fruit like the medlar but much better when it is very ripe, without which it is extremely sour. The twenty-fifth, we began to see bustards, (wild geese), coming from the north and going to the south.
The twenty-sixth, the cold continued. We saw a quantity of roebucks, but our small supply of powder and the fear of going too far from our entrenchments because of enemies, kept us from hunting them.
22.The statement that a Chickasaw Indian had arrived at this Paniouassa town on a trading venture shows how far commercial influences were reaching even at that early date. The statement that "he appeared troubled to see" La Harpe there, is easily explained by the fact that the Chickasaw people were already being brought under English influence, so the inference is plain that this paritcular member of the tribe had probably been sent there as a representative of a trader from one of the English colonies on the Atlantic coast.
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The twenty-seventh, the food having failed we killed one of our horses to serve for food. We smoked a part of it. The same day I killed a bustard and a wood-rat, which we ate.
The twenty-eighth, my English dog which I had lost a month ago came to our cabin, but she had lost her memory, so that she could not recognize us. What was singular, is that my other dog carried her food, depriving himself of his food to exercise this charity. The same day my people arrived from the Touacaras with some maize and some beans. They brought me a Naouydiche guide who had abandoned me to follow a savage woman, with whom he was in love.
The thirtieth, we began the journey, we made four leagues to the lake where one of our horses was drowned in going to our discoveries, having found a short cut of a league and a half by a good road.
The first, we perceived a very great multitude of wild cattle which appeared frightened. Our savage killed some of them; he stopped to smoke them against my advice having judged that the cattle were hunted by some enemy nations, I followed my journey. Having advanced a league we noticed about fifty horsemen who were following the cattle. We recognized them to be some Cancy. That made us redouble our steps until six o’clock in the evening when we stopped by a brook. I found one of my blacks was lost, having remained with the Naouydiche hunting, but he arrived at two o’clock in the morning, having saved himself by the help of the grass, where he had hidden himself. According to his report our guide and his wife had been put to death.
The third, we were misled into the mountains. As I had observed in coming the direction and had gone that route, I went to the southeast; but we found the roads were difficult, with lakes that it was necessary to cross, that I lost this day three horses with their baggage.
The fourth, from the fourth to the eighth of the same month, we roamed in the mountains. All of our horses perished there, we were forced to go on foot each with a pack of smoked horse flesh. The ninth, we found again our road, and the thirteenth we arrived at the Nassonites, extremely fatigued from such a painful route.
—ANNA LEWIS. THE NINETEENTH KANSAS CAVALRY IN THE WASHITA CAMPAIGN
An Address by Col. Horace L. Moore Before the Twenty-first Annual Meeting of the Kansas State Historical Society, January 19, 1897.*
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During the summers of 1868 and 1869 the western part of Kansas, the southeastern part of Colorado and the northwestern part of Texas were raided over and over again by war parties of what were called the Plains Indians. The Indians engaged in these forays were Cheyennes, Arapahoes, Kiowas, Comanches, northern Cheyennes, Brule and Ogallalla Sioux, and the Pawnees.
On the 10th of August, 1868, they struck the settlements on the Saline River. On the 12th they reached the Solomon and wiped out a settlement where the city of Minneapolis is now situated. In this raid fifteen persons were killed, two wounded, and five women carried off. On the same day they attacked Wright’s bay camp near Ft. Dodge, raided the Pawnee, and killed two settlers on the Republican. On the 8th of September they captured a train at the Cimarron crossing of the Arkansas River, securing possession of seventeen men, whom burned; and the day following they murdered six men between Sheridan and Ft. Wallace. On the first of September, 1868, the Indians killed four men at Spanish Fork, in Texas, and outraged three women. One of those women was outraged by thirteen Indians and afterward killed and scalped. They left her with the hatchet still sticking in her head. Before leaving, they murdered her four little children. Of the children carried off by the Indians from Texas in 1868, fourteen were frozen to death in captivity.
The total of losses from September 12, 1868, to Febuary 9, 1869, exclusive of casualties incident to military operations, was 158 men murdered, sixteen wounded and forty-one scalped. Three scouts were killed, fourteen women outraged, one man was captured, four women and twenty-four children were carried off. Nearly all of these losses occurred in what we then called western Kansas, although the Saline, Solomon and Republican do not seem so very far west now.
In 1867, the Union Pacific Railroad was built as far west as Fort Hays and, as the graders were constantly being attacked by Indians, the Eighteenth Kansas Cavalry (a battalion of four companies) was mustered into the service of the United States for the purpose of furnishing protection to the laborers on the railroad and to keep the Santa Fe Trail clear for the passage of wagon trains and the overland coaches. The battalion was rendezvoused at Fort Harker, *Reprinted by permission of the Kansas State Historical Society, from Volume VI of the "Kansas Historical Collections".
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near where Ellsworth is situated, on the 15th of July, 1867, I was mustered in with the rank of major in command. At that time, the Asiatic cholera was epidemic on the Plains and the hospitals at Harker were full of soldiers and laborers sick with the cholera.
As soon as the command was mustered into the service and transportation and supplies could be obtained, it marched to the southwest to strike the Arkansas River near Fort Zarah, at the mouth of Walnut Creek. The sick were left at Harker. The afternoon march of the 15th of July developed no new cases of cholera. On the 16th, a long march was made and camp was pitched on the left bank of Walnut Creek, about ten miles above Zarah (Great Bend now). The day brought no new cases and everybody felt cheerful, hoping that the future had nothing worse in store than a meeting with hostile Indians. By eight p. m., supper was over and, in another hour, the camp became a hospital of screaming cholera patients. Men were seized with cramping of the stomach, bowels and muscles of the arms and legs. The doctor and his medicine were powerless to resist the disease. One company had been sent away on a scout as soon as the command reached the camp and, of the three companies remaining in camp, the morning of the 17th found five dead and thirty-six stretched on the ground in a state of collapse. These men had no pulse at the wrist, their hands were shrunken and purple, with the skin in wrinkles and their eyes wide open. The doctor pronounced them in a state of hopeless collapse. By sunrise, a grave had been dug and the dead buried.
Commissary and quartermasters stores were then thrown away and two of the sick (most favorable cases) were put into single ambulance with the command and the remaining thirty-four were put into wagons with blankets under them. A government wagon is wide enough for three men to lie side by side, and long enough for two men at the side, so that each wagon would carry six. In this way, all the sick were taken along. It was necessary to follow up Walnut Creek three or four miles before a crossing could be effected. While this was being done, the sick were examined and not one was found to have died since the cholera camp was left. On this the doctor took new courage and during the balance of the day he was unremitting in his attentions. He went from one wagon to another, giving stimulants where it was possible to get the patient to swallow and details were made to assist him in chafing the hands and feet to restore, if possible, the circulation.
A long march was made on the 17th and camp was finally made on the Arkansas River, above Pawnee Rock. Not a man had died during the day. A buffalo calf was shot, soup made and the sick taken from the wagons and made as comfortable as possible under the circumstances. The night was spent in the most assiduous care of these sick men and, in the morning, a detachment was sent to Fort Larned to notify the commanding officer of the post, of the condition of the Page 352 command. On arriving at the crossing of the Pawnee Fork (now Larned), the sick were turned over to the United States surgeons, who had established a hospital at this place. Although the thirty-six men were in a state of collapse when they were loaded into the wagons at the camp on Walnut Creek, every one of them lived to be turned over to the doctors at Fort Larned, at noon on the 18th. Their circulation had been restored and they were able to take nourishment. I think this favorable result is entirely unprecedented in the treatment of Asiatic cholera. The doctor, a young contract surgeon, by the name of Squire, from New Hampshire, was attacked with cholera during the night of the 19th. As the command had to move in the morning, the doctor was given his choice, to move with it or remain in the hospital. He chose the latter and on the second day his case terminated fatally.
The command moved up Pawnee Fork without a medical attendant and, on the second day after leaving Fort Larned, one of the sargeants was attacked and died of cholera that night. This was the last fatal case in the command. The hospital steward was attacked at the same time but recovered.
The battalion served four months on the plains, marched about 2200 miles and fought a battle with the Cheyennes on Prairie Dog Creek, a branch of the Republican, in which it suffered a loss of fourteen officers and men killed and wounded.
The depredations of the Indians during the fall of the following year (1868) satisfied the War Department that something more effective than a summer campaign would have to be resorted to, to protect the frontier settlements and teach the Indians that the army was able to punish any tribe that made a pastime of robbery and murder. General Sheridan, who was then in command of the Department of the Missouri, determined on a winter campaign. If there is anything that strikes terror into the heart of the soldier it is a winter campaign. There is no feed for his horse except what he can haul in the train and the roads are generally impassable for trains and artillery. His camp equipage must be cut down all that is possible to save transportation. Tents, camp stores and clothing must give place to commissary stores and, as a general statement, the impediments of the army must be reduced to the lowest point possible.
The battle of Fredericksburg was fought December 13th and the army went into winter quarters where it remained until May 2d following. On the last of September, Mead retreated across the Rapidan from Mine Run, and did not move again until the 4th of May following, when Grant began the Richmond campaign and Sherman began the Atlanta campaign at the same time. The final campaign that resulted in the capture of Richmond began on the 29th of March. The battle of Borodino was fought on the 17th of September, and soon after Napoleon was forced to begin a winter campaign that lost him his army. In a winter campaign was the only hope of subduing
Page 353 the Indians. In the summer the plains were covered with grass and buffalo. The Indians’ forage and rations were everywhere. In the winter the buffalo were in the canons and mountains, snow covered the grass and blizzards swept the plains.
On the 9th of October, 1868, General Sheridan called on Gov. S. J. Crawford, of Kansas, for a twelve-company regiment of cavalry to be mustered into the United States service for this winter campaign. On the 15th of October General Sherman wrote as follows to General Sheridan:
"As to extermination, it is for the Indians themselves to determine. We don’t want to exterminate or even fight them. At best it is an inglorious war, not apt to add much to our fame or personal comfort; and for our soldiers, to whom we owe our first thoughts, it is all danger and extreme labor, without a single compensating advantage . . . . As brave men and as the soldiers of a government which has exhausted its peace efforts, we, in the performance of a most unpleasant duty, accept the war begun by our enemies, and hereby resolve to make its end final. If it results in the utter annihilation of these Indians it is but the result of what they have been warned again and again, and for which they seem fully prepared. I will say nothing and do nothing to restrain our troops from doing what they deem proper on the spot, and will allow no mere vague general charges of cruelty and inhumanity to tie their hands, but will use all the powers confided to me to the end that these Indians, the enemies of our race and of our civilization, shall not again be able to begin and carry on their barbarous warfare on any kind of a pretext that they may choose to allege. I believe that this winter will afford us the opportunity, and that before snow falls these Indians will seek some sort of peace, to be broken next year at their option; but we will not accept their peace, or cease our efforts till all the past acts are both punished and avenged. You may now go ahead in your own way and I will back you with my whole authority, and stand between you and any efforts that may be attempted in your rear to restrain your purpose or check your troops, (See Sen. EX. Doc. No. 18, XLth Cong., 3d Session, p. 5.)
This letter of General Sherman’s will be understood when it is remembered that the Indian Bureau is part of the Department of the Interior. The Indian Department appointed Indian agents, bought and issued supplies and had entire control of Indian affairs, till an outbreak occurred, when the War Department was called upon to force the hostiles into submission. As soon as the army struck the Indians, "the charges of cruelty and inhumanity," mentioned by General Sherman, were made and reiterated from one end of the country to the other, with the result that the army was called off. Now Sherman promised Sheridan to "back him with his whole authority" and stand between him and the querulous and impracticable humanitarians of the East.
The Nineteenth Kansas Cavalry was called into United States service under instructions received by his excellency S. J. Crawford, governor of Kansas, from Maj. Gen. P. H. Sheridan, dated October 9, 1868. The proclamation of the governor calling for volunteers was dated October 10, 1868, and the regiment was mustered, armed and the organization completed at Topeka, Kansas on the 4th day of
Page 354 November, by the muster-in of Samuel J. Crawford as colonel. I was mustered in with the rank of lieutenant-colonel.
In obedience to orders from General Sheridan, Captain Norton, D Troop, and Captain Lender, G. Troop, were sent by rail to Fort Hays on the 5th, with their commands, and, under instructions from the same source, the remaining ten companies broke camp at Topeka and marched en route to the mouth of Beaver Creek (the north branch of the North Canadian), where a depot of supplies was to be established by General Sully on the 15th inst. Our route was via Camp Beecher (now Wichita), at the mouth of the Little Arkansas, distance 150 miles, which distance we were to make with a new organization, supplied with five days rations and depended upon procuring forage from the country through which we were to pass, as our limited transportation of fifteen wagons precluded the possibility of carrying any supplies with us. The command arrived at Camp Beecher on the 12th inst. This was the first experience of the regiment in making five days’ rations do the work of ten, and, like all first efforts, it was not a complete success. General Sheridan says:
"On November 15 I started for Camp Supply to give general supervision and to participate in the operations. I deemed it best to go in person, as the campaign was an exceptional one—campaigns at such a season having been deemed impracticable and reckless by old and experienced frontiersmen—and I did not like to expose the troops to great hazard without being present myself to judge of their hardships and privations."
The regiment marched from Camp Beecher on the 14th of November, with five days’ rations, enroute to Camp Supply; supposed distance 140 miles. On the night of the 16th the command camped on the Chicaskia, and the last of the forage was fed to the animals. On the night of the 18th the regiment camped on Medicine Lodge Creek. A stampede of the animals of B, I and K troops occurred here and about eighty horses were lost.
The regiment moved out of camp on the morning of the 19th without forage for the animals or subsistence for the men, marching through an unexplored region in search of a camp of supplies supposed to be situated somewhere on the Canadian River, and on the night of the 22d camped on Sand Creek, during a heavy fall of snow, in sight of the bluffs of the Cimarron. Buffalo were abundant and thus far the command had subsisted on them. Captain Pliley, A Troop, and Lieutenant Parsons, C Troop, with fifty of the best mounted men of the command, were sent forward from this point to find General Sheridan, if possible, and cause supplies to be sent back to the regiment.
November 23d a blinding snow-storm continued all day. The guides found it impossible to keep the direction and the command was forced to lie in camp.
November 24. The snow this morning was fifteen inches deep. the horses had subsisted on cottonwood bark and limbs and were, by
Page 355 this time, so much exhausted that the men walked and led them. The country was so broken that, in some instances, ten miles were traveled winding around canons to make two miles on the line of march. The regiment camped that night at Hackberry Point, on the Cimarron, so named by the men for the abundance of hackberries in the vicinity, which were used for food. The canons of the Cimarron are not like those of Arizona, which are cut in solid rock and have perpendicular walls, but are like the canons of the Llano Estacado, or Staked Plain. The Cimarron cuts its way through a plateau of clay or loess and the main stream, together with the innumerable side streams, have cut the whole country into a labyrinth of canons or deep gulches that are almost impassable. The snow was a foot to eighteen inches deep everywhere. The guide knew no more about the country than any man of the regiment and the only course left was to continue the march, keeping a southwest course as nearly as possible, and keep going until the command got out of the canon country. It happened about sundown the 24th a bunch of buffalo bulls were seen among the bluffs. The command was halted while the guides stole up on them and shot the whole number. The train failed to come up at night and the command bivouacked on the snow without the usual small supply of blankets.
