This post contains a transcript of what is likely the earliest tourist report from who a party who visited Talihina in the mid 1890s. The original article was published in FOREST AND STREAM. A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. VOLUME XLV. JULY, 1895 – DECEMBER, 1895. Period photographs have been added to aid reader’s interpretation.
In the very early morning of a day in last December our car was coupled on to a southbound train at Parsons, Kansas, and we began the run to our point of departure from the railroad in the Choctaw Nation. We were a jolly party, drawn together by a feeling of good fellowship as well as by the love of hunting, and we knew that all kinds of good times were before us. Most of our number had hunted in the Indian Territory in former years, and some of us had come from far beyond the Mississippi for this last hunt in that land of lawlessness.
We had boarded the car late the night before, but it was not yet light when we tumbled out of our blankets and gathered in a group to look at the country through which we were passing. Then, after the manner all hunters know so well, the talk flitted gayly about-banter that recalled hunts of the past, plans that promised well for the future, discussions of the merits of various calibers, and the hundred other things that concern the sportsman.
Photo credit: Original publisher.
We were so occupied when the Blackstone siding was reached, and one of the party who was on the train that was robbed there the month before told the story of the “hold up.” Muscogee, a few miles below, is a breakfast station, and our hunting-coated party invaded the dining- room to get the last meal we were to have from a real kitchen for many a day. One may find more peaceful places than the little town of Muscogee, but the eleven deputy U. S. marshals who were patrolling its streets with their Winchesters had a decidedly quieting effect upon the disorderly element.
At that time the Bill Cook gang of outlaws was engaged in its wildest depredations, and some of the residents were nervously apprehensive that they might raid the town. Then southward again to South McAlester, a town that presents many of the features of the Western mining camp.
It is a little city of wooden buildings with un-paved streets and sidewalks of every grade. Two laws are rigidly enforced there-one against selling liquor and one prohibiting the carrying of firearms. At night especially it has a mushroom, temporary, unsettled appearance, with its ill-lighted, irregular streets and its crowds of restless men wandering aimlessly about. It is essentially a town of men; one might almost say of men only.
Here our car was switched on to the old Choctaw Coal Road and pulled east through the coal region to the ‘Frisco road. We began to feel that at last our campaign was about to commence, and rifles were taken from their cases, cartridge belts were filled, hunting knives were whetted, and we talked more earnestly of what should be done when we struck the trail at Talihina.
A two hours’ wait at Wister Junction for a train on the ‘ Frisco gave us time to pick up a few quail on the rolling prairie near the railway. Then a south-bound local picked us up and we headed for Talihina, where we were to leave the railway and start across country for the mountains.
The character of the region changed as the miles slipped away under us. It was new country to us all, even to the two Indians whom we had brought down with the hounds.
Until almost evening we climbed up a grade winding between low mountains that suggested portions of the Alleghany range, and the sun had set before our car was left on the siding at Talihina. In the failing light we scurried out to get a glimpse of the town.
Talihina overlooking the railroad circa 1889. Photograph shows the original depot. Photo credit: Talihina Historic Preservation Office.
It is not a pretty place, and it has not even the merit of cleanliness to recommend it, but in spite of all it has an atmosphere that is attractive in a way to a man from the “States.” Not a bit of gay color lightens the scene. The prevailing tone is a dark slate color, even the earth has this tinge, and many of the inhabitants have the alert, death suggesting air of the well-trained funeral director.
They did not receive us cordially, or at least those only did who expected to participate in reducing our financial resources. We left no friends in Talihina, but it was through no fault of ours.
That night we stayed on the car and several of the citizens spent the evening in parading up and down the track and commenting upon us. They may be good shots-we did not know-but they are not well grounded in the rules of etiquette.
The town is neither large, quiet nor religious, and there is as much lawless entertainment per capita there as in any locality in the country. If the accident insurance rate is not high in Talihina it should be.
Perhaps the most sincere spirit of good will to one’s fellow men does not prevail, but the universal custom of carrying firearms has engendered some respect for the rights and feelings of others. This, however, is not allowed to prevent the free use of these weapons.
