THE INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM INTERVIEW WITH: Osjetea Briggs (Limestone and Anderson [Osheetal Counties) DATE: June 21 1988 PLACE: Palestine, Texas INTERVIEWER: Joan Ballard JB: Osjetea, we've been talking about so much ahead of time, let's go on now. OB: Since we were talking about Limestone County, where I grew up, actually, this Saturday, June 25, will be the yearly memorial service at Old Bethel Cemetery. It's down in the southeast corner of the county. They are also going to have a reunion of the Kickapoo School, so-called, because my grandfather was a Kickapoo Choctaw Indian. That Kickapoo was a smaller tribe of the big tribe. And because of his helping to build that school, they always referred to it as Kickapoo. And there has not been any school in that o ld two-room schoolhouse since 1935. Even the building is gone. But three years ago somebody said: Let's try to have a reunion together with the memorial service at the cemetery because everybody who has loved ones in that cemetery also went to that school and nearly everybody bur ied in that cemetery went to that school, for that ma tter . So we called a reunion. We called it The Kickapoo Legion, because that means the survivors, you know. And , now there hadn't been any school there since 1935 and this was 1985, fifty years later. BRIGGS 2 OB: Thirty four students and one teacher showed up at that memorial service. So we continue to have it each year. Now it is a memorial service and the Kickapoo Legion has their yearly get-together, right out in the hot sun . Well , we do have a little arbor to keep some of the sun off. We have the same old church benches that once happened to be in the old church that has long since been torn down . The church that was at the graveyard. We have those benches under this arbor and the survivors of that area come to pay tribute to their dead. We have a little program, have much singing, spread dinner under the trees on long tables; we have to make the table longer each year. We always have it on the fourth Saturday of June and it's really fascinating. If you could just have a story of all of those people. Some of them are descendants of the survivors of Fort Parker , which is a l so not too far away as the crow flies from where the cemetery and old school once stood. And, the Plummers , especially , were my cousins. This was Rachel Pluruner's family who was also kidnapped along with Cynthia Ann Parker. Anyway, it's the story, even the Plummer descendants. It's real interesting. And I'm the president of the Old Bethel Cemetery Association and the Kickapoo School group now. Of course, I don't know how many years, twenty years I guess, that I've been the president of the Association. This means everybody that has kin that are buried in the cemetery is a member of the Old Bethel Cemetery Association. This is a perpetual loving care thing. This is something the big BRIGGS 3 OB: cities don't have. What we all did was to pool some money and put it in a trust fund that would draw interest and keep up the cemetery with the interest that we have on the money. This way, the principal can never be touched. And even if some of the younger people don't keep on meeting and keep on carrying on the tradition that we have set a hundred years ago, well, the money will be there so that it can be handled and the cemetery is always immaculate. JB: It will always still be maintained. OB: But it will be maintained by the fact that we all pooled our money to provide a trust fund for that purpose and that purpose alone. It's quite strange how we select our board of directors. When somebody dies, they have told somebody who they want to take their place. You don't choose somebody because they are popular, you choose them because you know they'll be there and that they will do what they are supposed to do as long as they live. If they get down sick or something and want to pass it on to somebody while they are still living well they just say: I've chosen to fill my shoes so-and-so, and that person is the trustee in their stead. And it depends on how many graves you have, how interested they think you are. If you have enough graves they know you'll be there, don't you see. A person who just had one grave out there, well, they might think, well, they might be inclined to forget old Cousin So-and-so, you know, but they wouldn't forget if they had all their kin there, or most o f their kin. It is really something to know BRIGGS 4 OB: that this still exists in this world, perpetual loving care. JB: Are most of them there the Indian descendants? OB: No, no, no, no. I'm the only Indian there. My grandfather was the only Indian in the ... Well, now, there is another family that has a little bit of Indian heritage. I did't know just how much . But I'm the only one walking around in braids, let's put it that way. But, it's not a bunch of Indians, no. There all kinds and creeds, and colors. JB: Just local residents, or citizens. OB: People that live in the area. JB: Who lived in this area. OB: A lot of them are. Some of them come from across the United States to be there at that time. They come from every place. I would never have dreamed we'd have had thirty-four people that once went to that school, plus a teacher, but we did. That's a picture of the old church. It was a Methodist church. But people of all denominations come to the •.. our song books carry hymns from all denominations. And everybody sings. They don't sing well but they sing loud and we enjoy it very much. And it's hot, very hot, and everybody brings food, iced tea, and everybody enjoys it. And you've never seen so much hugging in all your life. That's enough about that. I get carried away because it has been so much a part of my life - the cemetery has. JB: Right. BRIGGS 5 OB: And the inspiration that my grandpar ents, these were my maternal grandparents that were the Indians, and had a lot of influence. JB: And that is where you first went to school, was this school? OB: No, I didn't go to Kickapoo School, because the river was the boundary line. I was in the Groesbeck Independent School District. I first went to Groesbeck School. I didn't go to Kickapoo School, but my mother did and my older brothers and sisters did, and all of my cousins did, most of them. But, because Mama went there and my two older sisters and my older brother went there, well, I felt a special kinship, and I have visited in the school. We always got Washington's Birthday off at my school and Mama would load us kids up and take us over to Old Bethel so we could spend the day at Old Bethel School with my cousins, so we would know how important that school was to her. They would seat seven rows of children like the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th grades in one room and then the high school grades in the other room . Mama could just tell you what date anything happened. When we'd be studying our lessons and say something about what happened such-and-such a time, she'd say: Oh, yes, that happened so-and-so. And I'd say: Mama, how in the world can you remember the events in history so well. She'd say: Well, after you sit there in that one room and hear it, for instance at the 7th grade, well you hear it for seven years before you get to it. BRIGGS 6 OB: You hear what the teacher is teaching the seventh graders down on the end of the line, don't you know. By the time you get there you already know it. Or the grades in between. You know it beforehand and then you hear it reviewed in the years afterwards, don't you see. Say, for instance, the third grade. Before you get to be a third grader, you have already memorized it and then from there on you hear it every year, you know. So naturally it stays with you. JB: It's reinforced. OB: You get to be that is education at its very best. JB: It sure is. OB: At its very best. Now, in Groesbeck, since we knew so well - we had visited Old Bethel School where MaMa went to school, we knew so well. And then we went to Groesbeck School . This is where we could be warm through and through in the wintertime. Didn't even have to have your coat on. At home all the heat we had was the fireplace, in this old ramshackled house. And we'd sit in front of the fireplace and our legs would burn and our back would freeze.