November 25. The train got in by morning and the regiment was divided. Four hundred and fifty men (the best mounted) crossing the Cimarron at one p. m. and marched in a southwest course in search of Camp Supply. Those horses which were most nearly exhausted, together with the train and sick, were left in camp under command of Major Jenkins, with orders to remain until supplies reached them. The country on the south side of the Cimarron at this point is much broken and the command was forced to reach the table-land above by following up the dry bed of the stream which had cut its way down through the inaccessible bluffs. The men dismounted and leading, single file, wound their way around cliffs and over broken banks for several miles, till a little after sunset and just as the full moon came up they emerged from the canon, and by climbing a precipitous cliff were enabled to overlook the inhospitable table-land covered with snow. To-night we bivouacked in a small ravine with the never-failing buffalo meat for supper, no salt.
November 26. Still southwest over rolling prairie and through deep canons, horses perishing by the way, but with stout hearts the command moved forward, one company after another taking their place in front to break the road through the deep snow. The crust today in some places was strong enough to hold up the men. Bivouacked on a nameless stream fifteen miles north of the Canadian.
November 27. Crossed Captain Pliley’s trail at noon and bivouacked at night on the Canadian, at a point supposed to be twenty-five miles below the mouth of Beaver Creek. Made supper from wild turkey.
Page 356
November 28. Moved up the Canadian and at three p. m. the advance came back to the regiment with the welcome news that Camp Supply was in sight. The advance of the command took up the shout, and it was carried back along the column with a vigor which evidenced the fact that each had felt more anxious for the safety of the command than he cared to express. Made camp at sundown, canvas being furnished from the post by General Sheridan. Captain Pliley had arrived on the 25th instant and supplies had been sent to the detachment left at Hackberry Point on the 25th. The detachment arrived at Camp Supply on December 1st. The camp where the train was left was always known among the men as Camp Starvation.
After leaving Camp Beecher the regiment marched 205 miles on three days’ forage and five day’s rations, consuming fourteen days in making the trip; seventy-five horses perished from cold and want of food. The health of the regiment was good and it endured the hardships of the march without a murmur. We did not lose a man.
Touching the loss of the regiment in the Cimarron canons, General Sheridan says in his "Memoirs":
"Instead of relying on the guides, Crawford had undertaken to strike through the canons of the Cimarron by what appeared to him a more direct route, and in the deep gorges, filled as they were with snow, he had been floundering about for days without being able to extricate his command. Then, too, the men were out of rations though they had been able to obtain enough buffalo meat to keep from starving."
This was written in 1888. It is better to quote from the general’s official report, made at the time, twenty years before he wrote his "Memoirs":
"On November 25, I was relieved from great anxiety by the arrival of Captain Pliley and about thirty men. The regiment had lost its way, and becoming tangled up in the canons of the Cimarron, and in deep snow and out of provisions, it could not make its way out and was in a bad fix. Provisions were immediately sent and good guides to bring it in. It had been subsisting on buffalo for eight or nine days."
The word "good" is important, as it implies that the one sent to Topeka was "no good" and the statement from Colonel Crawford did not rely on the guide till the guide got lost is without foundation. The report was current in the command that when the guide met Sheridan the said guide picked up considerable information as to the way English was spoken by the British army in Flanders on a certain occasion. The general report of the regiment; "Officers and men behaved admirably in the trying condition in which they were placed."
When the regiment arrived at Camp Supply it found a camp prepared. The snow had been cleared off the ground, "A" tents pitched for the men and wall tents for the officers, with hay in every
Page 357 tent for bedding. This was a palace hotel compared with the canons of the Cimarron, and General Sheridan had captured the regiment at one blow. On the 6th of December Captain Norton, D Troop, reported at Camp Supply and was ordered to the command, Captain Moody, M Troop, being detailed for escort duty in his place.
Captain Norton reached Fort Hays on the 4th of November and escorted a train to Camp Supply, arriving on the 22d inst; returned to Fort Dodge and escorted a train to Camp Supply, arriving on the 6th. On the same day, Maj. Chas. Dimon, with one captain, three lieutenants, and 250 men, were detached from the command and left at Camp Supply; this included the dismounted and sick. This detachment was employed during the winter in garrisoning the post and escorting supply trains.
On the morning of the 23d, Custer had been ordered to follow on the back track a trail that came up from the southwest and crossed the Fort Dodge road between Supply and Dodge. The trail led him to an Indian camp on the Washita, some seventy-five miles south of Supply. Custer attacked the camp at daylight on the morning of the 27th of November, and had a hard fight. He lost nineteen officers and men, killed and wounded, with Major Elliott and fifteen men missing. He killed 103 Indian warriors and some of the squaws and children were killed and wounded in the excitement. He captured saddles, buffalo robes, provisions, and 875 horses. These were surrounded and shot. General Custer returned to Camp Supply November 30.
On the 7th of December the whole command marched for Fort Cobb. This included the 19th Kansas, 7th U. S. Cavalry and a company of Osage Indian scouts. The first day’s march was to the south bank of Wolf Creek, a distance of ten miles. The snow was still deep and when the command left Supply the temperature was below zero. The second day’s march was a little more than thirty miles, and camp was made on Hackberry creek, with plenty of wood for fires. During the night the wind rose, and by morning a fullfledged norther, or blizzard, was on the boards, billed for two nights and a matinee. The country seemed to be full of blizzards. The first had struck the regiment in the canons; the second while it was in camp at Supply; this was the third. General Sheridan says of No. 3:
"We camped in excellent shape on the creek (Hackberry), and it was well we did, for a norther, or blizzard, struck us in the night. It would have been well to remain in camp till the gale was over, but the time could not be spared. We therefore resumed the march at an early hour next morning, with the expectation of making the south bank of the main Canadian, and there passing the night, as Clark, the guide, assured me that timber was plentiful on that side of the river. The storm greatly impeded us, many of the mules growing discouraged, and some giving out entirely, so we could not get to Clark’s ’good camp’ for with ten hours of utmost effort, only about a half day’s distance could be covered, when at last, find-
Page 358 ing the struggle useless, we were forced to halt for the night in a bleak bottom on the north bank of the river. But no one could sleep for the wind swept over us with unobstructed fury, and the only fuel to be had was a few green bushes. As night fell, a decided change of temperature added much to our misery. The mercury, which had risen when the ‘norther’ began, again falling to zero. It can easily be imagined that, under the circumstances, the condition of the men was one of extreme discomfort; in truth, they had to tramp up and down the camp all night long to keep from freezing. Anything was a relief to this state of things, so, at the first streak of day, we quit the dreadful place and took up the marsh."
The next morning the command crossed the Canadian, which was about half a mile wide, by first breaking up the ice with axes and then marching the cavalry through. It took till noon to get the command over. Luckily there was timber on the south side of the stream. Fires were built and clothes thawed out and dried. General Sheridan says in his official report: "We moved due south until we struck the Washita, near Custer’s fight on November 27, having crossed the main Canadian with the thermometer about eighteen degrees below zero." The command marched in the afternoon and made camp on the Washita about dark. As wood was abundant, it was determined to lay over here until the storm subsided. The next day, December 11, General Sheridan, with several officers of the Nineteenth and Seventh, visited the battle field to determine, if possible, the fate of Major Elliott and his men. It took but a few moments to discover the bodies on the bank of the tributary of the Washita, called Sergeant- major Creek (as the sergeant-major of the Seventh was one of the killed), on the south side of the battle field. They were lying in a circle, feet in center, and a pile of empty cartridge cases by the side of each man told how dearly he had sold his life. The bodies were stripped of clothing, except the knit undershirt, and the throat of every one of them had the appearance of having been cut. This was caused by the Indians having cut out the thyroid cartilege. None were scalped, and none of the bodies had been molested. The men all lay with their faces down and the back was shot full of arrows. Wagons were sent for and the dead buried that night in a grave dug on the north bank of the river, opposite the scene of battle.
On his way back to camp, Doctor Bailey, of Topeka, surgeon of the Nineteenth, discovered the body of a white woman and a little boy two years old. The woman had been shot in the forehead, and the child killed by striking his head against a tree. The mother had a piece of bread concealed in her bosom, as though she had attempted to escape from camp. The next morning the woman was laid on a blanket on her side and the boy on her arm and the men ordered to march by to see if possibly some one might identify her. It was Mrs. Blinn, captured by the Kiowas, October 6, with a train going from Lyon to Dodge. Her husband was killed at the same time. The body of the woman and child were taken along and finally buried in the government cemetery at Fort Arbuckle. On the 2d of November, a number of Mexican traders had been in Kiowa camp and
Page 359 she had taken the opportunity to send out a letter by them. It is dated Saturday, November 7, 1868, and reads as follows:
"Kind friends, whoever you may be: I thank you for your kindness to me and my child. You want me to let you know my wishes. If you could only buy us from the Indians with ponies or anything and let me come and stay with you until I can get word to my friends, they would pay you and I would work and do all I could for you. If it is not too far to their camp, and you are not afraid to come, I pray that you will try. They tell me, as near as I can understand, they expect traders to come and they will sell us to them. Can you find out by this man and let me know if it is a white man? If it is Mexicans, I am afraid they would sell us into slavery in Mexico. If you can do nothing for me write to W. T. Herrington, Ottawa, Franklin County, Kansas, my father; tell him we are with the Cheyennes, and they say when the white men make peace we can go home. Tell him to write to the governor of Kansas about it, and for them to make peace. Send this to him. We were taken on the 9th of October on the Arkansas, below Fort Lyon. I cannot tell whether they killed my husband or not. My name is Mrs. Clara Blinn. My little boy, Willie Blinn, is two years old. Do all you can for me. Write to the peace commissioners to make peace this fall. For our sake do all you can and God will bless you. If you can let me hear from you again; let me know what you think about it. Write my father; send him this. Goodbye. Mrs. R. F. Blinn.
"I am as well as can be expected, but my baby is very sick."
The command marched on the morning of the 12th, following the Indian trail down the Washita. This was a hard day. It is well to see what so old a campaigner as General Sheridan thought of it:
"At an early hour on December 12, the command pulled out from its cozy camp and pushed down the valley of the Washita, following immediately on the Indian trail which led in the direction of Fort Cobb, but before going far it was found that the many deep ravines and canons on this trail would delay our train very much, so we moved out of the valley and took the level prairie on the divide. Here the traveling was good and a rapid gait was kept up until midday, when another storm of sleet and snow coming on, it became extremely difficult for the guides to make out the proper course; and, fearing that we might get lost or caught on the open plain without food or water—as we had been on the Canadian—I turned the command back to the valley, resolved to try no more short-cuts involving a risk of a disaster to the expedition. But to get back was no slight task, for a dense fog just now enveloped us, obscuring the land marks. However, we were headed right when the fog set in, and we had the good luck to reach the valley before nightfall, though there was a great deal of floundering about, and also much disputing among the guides as to where the river would be found. Fortunately we struck the stream right at a large grove of timber, and established ourselves admirably. By dark the ground was covered with twelve or fifteen inches, of fresh snow, and as usual, the temperature rose very sensibly while the storm was on. But, after nightfall, the snow ceased and the skies cleared up. Daylight having brought zero weather again, our start on the morning of the 13th was painful work, many of the men freezing their fingers while handling the horse equipment, harness and tents. However, we got off in fairly good season and kept to the trail along the Washita, notwithstanding the frequent digging and bridging necessary to get the wagons over ravines."
Three day’s march brought the command within striking distance of a Kiowa camp. The Indians did not suppose it possible for soldiers to move in such weather and were taken by surprise. While Page 360 the command was being taken across a bad ravine, some of them appeared with a flag of truce and delivered a letter from General Hazen saying the Kiowas were friendly. The soldiers represented the War Department and Hazen the Indian Department. It was exactly this back-fire and this influence that General Sherman had promised to guard against. There was no way out of it now, however, and Sheridan accepted the promise of the chiefs, Satanta and Lone Wolf, to move their families to Fort Cobb at once, and said the warriors would go with the command. So the march was resumed. In a little while the warriors began to drop out one by one. At last Satanta tried to get away, when he and Lone Wolf were both put under guard. The command reached Fort Cobb on the evening of December 18, and General Sheridan reported only two sick men in the Seventh Cavalry and six in the Nineteenth. He said: "The whole command is in shelter tents as we could not spare transportation for others, but the men now prefer the ’shelter,’ even at this season of the year. Everybody is feeling well and enthusiastic."
On the march from Camp Supply to Fort Cobb the command lost 148 horses, perishing from cold and want of food. Brigadier General Forsythe, assistant inspector- general, Department of Missouri, inspected the regiment on the 22d of November and said in his report:
"The soldierly bearing and military appearance of this regiment has made rapid and marked improvement since my inspection at Camp Supply; for this favorable condition of affairs the field officers are entitled and are deserving of special mention and praise. I have the pleasure, in concluding this report, to mention particularly the military bearing and soldierly appearance of Captain Norton’s Company D of this regiment. Next to Captain Norton’s company, I have the pleasant duty of bringing to your notice Capt. A. J. Pliley’s Company A. By reference to the table before given, it will be seen that Captain Pliley was the only officer either in the Seventh Cavalry or Nineteenth Kansas that made the march through from Camp Supply to this post without losing a single horse."
Perhaps some of you have never made the acquaintance of a "shelter" tent. During the war it was always called a "dog" tent. It is made of ducking, and very thin, is about six feet long and five or six feet wide. To pitch the tent the soldier must first hunt a couple of sticks with a fork or crotch, stick them in the ground with the fork a couple of feet from the ground. Now he hunts another stick that will reach from one fork to the other and then stretches the cloth over this, pinning the edges as close to the ground as he can. This leaves his tent open at both ends, with an open space of three or four inches between the cloth and the ground on each side. It always seemed to me that, in zero weather, this tent sacrificed a great deal in the interest of ventilation.
When the command reached Cobb they found no Kiowas, but Sheridan told Satanta and Lone Wolf that he would hang them both on the day following if the tribe did not report by that time. Satanta was put into a Sibley tent with an armed guard around it. He Page 361
would wrap his blanket around himself and come out and sit down by the side of the tent, then swaying back and forth, chant the most doleful and monotonous death- song. Then stooping over he would scoop up sand and dirt and put into his mouth. Then he would go around to the south and west side of the tent and, shading his eyes with his hand, would sweep the horizon to discover if possible the approach of his people.* But Satanta’s hour had not yet struck. Before sundown the advance of his tribe came in, and before morning the Kiowas were camped around Fort Cobb ready to obey orders. This settled the Kiowas and the Comanches had all reported except one small band. General Evans struck this band on the western base of the Wichita Mountains on Christmas day, killing twenty-five warriors; then what was left reported, some at Fort Cobb and some at Fort Bascom. Messages were sent to Yellow Bear, of the Arapahoes, and Little Robe, of the Cheyennes, to report and the former finally got his band in. This left nothing but the Cheyennes.
The command now moved south to Wichita Mountains, and established Fort Sill, on Cache Creek. The Indians were all required to accompany the command. It was impossible to obtain forage for the animals that had survived the severe winter and hard service, and after the arrival of the command on Cache Creek the horses of the Ninteenth were turned in to the regimental quartermaster, Capt. L. A. Thrasher, and taken to Fort Arbuckle.
