Hattie Jane, Part Three

My Father, Sam Paul the Politician

                                                         Sam Paul

As told to her great grandson, Dr James Phillips, discovertheword.com

            My name is Jim Phillips, great great grandson of Samuel Ikard Paul. My great grandmother used to love to tell me stories about her father and brothers Buck and Willie Paul. 

             These are her words through her eyes. You must remember of all the people and newspaper articles written about my family, that my great grandmother was an eyewitness to almost everything that happened among her family from March 2, 1883 forward. Many of the stories written in newspapers and by people that wrote the stories down years later were second and third hand witnesses. Hattie Jane Paul was there and saw much of the action actually take place, or heard the stories from eyewitnesses to these events. Every story that Grams told me, no matter how fantastic it sounded, turned out to be very historically accurate. Many times Grams would say, "Jimmy, if you get the court records you will see that I told you the truth." As I quote Grams, I will try to write as she spoke to me. The misspellings are intentional. 

Grams would say:  

My father was a politician among the Chickasaw people. He was a lawman and senator, and he ran for governor of the whole nation and he won it too, but they counted out his voters votes. I never saw a man with more nerves of steel than my father Sam Paul. He would stand up at public open air meetins and speak in a load voice. It took a person with a strong voice to address a crowd back in those days before mikerphones were invented.  

He spoke at every opportunity. People used to have all kinds of meetins before radio came out. That was entertainment. Everybody went to church just to have somethin to do. When Sam Paul started to speak everybody listened, his friends and his enemies. 

His enemies would sometimes pull out their pistols and go to work tryin to kill him. Someone would disarm them, and he would go on speakin just like nuthin happened. Some people thought he made a lot of sense, but his ideers were so different than most of the ol time Indians that he made a lot of enemies. My uncle Tecumseh was a politician too. Most of the ol time Indians liked Kump a lot more than my dad. My father would get up and make a speech then sometimes Tecumseh would get up and speak before or afterwards. Nobody ever shot at Tecumseh as far as I member. 

Sam Paul was fearless one time he went right into the enemy camp of ol Byrd and gave a speech standin in his fancy drivin rig while him and his people had guns on the opposin parties. My father spoke to them, and I think some later even went over to his side. Jimmy, that was dangerous business back then, goin like he did right into that camp of full bloods and apreechin his side of the argument an getting out of there alive. 

My Father always carried a smaller pistol under his coat. It was a 3220. He was never unarmed. It was dangerous business just walkin down the streets in those days. When my father Sam Paul went out on his law man business he carried a big colts 45 a Winchester rifle or more  likely that big ol 12 gauge lever action Winchester shotgun. It looked just like a rifle, but it was real big. 

In the territory them outlaws were as afraid of Sam Paul as they were the plague or small pox. He was deadly business to them ol boys. When he said, 'this is marshal Sam Paul. Yur under arrest.' They were already whupped most of the time. If they resisted, the shootin was on, and I mean in a hurry.  

Oh, how I wish Grams could have seen the real contributions that her father tried to make. Sam Paul had reached a terrible low in his life with drunkenness and womanizing, but I truly believe that the last eight years or so in his life, that he lived his life for his people. He lived those last years of his life to try to secure a future for all Indian tribes in what was Indian Territory. He spoke to each Indian tribe in their own language to explain to them without an interpreter their options for a more secure future. (Mike Tower in his foot notes, in the Outlaw Statesman,  states that Sam Paul knew 17 different Indian languages.) 

The white settlers were coming into Indian Territory by the thousands and they had the best politicians in Washington D.C. that money could buy. If the Indian people were to survive they had better learn how to deal with the white population on their own grounds. If you can’t beat them, you had better learn how to join them. Sam Paul was ahead of all the thinkers of his time. He was visionary. We know that now, but it got him classified as a traitor in the eyes of the full bloods back in his time.  

