Duchess of Weaselskin

Bayfield, Colorado - We had a Bear mangle our bird feeders around 9:00p.m. this last Saturday evening and during the earlier morning of the same day. We did get a glimpse of it when it came back a second time to see if the bird feeders were still out. The bird feeders had not been left out, though.

The bear was scared down towards the south when he heard us, but he (the bear) did not mess with NW Okie's portable vegetable greenhouse. A neighbor to the south said the bear came close to him and crossed the road and went under the North Bridge.



If you want to catch a quick few second of the bear and deer that dashed North and South on our road in the earlier morning hours between 4:27 a.m. and 5:27 a.m., do not blink while watching because you could miss them entirely.

NW Okie would not let us Pug dogs out alone this weekend in the evenings. She was afraid we would be skinned and/or the bear's next dessert. Anyway, this huge bear has been tagged twice already. And . . . you know what happens when they get tagged three times, don't you?

NW Okie's tomatoes ( early girls and better boys) are still growing and setting on, especially the "better boy" tomatoes.

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This Day In History (June 19 & 20)

America - On June 20, 1905, Lillian Hellman, the American playwright and screenwriter, was born. Following her death on June 30, 1984, her obituary appeared in The Times.

On This Day . . .

• 1863 - West Virginia became the 35th state.
• 1893 - A jury in New Bedford, Mass., found Lizzie Borden innocent of the ax murders of her father and stepmother.
• 1943 - Race-related rioting erupted in Detroit.
• 1948 - The TV variety series "Toast of the Town" hosted by Ed Sullivan debuted on CBS.
• 1963 - The United States and Soviet Union signed an agreement to set up a hot line communication link between the two superpowers.
• 1967 - Boxer Muhammad Ali was convicted in Houston of violating Selective Service laws by refusing to be drafted. (The conviction was later overturned by the Supreme Court.)
• 1975 - The movie "Jaws" was released.

• 1586 - English colonists sailed from Roanoke Island, N.C., after failing to establish England's first permanent settlement in America.
• 1862 - Slavery was outlawed in U.S. territories.
• 1903 - Baseball Hall of Famer Lou Gehrig was born in New York City.
• 1910 - Father's Day was celebrated for the first time, in Spokane, Wash.
• 1917 - During World War I, King George V changed the British royal family's German-sounding surname, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, to Windsor.
• 1934 - The Federal Communications Commission was created.
• 1961 - The Supreme Court struck down a provision in Maryland's constitution requiring state officeholders to profess a belief in God.
• 1964 - The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was approved after an 83-day filibuster in the U.S. Senate.

NW Okie's Ancestry Corner

Bayfield, Colorado - The photo on the left is a photo taken around 1960 or so of my Dad, Gene M McGill when he was head of the Oklahoma Democratic Party. Gene M McGill was born 27 December 1914, in Alva, Oklahoma; graduated from the Oklahoma University Pharmacy school in 1937; married Vada Eileen Paris 24 March 1940 and raised four daughters in Northwest Oklahoma. McGill died 16 June 1986, Sunday, on Father's Day.

We heard from some Oklahoman's this week that another Northwest Oklahoma pioneer died 14 June 2011. Some of you might remember Velma Ruth Bloyd Ware as the wife of Artie Ware and the daughter of Arvilla M. (Maddox) and Boone Homer Bloyd. Velma was born 8 miles west of Alva on 20 November 1919 and passed away recently at the age of 91 years, 6 months and 25 days. You can read her obituary at Wharton Funeral Chapel

Is it getting hot and drier in Oklahoma? Hope the firefighters get some relief soon to all those wildfires in Arizona, New Mexico and NW Oklahoma.

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Worth of WWII German POW Paintings

America - An archived issue of an earlier feature concerning the worth of World War II German POW Paintings has brought on this comment from Julia Clark-Foster as she asks in an OkieLegacy Ezine Feature #525, "My father was a major in the army and was responsible for some of these POW Germans's. My father commissioned Willie Sacks (the German artist) to do a series of artwork for him. How can I research if Willie Sacks is alive and what has happened to him. Are his artwork worth anything? Daughter of Myrvin C. Clark" View/Write Comments (count 0)   |   Receive updates (0 subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

A History of Oklahoma

Oklahoma - We found another history book on Google Books. This history book is A History of Oklahoma, by Joseph Bradgield Thoburn, Isaac Mason Holcomb with a photo of Sequoyah (George Guess) holding a tablet on the frontcover. It was published in 1908 by Doub & Scompany of San Francisco. Joseph B. Thoburn was a former secretary of the Oklahoma Board of Agriculture. Isaac M. Holcomb was a former Superintendent of the Oklahoma City Schools.