While we were in camp at Fort Sill, General Custer took a scout of about fifty picked men and, passing along the southern foot of the Wichita Mountains, marched to the west a distance of one hundred miles or more. He got into a desolate country of sage brush and mesquite, entirely destitute of game and almost without water. As he could discover no signs of the Indians he returned to camp.
On the 12th inst. Colonel Crawford received a leave of absence for twenty days and resigned his commission as colonel to take effect at the expiration of his leave of absence. He left the command on the 15th of February, carrying with him the best wishes of the regiment, both officers and enlisted men. I assumed command of the regiment by virtue of seniority of rank.
On the 2d of March, 1869, the Nineteenth Kansas and the Seventh Cavalry marched from Fort Sill with intention to find Little Robe’s band of Cheyennes. The command marched to the west, and on the second day out camped at Old Camp Radziminski, a camp where the Second Cavalry, (now Fifth Cavalry), under Major Van Dorn, wintered, before the war. The course was still west across the North Fork of the Red River and across the Salt Fork of the Red River, till the command reached Gypsum Creek. Here the command was divided. Most of the train, and all the footsore and dis-
*When the Kiowa people had failed to come to Fort Cobb as they had promised, General Sheridan had threatened to hang Lone Wolf and Satanta if their people did not come in and Satanta’s son had been sent with a messenger to the tribe to that effect.
Page 362 abled were sent to the north up the North Fork and along the state line, with orders to procure commissary stores and halt on the Washita till joined by the balance of the command.
The Seventh and Nineteenth then pushed on up the Salt Fork and on the 6th of March struck the trail of the Indians. It was as broad and easy to follow as an ordinary country road. The scanty rations were now reduced one-half, and the pursuit began in earnest. At the head waters of the Salt Fork the trail turned north and skirted along the foot of the Llano Estacado. The trail led through a sandy mesquite country, entirely without game, although the streams coming out of the staked plains furnished abundance of water. By the 12th of March rations were reduced again. The mules were now dying very fast of starvation, as they had nothing to live on except the buds and bark of cottonwood trees cut down for them to browse on. Every morning the mules and horses that were unable to travel were killed by cutting their throats, and the extra wagons were run together and set on fire. On the 17th the command came onto Indian camp fires with the embers still smouldering. The rations were all exhausted on the 18th, and the men subsisted from that on, on mule meat, without bread or salt.
On the afternoon of the 20th, the Nineteenth Kansas came in sight of a band of ponies off the west of the line of march, which was now in a northeast direction. In a few minutes Indians began to cross the line of march in front of the command, going with all haste towards the herd. The regiment quickened its pace and I directed the line of march to the point from which the Indians were coming. In another mile the head of the column came upon a low bluff overlooking the bottom of the Sweetwater and saw a group of 250 Cheyenne lodges stretching up and down the stream and not more than 100 yards from the bluff. The men thought of the long marches, the short rations, the cold storms, of Mrs. Blinn and her little boy, of the hundred murders in Kansas, and, when the order "left front into line" was given the rear companies came over the ground like athletes. But "there is many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip." Lieutenant Cook, Seventh Cavalry, rode up to the commanding officer, and, touching his hat, said, "The general sends his compliments, with instructions not to fire on the Indians." It was a wet blanket, saturated with ice water. In a minute another aide came with orders to march the command a little way up stream and down into the valley to rest. The order was executed and the regiment formed in columns of companies with orders to rest. The men laid down on the ground or sat on logs but always with their carbines in hand. Custer was close by, sitting in the center of a circle of Indian chiefs holding a powwow. In two or three minutes an officer of the Seventh came up and in a low tone asked that a few officers put on their side-arms and drop down one at a time to listen to the talk. While Custer talked he watched the officers as they gathered around, and in a few minutes he got up onto his feet and said, "Take these In-
Page 363 dians prisoners." There was a short but pretty sharp struggle, and a guard with loaded guns formed a line around these half-dozen chiefs, and Custer continued the talk. But he had pulled out another stop. The tone was different. He told them they had two white women of Kansas, and they must deliver them up to him. They had denied this before, but now they admitted it, and said the women were at another camp, fifteen miles further down the creek. He told them to instruct the people to pick up this camp and move down to the camp mentioned and we would come the next day and get the women.
As soon as the chiefs were taken prisoners, the warriors mounted their ponies, and armed with guns or bows and arrows, circled around the bivouac of the troops. They looked very brave and warlike. They wore head dresses of eagle feathers, clean buckskin leggings and moccasins, and buckskin coats trimmed with ample fringe. Lieutenant Johnson, commissary of the Nineteenth, watched them awhile and then remarked: "This is the farthest I ever walked to see a circus." In a surprisingly short time after Custer gave them permission the whole camp was pulled down, and loaded onto the ponies, and not an Indian was in sight except a half-dozen held by the guards.
Another night of stout hearts but restless stomachs, and in the morning the command began a march of fifteen miles down the Sweetwater to the other camp. The trail was broad and fresh for five miles and then it began to thin out and get dimmer and dimmer, until at the end of ten miles not a blade of grass was broken. At the end of fifteen miles an old camp was reached, but no Indians had been there for two months. The regiment bivouacked for the night and General Custer had the head chief taken down to the creek, a riata put around his neck and the other end thrown over the limb of a tree. A couple of soldiers took hold of the other end of the rope, and, by pulling gently, lifted him onto his toes. He was let down, and Romeo, the interpreter, explained to him that, when he was pulled up clear from the ground and left there he would be hung.
The grizzly old savage seemed to understand the matter fully, and then Custer told him if they did not bring those women in by the time the sun got within a hand’s breadth of the horizon the next day he would hang the chiefs on those trees. He let the old chief’s son go to carry the mandate to the tribe. It was a long night but everybody knew the next afternoon would settle the matter in some way. As the afternoon drew on the men climbed the hills around the camp, watching the horizon, and about four p. m. a mounted Indian came onto a ridge a mile away. He waited a few minutes, and then beckoning with his hand to some one behind him he came onto the next ridge, and another Indian came onto the ridge he left. There was another pause, then the two Indians moved up and a third came in sight. They came up slowly in this way till at last a group of a dozen came in sight, and with a glass it could be seen that there were
Page 364 two persons on one of the ponies. These were the women. The Indians brought them to within about 200 yards of the camp, where they slid off the ponies, and Romeo, the interpreter, who had met the Indians there, told the women to come in. They came down the hill clinging to each other, as though determined not to be separated whatever might occur. I met them at the foot of the hill, and taking the elder lady by the hand asked if she was Mrs. Morgan. She said she was and introduced the other, Miss White. She then asked, "Are we free now?" I told her they were and she asked, "Where is my husband?" I told her he was at Hays and recovering from his wounds. Next question: "Where is my brother?" I told her he was in camp, but did not tell her that we had to put him under guard to keep him from marring all by shooting the first Indian he saw. Miss White asked no questions about her people. She knew they were all dead before she was carried away. Custer had an "A" tent, which he brought along for headquarters, and this was turned over to the women.
I forgot to say that on the trip a scouting party had chased an Indian who got away from them, but he lost a bundle, which was thrown into one of the wagons. On examination it proved to be some stuff that he had bought of some of the traders at the Fort. It contained calico, needles, thread, beads and a variety of things. The bundle was given to the women, and in a surprisingly short time they had a new calico dress apiece. The story the women told us of their hardships, the cruelty of the squaws, the slavery to which they were subjected, their suffering during the long flight of the Indians to escape the troops, ought to cure all the humanitarians in the world. The women told us the Indians had been killing their dogs and living on the flesh for the last six weeks.
At the retreat that night, while the women stood in front of their tent to see the guard mounted, the band played "Home, Sweet Home." The command marched the next morning for the rendezvous on the Wichita. It was a couple of days’ march, but when the end came there was coffee, bacon, hard bread and canned goods. Any one of these was a feast for a king. From Washita to Supply, Supply to Dodge, Dodge to Hays, where the women were sent home to Minneapolis, and the Nineteenth was mustered out of the service. The Indian prisoners were sent to Sill and soon after the Cheyennes reported there and went onto their reservations.
The generals had a good word for the Kansas volunteers and the work they had done. General Sheridan:
"I am now able to report that there has been a fulfillment of all the conditions which we had in view when we commenced our winter’s campaign last November, namely, punishment was inflicted; property destroyed; the Indians disabused of the idea that winter would bring security; and all the tribes south of the Platte forced on the reservations set apart for them by the Government, where they are in tangible shape for the good work of civilization, education, and religious instruction. I cannot speak too
Page 365 highly of the patient and cheerful conduct of the troops under my command; they were many times pinched by hunger and numbed by cold; sometimes living in holes below the surface of the prairie, dug to keep them from freezing; at other times pursuing the savages and living on the flesh of mules. In all these trying conditions the troops were always cheerful and willing and the officers full of esprit."
General Custer says in his official report:
"The point at which we found the Cheyenne village was in Texas, on the Sweetwater, about ten miles west of the state line. Before closing my report, I desire to call the attention of the major general commanding to the unwavering good conduct of this command since it undertook the march. We started with all the rations and forage that could be obtained, neither sufficient for the time which we have already been out. First, it become necessary to reduce the amount of rations; afterwards, a still greater reduction was necessary and tonight most of my men made their suppers from the flesh of mules that had died on the march today from starvation. When called upon to move in light marching order, they abandoned tents and blankets without a murmur, although much of the march has been made during the severest winter weather I have experienced in this latitude.
"The horses and mules of this command have subsisted day after day upon nothing but green cottonwood bark. During all these privations the officers and men maintain a most cheerful spirit, and I know not which I admire most, their gallantry in battle or the patient but unwavering perseverence and energy with which they have withstood the many disagreeable ordeals of this campaign.
"As the term of service of the Nineteenth Kansas Cavalry is approaching its termination, and I may not again have the satisfaction of commanding them during active operation, I desire to commend them—officers and men—to the favorable notice of the commanding general. Serving on foot, they have marched in a manner and at a rate that would put some of the regular regiments of infantry to blush. Instead of crying but for empty wagons to transport them, each morning every man marched with his troop, and, what might be taken as an example by some of the line officers of the regular infantry, company officers marched regularly on foot at the head of their respective companies; and now, when approaching the termination of a march of over three hundred miles, on greatly deficient rations, I have yet to see the first straggler.
"In obtaining the release of the captive white women, and that, too without ransom or the loss of a single man, the men of my command and particularly those of the Nineteenth Kansas, who were called into service owing to the murders and depredations of which the capture of these women formed a part, feel more fully repaid for the hardships they have endured than if they had survived an overwhelming victory over the Indians."
The expedition resulted in forcing the Kiowas, Comanches, Cheyennes and Arapahoes onto their reservations, and since then the frontier settlements of Kansas have been practically free from the depredations of Indians.
The campaign was a most arduous one, prosecuted without adequate camp equipage in the midst of winter, and much of the time with an exhausted commissariat. The regiments of Kansas have glorified our state on a hundred battle-fields, but none served her more faithfully or endured more in her cause than the Nineteenth Kansas Cavalry. BLOOMFIELD ACADEMY AND ITS FOUNDER
Mrs. S. J. Carr
Page 366 The subject of this brief sketch, John Harpole Carr, was the son of Thomas and Mary Carr and was born of Christian parents, in Lebanon in Wilson County, Tennessee. His father was a man of weight and influence in the neighborhood where he resided, and he was the worthy son of a worthy sire. The date of his birth was April 16, 1812. When he was seven, his parents with three other families emigrated to Arkansas Territory. They embarked on a keel-boat, on the Cumberland River, the 25th of December, 1819, and, on the 9th of April following, reached their destination which was the north bank of Red River, in Lafayette County, Arkansas. Later in the year, they settled in Hempstead County, where they took up government land and called their new settlement Temperanceville. On no account would they sell any of the land they had acquired to parties who were not theoretically and practically of strong temperance principles. There, in this new wilderness home, the boy grew to manhood with only such advantages as this primeval forest country afforded at that early date. A few families had preceded them and that by only two or three years. Supplies were dear and scarce. What little stock they owned must be saved for increase. nearly all the meat they had for several years was the game they killed from the woods. Corn bread was the only bread they had and scarce at that. He never saw flour bread until he was nearly fifteen years old or a glass window, and then rarely. The school houses and churches as well as the homes were all of logs, without even the bark being removed. These homes were covered with clapboards, four feet long, laid on rib-poles and held to their places by weight poles laid on top. The only light came from the broad low wood chimney, a few openings between the logs, and an open door, the shutters of which if it had any was made of the same material as the roof, the timber extended six instead of four feet long, and hung with wooden hinges. In his own home he conned his lessons by the light coming down from the sky through the chimney, and at night by the light of the blazing fire. What literature he had is not known, possibly a few books borrowed from the neighbors in the settlement except that we know that the "New York Christian Advocate" was a constant visitor in his home at a very early date. It was however very different from what that paper now is in regard to literature adapted to a youthful mind. The seats in the churches and school houses were made of split logs from ten to twelve inches in diameter, thus making two seats with made legs, let in with an inch and a half auger.
The clothing was of jeans, homespun and homedyed. They had a few sheep in the settlement. They tanned their own leather, made their own shoes, also their hats with the fur of the coon, fox, rabbit
Page 367 and wild-cat, caught by the boys at night. Such were the surroundings of this youth.
He was the oldest of a family of six, four sisters and one brother younger than himself. He occupied a cabin in the yard at night, alone and being timid often retired at an early hour. It can readily be imagined that his nights were lonely. Had it not been for the pioneer preachers, men of education and refinement who always found a ready welcome in his father’s hospitable home, there would have been little for a young man to aspire to. The longing of his heart were ever for knowledge but his services were needed at home and there was no money to send him abroad. Who can tell whether he ever would have had those yearnings but for the inspiration afforded by the frequent visits of these men of God, the hope they instilled, the instruction they imparted.
As soon as he had the opportunity, he learned the carpenter’s and cabinet-maker’s trade, both of which were of great advantage to him in after years. It was a proud day to him when he bought his first suit of clothes at the store for which he paid fifty dollars of his own hard earned money. These things are mentioned that it may be known what difficulties he overcame in fitting himself for his life work. In October, 1833, he embraced religion at a Cumberland Presbyterian camp meeting, and was licensed to preach in the Methodist Episcopal Church, in 1834 in Mt. Prairie Circiut, Missouri Conference, Martin Wills, presiding elder. The next year he traveled the Rolling Fork Circuit, C. F. Ramsey, presiding elder, and was received into the Missouri Conference. At the end of the second year he located. In 1836 he was married to Miss Harriet Newell Nail, and unto them were born six children, two of whom survive, Edwin Erastus Carr, living at Tiff City, Missouri, and John Emory Carr, of Wynnewood, Indian Territory.
In 1845 he was again received into the traveling connection, joining the "Indian Mission Conference," and travelled the Doaksville Circuit, six years in succession.
He kept up the frontier work, and is reckoned among the pioneer preachers of Arkansas, Indian Territory and Texas, having preached several times where the city of Paris, Texas now stands, when it was composed of only a few scattered dwellings. During these years of toil he forded rapid rivers, travelled through heat and cold and stormy weather, stopping for the night sometimes with a friendly Choctaw, or at one of the boarding schools under the "American Board," where he was always welcome, or if he found no better place, in some deserted cabin he made his own coffee and prepared his meal from provisions he always carried with him, and wrapping his blanket around him, was weary enough to lie down to refreshing sleep upon the cabin floor, he counted not his life dear unto him, if
Page 368 so be that he might be counted worthy to tell the story of the cross to these children of the forest.
