Robert L. Thomas interviewed Ida Mae Hughes in Muskogee, Oklahoma, on November 15, 1937. She talked about her churchgoing and an ancestor’s experience of the Trail of Tears.

I was born at Tahlequah, Oklahoma, Cherokee Nation, March 14, 1879. I am three-fourths Cherokee.

I was educated in the country schools east of Stilwell, Oklahoma. I grew up in Cherokee Nation and married Lee Hughes, a one-eighth Cherokee. He died in 1919 with the influenza….

When I was a girl I attended Elm Hill Baptist Church with my mother, who was a full blood Cherokee.

She was educated and was a leader in the Baptist Missionary work for thirty years. She did the interpreting for the ministers who were sent there from the east.

They had the Bible in Cherokee language and would read a verse then pass it down the line and every person would read. I was very small but it impressed me very much. I am still trying to follow out the teachings of my mother and the Bible.

I enjoyed going to church and most all my people are Baptist. The old church was called the Elm Hill Church and it is about nine miles east of Stilwell, in Adair County. The building has been torn down but the old family graveyard is still in my memory and it has grown to be a large graveyard. It was started by our family in 1845.

My grandfather’s name was Alford Miller. He was born in Georgia in 1812 and came to Oklahoma with the Cherokees over the Trail of Tears. I have heard him talk of his journey here. He said they walked part of the way, came on a steamboat part of the way and had to suffer great hardships. They were driven like slaves by the masters of the expedition. The weather was cold and the Cherokees suffered; many of them died on the way.¹

ENDNOTES

¹ Ida Mae Hughes, Interview 12184, vol. 45, Muskogee, Okla., Nov. 15, 1937, 218–19, Indian Pioneer Papers, Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Okla.