There is a poem entitled "Oklahoma" by George R. Hall, on the first pages that this NW Okie has never read or seen before. Maybe someone out there might have seen this poem, which I transcribed below.

OKLAHOMA
Land of the mistletoe, smiling in splendor,
Out from the borderland, mystic and old,
Sweet are the memories, precious and tender,
Linked with thy summers of azure and gold.

O, Oklahoma, fair land of my dreaming,
Land of the lover, the loved and the lost:
Cherish thy legends with tragedy teeming,
Legends where love reckoned not of the cost.

Land of Sequoyah, my heart's in they keeping.
O, Tulledega, how can I forget!
Calm are they vales where the silences sleeping,
Wake into melodies tinged with regret.

Let the deep chorus of life's music throbbing,
Swell to full harmony born of the years;
Or for the loved and lost, tenderly sobbing,
Drop to that cadence that whispers of tears.

Land of the mistletoe, here's to thy glory!
Here's to thy daughters as fair as the dawn!
Here's to thy pioneer sons, in whose story
Valor and love shall live endlessly on!

The story of Oklahoma is a land of many peoples! Within its limits live the remnants or descendants of not less than fifty different tribes and nations of Indians. Their former homes of these peoples were scattered over thirty different states. I suppose you could say, "Every state in the Union is represented by the white people who settled in Oklahoma."

The citizenship of Oklahoma is made up of blended blood of the Puritan, the Cavalier, the patroon, the Covenanter and many of its people trace their descent from the American Indian as well.

The Indian has played an important part in the earlier history of every state of the American Union. It was only in Oklahoma that his race played a part in its construction.


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Expedition to Salt Plains & Establishment of Fort Smith

Oklahoma - In the History of Oklahoma, page 29, by Thoburn and Holcomb, there is mention of an "Expedition to Salt Plains." It was in 1811 the salt plains of the Cimarron and Salt Fork (Nescatunga) were visited and explored by George C. Sibley, U.S. Indian Agent at Fort Osage, on the Missouri.

At that period the Osage hunted buffalo in the region of the Salt Plains every year, and it was probable that Agent Sibley was induced to take the trip largely by their representations. George C. Sibley was born in Massachusetts, in 1782. Most of his early life was spent in North Carolina. He entered the Indian service as a clerk at Fort Osage, on the Missouri, in 1807, and was afterward made agent for the Osage.

In 1824 he was appointed by President John Quincy Adams a member of the commission to lay out a road to the Mexican frontier and secure the consent of the Indian tribes. Retiring format he Indian service, he settled on a farm near St. Charles, Missouri, where he lived for many years.

Establishment of Fort Smith
In 1817 a military post known as Fort Smith was established at Belle Point, at the mouth of the Poteau, on the Arkansas River, and adjoining the eastern boundary of what is now the State of Oklahoma.

Civilization was first planted on the borders of Oklahoma in the guise of military necessity. The site of Fort Smith was selected by Major Stephen H. Long of the Topographical Engineers, who had been exploring the valleys of the Kiamitia and the Poteau. The post was named for Col. Thomas A. Smith, of the Rifle Regiment. It was occupied by troops until 1824, when Forts Gibson and Towson were established, and the garrison was withdrawn. It was rebuilt and reoccupied in 1838 and as not finally abandoned until 1871 View/Write Comments (count 0)   |   Receive updates (0 subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

Arkansas Territory Organized

Arkansas - It was 2 March 1819, when the territory of Arkansas was created. It included nearly all of the region extending from the Mississippi River westward to the 100th meridian between 30° 30ʹ of north latitude, except that part which lay to the south of the Red River, thus including nearly all of Oklahoma.

At different times between 1819 and 1829, the territorial Legislative Assembly of Arkansas defined the boundaries of counties in the region which subsequently formed parts of the Cherokee, Choctaw and Creek Nations.