Sam Paul had the nerve to stand nearly alone and fight unbelievable odds to protect the rights of others not looking to take an advantage for himself. It states in a book written about those times, Leaders and Leading Men of the Indian Territory, by Harry F. O'Beirne:  

Mr. Paul has ever been a staunch friend to the white man. His father was a white man, and for no motives of self-interest to gain the favor of his people could he be induced to be-little the blood inherited through his father. This of itself is a noble quality, and will cover many imperfections,”------“As the leader of the progressive party in the Chickasaw Nation, all eyes are now turned in his direction, while he, himself, bent on restoring the white citizens to their original status, is at the time of this writing making preparations for a trip to the United states Capitol. Much depends on the result of his mission.  

The white citizens spoken of here represent the intermarried white citizens such as his own father Smith Paul. Sam Paul actually won his bid to be governor of the Chickasaw nation but all of the intermarried white citizens votes were disfranchised or counted out. These people were Chickasaws by marriage. Their votes had counted all the way back to Mississippi but now Byrd’s group changed all of that. 

My family on nearly every side was Native American. They had all suffered greatly from the greed of people willing to look over right and wrong and to simply get what they could get in total disregard of moral character.  

The Indian Removal Act had devastated every civilized tribe. All had their Trail of Tears. The Chickasaws, Ojibway, Sioux ,  and, Cherokees, were my ancestral people. All of them had come to Indian Territory to make a new start, where no one would ever try to take their homelands away from them again. The Chickasaw and Cherokee side of my family had treaties guaranteeing this.  

In Mississippi alone the Chickasaw’s lost plantations, beautiful homes , towns schools, and colleges, and their government buildings, and their council houses. These were whole nations that had been displaced The Chickasaw nation can be traced as far back as 1539-40 When Hernando De Soto lived among them during that winter then in the spring he tried to make slaves out of the men using them for bearers and guides. The Chickasaws revolted whipped his socks off scattered his hogs , which became the wild hogs in the south starting out in Mississippi and spreading to the other states. These hogs had been De Soto’s portable food supply brought from Spain. These peoples complete holdings as nations were stolen from them because someone else wanted their plantations, homes and schools. 

The Cherokee side of my family were forced to walk off and leave complete towns, working plantations, schools, colleges, a whole and complete nation was forced out of their native lands that they had occupied for hundreds of years.  

Both nations the Chickasaws and Cherokees had fought wars side by side with the United States government against opposing foes but this same nation wanted their lands and holdings.  

We hear so much about making foreign governments into democracies today, giving their people the right to vote and build their own autonomous democracies planning and developing their own futures. These Indian Nations were all democracies. They ruled themselves they had elections and everyone voted. Their schools were not segregated Women had the right to own property, to be educated and to vote. Intermarriage was fully accepted. Not only was intermarriage between races accepted but anyone who married into a tribe was adopted and many times became a leader or chief. .Whites and blacks were both accepted into the tribes as equal citizens. It did not take and act of congress or an amendment to the constitution to enforce it either. It took the United States Government  over two hundred  years,  a civil war, several acts of congress, constitutional amendments, and so called race riots to reach this same high state civilization and freedom for each individual in their nation that existed two hundred years ago in these so called heathen democracies.  

These Indian nations were complete autonomous entities. All these nations were caused to relocate  on their separate trails of tears into what was to be Indian Territory or  Indianola, as some called it. In this new land they would separately reestablish their autonomous nations and democracies. In this new land they were to live out their separate futures guaranteed forever their separate democratic autonomous governments.  

These 5 civilized nations held perpetual treaties drawn up by the U. S. government and the separate nations were to last forever or as long as the wind would blow the rain would fall and the waters ran. 

My great great great grandfather Smith Paul and great great great grandmother Elateecha lived through the Chickasaw trail of tears, many did not. 

They had carved out a new home and had become prosperous in this new land. 

