Field Worker: Thad Smith, Jr.
I made my first trip into the Comanche country, in 1898.
The Comanche Indians had a big dance near Ryan, which I attended. A lot of the dancers had terrapin shells, which had little rollers inside, strapped to their legs. These terrapin shells would rattle when the Indians danced.
The Comanches are very smooth dancers and it seemed as if they were just as light as feathers.
All of the Indians had fresh beef to eat while at the dance and some of them dried some beef while there. They would take a piece of beef seven or eight inches square and five or six inches thick and cut a cross in the beef from the top side nearly through or within a quarter or half an inch of being through. They would then turn each cut back and cut it thin but never in two. They did each quarter that way and when they finished they would have just one big piece of beef from a quarter to a half inch thick, that was ready to dry. It usually took about three days in the hot sun to dry this beef.
In 1899, I lived just across Red River, in Texas, at Red River Station and occasionally I would come over to CAL SUGGS ranch, which was in the Comanche country. I would usually go with some of my neighbors who wanted to buy some workhorses.
Mr. SUGGS had thousands of cattle and horses. His brand was O H triangle made like this
Oà [note: drawing here close but not accurate]
Nearly all of the horses were gray and brown and they would weigh from nine to eleven hundred pounds. Mr. Suggs sold these horses for one hundred and fifty dollars a span, either for cash or on time and he always got his money.
In 1902 I came to Chickasha and met SCOTT JONES, a white man, who married a Chickasaw Indian. I leased six hundred acres of land about twelve miles southeast of Chickasha, from Mr. JONES. I paid Mr. JONES eight hundred and eighty-seven dollars and fifty cents for my lease but I did not have to pay it until I raised and sold my crop.
I sowed one hundred and thirty acres in oats, which made twenty-six bushels an acre. I sold the oats for thirty-one cents per bushel. The rest of the land I planted in corn. The corn averaged about thirty-five bushels an acre. I sold the corn to "RED" ALEXANDER, a cattle feeder for twenty-five cents per bushel.
I did all of the farming with twelve head of mules and I had five men hired to help me do the work. I had six walking cultivators.
In 1903 I rented two hundred acres of land from BEN VAUGHAN. The land was only a few miles from the SCOTT JONES farm and was in the Chickasaw Nation. I raised sixty bushels of corn to the acre that year and I fed it to some coming four-year-old steers, which I bought in West Texas. Some of the steers died with tick fever. I paid thirty-five dollars per head for the steers and would have made some money on them if some of them had not died, as I got sixty-seven dollars per head for them, when I sold.
There were a few wild turkeys, prairie chickens, quail, squirrels and deer in the Chickasaw Nation, when I first came, but they soon disappeared.
I have an old muzzle loading shot gun, which I brought to this country from Alabama.
I have lived here continuously since 1902.
Submitted to OKGenWeb by
Patrick Lawrence Hogue <awana@snowcrest.net> 02-2000.