Part 4: “Here in this wilderness”

In November, I finished gathering my crop and on the ninth of that month went to the land office and filed on my claim. Mr, Griffin in the meantime had told the claim seekers that my land had been taken. I hired a neighbor, a Mr. Caddis, and his son with two wagons to move us to our new home. My wife and Mr. Caddis’ son drove his teams while Mr. Caddis drove my oxen to my wagon loaded with corn. I walked and drove our cattle which numbered seventeen head. We started early in the morning of November 20th and after driving hard, arrived on our claim by 11 o’clock of the second day. We put up the tent and set the cook stove outside under the trees, and by the time we got the wagons unloaded my wife had dinner ready to serve.

Having eaten dinner and Mr. Caddis and son has started on their return home, my wife looked out over our claim and said, “We have a place and I am proud of it, but how are we going to make a go of it here in this wilderness?” I said, “I can show you better than I can tell you,” and I picked up my ax and started cutting logs.. There was lots of good timber on the place and I was young and strong and a good hand with an ax, and by night I had enough logs cut and in place to make a bin as high as my head for my corn, besides I had floored with with puncheons. That night I unloaded my corn into it. The next day I cut poles and built a lot for my cattle. A few days later I had completed a log cabin which we used for a kitchen while we continued to live in the tent that winter.

I realized that if I cleared out enough land to make a crop on I would have to work day and night burning brush to make a light to chop by. Practically the entire place was covered with heavy timber which had to be cleared, but by planting time I had eight or nine acres cleared. The land was new and fertile and the first crop we made on our place, in 1892, we made two bales of cotton and all the corn we needed for another year.

For the benefit of the younger generation I shall give a description of this country as it appeared at the opening. Except for a few scattered cabins of the Indians and inter-married whites, with their small clearings, the country was in the same primeval state as it had been from time immemorial. Much of the country was covered with heavy timber with a occasional prairie glade of a few acres. Along the creeks were thickets of underbrush and tall trees of pecan, walnut, elm, cottonwood, and several kinds of oak. On the hillsides postoak, blackjack and hickory were the principle trees which grew in profusion. Grass grew from two to three feet high all over the prairies and woods, Wild fruits, such as strawberries, plums, grapes, blackberries, and dewberries grew in abundance. Acorns, pecans, walnuts, and hickory nuts were plentiful. The timbered regions, outside the creek bottoms, were generally free of underbrush, due to the burning of the younger growth with the grass in the fall and winter, and a wagon could be driven almost anywhere through the woods. Very few of the Pottawatomie Indians who had been given allotments were living on their land, and in consequence, it remained unfenced and on which ranged vast herds of horses and cattle. The settlers considered these unfenced lands as common grazing grounds. Wild game abounded, such as deer, turkeys, prairie chickens, while the woods and fields were alive with quail.

The early settlers got much of their food by killing the game and gathering the wild fruits and nuts. It was several years before orchards and vineyards came into bearing and these wild fruits were a God-send to the meagre larders of the settlers.

There were many springs over the country and the presence of a good spring often determined the location of a settler’s cabin, as these springs for several years were the source of water supply.

To be continued…