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.
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.
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