Then came the Civil war and many in  the civilized tribes supported the Confederate States of America. After the Civil War the United States decided to punish the Indian nations for backing the South and confiscated half of Indian Territory  from them for being rebels. Not all of each tribe were Southern sympathizers. Many Indian men fought on the side of the Union, but the U. S. made a good excuse for getting a lot more land free of charge. 

Then came the Dawes Act.  

In 1905 my Cherokee great grandfather John Wilburn was killed over the Dawes act. He had refused to sign a new treaty. His farm and home was taken from his family and sold to a new white man and he, John Wilburn, was killed while driving his cattle to his own pasture He was killed as a trespasser on his own land in the sight of all of his children and wife. He had become an enemy of the state. Many full bloods from all the Indian nations would not sign this new treaty and nearly all of their lands were stolen from them. Many were killed protesting this new treaty. Even their orphaned children had their property stolen from them as guardians were appointed for them as protectors under the guise of progress. 

My great grandfather Harry Stewart of Ojibwa, and Sioux heritage had told his wife Hattie Jane  and their children, ”Don’t ever speak the Indian language. Don’t tell anyone you are Indian or related to the Pauls. What we have we will be able to keep. If they find out you are Indian, you will not be able to keep what you have worked a slaved for all of your lives”.

My family had left Oklahoma to come out to California to be mistaken for the white emigrants. To buy homes and businesses once again and to be able to hold onto what they would work for and build. 

 Now you can see why my great grandmother Hattie was criticized for not laying down her heritage. The Pauls were her family. The picture of that little half Indian and black child was her brother and she loved him. He was her blood kin and her family. Mattie, Sammie, Black Willie, Willie Hiram and Buck were her family and she would not forget them or abandon her love for them. She had absolutely no prejudice what so ever toward any race of people not even the whites that had abused her people so much.  

Grams instilled these same principles in me. When she looked at a man or woman she did not see color or skin pigment she saw another human being. She must have inherited this trait from her grandfather Smith Paul. 

This Dawes Act the last major catastrophe is what Sam Paul saw as the Indian people’s last stand. To survive the Indian people had to circumvent the Dawes Act and start their own Allotments before the U.S. government could get involved.  

Sam Paul died trying to lead his people ahead of the enemy to out think them and outmaneuver them. 

In 1999 Sam Paul was added to the Chickasaw Hall of Fame, 108 years after he was politically assassinated by his own son, and 34 years after Grams died. Oh how she would have been proud of her father. 

In 1965 my great grandmother Hattie Jane Paul Stewart Russell died loving all her family, having never abandoned her heritage or the love for her brothers and sisters.  

I have heard many negative things about my great great grandfather Samuel Ikard Paul and I know that many of those things were true. At times he was a violent man, he was at times vicious in carrying out warrants for law enforcement. But Grams said he loved animals and that he was very gracious and kind to people. He was always ready to give them a helping hand. He was willing to help a man start out in business or to make a loan to the needy. These are the more important things that I now remember about him.  They are the things that last. These are the acts that placed him in the Chickasaw Hall of Fame.  

It has been reported the much of the story of the wild and reckless character of Rooster Gogburn was partially made up of Sam Paul’s real life and arrest episodes. 

Sam Paul’s trials were so famous in Fort Smith Arkansas that, Jon Wright guide of The Fort Smith National Historical site, told me that they were going to do reenactments of his trials in their night court episodes.  

To the American public John Wayne who played Rooster Gogburn was America’s hero. He was the frontier marshal taking the law in his hands as jury judge and executioner.  

My great great grandfather Sam Paul was my hero.  I have taken the bad with the good and I smile as I say that was my grandpa. 

What you don’t hear often is how that later in his life Sam Paul lectured on strong family values and morality. He said that these values would build and strengthen the Chickasaw Nation. Sam Paul must have said strong Chickasaw homes will build a strong Chickasaw Nation. 

As you had read in the other blogs my family came out here to California and lived in a state of poverty that many people could not even imagine. Some had fallen into depths of alcoholism but most of them survived.  