The eastern boundary of Oklahoma, from the Red River north to the Arkansas, was surveyed in 1826 in compliance with the provisions of the Choctaw treaty of 1825. From the Arkansas north to the southwest corner of Missouri, it was surveyed in accordance with the terms of the Cherokee treaty of 1828. All white settlers west of these lines were required to move father east where they were permitted to select other lands instead of those thus abandoned. View/Write Comments (count 0)   |   Receive updates (0 subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

The Santa Fe Trail

Santa Fe Trail - The History of Oklahoma book by Thoburn and Holcomb, also had this interesting piece about the Santa Fe Trail. It was 3 March 1825, approved by an Act of Congress, the President of the United States was authorized to cause a road to be marked out from the western frontier of Missouri to the confines of New Mexico and providing that three commissioners would be appointed to select and survey the proposed route and to secure the consent of the Indian tribes occupying the lands through which the road was to be laid out.

Benjamin H. Reeves, George C. Sibley and Thomas Mather were named as commissioners. Acting in that capacity they negotiated treaties with the Great and Little Osage and Kaw Indians and performed the work of locating the proposed road in 1825-6-7. This highway of international commerce across the Great Plains became best known as the Santa Fe Trail. For a distance of about 70 miles this road passed over Oklahoma soil, entering what is now Texas county, Oklahoma, from the north and passing, in a southwesterly direction across Cimarron county.

As originally laid out, the eastern terminus of the road to New Mexico was at Fort Osage, on the southern bank of the Missouri River about 30 miles below the mouth of the Kansas River. The western terminus was at Taos, New Mexico. A few years later the eastern starting point was changed to Westport (part of the Kansas City, Missouri), while the western destination was at Santa Fe, New Mexico. This historic highway soon became an important factor in the development of the West and Southwest.

Manufactured goods of all kinds were shipped to the trading posts of the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains, from the East, as well as to the Mexican settlements in the Valleys of the pPecos and Rio Grande. Bales of wool, bars of silver bullion, furs and buffalo hides were hauled to the Missouri River from the West.

Large freight wagons (Conestoga wagons) were designed and built at Pittsburgh especially for the overland traffic. They were generally drawn by mules or oxen. Traders traveled in companies of caravans of considerable number for mutual protection. Along the dusty paths tramped and camped part of the army which helped to extend the national domain in the war with Mexico. View/Write Comments (count 0)   |   Receive updates (0 subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

The Cherokee Phoenix

Indian Territor - The Cherokee Phoenix was the name of the first Cherokee newspaper. It was established at New Electa, Tennessee, in 1827, with Elias Boudinot as editor. Its publication continued until 1832. In 1844 it was re-established in Tahlequah, the capital of the new home of the Cherokee in the West, under the name of the Cherokee Advocate, and as such it was continuously published until the outbreak of the Civil War.

It was again re-established in 1870. In 1876 the printing plant of the Advocate was destroyed by fire and, when re-established, it was gain given a new volume and number. The Advoate was printed half in Cherokee and half in English. It was published by the Cherokee Nation, its editor being selected by the National Council usually from among the ablest men in the tribe. It was the medium through which all legal notices, proclamations, reports and other public documents reached the citizenship of the little Indian republic and, in addition, much in the way of news and editorial comment that was of pertinent interest. Being national publication, it was always neutral in all matters pertaining to the partizan political controversies which so often agitated the Cherokee people.
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Establishment of the Indian Territory Authorized

Oklahoma - By an Act of Congress approved 26 May 1830, provisions for the establishment of the Indian Territory were authorized. The terms of that law the President of the U.S. authorized to select a part of the undivided public domain to which the title of the aboriginal tribes had been extinguished.

The same to be divided into a suitable number of districts or reservations for the reception of such tribes of Indians as might choose to exchange the lands where they then resided in states east of the Mississippi. There doesn't seem to have been any formal action on the part of the President in definitely fixing the bounds and limits of the proposed Indian Territory, but the country immediately west of the organized states and territories came to be now as the Indian Territory.

It was within 15 years after the passage and approval of the act providing for the establishment of the Indian Territory, many tribes found their way from the stets east of the Mississippi. The Delaware, Miami, Shawnee, Wyandotte, Ottawa, Kickapoo, Pottawatomie, Sac and Fox, and several smaller tribes, moved to reservations in that part of the so called Indian Territory from which the state of Kansas was afterward formed.

The eastern parts of Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma, with an indeterminate western boundary, were known as the Indian Territory until after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill by Congress in 1854. View/Write Comments (count 0)   |   Receive updates (0 subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe