REMINISCENCES OF BEN HAMPTON
1853 - 1943

Note from Marcie: Ben Hampton was my great-great-grandfather, and the father of Lucinda Hampton/Burks, my great-grandmother.  This transcript was located on the Oklahoma GenWeb site for Choctaw County, OK.  We, in our family, are very indebted to the volunteers who have made information like this possible and available to us.  My great-great-grandfather has been nothing but a hazy presence, with little to no information about him.  With the finding of this, we can begin to see what kind of person he was, and to know him a bit.  Here is a link to the site where this was found: http://www.rootsweb.com/~okchocta/   And so, family, meet your ancestor... he is a very interesting person.

    For the benefit of any other descendants of Ben Hampton, this rough copy of the material included in the original manuscript of the book made for Robert Bruce Harlow, has been made so that they may use all or any part in having copies made.
    Transcript of notes made from conversations with Ben Hampton (born and reared in the Choctaw Nation, Indian Territory) while he was visiting his daughter, Phoebe, in Oklahoma City during the winter of 1938.  At that time he was eighty-five years old; his mind was remarkably clear, and he often read newspapers without his glasses.  He was unusually mentally alert for a man of his age and interested in everything that was going on up to the time of his death in 1943. - Margaret White, Compiler of Notes

    My father was Nicholas Hampton, a half-blood Choctaw, son of Larry T. Hampton of Mississippi.  He was a widower when he came to the Indian Territory at the time of the migration of the Choctaw Indians, under treaty entered into with the United States Government.  At that time he had only one child, his son Wilburn.  The Hamptons moved themselves  (Without any supervision or financial aid from the United States Government).  Father established a home in the Kiamichi Mountains, near Tuskahoma, in the eastern section of what is now the State of Oklahoma.  It was there I was born in the year 1853.
    Father was a man of rather stocky build, weighed about 165 pounds, of light complexion, had blue eyes, and black hair which was inclined to be curly.  He wore his hair long, about to his shoulders, which my grand-daughter would call a long bob. He was very talkative and had a keen sense of humor.  He farmed, raised livestock, and was quite a trader.  He was especially fond of hunting and kept special horses for that purpose.  One sport he particularly enjoyed was what was known as fire hunting which was done on a very dark night.  The hunters would ride holding a long-handled pan over one shoulder for pine torches, the light from which located deer by reflection in the animal's eyes.  A man skilled in this kind of hunting could work the torch around until he located the animal, and at the same time could shoot with great accuracy.
    The chief danger in such hunting was that occasionally even an experienced hunter would mistake young stock, such as calves or colts, for deer; but it was often possible to get close enough to see the animal's entire body with the aid of the torch, and the killing of stock did not occur often.  The hunter was followed by a man with a sack of pine cut in lengths that fitted in the pan so it would not fall out.  The sack was closed at both ends, with an opening in the middle, which made it easy to replenish the pine as it burned out in the pan.
    Father always kept a large pack of dogs for trailing various wild animals, such as timber wolves (which would kill calves and colts), panthers, bobcats, foxes, etc.  The slaves had to cook up quantities of food regularly for these dogs.  The hunter could tell by the way the dogs would run and from the sound of their baying, the kind of animal they were chasing, as they used different methods of trailing animals.  The timber wolf was the hardest animal of all to kill.  The bear was the animal that made the principal depredations of hogs.  The hounds were no good for hunting bear.  Small dogs were used for bear hunting because they could track down the bear and hold him at bay for the hunter, but they were too small for the clumsy bear to injure.
    Guns and ammunition were scarce in those days and not many of the full blood Indians had guns.  I remember one who come to our home often and would clean up and oil my father's guns, then he would ask my father and mother what game they would like him to go out and kill for them.  My mother's choice was usually gray squirrels.  Most Indians preferred to hunt large animals.  I suppose this was because they didn't want to use their ammunition on small game such as squirrels, wild turkeys, quail, and other game like that which was very bountiful.
    Some of the hunters had very fancy hunting pouches, powder horns, etc.  The pouches used for carrying bullets were made of bearskin, beaver, or the skin of other animals.  The shoulder straps to which these pouches were attached were often very ornamental and artistic,  and the powder horns were frequently beautifully carved.  A powder measure also hung from the shoulder strap, and gun-patches (small squares of cloth, oiled, with a hole in the center) which were strung together and used to ram the bullets into the gun.
    My mother's maiden name was Phoebe Anderson.  She was also a half-blood Choctaw.  My father married her soon after he came to the Indian Territory.  She was the daughter of Capt. John Anderson, whose father was Daniel Anderson, a white man born in Virginia.  She was light complected, rather tall and slender, and her hair was black and straight.  She was quiet-natured - not talkative like my father, but she enjoyed social contacts and listening to the conversation of others.  She frequently invited her friends in to spend the day or afternoon, and when they left she would hand each a bundle of wool which she had dyed herself and the negro women had made up in bundles beforehand.  They would take the wool home, spin and weave it into cloth and return it to her.  This was a social custom similar to quilting parties where the neighborhood women met and helped each other with similar household tasks.  One thing I remember she would never trust anyone else to do was storing away vegetables and other food supplies in a log house separate from our home, which had shelves and compartments of different sizes.  There was a place for everything and she saw to it that everything was kept in its place.
    While we lived in the Kiamichi Mountains our principal market for buying merchandise was Fort Smith, Arkansas.  At that time steamboats came that far up the Arkansas River, bringing merchandise of all kinds from New Orleans and other points.  It was customary for the Fort Smith merchants to send word to the women in their trade territory when they received a new stock of dry goods, so they could send in their orders for what they needed.
    During the war when it was hard to get supplies brought in we would have to go for months without anything we could not produce in our community. 