In 1847 his beloved wife died. He had taken her to his sister’s home in Arkansas and though feeble she would not detain him from his life work but said "Go." But ere he finished the round of his next circuit, the grim messenger claimed his victim. They sent for him, he rode all night, and reached her couch of suffering a few short hours before she breathed her last.
Later in the same year he was appointed to an "African Mission" within the Conference, but the toils and privations of the past had made such inroad upon his health that he was compelled again to resign his work. Not yet however was he to be laid aside as a useless vessel. In the fall of the same year the Conference appointed him to superintend the construction of buildings known afterward as "Bloomfield Academy," in the Choctaw Nation. He was afterward appointed superintendent of the school. In the spring of 1852, he, with others, selected the site and began the work, stretching his tent in the hitherto unbroken forest in the midst of a grove. The situation was afterwards much admired by passing travelers. It was surrounded by undulating prairies of verdant green and all in gay attire with wild flowers of all hues and kinds, so like a garden spot planted and cared for by nature’s own bountiful hand. There, with his own axe he strikes the first blow toward civilization in this new field, which, resounding, breaks the long silence of the ages, and began the establishment of the first missionary boarding school for girls among the Chickasaws. A year previously a manual labor school for boys was established near Tishomingo, superintended by the Rev. J. C. Robinson.
In June of this year Mr. Carr was again married to Miss Angelina Hosmer, of Bedford, Mass. She was a former pupil of Mt. Holyoke Seminary, Mass. Of this union five children were born one of whom survives, W. J. D. Carr of Sherwood, Texas. Immediately after their marriage, they went to New England in quest of teachers and secured Miss S. J. Johnson, of Lenox, Mass., also Mrs. Butterfield, who went at once to Chickasaw Manual Labor School and was never connected with Bloomfield. The school should have been named after General Washington, for every year it received a portion of the interest from the money donated by the first Congress of the United States to General Washington in acklowledgment of his revolutionary services. This he refused to accept personally but had it set apart for educational purposes and Bloomfield had $1,000 yearly of this money.
It may be asked, how then did it obtain its name? It was in this way. While Mr. Carr was living in his tent a warm friend of his among the Chickasaws, Mr. Jackson Kemp, an ex-chief who had previously visited him and returned to his home in Doaksville, wished to send him a message but did not know where to address him.
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So he improvised this poetical name, which the profusion of flowers suggested to the Indian chieftain. All the boarding schools among the Choctaws and Chickasaws, and I recall thirteen, were supported by joint appropriations from the respective missionary boards having charge of the schools and the annuity fund of the Chickasaws and Choctaws.
In Bloomfield the $1,000 before mentioned was included in the money received on the part of the Nation. The Board contributed one third and the Nation two thirds of all the money used for the current expenses of the school. There never was any average attendance calculated for we always kept our number filled, whether it was twenty- five, thirty-five, forty-five or sixty. Whenever there was a vacancy through sickness or any other cause for any length of time, another was waiting to step in. The trustees were the superintendent of missions, the Rev. John Harrell on behalf of the Church, and two Chickasaws on behalf of the Nation. After the first appropriation for the building Mr. Carr received $66.66 yearly per pupil. His salary was $600 a year. His teachers salaries were raised gradually from $100 the first year to $250 at its close. All the salaries, all the hired help, all the school books and stationery with every other expenditure was paid out of the yearly appropriation. It required economy to do this, but expenditure was saved by Mr. Carr’s being able to do carpenter and cabinet work himself. He cultivated a farm on which he raised wheat, corn and potatoes, and in time two orchards which furnished peaches, plums and apples. So he managed to keep clear of debt. Reaching Bloomfield in December of 1852, we could not open the boarding school until the next September owing to the unfinished condition of the buildings. So a neighborhood school was opened for boys and girls and continued through the winter and spring. I recall the names of three of the boys, namely, Simon Kemp, Martin Allen and Levi Colbert. In the fall of 1853 we opened the boarding school, with twenty-five pupils which was all we could accomodate at the time. Mrs. Carr was matron and Miss S. J. Johnson was teacher. The girls were taught if necessary the English language and the alphabet; spelling, reading, writing and artihmetic, both mental and written, and, as they advanced, natural philosophy, grammar, "Watts on the Mind," botany and history of the United States during the regular school hours. The opening morning session was at half past eight and continued with a recess until half past twelve. The older pupils studied from five to six in the afternoon. Before this, in the afternoon they were taught to cut, make and mend their own clothes. They were also taught how to do all the ordinary house work, cooking excepted. The older pupils were taught each Saturday in the pastry department Instruction in all these domestic duties was required by the contract. The division of labor was after the plan adopted at Mt. Holyoke Seminary, and never seemed irksome to anyone. In the afternoon at stated hours they were taught needle, wax, worsted and coral work, also drawing, painting and vocal music. In each of these
Page 370 departments they showed taste and made fair proficiency. The departments of fancy work and music was taught by Mrs. Carr.
At the opening exercises of the school in the morning instead of reading the Scripture, each girl who could committed to memory a verse, the same one. They began at the first chapter of the Gospel of St. John. Everyone was taught as far as possible to explain the meaning of the verse and give the definition of the most important words. They finished the Gospel some time before the school suspended.
Singing was an important factor in family worship and at evening they repeated the verse they learned in the morning thereby fixing it in the memory. Another exercise kept up through all the years was the voluntary selection of a Bible verse which they repeated at the breakfast table, each choosing their own and most of the girls participated as did the teachers and family.
In the Sabbath School, Mrs. Carr taught the advanced class by Bible topics and her pupils would compare well with any children of the same opportunities in their understanding of the Scriptures. The youngest pupils were taught the catachism and other lessons suited to the primary department, being advanced to the Bible class when they had memorized the catechism. Mr. Carr preached in the school house Sabbath mornings, once in two weeks, or, later on, in an arbor near the branch, in the summer time. They were nature’s children and much preferred to worship in God’s universal temple. At these services the whole school was always in attendance. On the intervening Sabbath he preached sometimes across the river, at Virginia Point and other places, or at the Eastman School house, in the neighborhood. Occasionally the Rev. John Harrell, superintendent of Indian missions, or the presiding elder preached in his stead.
In the fall of 1855 the services of Miss Eliza Martin from Collin County, Texas, were secured as matron for one year. She has been dead many years. Not long after school opened in the fall of 1856, a man called and asked for Mr. Carr, introducing himself as Doctor Greene and requesting an interview with one of our pupils. Mr. Carr, who felt the responsibility of a parent toward all entrusted to his care refused his request without a written permit from her parents, who resided at Doaksville. It seems that she had met him clandestinely and had engaged herself to him unbeknown to her parents. She had never mentioned him to any of us and no one knew how she felt toward him. She had also received gifts from him. Her friends were not pleased with his attentions and one of her uncles was so incensed toward him that a shooting affair was the result and a black eye for the Doctor. He came often, was bold in his demands, determined and threatening in his attitude. Sometimes the interviews were long but however fierce and bitter he was at first, he always yielded to
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Mr. Carr’s mild and gentle persuasions and went away subdued. During one of his visits it was thought best to interview the girl. She was only fourteen or fifteen years of age, so she was sent for from the school room. She knew his horse and when found in the sitting room she was behind the door hid under a bunch of shawls. She seemed frightened and said she did not wish to see Doctor Green. At one time the Doctor informed Mr. Carr that he had fulfilled the conditions and seen her parents but he did not have the document required. Then he changed his tactics and prevailed upon one of the neighbors to make a candy stew and through the unprincipled cook in the kitchen, who was bribed, a note was conveyed to the girl stating that there would be horses outside the enclosure sufficient to carry every girl to the candy party. Only two of the smallest girls went. At another time he offered the cook ten dollars to go to the dormitory after the girls had retired and bring her down. That night there seemed to be so much disturbance, dogs barking, etc., after the pupils had retired for the night that we locked their outside door, a thing which was not considered necessary in those days, and had never been done before nor since. But the Chickasaw Council convened at Tishomingo, had heard that Dr. Greene had threatened Mr. Carr’s life and they sent two armed men for his protection who rode all night reaching Bloomfield early in the morning. It is true that there had been spies all about seeking to decoy the teachers so they could get possession of the girl. But Mr. Carr dismissed the men assuring them that he had no need of a guard. At last the Doctor gave unto a Chickasaw, who had been known to be a desperate character, ten dollars to interview the girl personally and ask her if she wrote the letter he, the Doctor, had received some weeks before, without compulsion. In reply, she wrote the letter and it contained her true sentiments and after that we had no more serious trouble.
In December, 1856, a new worker was added to our list, Miss Ellen I. Downs, of Champlain, New York, who was matron of the school from that time until its close, in 1861. She stayed with the family one year after the war ended, then taught a private school in Paris, Texas, one year and was afterward engaged as teacher and matron in Lamar Female Seminary of that city, the principal of which was the Rev. O. T. Stark, formerly a missionary among the Choctaws at Goodland. She remained at the Seminary until her marriage to the Rev. J. C. Robinson, whom she survives, and resides at 504 Robinson St., Paris, Texas. She had filled many important positions in the Church with which she is connected, the W. C. T. U., the Sunday School and missionary work, and is at the time of writing this very feeble.
In the fall of 1859, a pupil, honored and beloved by all had charge of the primary department, keeping up with her classes at the same time, Serena Factor, had been with us from the very first. The girls all called her "cousin." She was gentle and sweet in her dis-
Page 372 postion, a devout Christian and exercised a strong controling influence over the whole school. She only taught a part of the forenoon. The next year, Mr. Carr secured the services of Miss Rebecca Pritchett in the primary department. She lived with her mother at Virginia Point, Texas. Soon after the school was disbanded she was married to Doctor Henry, a widower who resided in the same neighborhood.
Following the firing on Fort Sumpter, the whole South was in arms, and many of the fathers of our girls enlisted. Their first act was to take their daughters home. So, in May of that scholastic year, Bloomfield Academy, as it had been, was no more.
Every year the school closed with a public examination. Many of the parents lived at a distance and those who had no relations in the neighborhood stayed all night with us the night before. All who attended the examination, whether living near or far away, were invited to dinner. Usually as many as three hundred dined with us on that day alone. Soon after school was dismissed, Mrs. Carr, who had always been frail was laid upon her bed with disease of the spine from which she never arose but continued to decline until September of 1864, when death brought her sweet release. Her remains lie buried with two little daughters of Mr. Carr’s in the cemetery north of the school house and within the enclosure as it then was.
Several improvements were inaugurated during our stay among the people. It is no easy task to persuade anyone that the way their ancestors did is not the very best way. After Mr. Carr had chosen the site for the school building, families began to move from Doaksville and other places and settled in the neighborhood. There was a law that no one could locate within a half a mile of another claim. Among the most prominent of those who settled near were two Indian chieftains, half brothers, Mr. Jackson and Joel Kemp, with their families. The latter owned the ferry known as Kemp’s ferry. Then there were four Colbert brothers, Adam, Lemuel, Morgan and Benjamin, and, several years later a Mr. Holmes Colbert, who showed us much friendship.
The first winter we were there, there was an unusual mortality among the people. Their cabins were open and though the winters were short they were severe and possibly owing to the season’s being short they did not think it essential to provide warm enough clothing. There was no carpenter in the neighborhood and consequently Mr. Carr had all the coffins to make. He always kept lumber on hand, and many a time answered to a call in the middle of the night and went out into his shop to work. The coffins had to be lined and covered on the outside with black cloth either cambric or woolen for there was no lumber but pine. He conducted all the funerals far and near and was obliged to make the coffin and perform the burial service for his own little daughter. There were eighteen funerals
Page 373 in that thinly settled neighborhood during that first winter. It was their custom to bury in their cabins. They removed enough of the puncheon floor to enable them to dig a grave and after the interment laid back the boards, deserted the house for a few weeks then came back and lived on as before. The clay was hard and lumpy and decomposition was rapid. One house was literally filled with graves, so that the last one had to be buried outside.
The next summer the carpenter who had taken the contract to enlarge the building at Bloomfield, finding this house empty moved his family in. The son buried his daughter then moved into a tent for the rest of the summer. But long and persistent efforts, were at length rewarded and the first one to be laid away in the cemetery under the blue sky of heaven was Mrs. Allen, sister to the Colbert brothers. After this they never went back to their old customs.
It was during our residence in the Nation that polygamy was made unlawful. A law was also enacted compelling all who had not been lawfully joined together to have the ceremony performed. Many a couple, with children grown around them, stood up and made the solemn promise to cleave to each other "so long as ye both shall live" as though they had not been doing so through all the years. On one occasion after this ceremony had been performed and the couple had been told that the lawful fee was two dollars the husband presented a dollar to Mr. Carr and the wife took up the puncheon floor and put a dollar’s worth of potatoes in a sack and gave him for her share of the fee.
Another custom which was universal among the women was the wearing of a silk handkerchief in place of a bonnet, folded from corner to corner and tied under the chin, but we could only advance step by step and by persuading the girls to wear sunbonnets their mothers soon followed.
I will here give the names of some of the older girls who first entered the school. Serena and Lorena Factor, twins, daughters of full blooded indians.
Rebecca Burney, daughter of a deacon of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church.
Rebecca Colbert, sister of Frank Colbert who built the bridge across Red River.
Amelia and Lucy Kemp, daughters of Jackson Kemp.
Mary and Frances Kemp, daughters of Joel Kemp, who owned the ferry.
Mary Ann Colbert, daughter of Morgan Colbert, deacon in Cumberland Presbyterian Church.
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Alice Warner, daughter of Dr. Warner. She married Captain Welch, of the Confederate army.
Mary Reynolds, whose parents resided in the neighborhood.
Elvirn and Elzira Colbert, daughters of Lemuel Colbert and Carter Elzira Hoyt.
Others were: Emily Allen, Sallie Shecho and Mildred Fletcher.
During the Civil War a private school was kept three hours during the morning, free to all who chose to avail themselves of the opportunity. In the early part of the war the Chickasaw Battalion had orders to occupy the biuldings at Bloomfield in which case the family would have had to move out, but the buildings were not large enough to accommodate all so they main body of soldiers encamped in the prairie only making use of the small building in the yard, which we called "The travellers house," for the Doctor’s office and the girls’ sitting room form commissary stores. The school house was used for a hospital. Mr. Carr had the pleasure of distributing delicacies and medicines to the sick soldiers which they afterward remembered with gratitude.
In those times it was a common sound at night to hear the tramping of men and the clattering of the spurs of the troopers as they tramped through the verandas, thus assuring themselves that "All was quiet along the Potomac," no insurrectionary scheme was brewing and no foe lurking in our midst. Yet we never felt safe at night, for all northern Texas was infested by a band of robbers called "Bush Whackers.’ They belonged to neither army but in the night they entered homes wherever they suspected anyone of having any money secreted. They suspended the man and proceeded to draw out his toe nails if he refused to tell where it was, and not infrequently men suffered who had no money at all.
