L. W. Wilson interviewed Mary Cobb Agnew in Muskogee, Oklahoma, on May 25, 1937. Mrs. Agnew’s comments about the Trail of Tears are quoted in Part 4. Here, she talks about her life before, during, and after the Civil War.

Agnew makes reference to “Bread payments” and the Cherokee Strip. Based on the 1880 Cherokee census (called “the Lipe Roll”), a per capita payment was made to citizens of the Cherokee Nation. It was called “bread money” because it was used for a basic family need. Other payments were also made. For example, “grass money” referred to per capita money derived from leasing the Cherokee Outlet, and the 1893 Cherokee census was the basis for a per capita payment derived from funds received from the sale of the Cherokee Strip. The Cherokee Outlet—a 60-mile-wide, 225-mile-long strip of land south of the Oklahoma-Kansas border—was granted to the Cherokee Nation by the Treaty of New Echota. The Cherokee Strip was a 2-mile strip along the northern border of a portion of the Cherokee Outlet.¹

In my girlhood days, we lived in log cabins with large fireplaces. Some of the cabins had puncheon floors, some dirt floors. We cooked in fireplaces and on open fires. We had no matches to start our fires. We had to start the fire with a flint and steel, or had to keep the fire continually burning.

Our farming consisted of raising corn in small clearings in the woods. We raised good gardens of beans, pumpkins and common garden vegetables. Of course, we didn’t have all the new farm tools they have now. Almost all the work done on the farm was done with a deer tongue and a hoe.

We raised some cotton, just enough for our clothing. We had no [cotton] gins. We used to lay the cotton around the fireplace and get it good and dry and pick the seeds out by hand.

The corn for our bread was crushed in a mortar with a pestle. Also our hominy grits or “Canahomie” was made with the pestle and mortar. We had hominy too. We called it skinned corn. Later we got a hand grinder to make our meal at Fort Gibson.

We made our soap. We had an ash hopper and saved all the ashes. The water made a lye after going through the ashes and with this water and old fat meat scraps of all kinds, we made soap.

We made our own cloth with the spinning wheel, reel and loom. Many, many days I have carded and spun thread. I have spun wool, but most of my spinning was cotton. After we made the thread, we would dye it different colors from dyes made of oak bark, indigo, walnut hulls, etc. We always put copperas in our dye solutions to keep the cloth from fading.

Before the war, we were all getting along well, had plenty of everything to eat and wear. Had horses, mules, oxen, cows, hogs, sheep, chickens and everything and there were still wild game, berries, fruits, and nuts, so we really wanted for nothing.

Schools and churches improved. They taught and preached in English and sometimes in Cherokee. The best schools and the printing press of the Cherokee Nation were at Park Hill. John Ross was our principal chief and was determined to affiliate the Cherokees with the Northern army but my family and I could not agree with him here. We fell in with Albert Pike for the South.

Army troops occupied Fort Gibson until just before the Civil War. They were there until about 1857 or 1858.

I was married to Mr. Agnew before the Civil War. He was a well-educated man and was a graduate from the Cherokee School at Park Hill. He served on the Cherokee Council at Tahlequah and was also a District Judge and held different positions in the affairs of the Cherokees….

After the Civil War, the Cherokee Nation was in a deplorable condition. Houses and cabins had been burned. Fields had grown up into thickets of underbrush. The hogs and cattle which the soldiers had not killed had gone wild in the woods and canebrakes.

People had to start life anew, build cabins, clear ground, plant crops, and build rail fences, in fact, do as they had done before the Civil War.

The soldiers were still at Fort Gibson and stayed there until 1889 when they left and never returned. These soldiers were to keep down uprisings among the people which usually flared up at elections such as the Green Peach War over there in the Creek Nation. They also would be sent out at times to try and confine wild Indians to reservations on land which the Government had taken from us Cherokees and others of the Five Civilized Tribes.

We Indians got our homes rebuilt and were doing well when the Government took another shot at us and set up the Dawes Commission in 1894. We owned all the land as a whole and could farm all we wanted to as long as we didn’t infringe on our friends’ land. We had a good government of our own just like we had had back in Georgia, but the white men wanted our land just as they had wanted it in Georgia. Again there was much discussion. The white people called us barbarians, half-wits, said we couldn’t run our business, etc. So they sent men out to enroll all the citizens of the Cherokee Tribe. I and all my kin enrolled without any trouble, for I saw and so did Mr. Agnew, that if we were to get anything, it would be necessary to enroll. Many people tried to get enrolled and get a little land that way who were not entitled to it.

I am an old woman who has lived a long time and if there ever was a race of people that was downtrodden it is the Cherokees. The white people came in with the negroes and we had to give them part of our land. I never will know why we owed them anything. We didn’t bring negroes here, God knows….

I received my allotments under the Dawes Commission and I am enrolled. Restrictions were raised on my allotments and I sold them to get money to keep me in my old days.

I received Cherokee Strip payments, also Old Settlers payments. I never received any Bread payments. With all the money due the Cherokees for their lands in Georgia and in the Territory, the Government practically has given us nothing.²

ENDNOTES

¹ See //www.cherokee-strip-museum.org. For more on bread money, see http://files.usgwarchives.net/ok/nations/cherokee/census/cherwest.txt.

² Mary Cobb Agnew, Interview 5978, vol. 1, May 25, 1937, Muskogee, Okla., 289–303, Indian Pioneer Papers, Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Okla.