It took my family a whole generation to settle down out here in California, but Smith Paul and Elateecha’s descendants through Sam Paul became businessmen military heroes, soldiers, firemen, artists, educators, workers, ministers, entrepreneurs, lawyers, law officers, doctors, and assets to their communities. Some failed but most succeeded. Those strong Scottish and Chickasaw genes still run in the veins of many descendants from coast to coast.

End Note by Robin Gunning:

Sam Paul was one of the few Chickasaws who envisioned a union between Indian and white man. He wrote this prophesy in 1891, 16 years before Oklahoma Statehood:

The shadow of an Indian Star is already among the galaxy upon the national flag...The beginning of the end is here. The State of Oklahoma, if such it will be called, will include the old bounds of the Indian Territory. No state west of the Mississippi will surpass it in the extent and variety of its resources and general prosperity of its people...in all the resources that go to make a great commonwealth, the new state will be complete. Men of Indian blood will sit beside their white brethren in the councils of state and assist in the administration of government; their interest mutual. The races will be blended as one. The Indian problem will no longer cry for solution. Civilization will have broken down the last barrier raised to retard her irresistible march. Our hills and valleys will teem with industry and thrift and our streams turn the wheels of manufactories. Important trade centers will spring up along the old cattle trails and stage roads...I have given you no fancy sketch. The time is not far off.

Sam Paul left the State of Oklahoma as his legacy.

Hattie Jane, Part Two

Hattie Jane's Story, as told to her great grandson, Dr James Phillips discovertheword.com

                                            James and His Wife Marilyn 
            My name is Jim Phillips, great great grandson of Sam Paul and Sarah Jane Lambert. 

            I had always lived near my great grandmother Hattie Jane. I called her Grams. My grandmother Dottie Opal Stewart Wilburn I called Momma. Grams was like my grandmother, and my grandmother Dottie was like my mother. My father was killed when I was two years old, and I had always slept in the bed with my Grandmother Dottie and grandfather Charlie Wilburn. My grandfather was Cherokee, tall about 6’2”, but a bent man because of sickness. He weighed about 140 Lbs. His lungs were greatly damaged in WWI, and even though he was only in his forties by his fifties he was an old man.

                                             Dottie and Charlie Wilburn

             My grandmother Dottie always watched after her mother Hattie. When she was sick she took care of her, and even when my grandmother was a young child she took care of all of her brothers and sisters and her mother.

            Dottie only went to school one year and that was the third grade. She only knew how to write in cursive. She taught me how to write in cursive before I ever went to school. Dottie was a great musician and vocalist. She could play a lot of musical instruments and the piano. If she heard a song one time she could sing and play it on and instrument.

            My grandparents taught me honesty. We lived a hard life but their word was iron. Their word meant everything to them. They would not lie for any reason, not for life or death. They would have died before they cheated a man out of a payment that they owed or break their given word.  

            In Oklahoma my grandfather was a bootlegger. That may sound funny these days being a bootlegger and honest. These people were Indians and they knew that just not everything this white government did was on the up and up. Every family heirloom I have handed down to me was bought with whiskey. A Remington 22 rifle, a 7 jewel Elgin pocket watch, and a steel skillet are the priceless family heirlooms. The watch is now lost. My grandfather was too sick to work but my grandmother worked in the fields as a field hand, for the railroad as an oiler, and did painting and household repair. She also cleaned houses and did laundry and ironing.

            My grandma and grandfather were very frugal. When they came to California they lived in tents in an Okie village they called Little Oklahoma, A lot of the country and western singers that would become stars lived in that village also.   

          It wasn’t long till my grandfather and mother had bought an acre of ground and built a little shack on it we called home. Our little shack did not even have a door, just a tarp flap over where a door should have been. We couldn’t find a piece of wood large enough for a door. The shack was about 10 ft by 12 ft put together out of wood that someone had thrown into the canal behind our shack. We had a wood stove to cook on to the right side of the shack a little closet built onto the right rear of the room and a bed to the left rear. A little table with a couple of boxes worked for chairs. We did not have electricity or running water. Our running water was in the canal ditch that ran by our house.