From the minutes of the Indian Mission Conference held at Eastman school house in September, 1864, we learn that three-fourths of the territory occupied by the Conference was laid waste by the ravages of war. There were only ten preachers to answer to the roll call. Lee’s surrender was in April of the ensuing year. While Mr. Carr was looking eagerly forward to the return of his oldest living son, Joel Henry, who was in the army all through the war and had been promoted to first lieutenant of his company, word came back that he and his captain had been decoyed into a house supposed to be friendly, betrayed and shot. This was a terrible blow to the fond father who was looking forward so anxiously for his return.
In August, 1865, he was married the third time to Miss S. J. Johnson. They had three children, two of whom survive, Bradford Marvin Carr, Denver, Colo., and Sallie Casandra Carr who resides with her widowed mother in Los Angeles, California.
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In the spring of 1866, Mr. Carr was a delegate and attended the first General Conference of the M. E. Church, South, after the close of the war, at New Orleans. In September of the same year, the Indian Mission Annual Conference met at Bloomfield, with Bishop Marvin in the chair. This was his first Conference after he was appointed to the Episcopacy. The Bishop and all the members of the Conference were entertained at Bloomfield. Mr. Carr was appointed Presiding Elder of Choctaw and Chickasaw District which work he continued to do as long as he remained in the Nation. He started out in his buggy taking his saddle along and when it became necessary he left his buggy and proceeded on horseback. It took four weeks to make the round and he had his own provisions along as it was often necessary for him to prepare his own meals.
During all the years of the war no one received any compensation. We lived on what the farm produced and what supplies we had. There was no hope of Missionary operations being resumed for years to come, as the Board was already burdened with a heavy debt for our Missionaries in China had been supported by money advanced which must be paid first. Having three children to educate we were compelled to seek a desirable place for the accomplishment of that purpose and Paris, Texas, was selected.
Here let me state that after the war closed Captain Young of the Confederate Army opened a neighborhood school in the school house which was continued sometime after we left. He was an Englishman, had at one time belonged to the Queen’s Body Guard. He afterwards removed with his family to Texas.
So, in December of 1867, we bade farewell to the scenes of our toils and labors, hallowed by a thousand endearing associations, to the little spot of earth where the dead not only our own but of our neighbors reposed, stopping for dinner by invitation at the ever hospitable home of Mr. Jackson Kemp, and a sumptuous turkey dinner it was. He was a constant friend, a strong support ever rallying to cheer and encourage us in every time of need. He was a perfect gentleman, kind and tender-hearted as a child. We could never forget the many favors we received from him and his family.
Mr. Carr bought us a home in Paris and enlarged the building. When that was done he took work as a supply on the circuit whenever his services were needed until called home on account of sickness in the family. Afterward he worked in a furniture store until his last sickness. He had a severe attack of pneumonia and after two and a half days of suffering he "was not, for God took him." He died December 29, 1876. The testimony of the City Council of which he was a member at the time of his death was, "That the Council had been deprived of an able and conscientious member, his family a kind and devoted husband and father and the community at large a noble, useful and exemplary citizen."
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The quarterly Conference at Paris Station M. E. Church, South, of which he was a member rendered this tribute to his memory, "It is with deep regret that we are called to give up from our Quarterly Conference one of its brightest ornaments, our beloved co-laborer. Having enjoyed the benefits of his judicious counsel and experience so often in our deliberations on the spiritual and temporal interests of our charge it is with humble submission to the will of Him who doeth all things well that we say, ’Thy will not ours, Oh Lord, be done.’ Yet we know it is well with those who, like the ripened sheaves, are gathered to their heavenly home. Life’s labor is done and the good man takes his rest. ’How blest the righteous when he dies.’ In the death of our brother, the Church has lost a tried and useful minister of Christ, and the community in which he resided a dignified and honored citizen." This is the testimony of his presiding elder, "He has ended a well rounded life prompt in business, an exemplary father, an attentive and provident husband, an humble and devout Christian and an instructive preacher of erect person and solemn mien. But he has gone, a good man has fallen."
Mrs. S. J. Carr, April 1, 1901.
SUBSEQUENT HISTORY OF BLOOMFIELD
The story of Bloomfield, as told in the narrative of her husband’s life and career by the late Mrs. Susan Jane Carr, brings it only down to the time of its discontinuance at the outbreak of the Civil War. The story of its re-establishment and of its operations through the intervening years can only be told in brief form here. When the founder, Rev. John H. Carr, with his family, left Bloomfield, in 1867, the traditions which had gathered about this school had too strong a hold on the Chickasaw people to permit of its permanent abandonment. While the records are incomplete, it is known that the first school session after their departure was conducted by Captain Frederic Young. At that time, the school was conducted as a co-educational institution, boys as well as girls being admitted as pupils. It is worthy of remark that, among the boys thus enrolled, there was a lad by the name of Douglas H. Johnston, who was destined, many years later, to serve as superintendent of Bloomfield Seminary and, still later, to serve the people of the Chickasaw Nation as their chief executive or governor.
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Captain Young was succeeded, in 1868, by Dr. and Mrs. H. F. Murray, who had charge of the school for two years. Mrs. Murray was a lady of culture and refinement, a native of Mississippi, a member of a prominent Chickasaw family, and she had been educated at Salem, North Carolina. Doctor Murray was a native of Tennessee, well educated and a physician by profession, having completed his medical studies in New Orleans. He continued his professional practice to some extent while in charge of the school at Bloomfield. Following Doctor and Mrs. Murray, Professor Robert Cole had charge of the school for five years, from 1870 to 1875. He, in turn, was succeeded by Professor J. E. Wharton.
Up to this time, the school had been conducted largely upon the personal responsibility and individual initiative of the superintendent. In 1876, however, the Chickasaw National Legislature enacted a law providing that Bloomfield Academy should be a girls’ school, of high school grade, and that it should thenceforth be known as Bloomfield Seminary. It was also provided that the superintendent should take a contract for conducting the school in all of its details, including the employment and payment of instructors and other workers, furnishing the necessary text-books, stationery and other means of instruction, together with boarding, lodging, laundry and medical attention for the pupils and everything necessary for a full and thorough schooling through the required course of study.
Professor Wharton continued in control until 1880, when he was succeeded by Robert Boyd, of Tishomingo, who was a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation by birth. Two years later, Mr. Boyd resigned and was succeeded by Mr. and Mrs. Douglas H. Johnston, who were to fill out the other three years of the five-year period. Mrs. Johnston died during the last year of this contract term. Mr. Johnston was given a new contract for another five-year period, in 1885. Three years later, he married Miss Betty Harper, one of the teachers in the Seminary and who was also one of its former pupils. Her mother, whose maiden name was Serena Factor, had likewise been educated at Bloomfield and was the first pupil of the institution to become one of its teachers. Mr. and Mrs. Johnston remained in active charge of Bloomfield Seminary for ten years after their marriage. Then, Mr. Johnston was elected as governor of the Chickasaw Nation,
Page 378 thus terminating sixteen years of faithful and efficient service as superintendent.
Governor Johnston was succeeded by Professor Elihu B. Hinshaw, who had been actively associated with him as the principal of the Seminary, for eleven years. During those years, a modern frame building was erected, superceding the original log school building. Both the original building and the new one were destroyed by fire, however, and a third building was erected, more commodious than either of its predecessors. While Governor Johnston was superintendent, he was greatly interested in popularizing education among the Chickasaw people, especially those of full Indian blood. As the result of his efforts, the Chickasaw Legislature was induced to make a grant of ten dollars per month for the maintenance of each pupil, whether living at home or boarding at the Seminary. This action was the cause of many families moving and settling in the immediate vicinity of Bloomfield.
Professor Hinshaw worked out a course of study for Bloomfield Seminary which was submitted to the Chickasaw Legislature for approval. The Legislature not only approved the course of study but issued a charter to the Seminary, authorizing it to confer diplomas on those of its students who had completed the course for graduation. The Seminary was the only school in the Chickasaw Nation which was thus honored. Professor Hinshaw, who is a native of Indiana and a man of finished scholarship in the classics, also developed a summer school of normal training for teachers, which was largely patronized by teachers of the Chickasaw Nation for a number of years immediately prior to statehood. The stimulus supplied to the cause of education in the Chickasaw Nation from these several sources had a marked effect upon the people of the Chickasaw Nation generally and it is said that practically every child of school age in the Nation could read, write and speak English when the time came to organize the public school system under the state government.
The cultivation of the fine arts was especially stressed during the administration of Professor Hinshaw at Bloomfield Seminary. The work of the art department of the Seminary was well represented in the Indian Territory exhibit at the Louisiana
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Purchase Exposition, at St. Louis, in 1904, where it received a high award. Many of the women of Oklahoma, who trace their lineage back to a Chickasaw ancestry, owe their education and a large measure of their inspiration for the better things of life to the training and the cultural influences of Bloomfield Seminary.
In 1899, the Federal Government assumed control of all tribal schools in the Indian Territory. Professor Hinshaw was continued in the superintendency of Bloomfield Seminary for seven years longer, however. In 1906, he was succeeded by Mr. J. R. Hendricks, who, in turn was succeeded by Mrs. Annie Ream Addington, a member of the well known Guy family of the Chickasaw Nation. She remained in charge until the school buildings were again destroyed by fire, January 24th, 1914. It was not again rebuilt but the school was moved to Ardmore, where the old Hargrove College property was purchased for its accomodation and where it has since been conducted.*
*The Oklahoma Historical Society is indebted to Miss Sally C. Carr, of Los Angeles, California; Professor Elihu B. Hinshaw, of Oklahoma City; Governor Douglas H. Johnston of the Chickasaw Nation, and Mrs. Michael Conlan, of the Society’s staff, for the information and data for the foregoing supplemental account. HORACE P. JONES, SCOUT AND INTERPRETER.
JOSEPH B. THOBURN.
Page 380
Horace Pope Jones, scout, interpreter and philosopher, was born at Jefferson City, Missouri, March 29, 1829. He was the son of Robert Harris and Maria (Ramsay) Jones. Robert Harris Jones was a native of Kentucky, born December 29, 1798. Of his antecedents and family history but little is known. At the age of thirty, he married Maria Ramsey, who was born at Jefferson City, Missouri, September 19, 1809. Her parents, Johnathan and Hannah (Lamkin) Ramsay had migrated to Missouri from Robertson County, Tennessee, both coming of pioneer stock. The father of Johnathan Ramsay, familiarly known as "Granddad" Ramsay, had been captured or stolen by the Indians while he was a small child and was reared among them, returning to live among the people of his own race only after he had grown to manhood. As was not infrequent in those days, the forebears of Horace Pope Jones had migrated in company with kinsfolk, so the family connections were numerous in Missouri and, socially, all were held in high esteem.
The boyhood of Horace P. Jones was spent at Jefferson City, where he received a fair English education in the public schools. As a boy, he was very fond of outdoor sports and excelled in hunting and fishing. When he was seventeen years old (in 1846), the family migrated to Texas, settling at the town of Jefferson, county seat of Marion County, in the northeastern part of the state. Of the story of his life during the ensuing ten years, no record seems to have been left but much of that may be left to conjecture, since he was a born hunter and always at home in the saddle and most of Texas was still a wilderness, teeming with wild life. That he drifted westward toward the buffalo country and came in contact with the Indians of several tribes, which were still ranging over the central, northern and western portions of Texas, seems probable. That he lived among them and associated with them until he learned to speak the language of the Comanches and to use the sign language which was so readily comprehended by the people of all of the tribes of that region is also likely.
In 1855, the Federal Government effected an arrangement with the state of Texas, whereby two small Indian reservations
Page 381 were established on the Brazos River. Of these, the one known as "the Lower Reserve" was located at the Forks of the Brazos, in Young County. Upon this Lower Reserve were gathered a number of small tribes and parts of tribes, including the Texas band of Caddoes, the Nadarkoes, Keechis, Waccoes, Towakonies, Absentee Shawnees and others. The other reservation, known as "the Upper Reserve," was located upon the Clear Fork of the Brazos, in Throckmorton County, and was occupied by the people of the Peneteka ("Honey-eater") band of the Comanche tribe, which was the only one of the Comanche bands that was at all tractable in those days. At the agency of the Upper Reserve, Horace P. Jones was employed as farmer, his work being to supervise and instruct the Indians in tilling the soil and caring for live stock. In his annual report for the year 1858, Matthew Leeper, agent for the Comanches of the Upper Reserve, makes the following statement:
"Notwithstanding all the difficulties and threatened dangers with which these people have been surrounded during the past year, they have cheerfully and quietly followed their agricultural pursuits and have apparently been satisfied to be confined to the narrow limits of the reserve. This, I apprehend, is the result of sound judgment and good sense on the part of the Indians more than any management or agency in my own. Those who are here are determined to follow a quiet, civil life and to follow, as far as possible, the good examples of white men. Their crop of corn, which was one of the best in the country, was cultivated principally by the labor of their own hands under the efficient instructions of their farmer, Mr. H. P. Jones, and will be amply sufficient to supply them with bread-stuffs during the ensuing year."
In his mastery of the Comanche language, Horace Jones completed his qualification for the part he was destined to play as a scout and interpreter, for it was really the court language of the tribes of the Southern Plains, being understood and spoken to a greater or less extent by some members of nearly all of the other tribes. But he became more than a mere interpreter, for he won the confidence and trust of the Peneteka Comanches to such an extent that he soon became their advisor and counselor and their oracle and mouthpiece. While living with them in Texas, he was formally adopted as a member of the Comanche tribe and he ever afteward justified their faith in him on every occasion wherein his knowledge of the white man’s tongue and the white man’s tricky ways made it possible.
As the result of the intrigues and machinations of a discharged Indian agent, the settlers of several neighboring frontier counties became very much inflamed against the Indians of
Page 382 these two reservations on the Brazos, in the latter part of 1858 and, in consequence, they were all removed to the Washita, in the western part of the Indian Territory, in August and September of the following year. Horace P. Jones was one of the white employes who accompanied the Indians to the new location, where the two agencies were consolidated and where he was retained as an employe. At the outbreak of the Civil War, practically all of the Indians who had been thus transferred to the Territory except the Peneteka Comanches and the Tonkawas, sought refuge in Kansas. Matthew Leeper who, as an agent, was let out in the consolidation of the two agencies, was subsequently appointed agent for the tribes thus settled on the Washita, in which position he was retained by the Confederate commissioner of Indian Affairs. The agency of these tribes was located near Fort Cobb, in the west- central part of Caddo County. Horace P. Jones was retained as an employe of the Washita Agency, serving as an interpreter.
That Horace Jones was not always on duty at the Washita Agency, during the interval between its establishment and the outbreak of the Civil War, is evident from the fact that he related to Hon. Dan W. Peery (one of the present directors of the Oklahoma Historical Society) the incidents of the recapture of Cynthia Ann Parker, in 1860, to which he was a personal witness. In this narrative, he stated that he was serving as an interpreter with the company of Texas Rangers under the command of Capt. L. S. ("Sul") Ross, by which the recapture was effected. Acting in this capacity, he was called upon to interrogate Cynthia Ann as to her identity, practically all knowledge or remembrance of her mother tongue having been effaced during the twenty-four years which had passed since she had been captured and carried away by the Comanches. She was frightened and very reticent, however, and little or no information could be elicted from her. Then several of the older men of the command began to discuss her possible identity. They mentioned the names of a number of white girls and young women who had been carried away into captivity from the frontier settlements by the Comanches during the course of the twelve of fifteen years preceding. Finally, one of them remarked that she might have been carried away in childhood at a much earlier date and then he mentioned the two Parker children, Cynthia Ann and John, who had been captured and carried away when Parker’s Fort
Page 383 was destroyed, in 1836. At the mention of her name, Cynthia Ann immediately became not only interested but animated and, tapping her breast with her finger, she exclaimed, "Me, Cynthia Ann! Me, Cynthia Ann!" Thereafter she talked more freely with Jones, telling him of her Comanche chieftain husband, Peta Nocona (i.e., "Lone Camper"), and of her two young sons who had escaped when she had been recaptured.