Shortly after sunrise we transferred our camp kit and provisions to wagons and loaded another with baled hay for the horses. In an hour we were on the march across the somewhat broken prairie under the guidance of two resident Indians.
To the left lay the Winding Stair Mountains, far down to the right were the mountains of the Seven Devils, and behind us in the distance were the San Bois Mountains. Dead ahead, but not yet in sight, was our destination in the Kiamichi Mountains.
At noon we stopped on the bank of a small stream, and just as the coffee began to boil a sharp-featured, brisk little man galloped up on a black horse, and the following conversation ensued with the leader of our party:
“Is your name Don?”
“Yes.”
“You’re leadin’ this outfit?”
“Yes.”
“I’m a United States Marshal and I’m after one of your party. ”
There are many annoying contingencies in life and arrest is not the least of them. We were disturbed, though innocent of wrongdoing. Further questioning, however, showed that it was one of our teamsters whom the law desired.
We promptly admitted the marshal’s greater right to the man and parted company, we keeping his team. Later developments caused us to think that the heavily armed gentleman might have arrested two of our teamsters without taking an innocent man. Before we were under way again a second deputy marshal rode in from another direction with an illicit distiller in custody.
Perhaps these evidences of the power of the law should have been reassuring to us; nevertheless we felt that there was yet something to be desired in the way of peace and quiet.
All day we followed the Polk county road toward Arkansas and at night camped in a bit of heavy timber near a small creek. It was a hurriedly made camp, but a picturesque one. The big cedar logs of our fire made a brilliant circle of light in the surrounding gloom and shone brightly on the faces that clustered round and on the white tent and wagon tops.
A camp on a prairie usually seems lonely and often cheerless; a camp in the mountains is sometimes almost oppressive with its sense of awe, and the gayest camp one can make is that in a heavily timbered country where great trees confine the firelight in a narrow space and throw it back upon the campers. Such was our bivouac that night.
At ten o’clock the next morning we forded the Kiamichi River and headed southeast to our camp ground. We had intended to go up into the Kiamichi Mountains, but found only one place where even a packhorse could ascend. To take the wagons up was out of the question, and so we pitched our tents in a grove of white oaks at the mountains’ base, near a little stream that came tumbling down a ravine.
The first half day we spent in learning the country. It presented a great diversity of kind; along the river were the prairies of the bottom land; then low hills covered here and there with cedar and oak trees; behind them rose the first long unbroken ridge of the mountains.
There was joy in the camp when the first turkey was brought in; there was greater joy the day following when three more were hung up in a tree beside the cook-tent. We kicked a bit each time one of them disappeared to reappear on the table, but the cook always laughed and did it again the next day. We wanted to make a big show of game when we marched out of the wilderness; he was determined to feed us well if it took all we could shoot, and possibly our remonstrances were not altogether sincere.
In spite of our appetites the game bag grew until when we broke camp thirty-two turkeys were hanging on ropes stretched from tree to tree and three deer were slung from the branches, while several fox skins that were to make rugs for far-away homes decorated neighboring saplings.
We hunted bear with considerable persistence; we had the hounds out after deer; but our only good luck was with the turkeys. Not even a glimpse of a bear did we get, only two bleached skulls, from which we took the teeth to keep as souvenirs of the hunt.
Now and then we stumbled on things that surprised and interested us and set our imaginations to building stories on the suggestions they offered. One such was a little “shack” in a valley near the foot of the mountains at a spot where the trampled ground and the quantity of manure showed that horse thieves had been want to corral their stolen stock there.
Perhaps, too, it had been a stopping place for the itinerant and hard hunted whisky peddler, the curse of the Indian nation. At another place nearer the river we found an old slab of stone telling that in that corner of the wilderness lay the body of a member of the Indian Council.
It may be he had desired to be buried in a country as wild and primitive as that of his forefathers. If so, his wish had been fulfilled. Breaking camp is often a mixed pleasure, and so it was as we moved out of the “Kimish.” A part of our camp kit had been sent on the day before, and thus lightened we made the railroad in one day.