        This is me at about age ten with my pet chicken, Hoppy, in front of our shack

          Because we did not have an ice box we had no way to keep our beans cold or store them. When we came in from work in the summer time near Bakersfield, California where it gets above 110 degrees every day, the bean pot would just be boiling with fermentation. Grandma had to build a fire under the bean pot and make the beansboil for at least a half hour before we could eat them. Grandma Dottie would always throw in a pinch of baking soda. Grandma said that would keep us from getting a belly ache. (food Poisoning). We could only afford to eat beans, and we could not take the time to cook a fresh pot of beans everyday. It took too long and we had to work too many hours.  

          Of course we had two hole out house, which served for a garbage pit and restroom (Nowadays people dig up old out houses to find all kinds of treasures that fell down the hole). It was a major job to dig a new hole and to move the outhouse about every six months. 

After we had our shack and outhouse built, Grams (Hattie) came with her second husband Roscoe, and moved on the front of the property in a little blue and silver trailer.

                                                  Grams and Roscoe Russell

I spent a lot of time with Grams and Roscoe, Roscoe was my step great grandfather, He was good to me and I loved him, but I just never did call him grandpa.  The Russells, Corleys, Lamberts, and Pauls were all related, and Grams told me they were all part Indian. The Russells were Chickahomony from Virginia, and the Corleys were from Virginia also (there are some Corleys on the Chickasaw rolls). I don’t know exactly what kind of Indian the Lamberts were, but Grams said they were Indian also. They could have been Chickasaw, but I don’t know for sure. Some things are foggy after all these years.

My mother moved into a house next door with my Dad, but I lived with my grandparents even when my father was still alive. My great uncles and aunts all threw up little dwellings here and there. We had a regular old time Indian village erected in no time at all. 

My mother worked with my father James Phillips in used car lots and fruit stands and a gas station that they ran. I lived with Grandma and Grams.

Faye and James Phillips, my parents, in front of their service station and fruit stand, early '40's

Grams dipped Garrett snuff and always told me when I grew up that if I should use a little snuff I would never get worms or hemorrhoids. She was really serious about that. I took all the old Indian remedies whether I was sick or not, just like in the old days they used to say.

In this setting I got to hear all kinds of stories from Grams. My grandmother and Grams always did their laundry on a rub board and heated their water outside. Grams and Grandma would talk Chickasaw when no one else was around. They would just jabber away and I couldn’t understand a word that they were saying. I asked my grandmother what language that she was speaking and she would say Indian. She would not teach me how to speak Indian because my grandpa Charlie and Roscoe did not approve of it.

When one of us had something to eat everybody ate. Gram’s was a great cook cooking all types of Indian foods from the old days as they said. We ate rabbits, fish an occasional deer or bear, and crawdads that my uncles caught or killed. Grams always cooked outside when she lived in her trailer. Later she moved in next door and she had a regular stove and she cooked some things in the oven. In those days they threw away sheep heads and cow heads goat heads and hog heads, it seems that she always had one of them in the oven. She cooked chicken heads and chicken feet and chitlins from chickens and all the animal guts she could get.

When I stayed with grams she would tell me stories of her family when Roscoe was not around. Roscoe called Grams a black footed gut eater. Her sons would talk down to her in the same way and call her The Indian Sqaw or Jim Crow because she had some black brothers and sisters from Sam Paul’s Illegitimate Negro girlfriends. Grams had a picture of one of them which I now have.

Sam Paul's Negro children, Willie and baby (name unknown)

Grams, in spite of all of this degradation because of being Sam Paul’s daughter and an Indian, loved and cared for her children. I never saw her have a single conversation with anyone in the family but my grandmother Dottie and myself.

I will begin to tell you some of these stories in her words and through her eyes.