On the night of the destruction of the Washita Agency and the massacre of the Tonkawa Indians (October 23, 1862), Horace P. Jones narrowly escaped death. The story of this incident in his life is most effective when reproduced in his own words, as he related it many years afterward:
I was living at the Indian Agency, about four miles north of the Washita. There had been rumors that the Osages, who had taken sides with the Federal troops, were sending a large party down to attack the Tonkawa and kill all the white people at the Agency who sided with the Confederates. The agent, hearing these rumors, had left the country, taking his family to safe quarters, and had left me in charge. The Agency was right in the Caddo country and I thought I had some good friends among the members of that tribe who would warn me of the approach of a hostile party but, as things turned out, I found that I was mistaken.
The Caddoes, who were friends of the Osages, declared that our fears were without foundation but, should anything occur, I was to be told at once. I noticed that, for some time, the Caddoes had been holding secret meetings and would not allow any of the other Indians to attend their councils. The agent, thinking all danger was over, returned. The very night of his return, the Osages attacked us. I think they knew that he was coming back soon and had watched his return across the plains and had decided to make the attack as soon as he got home.
You know that I love a hound and one of the reasons is that my hounds saved my life that night. I and a friend were living in a log house of two rooms with a passage way between them. There was a store with two clerks in it, near by, and the agent’s home, where he lived with some of the employes. My friend and I were sitting over the fire, about nine o’clock that night, planning a cat hunt for the next day, and we were just preparing to go to bed, so as to be up early the next morning. Just then my dogs commenced to bark and, as several horses had been stolen from the Agency recently, I thought there might be thieves about. I therefore picked up my six-shooter and went outside to have a look around. The moon was not up. As I stood by the house, I heard something moving, out in front of me.
"Who is there?" I called. Then I heard the click of a number of rifles. I stooped down and could make out the forms of fifteen or twenty Indians making toward the house. They evidently supposed that I had spoken from the window. Had they known that I stood outside, I would not be here talking to you now.
"Well, I was pretty badly scared and did not know exactly what to do. I thought I would try to slip around to the door and warn my partner, but, before I could get to it, the Osages had arrived and were inside. I had a young mare lariatted out about a hundred yards from the house and I decided to try to get her, as I knew that, once upon her back, no Osage
Page 384 could catch me. I slipped up toward her. She had her head down, feeding, and did not notice me until I was within six feet of her, when she suddenly raised her head, gave a snort and ran away from me. The lariat snapped and away she went. I knew it was no use trying to catch her. While I was out by the mare, I heard shots in the house and I knew it was all over with my friend.
Doctor Sturm was at the Caddo camp, three miles away, and I decided to foot it up there and warn him. The Indians were now attacking the trader’s store and the agent’s house, so there was no use of my going there. It did not take me long to find Doctor Sturm. He would not believe me when I told him the Osages were attacking the Agency, as he had great faith in the Caddoes and believed that they would have warned him. Going up on a hill, I showed him the Agency buildings on fire and he soon had no more desire to tarry than I had. He had only one horse, so we decided to take turn about riding it and go and warn a man named Chandler, who lived twenty- five miles south, on a creek which is now known as Chandler Creek, about ten miles from the present site of Fort Sill. We had by no means an easy ride, as we had no saddle and the pony was far from fat, but, as long as we could save our scalps, we did not mind losing a little skin here and there.
We arrived at Chandler’s just as the sun was rising. He saw us coming and guessed what was up. His family soon gathered around and we held a council of war. It was decided to get some breakfast, pack some grub, strike out for Red River and cross into Texas. I took a little nap while preparations for the journey were being made. We all got a mount and, with our provisions tied on our saddles, journeyed toward the Red River as fast as we could go. Red River was about fifty miles south of Chandler’s and we reached it late that night. We rested a while and then went on to the settlements—fearful all the time that the Osages were close behind us.
We sent word to some troops that were camped not far away and they started up to drive back the Osages. I went with them. On our return to the Agency, we found our worst fears realized. All of the white men had been killed and horribly mutilated and the Tonkawas were almost wiped out of existence.
It seems that the Osages had divided themselves into three bands. One of these had attacked the store, another had attacked the agent’s house while the other had come to my house. After finishing up the whites, the three bands combined and attacked the Tonkawas. The Osages were well mounted and had plenty of ammunition, while the Tonkawas had very few guns, being armed chiefly with bows and arrows. The Tonkawas were camped along the Washita River and, as they were attacked by the Osages, they fled toward the Keechi Hills along a stream which has since been known as Tonkawa Creek. They made little or no resistance and were butchered and scalped as fast as they were overtaken, women and children as well as men. About eight hundred were massacred and the tribe was practically wiped out.
Not satisfied with this, what did the devils do but steal my hounds, and I had four nice puppies, too; but they cleaned out the whole lot. After doing all this mischief, the Osages fled northward, thinking the soldiers would be after them. So, while we were running south, the Osages were going north and I hope they were as badly scared as we were.
I found out from the Caddoes afterward that the Osages had visited the camp of a Caddo chief—the one who had promised to notify me of their coming—and had eaten dinner there about noon and afterward held a council at the same place. The Caddo told me that he tried to get a chance to notify me but failed. I do not believe him as the Caddoes were always the meanest and most treacherous Indians on the planet. The very evening of the massacre, one of these Indians was in my house and I believe now that he was there as a spy.
Page 385
The following letter, written nearly three months after the Tonkawa Massacre, tells of the plight of Horace Jones, for the destruction of the Washita Agency had left him without employment.
Sherman, Grayson County, Texas, January 21st, 1863.
Dear Father: I wrote you sometime in November last, giving you a particular account of the Indian Massacre at the Wichita Agency and my own narrow escape therefrom. I have been staying here, hoping that some measures would be taken to re-establish the Reserve, but everything has been in so much confusion that nothing has been done as yet. I have been continued as Comanche and Wichita Interperter but unless the Indians are settled again, there will be no appropriations and consequently no money to pay employes. I am now nearly out of money, in bad health and pretty low-spirited. If the Reserve is not re-established again, "Othello’s occupation is gone." I hope, however, that something will be done towards spring. I lost all I had at the Wichita Agency except my pistol and the clothes I had on. My Whole loss amounts to about eighteen hundred dollars. I shall start up to Fort Arbuckle in the morning in company with my friend, John Shirley, for the purpose of learning something about Indian matters. I do not exactly know when I shall be back here, but you must write to me at Sherman. I should have had an answer to my first letter long since. I would go and see you all if I had a good horse or mule. Give my love to all and write.
Your son, H. P. Jones.
The period including the two and a half or three years following the date of the foregoing letter is one in which we have no record of the whereabouts and activities of Horace P. Jones but it may be surmised that he put in most of it as he had the preceding three months—waiting for something to turn up. What finally did turn up was the collapse of the Confederacy and the return of the Federal regime on the southwestern frontier. All that we know is that, when conditions finally became normal, a year or two after the end of the Civil War, Horace P. Jones appeared in the role of a civilian employe of the Army, as post scout and interpreter at Fort Arbuckle. Thenceforth, the story of his life is a part of the history of two military posts—Fort Arbuckle and Fort Sill. His marked personality, his quaint humor and his unvarying good faith with his fellow men were such as to give him a lasting place in the memories of officers and soldiers with whom he came in contact and in their affections as well. His rugged honesty and truthfulness is treasured among the traditions of Fort Sill and many of his sayings have become as proverbs.
To his dying day, Horace P. Jones never lost his love for sport. He was a skilled marksman with the rifle, an accomplish-
Page 386 ed horseman and was inseparable from his greyhounds and staghounds. Indeed, among his old-time friends, he was known no less as an ardent sportsman than as a scout and interpreter. While he excelled as a hunter of game animals, the flesh of which was needed or used for food, he was never more at home than when running panther, wolf or wildcat to bay. Habitually lighthearted and cheerful, he forgot the money loss sustained by himself at the time of the destruction of the Washita Agency, on the night of the Tonkawa Massacre, but he never ceased to mourn the loss of the hounds which he had to leave when he fled for his life upon that occasion.
Horace P. Jones enjoyed the implicit confidence of the Indians because, as he said, it was his inflexible rule to always tell them the absolute truth under whatever circumstances. In consequence of this, he was known among them as "the man who never tells a lie." Captain Richard T. Jacob, who, as a lieutenant of the 6th U. S. Infantry, was more or less intimately associated with Jones at Fort Arbuckle and Fort Sill, in the late ’sixties and early ’seventies, related an interesting instance in proof of this. Upon one occasion, several Comanche Indians had come to consult the post commander in regard to some matter. Phil McCusker, another interpreter, was acting as intermediary, though Horace Jones was present. Apparently, so far as either the army officers or Indians were aware, McCusker had completed the interpretation of a statement which had been made to the Indians, but Jones, who had been listening intently, bluntly said, "Tell it all, Mac," which McCusker proceeded to do with a degree of alacrity that was astonishing to both of the principals to the parley, who had apparently been led to regard his interpretation as already completed.
Although most of his life was spent beyond the confines of civilization, Horace Jones always managed to keep abreast of the times, for he was a great reader. Not only was he regarded as a man of superior intellect and intelligence, but his social standing was also a matter above question. At Fort Sill, as at all other regularly garrisoned military posts, the social lines were closely drawn, the commissioned officers forming an exclusive social class into which no enlisted man and but few civilians could gain entrance. Yet Horace P. Jones, civilian scout and interpreter, was always greeted and treated as a social equal by the officers of the garrison at Fort Sill.
Page 387
As Horace Jones never married, there was always more or less speculation among some of his associates as to whether or not there had been a romance in his early life. Some of them inclined to the presumption that there had been a love affair in his young manhood which had ended in disappointment and that he had deliberately sought solace therefrom in the solitudes of the wilderness. On the other hand there were others who knew him well and yet believed that he had turned his back upon the abodes of civilized men from sheer love of all that was wild. Whatever may have been the motive which prompted him to take such a course, such was his reticence that he never mentioned the matter to anyone and the secret, if such there was, was held in his own heart, untold until the end of life.
Unlike many white men who have become enamored of Indian life, Horace Jones never fell into the habit of imitating the Indian ways in his manner of dress—there were never any fringed buckskins or beaded hatbands in his sartorial make-up, for, in dress as well as in deportment, he was always a modest, well-bred white man. Indeed, he seemed to have an open aversion for the swaggering attempts at the picturesque which were so commonly affected by many of the border whites upon the frontier. His contempt for the putative bad man is still proverbial at Fort Sill. The late Fred S. Barde related one of these which is as follows:
Horace Jones was sitting quietly in his favorite place in front of the traders’ store, one day, when, with a whoop, a yell and a flourish of six-shooters, a vision of long hair, fringed buckskin shirt and broncho steed broke through the horizon. It swirled up in front of the store and the atmosphere was badly torn by the accompanying noise. It was truly "a bad man from Bitter Creek". It was evidently from the headwaters and the farther up the creek you go the worse they are. After the human whirlwind subsided somewhat, Horace Jones quietly asked where it was bound. With one of those hump- backed double-jointed oaths which are so familiar to stage-ranch bartenders and to readers of yellow-covered stories of "Alkali Ike, the Cyclone of Dead Man’s Gulch," it replied:
"I ain’t a-goin’ nowhere. I’m stayin’ right here."
With kindly patience, Horace Jones persisted: "But, Stranger, what direction will you go when you do start?"
With another expletive, the stranger remarked that he was likely to go in "any old direction."
Still presisting, Horace Jones asked: "What may you be called when you are at home?"
The stranger looked at him in wondering surprise. "Why, you must know me," he said. "You will know me when I tell you my name. I’m known from one end of the country to the other. I’m ’Whistling Buckshot’. "What may be your name?"
Having caught the spirit of the occasion, Horace Jones replied: "Of
Page 388 course you’ll know me when I tell you who I am. I’m known from the North Pole to the South Pole as ’the Unconfined pie-eater of the Plains.’"
"Whistling Buckshot" looked nonplussed for a moment and then, realizing that his hand had been called, soon made excuse and took up his journey in "any old direction".
Like many a man of real attainments, Horace Jones was distinguished because of his modesty. It was difficult and, indeed, well nigh impossible to induce him to talk about himself and his career. No word of any of the stirring incidents of which he had been a witness was ever volunteered nor would he permit himself to be interviewed concerning any of his own exploits and achievements. Only those whom he had known for years ever succeeded in inducing him, "bit by bit and word by word," to tell of some of the dramatic scenes in which he had been an actor. As he grew older, Horace Jones came to be known as Colonel Jones and he was commonly so addressed by all of his friends, both military and civilian. He was carried on the payroll at the stipend of one hundred dollars per month. Although he was not extravagant, he was generous to a degree that made it impossible for him to save any money. Because of this, some of his friends induced him to take out an allotment and start a ranch, in 1883. This allotment was selected a couple of miles southwest of Signal Mountain and near the Fort Sill military reservation. In order to stock this ranch, some of his friends were asked to each donate a cow to start a herd. Needless to say, all of them were glad to do so. In addition to animals which were thus given by white ranchmen who had leases on the Comanche and Kiowa reservations, several of the Indians who had small herds of cattle gave a cow apiece, Quanah Parker giving two. W. G. Williams ("Caddo Bill") whose ranch was in the Wichita country, not only donated a cow but also gave a high-grade white-face bull. From that time on, the brand of Horace P. Jones was to be found upon some of the cattle that ran at large on the Comanche reservation.
Along about the end of the year 1884, the inspector general of the Department of the Missouri visited Fort Sill officially and investigated things generally. Without consulting anyone, he decided that Horace Jones was being paid too much money for the services rendered, so he cut his allowance in two, making his pay thereafter but fifty dollars per month. The old scout was deeply grieved, not alone on account of the reduction in salary
Page 389 but rather even more on account of the lack of appreciation of which the action was manifestly indicative. Six months later, because of the threatened outbreak of the Cheyennes, Lieutenant General Sheridan, then in command of the Army, came to Fort Reno. While he was there, several of the officers of the garrison of Fort Sill went to Fort Reno to pay their respects. Much to their surprise, after the exchange of greetings, General Sheridan asked:
"How is my old friend, Horace Jones?"
Now General Sheridan’s acquaintance with Horace P. Jones was practically limited to the few weeks of his sojourn at Camp Wichita (afterward named Fort Sill), in February, 1869, more than sixteen years before, and a brief, hasty visit in the autumn of 1874, yet he had not forgotten the scout. In reply to the General’s inquiry, he was told of the depression of spirit due to the cut in salary. The General was deeply interested and, turning instantly to an assistant adjutant general who was present, he directed that an order be issued at once restoring the salary of Horace P. Jones, scout and interpreter, to the full sum of one hundred dollars per month and allowing back pay for the difference during the period which had elapsed since the cut had been made. And so, the heart of the old scout was made glad when the news was carried back to Fort Sill that General Sheridan had not forgotten him, even in the hour of adversity.
