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Brief Narrative Sketch of Cow Tom
Cow Tom is an intelligent negro of the Creek persuasion.
During the Florida war he was interpreter for General Jedsup, and was
the body servant of Lieutenant Lane, when that unfortunate young officer
committed suicide by falling on his sword, the point of the weapon
entering the brain just above the eye. Cow Tom is the proprietor of a
plantation—under a good state of fencing, he purchased the
improvements since the war for $150.
He is entitled under the Creek law
to all the land he can put under fence and cultivate, with the privilege
of keeping off his neighbors at arm’s length, as settlements are not
allowed nearer any occupant than each quarter of a mile. The reason for
this custom, as adopted by the early Indian law givers, growing out of
the tribal relation, obliging the Indians to scatter about and become
independent proprietors.
Wild tribes of nomadic habits are accustomed to wandering about and
huddling together for mutual safety and, defense.
Cow Tom this season has raised fine crops of corn, cotton, and
chickens, sufficient to render comfortable a large family of children
and grandchildren who lean on him for support. But owing to the distance
from the mill, he pounds his corn in a mortar with a wooden pestle, and
the yield of cotton, raised exclusively for home consumption, has to be
ginned with the fingers, and carded by hand.
For breaking up the prairie
he used the old-fashioned "bull plow," such as was in use
before the invention of the "wood patent." By long service,
the plow point, from constant filing, has become worn up to the
mold-board. It should be stated that farmers nearer the States,
especially among the Cherokees, Senecas, Quapaws, Peoria, and other
advanced tribes, have introduced improved farming implements to a
considerable extent.
The Neighborhood
Our fare at Cow Tom’s was relished with a keen appetite, and there
were neat quilts on the beds, of home manufacture. There is a
comfortable school house near by, where the children are taught to read.
There is no physician nearer than Fort Gibson, distant thirty-three
miles, and the inhabitants have a goodly prospect of dying a natural
death.
Source: Chronicles of Oklahoma, Volume
5, No. 1, March 1927 APPENDIX—37 / and http://digital.library.okstate.edu |
