Indian Pioneer Papers - Index

Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma
Date:  May 20, 1937
Name:  Lonnie Ward
Post Office:  No address given
Residence Address:
Date of Birth:  May 14, 1883
Place of Birth:  Bridge Creek Store
Father:  Dock Ward
Information on Father:
Mother:  Mary Ballard
Information on Mother:
Field Worker: Thad SMITH, Jr.
Western History Collection
University of Oklahoma
Volume 95, LDS microfiche #6016960

My mother and father moved to the  Chickasaw Nation in White Bead when I was just old enough to start to school, in 1886.

I got all of my schooling the three years I went to the White Bead subscription school.  My teacher's name was Miss Tansey HULL.  I studied the McGuffey reader, Rays Arithmethic, and blue back speller.  The seats and desks used in our school were home made and were long enough for six or eight pupils to sit together.

The Baptists used our school building to have church in every Sunday.

Sam GARVIN owned the only store in White Bead, and he freighted his supplies from Pauls Valley, which was only five miles away and on the Santa Fe road.  Mr. Garvin also owned lots of cattle, his brand was bar triangle.

My father was a blacksmith and did lots of work.  I have seen as many as five hundred Indians freighting supplies from Pauls Valley to Ft. Sill for the Government.  They used oxen altogether and would have as many as
sixteen oxen hitched to one wagon or maybe there would be as many as three wagons tied together and trailed behind each other.  The wagons had wooden spindles and had a key in the end of the spindle to hold the wheel on. They used tar to grease the wheels, and on cold mornings you could hear wagons squeaking, as far as a mile off.  The Indians doing the Government freighting were mostly Comanche[']s and they were all honest, and friendly.

My father shod all of the oxen that the Indians used to trail wagons. Sometimes they would drive in, and the oxen would be so sore footed they could hardly travel, and my father would cut a horse shoe half in two and nail it on the oxen's feet.  Usually on the ones that had the sorest feet, he would use a piece of felt between shoe and the hoof, this would take the jar off the hoof, and they would travel just as well as ever.  By cutting the horse shoe in two at the toe of the shoe, and then putting it on, it gave the oxen's feet a chance to spread natural, as they walked.

I have also seen men farm with oxen, using double shovels, which is a cultivator, that only plows one side of a row at a time, taking a full round to cultivate one row, and a good many farmers used a small plow called a Georgia stock, which had wooden foot pieces, with small share bolted to them.

Most of the farmers in the country lived in box houses, stripped with one by fours.  My older brother and I farmed some, and raised cotton and corn. We raised twenty one bales of cotton on twenty acres, and had it ginned at Pauls Valley.  As well as I remember we got six cents a pound for it.  Our corn made from sixty to seventy five bushels to the acre, and we sold it for fifteen cents a bushel.

I have seen as many as fifty deer in one bunch.  And there was no end to the number of wild turkeys.  My father killed and kept venison all winter.

There were lots of pecans, black walnuts and wild grapes.

Dr. BRANNAM at Pauls Valley was our nearest doctor.  He made his calls in a buggy.

The Chisholm trail was about thirty five miles west of White Bead, and there was thousands of Texas longhorn cattle driven north every year until 1892 when the Rock Island built their road south.  Cowboys were paid about thirty or forty dollars a month and board and farm hands were paid from fifty to seventy five cents a day, and they usually boarded themselves.

My father was a United States Marshal for seven years.  I think he got his Commission in 1893.

Transcribed and submitted by Gay Wall <t31892@wind.imbris.com>  November, 2000.