Field worker Jennie Selfridge interviewed Mary Scott Gordon in Ardmore, Oklahoma, on March 31, 1937.

When the Civil War started all full-blood Cherokees went north and joined the Union. The white men and half-breeds crossed the South Canadian [River] and came South. The full-bloods would sometimes slip across the river and kill the southern Indians.

We lived just a little ways from Fort Gibson on Bayou-Maynard Creek. One day a man came down the road from toward Tahlequah on horseback. He had been riding his horse so hard that it fell when he reached our gate. This man, I do not remember his name, told Papa he had better leave at once because the full-blood Cherokees were coming in that direction. Papa wanted to take time to get something to eat but the men insisted that they hurry on across the Canadian. Papa was a big cattle owner, and had sold many cattle that year. While he was getting his horse saddled, and a new horse for his friend, I went to the room where he had three trunks full of money stored under the bed. I pulled out the smaller trunk which was full of money sacks. Each sack contained five hundred dollars in twenty-dollar gold pieces. I put it in his wallet and the rest in his overcoat pockets.

After papa went south, it left my stepmother, her children and me at home with the negroes. The negroes all went to Fort Gibson. We only had six or eight of them. After they left, my step-mother did not want to stay there, so we moved over to her mother’s home. Her mother was Mrs. Ada Adair. She lived in a sixteen-room house, which had been built by an old woman who was a whiskey-peddler. She died and my grandmother bought the house. Grandmother’s negroes carried over about one hundred fifty or two hundred head of hogs that papa had butchered. He killed about that many hogs every fall and sold the meat and lard to the fort. He smoked the hams and shoulders in Hickory smoke and sewed them up in sacks. The negroes were always happy at hog-killing time. They would usually butcher fifty at a time.

The Negroes carried the meat over to grandmother’s house and hid it in the basement, which was concealed under the dining-room floor. We put our bed-clothes through a trapdoor in the bedroom. This door had a ring on it and was always kept concealed under a rug. Underneath was a hole that did not connect with the basement. I wanted to bring our money over and hide it here, but my step-mother was afraid we would get caught with it.

We could get our bedding out after ten-o’clock every night because the Cherokees and Creeks never made a raid after that time.

In February father decided to come back across the river; [Arch] Love was with him. They crossed the river and got the horses. Love took three of them and went to his home, and papa brought four and came to us.

Grandmother had a turnip-patch at the side of the house. She also had a yoke of oxen, one of which wore a bell. That night Grandmother’s negro boy, eighteen or nineteen years old, heard one of the oxen jump into the turnip-patch. He went out to see about it. It was a bright night. The moon was shining almost as bright as day. When the Negro crossed the turnip-patch, someone began shooting at him from the barn. Of course, we knew it was the Indians after papa.

I helped papa get into his clothes. He wanted to cross the yard and make a run for his horse, but I knew if he did he would be killed. There was a large walnut tree standing at the back of the house, and this was the only safe place I could think of for him to hide. He went out the back door and made for the walnut tree. I gathered up his saddle, saddle-bags and clothes. Grandmother always raised some cotton every year and kept the seed in one room of the house. I took his things and went to this room and began burying them in the cotton-seed. The Indians saw the light and began shooting into this room. I kept working, and had just got the things covered when they broke into the house. They came into the room, sixteen of them, and forced me to take the lamp and go with them to search the house.

I told them papa was not at home. I led the way upstairs and all over the house. They then went into the smoke-house. [Text missing.] They got on their horses and rode off. I stood and watched them to make sure all sixteen of them were leaving.

After they left papa came back into the house. I told him to leave, and I would send his things together with some dry clothes to Little Shelf on the other side of the creek. “Little Shelf ” was a rock ledge on the south bank of the creek not far from where we lived. Papa waded the creek and went to Arch Love’s house. His clothes were frozen to him before he got there. He and Arch Love got the three horses and went across the river that night. The next morning we counted the holes and found that there were sixteen shots fired into the room where I was that night.

My sister told Arch not to come back home anymore because he would get killed if he did. He told her he would have to come back and cut her some wood. Papa told her to get a Negro by the name of Cicero to cut the wood. A short while after that Arch came back and brought a white man by the name of Jim Goree with him. The Indians attacked the house and killed both of them. Arch got out in the yard before he fell and Jim Goree got a little ways from the house. They cut his head off. After they were gone my sister had a hard time keeping the wolves away from their bodies. They came out of the hills in a large pack, ran the dogs away from the house and made for the bodies. My sister got the gun and killed some of them. As fast as she would shoot one, the others would devour the body. She finally got a pen built around the men and the old Negro, Cicero Riley, got there. We went down the next morning and helped dig their graves. There was no way of getting coffins so we wrapped quilts around them, put some sheets over them and lowered them into the graves.

After the white men came to Fort Gibson, they put guards around our house and wouldn’t let anyone in without our permission. There were ten thousand soldiers camped around the fort. We put up all of the milk cows we could find and milked them. I sold the milk to the soldiers for one dollar a pint. We would fill up a canteen for two dollars. My step-mother had always had Negroes do the work for her, and didn’t do anything except knit and piece quilts. This left most of the work for me to do. Grandmother was only seventy-five years old but she thought she was old. She had three negro women, one negro girl, one boy and one old Negro man. They all stayed with her during the war.

We stayed at grandmother’s almost all of the first three years of the war, then went south under a flag of truce. We went to Warm Springs [Arkansas] and met the southern men. That night we all camped together, both Union and Confederate.¹

ENDNOTES

¹ Mary Scott Gordon (Mrs. Raymond Gordon), Interview 1162, vol. 35, Ardmore, Okla., March 31, 1937, 30–34, Indian Pioneer Papers, Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Okla.