Hulbert Tales and Trails
by Gloria Youngdeer
copyright 1997
The following stories are excerpts from interviews and articles that mention Hulbert or the surrounding area. This has been compiled for the entertainment and education of persons interested in stories about our local area.
The experiences
of William Henry Henson
In the Indian Territory
recorded July 1937
I came here from Van Buren, Arkansas on the third day of March in 1903. I landed out here near Gideon, Oklahoma, where I rented a place for that year. I stayed there just that year. I made a fine crop but I decided I wanted to move to some other place, so I started out hunting a new location. I stopped at Melvin, Indian Territory, for about three months, then down to Briartown where I stayed three months, then right back here close to Hulbert or near the Shady Grove neighborhood where I found a community I surely liked and where I lived for thirteen years until 1917.
There in that location I really got acquainted with a lot of Indians and there is where I met the best Indian friend I ever knew. His name was Aaron Cary, a Cherokee. That Indian would do anything in the world for me. I could get anything he had if I needed it. He surely loved me as a dear brother, and if he just had the least idea my family was in need, he was right there to see about them. You see I was ordained a Baptist Minister in 1906 and I was away a great deal and needed a good friend.
I had charge of some of the early churches and I had about as many Indian members as I did whites. I found them to be the most sincere supporters I had in all of my church work, even until now. I did all this preaching in those early days going from place to place horse back and living on what those good faithful Christians donated as a free will offering.
I would think the greatest and most noticeable change in social customs since the early days is the loss of respect for parents by the children, which I think is brought on by poor training that this younger generation is getting from their parents. This lack of home government means less respect for authority. Children who know no respect for home authority will respect outside authority, even less. No respect for authority means dishonesty.
I have known a few mean Indians. One was Tom Shade. There was an old time shooting match down there on the creek and this Tom Shade and Madison Cary, the brother of the good friend of mine, had a hard fist fight over the shooting match, and Madison Cary beat Tom Shade up with his bare fists; so just three days after that, Tom Shade went to Tahlequah and sold out a lot of stuff, such as cattle, etc., and bought two six shooters and a Winchester and a whole gallon of mean whiskey, a horse and a saddle. He then started back toward Madison Cary's place near Hulbert, and on his way back he kidnapped Winn Cochran and took him along and told him, "Now, Winn, I am going to kill four men today. I intend to make you go along and see me kill three men, then I intend to kill you, making the four men to be killed by me today.
I aim to kill Madison Cary first and salt him down so I can have Cary meat any time I want it." So he took Winn up to Price Cochran's place where Madison was helping gather corn.
There with his prisoner he went right into the house, took a chair, and set it right in the middle of the front room, and began hollowing, "Oh-------Madison, come here." Madison was out at the barn throwing corn out of the wagon, and when he heard that drunken Tom Shade calling, he slipped into a back room and got his 45 colt's pistol, went back to the barn and hid a few minutes. He told me he had as hard a chill as he ever had in his life out there at the barn, but when the chill left him he said he decided to come and swap out with Tom Shade; so he slipped into the back door and came on into the door of the front room where Shade was sitting, and just held his gun in his hand and spoke to Shade, "What do you want, Tom?" Shade started to raise his Winchester and Madison shot him in the neck and broke it, and Tom Shade slumped in his chair, dead. Anyhow, the kidnapped intended death victim escaped as well as Madison Cary and two other intended victims.
I heard a lot of objections to Indian Territory becoming a state and the reason seemed to be the Indians felt it would mean a loss of self government. The better advised Indians seemed to think that their people would likely sell their land as fast as they could and sell it too cheap, and likely be without homes within a short time. Also, they knew it would be a loss of game and fish privileges. The white cattlemen were already using up all the open range they enjoyed for their own stock. We old timers made a living a lot easier back there in those days than we can now. I, for myself, can't blame the Indians for objecting to allotment.
The most devout Cherokee Indian who belonged to my church was Wilson Rider, a full blood Cherokee, converted in my church at the Big Greenleaf Baptist Church. I never will forget how wild that Indian was when I first began to try to see him about coming to my meetings. I would go to that Indian's home out there in the woods and when I rode up in front of his house I would just get down and go right in, not even hollowing before getting down; and as I went into the house Wilson Rider would go out of the back door. But his wife wouldn't run like he did but would try to talk to me. I would preach to her all she could understand and finally this old seventy year old Indian, Wilson Rider, got tame and I succeeded after years of endeavor to convert him to believe on the Lord. And when he did that was the best Indian and the most influential for the Lord of any man in the Cookson mountains during all the rest of his life, and his whole family was converted to the Lord and his daughter is a minister for the Lord today. All that knew him during the rest of his life respected him and the good he did among other Indians from then on will never die.
The strangest thing I ever ran into among the Indians was one time
when I lived at Briartown. I was peddling medicine around in the old hack
of a thing and I got about twelve miles northeast of home and I found a
family by the name of Wilson Girdie.
[ Told of how he came to stay the night ],
Next morning the mother asked me, through her husbands translation, to turn my coffee cup down so she could tell my fortune. So I did and she told me three different things that came true that week. One was, I would hear of the death of a baby who was a close relative to my family. Sure enough, my wife received a letter that her baby niece had died in Western Oklahoma. The second was, somebody had been wanting to see me badly for some time, and the next Saturday when I went to town, an old friend who lived away down in Younger Bend came up and said, "Hey, there, I have been wanting to see you so bad for a long time." I asked, "What for?" and he said, "I want you to help me hunt some buried money in an old field down there near home." The third thing was, "Heap big money in a big field." I thought maybe someone would try to sell me a farm, but it was this fellow from Younger Bend wanting me to help him hunt money in a field.
This Wilson Girdie and I grew to be real friends. There were very
few whites in the hills of the Indian country at that time. I lost practically
nothing trading and trusting the Indians, but I have lost about four thousand
dollars trusting other people. for myself, I would like to call those good
old days back again. It seems to me that God blessed the people of that
age and I would enjoy seeing those days again.
Ref: Indian & Pioneer Interview Vol.28 pg 469-471.
Communicate with us, send us the rest of the story.
This page hosted by
Get
your own Free Home Page This page was created with 