Conversation with a Cherokee Elder

Conversation with A Cherokee Elder Speaks of the Past ~ Chris Boles Authors Note: This is a nonfictional conversation on various topics of the time. The interviewer is not named; but it is as if you were sitting beside this man as he speaks on things of the past, after the Native Wars, after the 'walks'; at the closing of one century in and out of the way, a tiny place. His name was Sam Sloan and he was born in 1898. He lived all his life near Big Cabin, Oklahoma. He saw many changes, bad people, smart Indians, outlaws, and the hanging Judge Parker of Fort Smith Arkansas. He gave an interview (1968) and spoke. He used terms that were common at the time but now we judge as prejudiced. He spoke of many things and here are a few of his stories. Cherokee Sam Sloan noted: “I think people were better back then (40 years earlier). They loved one another better when they didn’t have so damn many plentiful people. They watched out for each other and they were better neighbors. They depended on each other.” “I am on a pension now. I have a bad finger that needs treatment but the doctors today want $40-50 a day and to put me in a hospital for two weeks. Wouldn’t cost me back then. Now they fix it so that people can graft on the thing. It’s the awfulest thing you ever saw. Well, I’ve taken them (doctors) through this country when there wasn’t no fences on horseback. I led them to places that they couldn’t make it. They (doctors) done just as well and they saved many lives.” “I seen corn stacked along the railroad track on the ground for a half a mile long. Yes Sir, just on the ground. I have seen old John Curry haul many a load in there and just dump it onto the ground. The land produced stuff in them days. I could tell you where all that corn came from and oats back then raised from 75-80 bushels to the acre. And today, these people just sit around here and draw (government checks) on the land and crops. It seems everyone just draws a check today.” “They tell me they are building a railroad and road up to White Oak to the coal mine. It is a strip mine. They are strip mining all over the place now. It changes things.” “Big Cabin is an old town, Yeah, 70 years ago there was no railroad. It was just one old store down here…didn’t have a Post Office. Post Office was down in Pensacola. There was stagecoaches that went out of Pryor (Oklahoma) to Siloam, Arkansas, and I think maybe Claremore, Oklahoma too. I got an old newspaper from Vinita (Oklahoma), can’t recall the name of it. It was an old paper when I got it. You know Oklahoma wasn’t a state until 1907?” “I got my mail once a week, never got much mail. They had what we called mail hack. They delivered the mail to places that did not have a Post Office. Big Cabin didn’t have one yet. When the mail came it was a community thing.” “Big Cabin grew after the railroad came. We had a hardware store, drugstore, two drugstores, two or three grocery stores, scales and offices. When they built that railroad here, I thought that was the damndest thing, they had too good a business with the train. The trains would bring in those big ties, that they set about three feet apart, but they never had too good time as the track would break down, the ties on it would roll over; but they kept on running this train until they got it right. You know they did not pack things like today?” “OH, we had some bad fellows here then. Used to be some places got little old petty thieves, stealing you know. Things like that, these fellows would fight you but just didn’t know anything about taking things over, you couldn’t put it over nobody! If you did you’re liable to get the tar shot out of you—old six-shooter days back then. Yeah, it was.” “They would take them (law breakers) to Fort Smith, Arkansas. That is where they took them to trial. Some got out before Judge Parker. Judge Parker… he would hurt them. You probably see them in television now, they’re asking for a day and the one that got the quickest (shooter) was the one to win the battle. And old Judge Parker, you’d shoot anybody in the back, and he’d hang him.” “But if you were gonna walk out-- it was fair deal, that was over with. Shooters never picked anybody up for that but now you’ve got to have guts and gail to walk out before a fellow and count the count and take a draw with him and grab your pistol and shoot him.” “Yes sir, you’ve got to be sure of what you’re doing then. That’s the way they lived then, Yeah, that’s the way you to had to do it.” “Yeah, in those days I see them out there—walk out there and they never touch that guy…just unbuckle that belt, and that belt falls. So they just won it that way. They were good. “ “When the white people came here – he went to get a permit from the Indian Agent to come down in here and pick him out a location. That’s the way they done it. Pick them out a location. Pick them out a location. You (Indians) could not move nothing off. Didn’t have nothing here. Didn’t have nothing you could sell and you couldn’t buy nothing either!” “That Indian Agent would talk to them, that’s the reason why they (whites) didn’t have no problems. They done it back here like in the South—there was some outlaws (Indian outlaws) in here.” (Authors note: not noted but suspect he meant like the KKK of the south, where the Indians burned houses and worse to these land grabbing whites.) “The government sent in a militia down here to hunt them outlaws (Indians) out. Them Indians know what they was doing, so they set up their camp over there. Well they set the old camp over there in sort of a meadow. Well, long about ten o’clock that night the Indians set the prairie on fire. They put the militia out of here!” “Yeah, that’s what happened. Things like that – so white people were taught to let them Indians alone for whatever they carry on – you couldn’t tell what an Indian was doing. Indians ways are different.” ‘’The whites might see five, six, seven comin’ through here on horses, scattered out. You wouldn’t know what they were doing’ maybe hunting for a deer or something. And white people would –lots of them get ‘fraid of them’.” “Indians back then moved around in Oklahoma. They had tipis and this was in 1899 or 1900-1907 and the Indians just moved around where there was more game or fishing. Hunting and fishing was good then. In winter they moved to another place in the hills for protection from the weather. Life was good. It was all Indian land back then (in Oklahoma).” ~ Chris Boles ** Please visit us http://www.whispernthunder.org/