As the years swept past and the infirmities due to advancing age began to make themselves manifest, the duties to be performed by the old time scout and interpreter decreased until they were but little more than nominal. But, despite the changes that came with time, Colonel Jones was still a part of Fort Sill. "First, Mount Scott; then Colonel Jones, then Fort Sill!" was the order in which visiting sightseers were advised to look at what was really worth while. Meanhile, the little bunch of cattle that had been branded and turned out on the range had been increasing. Sometimes the old man would express wonder as to whether or not the Indians had not killed and eaten them all—though no Indian would knowingly kill an animal with Horace Jones’ brand on it. After he became too feeble to visit his ranch and look after his affairs, Mr. William H. Quinette, the veteran post trader at Fort Sill, performed such duties for him. Finally, because the old scout was worrying unduly about the matter, Mr.
Page 390
Quinette told him that he was going to settle the mater by selling his cattle. The man who was in charge of the ranch was told to round up all of the cattle bearing the HPJ brand and hold them together, which he did with the aid of a couple of young Indians. The herd was found to number slightly more than four hundred head. A buyer was found who took the entire herd, calves and all, at twenty-five dollars per head. The Colonel expressed amazement both at the size of the herd and the price received, for he found himself far wealthier than he had ever hoped to be. The year 1901 not only brought the dawning of a new century but was also destined to see the end of the old order of things in the Comanche and Kiowa country, for the surplus lands of that great reservation were to be thrown open to homestead entry by white settlers. With the announcement of this impending change came also the rumor that a railway line was to be built across the Fort Sill military reservation. Living largely in reveries of the past and dreaming of the primitive wilderness as it was when he first knew it, Horace Jones announced that he did not want to live to see the steam locomotive and its trailing train come roaring into the station at Fort Sill. During the autumn of that year, after the country had been formally opened and the settlers had come to make their homes, the tracklayers were pushing southward from Anadarko toward Fort Sill and Lawton. Day after day, the old scout asked how near the railway was. And when he was told that it was at Apache, that it had reached Richards, etc., his quiet comment always was:
"I’ll beat it yet."
One day, his friend, Quinette, the post trader, took him out for a drive. They drove down to the new railroad station, which had just been erected and enclosed but which was not yet completed. The tracklayers had not arrived. Colonel Jones looked at the intruding structure regretfully. It was his last outing. He was not there when the first train arrived a few days later. Another old scout and palinsman had crossed the Great Divide.
The following tribute to the character and worth of Horace P. Jones appeared in the Army and Navy Register, of Washington, D. C., in its issue of January 11, 1902:
The older army officers will be interested and saddened by the belated news of the death, at Fort Sill, O.T., of Horace P. Jones, known to them familiarly and favorably as "Colonel" Jones. He died at that mili- tary post on November 16, full of years, wealthy in the honors of a brave and useful life and with a career crowded with hazardous adventure which belongs to that passing eqoch of the wild Indian and the frontiersman. Jones was of that famous band of scouts and guides of which a few old men have survived, such as Buffalo Bill, who has gained wealth and fame, and Ben Clark, who still lives in the quiet of Fort Reno. Jones was the favorite and trusted guide and interpreter of such officers as Sheridan and Custer and had many perilous encounters in early days on the Plains. No one can fully estimate the value of the Army of such men as Jones, Cody and Clark. They did much to aid in the march of the pioneer and were important, if unknown and unnamed, contributors to the extension of pacific industry across our continent.
Jones was a thorough frontiersman. He knew little of the graces and the adornments of civilization and, from all accounts, took little store in anything which was not of his rugged and hazardous west. He was a well-read man to the extent of taking a keen enjoyment in the publications of the east, but he rarely trusted himself among the comforts of the great cities. He had no faith in the modern elevator, lest the "string" should break, and, when forced to stay at a public hotel, he preferred a room no higher than and near a tree, down which he could clamber in case of fire. He had many narrow escapes in his lifetime of contact with the untamed savage and went to his grave at last, highly respected and greatly admired, and was buried in the cemetery at Fort Sill with the military honors of a colonel.
JOSEPH B. THOBURN. THE SHAWNEE FRIENDS MISSION
S. Carrie Thomson
Page 392
Though the sanitarium being established near Tecumseh and Shawnee is the outgrowth of an early mission school, there have been two distinct institutions working hormoniously side by side through many years: The Shawnee Mission or Indian Mission and the Friends’ Shawnee Mission.
In 1871 or 1872 (the exact date seems obscure) the Society of Friends with a view to Christianizing the Shawnee Indians established a mission on their reservation about two miles south of the present southern boundary of the city of Shawnee. The Indians hauled native lumber from a mill at the Sac and Fox Agency, a distance of thirty-five miles, to erect the first building which was 14x18 feet partitioned into two rooms; the one to be used for day school and religious meetings; the other to constitute the entire living room, kitchen, dining and sleeping apartments for the missionary and his family.
The first missionary was Joseph Newsom. His family consisted of his wife, Martha, and four children, M. Emma, Lysias E., Eldon and Ellsworth.
A mission day school was opened with seven pupils with Joseph Newsom and daughter, M. Emma, teaching alternately. Two of the seven who were present the first day survive: Thomas Wildcat Alford and Susan Foreman, now Wilson. Several others who entered later are living.
The attendance gradually increased and as the older people became interested enough to attend, the meetings were held on Sunday.
In 1875 the U. S. Government took over the day school and for a time the school was taught in a log cabin owned by a U. S. Indian trader, Miss Eva Hasket teacher, until such a time as the Government buildings were ready for occupancy.
The Society of Friends, however, continued their labors so that the purely religious education of the Indians might be maintained. They were greatly assisted in their efforts by the cooperation of the Government employees; for it was the policy of
Page 393 the Interior Department, until 1885, to appoint agent, teachers, and other employees from those of the Friends’ faith or those who were in close sympathy with them.
A new log cabin was built less than a quarter of a mile south of the first building on the site where now stands the brick Government building known as the Boys’ Dormitory. The first missionaries to occupy this building were Elkana Beard and his wife. Meetings or church services were well attended and much interest aroused. From these meetings grew what was designated, "Shawneetown Monthly Meetings" and later "Shawneetown Monthly Meetings of Friends."
In the latter part of 1879 Beard and his wife were succeeded by Franklin Elliott and wife who built another log cabin for their family and later the little church or meeting house which still stands and which was dedicated, September 27, 1885. During the Elliotts’ time the mission work was extended to other tribes.
In 1885 Dr. Charles Kirke and wife, Rachel Kirke, succeeded the Elliotts, coming from mission work of the Society of Friends in other parts of the Indian Territory. Dr. Kirke became superintendent of Friends’ Mission work in the Indian Territory and was well qualified for the position. The membership continued to grow and as Oklahoma was settled by white people many of them affiliated with the society.
Dr. Kirke who had been a missionary for fifteen years died in the work, September, 1893, and was buried in the Shawnee Mission cemetery. His wife, Rachel Kirke, continued the work until she died January, 1918, and was buried beside her husband. Mrs. Kirke was a missionary for thirty-seven years.
In October, 1894, George N. Hartley with his wife, L. Ella Hartley, came to be superintendent of Friends’ Missions and carried on the work until they went to Palestine, early in 1904, returning in March, they resigned in September the same year.
William P. Haworth and his wife, Abigail C. Haworth then were in charge from 1904 till 1914 when they were succeeded by Clark Brown and his wife, Elma T. Brown. The Government school closed in 1919 and with the going of the teachers and other employes and the pupils there seemed to be only a few to
Page 394 attend and so the interest in the meetings waned. Mr. and Mrs. Clark left for another field.
The last of the missionaries, Lawrence E. Lindley, and his wife, Amelia R. Lindley remained from 1920 till 1923. They made a careful survey of the community, of the facilities for continuing the work as well as the handicaps and reported the same to the Associated Executive Committee of Indian Affairs. In 1923 there was a decrease in the support from Friends of the various Yearly Meetings and the committee found it necessary to close some missions among the Indians and decided that the Shawnee Mission needed their help less than any of the other Friends’ missions in Oklahoma. One reason for this decision was that the growing town of Shawnee gave increasing opportunities for Christian fellowship.
In June, 1923, financial support was withdrawn by the Associated Executive Committee, the mission property was offered for sale, Mr. and Mrs. Lindley departed for other fields and in the words of Thomas Wildcat Alford, "The end of Shawnee Mission had come."
But it was only seemingly, for six months later, Charles Wooten, who had been a missionary for fifteen years among the Indians, through a great desire to prevent the old mission from falling into the hands of people not interested, felt drawn to purchase a part of the property and make his home there.
In June 1924 another Sunday school was organized with only eleven present with officers and teachers all Indians, except the secretary, Orville Wooten. Mrs. Jennie Meeks was made superintendent and Thomas Alford, one of the seven in the first day school, teacher of the Bible class. A son and daughter of Mr. Alford are also teachers.
The Sunday school has been growing in interest and attendance until it seems that the work of the Shawnee Mission has revived.
—S. Carrie Thomson. OKLAHOMA CITY’S INDIAN SCARE
C. A. McNabb
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One of the noteworthy incidents occurring in the early day history of Oklahoma City was a battle with the Cheyenne Indians one night in the late fall of 1890—noteworthy because of the fact that the battle never was fought notwithstanding it was momentarily expected for a period of several hours on that eventful night.
Shortly after midnight the writer was awakened by a thunderous pounding on his front door, accompanied by a call in an excited tone "Mack, get up and come to the door and please hurry." I recognized it as the voice of a near neighbor, Judge Stanley, a man more than 300 pounds avoir-dupois, of a somewhat nervous disposition and easily excited. On inquiry I learned that several messengers had arrived in town a few minutes before, with the report that the Cheyenne Indians, who had been dancing the ghost dance, over near El Reno, had suddenly gone on the war-path, eluded the vigilance of the troops at Fort Reno and were headed for Oklahoma City for the massacre of the population.
At this time the then very young city boasted of about five thousand inhabitants, for the most part peaceable souls, and just why a bunch of savages should decide to annihilate a lot of peaceloving folks who had never even wished them harm, we did not even stop to consider. It was enough to know that our lives were in danger and that decidedly prompt action was necessary if we were to drive back the oncharging redskins. That thought impelled me to act on Stanley’s suggestion to repair at once to the center of the city, where all sorts of ammunition was being doled out by our enterprising hardware merchants, W. J. Pettee and Gilpin & Frick.
After hastily apprising my wife of the dangerous situation and before getting under way to join other defense troops down town, another neighbor, C. G. Jones, called to advise us that all women and children of that part of the city were to take refuge in the basement of Jones’ Mill at Choctaw and Robinson streets. Instructing my wife to remain at home until the reports of rifle shots were heard, I hastened down town
Page 396 where I found practically every ablebodied man and boy in the city under arms or getting under as rapidly as ammunition could be secured. If a boy had a gun and no funds, some public spirited citizen provided him with such ammunition as seemed necessary at that tense moment. As fast as recruits were equipped they were assigned to certain "companies," "squads," and "divisions," as the impromptu chosen captains, colonels and generals might decide.
I wish I could recall the names of all those on whom official honors were thrust that night. I recall the names of but a few, such as Jim McCartney, Ed Dunn, "Posey" Violet, John A. Blackburn, Major D. D. Leach, C. G. Jones, and Captain A. B. Hammer. I do not recall at this writing who was supposed to be in command, but the truth of the matter is, all officers and many of the privates seemed to be in command. However, as rapidly as a company was organized, it was assigned to the end of some street on the western edge of the city, which at that time was Walker street. All avenues entering the city from north, west and south were securely guarded by at least one company of brave home guards.
During all this time, a constant stream of farm wagons (no automobiles then) was pouring into the city from the west, laden with farmer families and some household equipment. It was reported at the time that several farmers brought the family cow and the pigs. I did not see them. The excited farmers all reported that they could plainly hear the Indians coming, accompanied by the usual noises indulged in by Indians who were on the warpath. The racket created by the farm wagons bumping over the rough roads made such an impression on my mind that it requires but a slight stretch of the imagination to hear it as I write this narrative. It was thunderous, hair- raising, gore-inspiring to those who were called upon to defend the city and its precious populace. Everybody was on tiptoe, awaiting the arrival of the Indian advance guard. Orders had been issued to all guards, except those at the Mill, to hasten to where the battle was finally to be staged, upon the sound of the first half- dozen rifle shots, to re-enforce those composing the first engagement. With all pockets bulging with ammunition, ready for duty at a moment’s call, the guard did duty until about four o’clock in the morning.
Page 397 About that hour a wagon arrived from the west, bearing a load of a dozen or more young folks who, on inquiring, learned why the whole populace was awake and on guard duty and to the dismay and I might say disappointment of the guards in particular, it was learned that the real cause of all the excitement and commotion was a charivari party, some ten miles west of the city, indulged in by a hundred, more or less, young people. The noises were such as only young minds, charivari bent, can devise. The variety and number on this particular occasion convinced the neighbors that it could be nothing short of a Cheyenne uprising. Acting on that impulse, a hasty exit was set up. The charivari by that time was getting into good action, which in turn convinced the excited neighbors that the Indians were approaching nearer and nearer. Fearing the massacre of neighbors, the word was passed along to all settlers that grave danger threatened them and that safety lay only in a hasty departure for the city. Thus all comers had one and only one story to tell on their arrival—"The Cheyenne Indians were on the warpath and were headed for Oklahoma City, bent on its total destruction."
Most of us remained up for the balance of the night, hoping, perhaps, that some savage redskins might show up. There has never existed in my mind the least doubt of the successful termination of that battle. Had it been fought as anticipated, the Cheyenne Indian tribe would today have been extinct.
C. A. McNabb.
Charles A. McNabb, was born at Fairfield, Greene County, Ohio, December 11, 1861. In 1885, he moved west, settling at Winfield, Kansas. Subsequently, he engaged in the milling business at Douglass, Kansas, where many of the Oklahoma "boomers" lived. He settled at Oklahoma City, April 22, 1889, where he embarked in the flour, grain and seed business. Several years later he located on a farm where he specialized in fruit growing. He was one of the organizers of the Territorial Horticultural Society, in which he successively served as secretary and as president. In 1903 he superintended the collection of the Oklahoma exhibit for the St. Louis World’s Fair and had active charge of the same throughout the exposition, in 1904. In July, 1905, he was elected secretary of the Territorial Board of Agriculture, serving in that capacity until the advent of statehood. He become identified with agricultural college extension work, as county agent in 1913. He was later promoted to district agent and in 1916, was advanced to the position of "field agent in marketing," representing the Bureau of Markets of the U. S. Department of Agriculture and the Oklahoma A. & M. College. Since the beginning of 1918, he has occupied a similar position with the New Mexico College of Agriculture where he has rendered constructive and useful service. WILLIAM J. WEAVER
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The student who is interested in personal sidelights on Oklahoma history of the period before the Civil War will miss much if he fails to gain access to the writings of William J. Weaver, of Fort Smith, Arkansas. Practically all of his writings are to be found in the files of the Fort Smith papers. The commercial, political and social relationships which Fort Smith sustained to the Five Civilized Tribes, during most of the seventy years which covered Mr. Weaver’s residence in that community, were such as to afford a fairly accurate and intimate personal knowledge of much of their history throughout that period. It was from such a knowledge that he wrote so effectively during the later years of his life.