Talihina did not welcome us, and we did not stay long there, but loaded our traps and coupled on to the first north-bound train. The last act of one of our party before leaving Talihina was to tear down and take away from a wall of the railroad station a handbill reading as follows:
$3,500 REWARD.
By authority of the Attorney General of the United States I hereby offer a reward of $250 each for the bodies of the following named outlaws, delivered to me, the reward payable on special approval of court. Deputy U. S. Marshal cannot receive the reward.
Names of outlaws: Bill Cook, Crawford Crosby, alias Cherokee Bill; Buck Wightman, alias Bitter Creek; Columbus Means, Skeeter, James French, Sam Brown, Perry Brown, Thomas Quarles, Joe Jennings, Charles Clifton, George Newton, Slaughter Kid, Bill Doolin.
Reward to be accepted in full of all expenses so far as the Government is concerned.
G. J. CRUMP, U. S. Marshal. Oct. 27, 1894.
This offer of reward by the Federal authorities gives a hint of the condition of lawlessness prevalent in the territory. In addition to the sum offered by the Government the express companies doing business in the Nation had offered rewards for the men who had taken part in the robberies in which they suffered. In some instances the totals had run up to very large sums.
The various Indian governments of the “Nation” are wholly unable or unwilling to put a stop to the reign of disorder there, and the territory is to-day the resort and asylum of desperate criminals from the Alleghany Mountains to the Rockies. The act of Congress, approved March 1, 1895, providing for the establishment in the “Nation” of two additional Federal courts and the appointment of their officers, may aid in restoring quiet, but if it is not successful something else must be tried.
A few miles northeast of Talihina we passed through the now notorious town of Le Flore, where Silan Lewis was executed by the Choctaw authorities in November, 1894, for complicity in the killing of several men during a political row, the result of attempts of rival candidates to secure the position of Governor of the Choctaw Nation. The party to which Lewis belonged was defeated and his trial was conducted by the other faction. A death sentence was passed and he was ordered shot.
The execution was deferred upon the request of President Cleveland, but at last feeling that there was no danger of Federal interference, the sentence was carried out in the most brutal manner possible. It was decided that the prisoner should be shot by one of his political enemies in accordance with Choctaw custom, and a member of the victorious political party was chosen to do it.
As had been prearranged, the shot was not fatal and the condemned man did not fall. No second shot was fired, but he was thrown to the ground and strangled to death by the fingers of his political opponents. He lived thirty-two minutes. There was no pretense of a fair trial and the death was made as horrible and painful as possible.
At Wister Junction we made the acquaintance of Jack Ellis, a Deputy U. S. Marshal, who has a “record” of twelve men and a wide reputation in that country for bravery. He told us that the train we were to take north from South McAlester would probably be held up by the Cook gang near Eufala, and he was corroborated at McAlester by the conductor of the train. We did not need to be told, however, that trouble was expected, for the number of guards on the train showed that it was true.
Photo credit: Original publisher.
One or two at a time these well-armed U. S. marshals strolled into our ear to smoke and learn of our luck in the field. They were good fellows, and one of them was carrying a bullet from “Cherokee Bill’s” Winchester.
The express car was only opened when absolutely necessary and then but one door at a time, while two marshals, one at each side of it, kept a careful lookout for danger. Thus we rode on through the night and in the early morning were again at Parsons.
To bed for four hours’ sleep; then for those of us who were to go on east the labor of packing our personal effects, and the party disbanded-no, not yet, for before we said good-by we were all to have dinner with “Joe”-“Joe, ” the jolliest man in the party; “Joe, ” whose eggnogs were dreams in alcohol, poems in whisky; “Joe,” who was never tired and whose luck in the field came late, but it came large.
Once more we gathered round a table and once more we hunted the “Kimish” together in retrospect, separating in the hope that we may again come together for another hunt in the “Nation.”
ALLAN HENDRICKS.
Original article preserved here: Forest and Stream a Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun 1895-08-31: Vol 45 Iss 9 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