Hattie Jane's memories:

                                                 Jason and Ellen McClure

A few times in the early days of my life a dog would come up in the yard foaming at the mouth and Grams would take me in her little trailer and tell me about mad dogs with hydrophobia.  

She would say:   

Jimmy, my grandma’s first husband died of hydrophobia. You’ve got to stay away from them mad dogs and shoot 'um if you can and burn 'um plum up to kill the disease. My grandma's first husband was bit by a mad dog and he sent for his friend (This must have been Smith Paul, her grandfather), to look for a madstone to save his life. A mad stone could not be found anywhere. Our people had to leave our country back east so fast that many important medicines were left behind or lost on the trail on the way to Indian Territory.  

A madstone was the only known  cure for rabies in the early history of man. American Indians used them and passed this knowledge down to many old time white doctors that used folk medicines. Even in Europe and the Middle East madstones were used to cure rabid bites from animals and snake bites. To learn more about madstones go to Google and look up the “Lee Penny a madstone” you can learn much about the use of madstones for medical cures and their legitimate place in documented cures for hundreds of years in ancient medicine.  

Back to Hattie's story:  

My Grandpa Smith (Paul) was then told by Rev. Mc Clure to take him way out in the woods away from his family and friends. Jimmy, they took a length of strong chain and some locks. Rev. Mc Clure had them gather up a lot of dry wood and brush and stack it in a big pile. Rev. McClure said that grandpa could not bury him because the dogs and wolves might dig him up and carry on the hydrophobia, and more people would have to die. After they got everything ready, Rev. McClure put the chain around his neck and locked the lock tight so he couldn’t get loose and hurt anyone. Mc Clure was a good man from everything I have heard about him, and his son Tecumseh is a real good man too. He is my Uncle. I was always proud of Tecumseh the other Indians always liked him more that they did my father Sam Paul. Smith and Rev. Mc Clure laid out a pallet for him to lay on under this big tree and chained the other end of the chain to the tree trunk. The Reverend got real bad and Grandpa Smith could not bring himself to shoot him and to put him out of his miseries. The Reverend finally died, and grandpa Smith  put Mc Clure and all his personal effects upon the brush and wood pile and burned them completely up. Later grandpa Smith kept his promise to him to watch after his wife and children. Grandmother had three children by the Reverend Mc Clure: Catherine, Tecumseh and a baby that died.

Grams told me this story several times.

 

To be continued:

`

For more about Hattie Jane's grandmother, Ellen or Ela-Teecha, see the post of February 28, 2011, Indian Territory, 1845.

For more about Jason McClure, Ellen's first husband, see post of December 29, 2010, Jason McClure.

Sam Paul, Part Six

With this post I'm going to try and finish the story of my great grandmother's divorce from my great grandfather, Sam Paul. It's not a pleasant story, and not one I'm proud of. Anyone interested in more details can read the book: Shadow of an Indian Star, by Bill and Cindy Paul, who did and continue to do a huge amount of research into our family's history. They have discovered more details since the book came out, but it covers most of the stories about Sam Paul, with some drama added. See shadowofanindianstar.com for pictures, excerpts, and book orders.

Like I said in my post of September 10, Sam Paul divorced his wife Sarah when he got out of prison because she had run off with his codefendant, Jim Ross. It must have been a frightening time for Sarah. Several years before, when she had fled to her parents' house to escape her husband's wrath, her father, Hiram Lambert, had turned her away, saying "it is better for one to be killed than the whole family." Sarah's father had died in 1883 though, so when Sam returned to the Chickasaw Nation she was staying with her mother. 

This was Sarah's testimony before the Dawes Commission:

Q: Where were you when he (Sam Paul) came back?

A: At my mother's

Q: He did not come to see you?

A: Yes, sir.

Q: Did you ask him to live with you?

A: Yes, sir.

Q: Did you propose to go back to live with him?

A: Yes, sir.

Q: What did he say to that?

A: He said no, he wanted a divorce.