William J. Weaver was born in the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, May 2, 1818. He sprang from Quaker stock, some of his ancestors having come to America with William Penn, in 1682. His paternal grandfather, Joshua Weaver, who was a citizen of Chester County, Pennsylvania, was a Revolutionary soldier, serving under General Lafayette at the Battle of the Brandywine and in other engagements in Pennsylvania and New Jersey at that stage of the War for American Independence. At the conclusion of that conflict, he was expelled from the church or "deprived of his birthright in the Society of Friends," as expulsion was then termed. His maternal grandfather, William Boswell, who was also a Quaker, was a Tory and, on the night of the day that independence had been declared, his home was attacked by a mob of patriotic partizans who broke the windows and made a bonfire of his furniture because of his refusal to illuminate the house in honor of the occasion. A grand-uncle, for whom he was named, was a member of a drum corps which was attached to Washington’s army while it was stationed at Valley Forge.
When William J. Weaver was fifteen years old, he removed with his father’s family to Ohio, settling on a farm near Salem, in Columbiana County. There he spent several years in felling trees, clearing land, splitting rails and other work incident to the development of a farm in a country which was still comparatively new. Finally tiring of farm life, he went to Wheeling, Virginia, where he worked in a planing mill and acquired considerable knowledge of the milling industry. While located at Wheeling, he made several trips to New Orleans on flat-boats which were loaded with flour and other lines of merchandise that were in demand at that place.
In 1838, while returning from one of these voyages to New Orleans, he made a side- trip to Fort Smith, ascending the Arkansas River on the steamboat "Trident." He remained at Fort Smith but a short time, returning thence to Wheeling. In the latter part of 1840 and the early part of 1841, he made another journey to Fort
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Smith, voyaging thither from the upper Ohio River on the steamboat "President." Among the other passengers on the same craft were General Zachary Taylor and some of the members of his family. The General had recently been appointed to the command of the Southwestern Division of the Army, with headquarters at Fort Smith. Mr. Weaver served as "mud clerk" of the boat (i. e., took soundings for the pilot) during this trip.
When he arrived at Fort Smith, work on the construction of the new post, which was designed to replace the earlier log-walled post, was under way. All buildings as well as the pentagonal defensive walls were to be of heavy masonry construction. He secured employment, first as a hod carrier and later as a quarryman, receiving as compensation the sum of thirty dollars per month and a soldier’s rations. Tiring of this, after a couple of months, he went over into the Cherokee Nation, where he secured employment at old Dwight Mission. There he spent a year, clearing ground, helping to build log cabins, splitting rails and doing general farm work. His next employment was conducting a ferry across the Arkansas River, at Fort Smith, for Mrs. McDaniels, a Cherokee woman who lived on the Cherokee side of the stream. He then entered the service of George S. Birnie, one of the pioneer merchants of Fort Smith.
While he was living at Dwight Mission and later, while operating the river ferry, he made the personal acquaintance of many of the leaders and prominent members of the Cherokee, Creek, Seminole and Choctaw tribes and was quite conversant with the current tribal history of that period. Among these was Sequoyah, the Cherokee Cadmus. It was during the early years of his residence at Fort Smith that he made the visit to Warren’s Trading Post, on the upper Red River, his description of which was quoted in Mr. W. H. Clift’s paper on that theme in the last issue of CHRONICLES OF OKLAHOMA.
In 1851, Mr. Weaver embarked in business on his own account, his line being dry goods. This he continued until 1858, when he closed out his business on account of failing health. Two years later, he moved to Northern Illinois, where he engaged in farming until 1871, when he returned to Fort Smith, where he again engaged in mercantile pursuits. Eventually, he became connected with the newspaper business, as manager and assistant editor of the Western Independent, published at Fort Smith. Previous to that, it does not seem that he had done much in the way of writing, but he seemed to take to it with unusual facility when the opportunity was thus afforded.
During his later years, Mr. Weaver attained considerable celebrity as a writer of local history, his themes generally taking the form of accounts of the early history of Fort Smith and the surrounding regions, including much of what is now eastern Oklahoma. He was possessed of a remarkable memory and his historical writings, published from time to time in the local press, attracted wide attention. It
Page 400 was fortunate that he felt minded to undertake such a line of writing, since no one else had deemed it worth while. Indeed, his reminiscent writings served to present a more complete and faithful picture of old Fort Smith than anything else now available.
In 1848, Mr. Weaver was married to Miss Katherine Minnier, a native of Germany, whose parents were numbered among the pioneer settlers of Fort Smith. To this union three sons were born. (Of these, the eldest, Hon. J. Frank Weaver, followed in his father’s footsteps as a newspaper man and writer and had long been regarded as a worthy successor of his father as an authority on local historical lore. He has represented Sebastian County in both houses of the Arkansas Legislature and he is an honorary life member of the Oklahoma Historical Society.)
William J. Weaver died, July 21, 1907, in his ninetieth year. His passing severed the last living link that had bound the old frontier military post, Indian trading center and inland river port with the modern commercial and industrial center which still bears the name of Fort Smith. “PASSING PIONEERS”
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One of the most picturesque figures in the history of Oklahoma, passed off the stage of action with the killing of William Tilghman, of Oklahoma City, who had been serving as a peace officer at the new old town of Cromwell, in Seminole County, on Saturday evening November 1, 1924. "Bill" Tilghman, as familiarly known throughout that part of the state which had been included in old Oklahoma Territory, was one of the most noted peace officers of the Southwest. Born in Iowa, over seventy years ago, he made his way out to the frontier of western Kansas while he was still a youth. There he drove cattle, hunted buffalo, went through a brief Indian war campaign and saw service as a peace officer at Dodge City, when that celebrated market for range cattle was reputed to be "wide open, wild and wooly," and served several years as marshal or chief of police. He came thence to Oklahoma in 1889, when the first lands of the Territory were thrown open to settlement, entering the service as a deputy United States marshal, at the time there was no other form of civil government yet established. His service in this capacity was continuous and arduous most of the time during the territorial period. He also served as sheriff of Lincoln County and subsequently rrepresented his district in the State Senate.
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Still later, he filled the office of chief of police of Oklahoma City. As a peace officer, his reputation for fidelity and fearlessness was untarnished. He traced his descent straight back in the direct male line to one of the founders of the colony of Maryland and he proved to be a worthy cion of the stock from which he sprang.
Henry Clay Meigs, long a prominent citizen of the old Cherokee Nation, died at his home in Fort Gibson, on Sunday, September 14, at the age of eighty-three. He was of distinguished ancestry. Return Johnathan Meigs, who served as an aide of the staff of General George Washington during the War for American Independence and who, after his retirement from the military service at the beginning of President Jefferson's administration, was appointed as the tribal agent for the Cherokee Indians, was his paternal grandfather. John Ross, who served as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation from 1828 until his death, in 1866, was his maternal grandfather. In his youth, Mr. Meigs saw brief service as a soldier during the Civil War. He had filled several official positions under the Cherokee national government and was reputed to be one of the oldest members of the Masonic order in the state. Always a man of sturdy physique, it was his unvarying custom to bathe in the waters of Grand River once each day except when the inclemency of the weather prevented. SEMI-CENTENNIAL OF THE BATTLE OF ADOBE WALLS
Page 402
On the morning of June 27, 1874, seven hundred picked warriors of the Comanche, Kiowa and Cheyenne tribes charged upon the Adobe Walls and the twenty-eight men and one woman in the three buildings that constituted the trading post.
On the morning of June 27, 1924, more than two thousand people, residents of every state in the Southwest, in high-powered automobiles, in air planes, on horseback and wagons and buggies charged upon Adobe Walls to do honor to the men and women who so nobly defended the fort against the onslaught of the savage horde fifty years ago.
Airplanes hovered about the place where a half century ago Indians with bows and arrows, spears and lances, in full war paint mounted on their fastest horses circled about the Adobe Walls in a vain effort to dislodge the inhabitants.
Two of the men who participated in the battle remain to tell the story. They are Andrew Johnson of Dodge City, Kansas, and Fred Leonard of Salt Lake City. Johnson was present and was able to draw for the assembled hundreds the contrast between the Panhandle of today and the Panhandle of fifty years ago.
Citizens of the Southwest, realizing that the Adobe Walls battle was not only a desperate one but a great one, under the leadership of Mrs. Olive Dixon, widow of William Dixon, who participated in the fight, F. P. Reid of Pampa, Mr. and Mrs. W. T. Coble, owners of the ranch on which the battle ground is located and others, began two years ago to solicit funds with which to erect a suitable monument on the ground. Their efforts were crowned with success and fifty years after the great battle the monument was unveiled. The Panhandle-Plains Historical Society became interested in the work and through its president, Thos. F. Turner of Amarillo and other officers had a great part to play in making the anniversary celebration a success.
The festivities started with an inspection of the battle ground early Friday morning by Andrew Johnson, Bill Tilghman, J. Wright Mooar, J. A. Cotten, Jas. H. Cator, Mrs. Olive Dixon, J. E. McAlister and many other pioneer citizens who were familiar with the events of the battle.
At noon a free barbecue was served to more than two thousand people at the Turkey Track ranch headquarters, one mile and a half north of the battleground.
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Following the dinner, the band of the West Texas State Teachers’ College rendered several selections, F. P. Reid of Pampa called the assemblage to order and the celebration was on.
Judge J. M. Grisby of Perryton delivered the invocation. Thos. F. Turner of Amarillo, president of the Panhandle-Plains Historical Society, was the first speaker. He told of how the committee in charge of raising funds for the erection of the monument had met with enthusiastic support from every source. He told of how the business men of Amarillo had aided in the work by the donation of material and money. He explained the work of the Historical society and urged all citizens of the Panhandle to co-operate in the work.
F. P. Reid gave a brief history of the work and complimented all those who had participated.
Mrs. Olive Dixon, wife of Captain Billy Dixon, hero of the Adobe Walls battle, expressed her thanks to everyone who had aided in the work.
"Had it not been for the work of J. Lindsay Nunn of the Amarillo Daily News, through the columns of his own paper and in securing the interest of other editors of the Panhandle, I am sure that our work would not have succeeded," said Mrs. Dixon, who thanked Mr. Nunn and all other newspaper men for the interest they had shown in the work."
Mrs. Dixon declared that contributions to the funds used in erecting the monument and in marking the graves had come from practically every state in the Union. She declared that the work of making the grounds of the Panhandle had just commenced and that the Panhandle had a real history that should be compiled while those who made that history are here to relate the true facts.
Prof. L. F. Sheffy, of the department of history in the West Texas State Teachers’ College, made a short address telling of the work of the historical society. Andrew Johnson, of Dodge City, Kansas, survivor of the battle, then told in detail of the incidents of the fight.
Following his talk, J. A. Cotton, of Snyder, Texas, made a short talk telling of the work of the soldiers in his section following the Adobe Walls fight. Mr. Cotton was a member of the Eighth Cavalry.
The battleground has been marked with concrete markers at each corner of the six acre plot deeded to the Historical society by Mr. and Mrs. W. T. Coble. The corners of the buildings have been marked and the graves of the two men killed in the battle are marked with simple granite monuments.
The monument erected to the memory of those who took part in the fight is about ten feet tall. On the eastern face is inscribed the
Page 404 names of the men and the woman who participated in the battle, the fact that the grounds were marked under the direction of Mrs. Dixon and Mr. Cator and an acknowledgment of the donation of the land.
The names on the monument are: Jas. Hanrahan, Bat Masterson, Mike Welch, Shepherd, Hiram Watson, Billy Ogg, Jas. McKinley, Bermuda Carlisle, William Dixon, Fred Leonard, James Campbell, Edward Trevor, Frank Brown, Harry Armitage, Dutch Henry, Billy Tyler, Old Man Keeler, Mike McCabe, Thos. O’Keefe, Mr. and Mrs. William Olds, Sam Smith, and Andrew Johnson.
The hundreds of visitors spent a large part of their time Friday and today going over the battleground, visiting the nearby foothills and other points of interest. Many arrow heads and bullets used in the battle were found by them.
A rodeo performance and horse races staged by Emmett and Orin Thompson was presented Friday afternoon and today.
A large dance platform was erected at the ranch headquarters and dances were given Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.
Pioneer citizens spent their time in visiting with each other, relating incidents that occurred many years ago.
The celebration was pronounced a great success by all who attended and Mr. and Mrs. W. T. Coble were given the thanks of every one for the hospitable manner in which the crowd was entertained.
—Staff Correspondent, Amarillo Daily News.
The Oklahoma Historical Society hopes to have its collections housed in a building especially erected for library and museum purposes in due time. It has been suggested that such a building should have a foyer, or entrance court, the walls of which should be faced with dressed stones taken from the ruins or foundations of historic buildings or other structures from various parts of the state, such as missions, trading posts, tribal schools, academies or seminaries, Indian agencies, military posts, piers of bridges on military roads, steamboat landings, etc., each stone to bear an inscription, either directly or on a small inset tablet. The honor of sending in the first stone for such a purpose belongs to a troop of boy scouts of the town of Fort Towson. This contribution is in the form of a stone from the ruins of the old military post of the same name, which was established in May, 1824, just a few months over a century ago. It is to be hoped that their example may be emulated by residents of other centers of historic interest in Oklahoma, who may wish to aid in the effort to blend such mementoes of local history into a most unique composite memorial in the architecture of the proposed edifice.
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The recent destruction of a portion of the building in which was housed the library of the School of Field Artillery, at Fort Sill, serves to emphasize anew the importance of having all library and museum collections installed in fireproof structures. Of the books destroyed in this instance, most unfortunately, it will be nearly if not quite impossible to replace many if not most of them. Among others, was a complete file of the Army and Navy journal, which was especially rich in the amount of historical material pertaining to the states of the region west of the Mississippi during the quarter of a century immediately following the close of the Civil War. If it is worth while collecting such a library, surely its installation should be in a building that is as nearly fireproof as it is possible to make such a structure.
CONTRIBUTOR
Susan Jane Johnson was born at Tyrington, Massachusetts, March 16, 1831. She was reared on a farm near Stockbridge, in Berkshire County, in the same state. She was educated in the village schools at Stockbridge, with two years in an academy at Lansingburg. Without the means to enable her to continue her own education, she sought and secured a position as a teacher in a village school. During the second term of her work in the school room, she received a call from Rev. John H. Carr, the founder and superintendent of Bloomfield Academy, who was in quest of teachers for his school in the far-away Indian Territory. She came to the Chickasaw Nation in 1852 and took up her work at Bloomfield, where she was an educator for twelve years. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Miss Johnson did not leave the Indian Territory and return to the North, as most of the other mission teachers from that section did. On the contrary, she remained at her post, tenderly ministering to Mrs. Carr, who was an invalid, and also conducting a neighborhood school for Indian children, and this without any remuneration whatever. Just before the outbreak of hostilities, she wrote to her father, stating that, though communications between the two sections would doubtless soon be cut off, she felt it to be her duty to remain and continue her labors among the Indian people. She was married to Rev. John H. Carr, August 20, 1866. Two years later, they settled at Paris, Texas, where they made their home until his death, nine years later. With her two children, she then went north to be near her own relatives for a time. Subsequently, she returned to the South and lived again in the Chickasaw Nation. Her last years were spent in Los Angeles, California, where she died, November 8, 1920.