I kind of doubt that Sarah begged Sam to take her back, but that's what she said anyway. It's pretty clear though, from the evidence that her attorney, Owen Patchell, presented at her citizenship hearing, that her life with Sam Paul had been a living Hell. As he said in his brief: "the plaintiff had been so uniformly brutal and had led her such a dog's life for the ten years that she did live with him that she looked upon a permanent separation as a mercy of God."

After making the point that Sam Paul had multiple affairs during their marriage and had several illegitimate children, Patchell asked Sarah:

Q: Did he make any pretense of keeping these matters secret to you?

A: No, sir, told me I could leave if I did not want to stay.

Q: How did he treat you in other respects?

A: He tried to starve us out.

At this time, Sam Paul's oldest boy, Joe, was living on his own, and he helped Sarah and his two younger brothers. My grandfather, Bill, whom his mother called Willie, said that there were times when they would have starved had it not been for Joe.

              
                               Joe Paul, second from left

Mr. Patchell went on with his questions:

Q: Did he ever make any serious threat on you?

A: Yes, he tried to shoot me lots of times.

Q: Describe one instance of what he did and said to you?

A: He came home --- he was just like a stranger --- came in that time and asked me if I heard about some men getting killed and I said I did and he just run a pistol up my head, and said he would show me how they were killed, and tried to kill me but I broke away.

Q: Was anybody present when that occurred?

A: Yes, Frank Beckly and his wife.

Sam's libertine behavior, and his cruel treatment of his wife Sarah was certainly not typical of Chickasaw men. For example, Sam's brother Tecumseh was happily married to the same woman all of his life. Sam did follow Chickasaw tradition however in taking responsibility for his children and for their mothers. He apparently even paid one man to marry Fanny Briley, with whom he had a daughter pictured below. You'll remember that Fanny had been Sam's partner in the saloon business. 

                        Daughter of Sam Paul and Fanny Briley

Sam Paul certainly was a brilliant man, as I'll try to show later, but he was also volatile, and at times violent. At one point in her testimony Sarah estimated that during his life he had killed fifteen or sixteen men.

If my mother had known her grandmother Sarah at an earlier time, she might not have thought of her as being so timid, since she was able to stay with Sam Paul, and occasionally she even stood up to him.

But what of this trip to the Cherokee Nation? Was it just simply a brief love affair interrupted by Sam's release from prison? "That just doesn't quite ring true. Well, the answer took a long time in coming, at least to Sam's descendents in Oklahoma, and it came from California, from a Baptist Preacher named Dr. Jim Phillips, who read the book, Shadow of an Indian Star, and realized that he had been hearing stories about the characters in the book all of his life. He contacted the authors, Bill and Cindy Paul, and the two branches of our family were finally joined.

Dr. Jim Phillips and great aunt Mable Stewart, Hattie Jane's daughter.

Jim was raised by his great grandmother, Hattie Jane Stewart. Nobody paid much attention to Hattie Jane's stories, partly because she was an old woman, but also because the family was of Indian descent on both sides, and didn't want to be labeled as such by the largely prejudiced community. Jim loved his great grandmother's stories though, and gradually as he grew older he pieced together the story of her life.

                           Hattie Jane Stewart

Hattie was the daughter of Sam and Sarah Paul. When Sam was taken to prison at Fort Smith, Sarah was pregnant, and when he was sent to the federal penitentiary in Detroit, she went to the Cherokee Nation to have her baby, secretly. About that time Sarah's sister Juliana was also pregnant, but she lost her baby, so Sarah asked her to raise her daughter, whom she named Hattie Jane, as her own daughter. Sarah was afraid that if Sam were to be released from jail he would take custody of his children. She knew that she would lose her two boys, but she didn't want to lose her daughter also. So the switch was made. Hattie Jane was raised by her Aunt Juliana, and Sarah denied that she had ever given birth to her.
 

For the next couple of posts, My cousin, Dr. Jim Phillips has kindly agreed to write the story of his great grandmother, Hattie Jane Stewart, as she told it to him.