(in Vol. IX of THE CHRONICLES OF OKLAHOMA, a magazine published quarterly by the Historical Society of Oklahoma, an article appeared in which Phoebe Anderson is mentioned as a woman of importance in her community; not only because of her personal character and neighborliness, but also for her executive ability.  She is said to have owned considerable property and also some slaves.)

    I can remember seeing grain threshed by spreading stalks out on the ground in a circle and oxen or horses being led around the circle to stomp out the grain.  The grain was pushed into the center of the circle as it was stomped out, and more stalks thrown down.  After the grain was separated, it was gathered in homemade baskets made of cane, sifted in sieves also made of cane, husked by fanning in a shovel-like implement pointed at the end, then washed out on a clean cloth to dry.
    For grinding or pulverizing grain before there were any mills, a large oak tree stump was selected and fired to a depth of eight or ten inches, pushing the fire to the center of the stump until a bowl was formed, and then smoothed off.  A maul with a round knob on one end and a weight on the other was used to pulverize the grain.  Sometimes one woman would do this alone, at other times there might be as many as three women walking around the stump, with their mauls going up and down in perfect rhythm.  Dried meat was also pulverized by the same method and the ground grain and meat were cooked together into food that was not only very nourishing, but palatable.
    The most vivid recollections of my childhood center around the Civil War period, when the principal topic of conversation in the home and community was the war.  All the news we got from the outside or the states was that brought back by soldiers who had returned home on account of wounds or illness.  While the Indians were discouraged by the Government from enlisting in the armies, many Choctaws and our neighbors, the Cherokees and Chickasaws, enlisted in the Northern or Southern Army.  The Cherokees who lived principally to the north of us, fought mainly in the Northern Army, and all the Indians who enlisted on the side of the North were referred to as Pin Indians.  I was not curious enough at the time to inquire why they were so called and have never since heard any explanation of the term.  Since both my father and mother had lived in the South, I suppose it was natural their sympathy was with the Rebels.  My father was very active in the numerous meetings held from time to time to encourage the young men to join the Confederate Army.  My two older brothers served in that army; and I can well remember playing taps on my drum on several occasions at the burial of soldiers.
    Our community was troubled to a considerable extent by marauding soldiers during the war.  Whether they were deserters or members of the regular army, I don't know.  They got to be such a nuisance that my father finally made up his mind to move farther south near what is now the town of Bennington.  Mother and the slaves spent several days preparing enough food to last us on our journey.  My two brothers who were home on furlough, were to help our father drive his stock through.  All preparations were about completed when one day we saw approaching our home along the military road a band of about three hundred soldiers.  They were very tired and hungry.  As soon as they removed the saddles from their sweating horses, the first thing they wanted was to be shown the way to our spring.  They asked me to go with them and show them the way, but I hung back until my father assured me it was all right for me to go with them.  One of the soldiers gave me a $10 Confederate bill for taking them to the spring.  They ate up the food we had prepared for our journey south, and finally departed, taking with them my two brothers and some of our best horses.  Soon after, my mother became ill and died.  Later, father, Jules and I started accompanied by the slaves, but as winter was coming on, father decided to leave the livestock and wait until my brothers could help him drive them through.  I have some rather unpleasant memories of that trip.  I not only had the whooping cough at the time, but also malaria.  We stopped and slept in a vacant house one night, and the next morning there was snow on our bedclothes that had sifted down through the roof during the night.  Also, a mule dropped dead at a spring along the way, and I couldn't take a drink of water after that for quite a while.
    It was the custom to turn stock loose during the winter and let the animals take care of themselves.  We never fed them at all during the winter.  They would go to the canebrakes, which afforded both food and shelter, and come out in the spring in fine condition.  This cane which was very rank in the country at that time, grew taller then a man's head.  It was evergreen and the leaves provided good food for the stock.
    Our hogs, consisting entirely of razorbacks (the only kind anyone had in those days), ran wild most of the time out on the range.  We had special dogs, called hog dogs for rounding them up at intervals when they were brought in and penned up for a few days at a time and fed corn to keep them from getting too wild.  We would toll them to the pens with corn scattered along the trail to the pens.  The dogs would go out and hunt until they located a drove, and if it turned out they had rounded up hogs that did not have our father's ear-mark, the dogs would be called off and sent out on the trail of another drove.  The barrows that ran with the different droves of hogs were often very ferocious and if the dogs got too close to them they would rip them open by goring them with their tusks.
    Father would occasionally give us boys some stock and would tell us as long as we could keep track of it, the increase of the stock would be ours.  When the increase reached such proportions that we could no longer keep track of it, we were given ear-marks for our stock to distinguish it from father's.  Later on we had our own brands -- each of us selecting his initials for his brand.
    It was chief ambition of every young fellow in those days to have the best riding outfit in the country, and I believe my brothers and I were as fortunate as most in having our share of good horses and riding outfits.
    The favorite public entertainment was horse racing and ball games.  The Indian ball game was different from our baseball game of today.  Instead of the regular baseball bat, long sticks with a sort of spoon at the end were used by the two teams to bat the ball.  The object was to keep the ball from touching the ground and the team failing to do this made no score.  Frequently the teams would get into an argument which sometimes wound up in a free-for-all fight and some of the on-lookers would have to go in and break up the fight.  The spectators would get impatient at the interruptions. of the game and would call out, Play Ball!
    After my mother's death, which occurred in 1862 or 1863, my father married Mrs. Polly LeFlore, a widow who was a sister of Wilson Jones, who later became Governor of the Choctaw Nation.  Five or six years after this marriage, Father died.  His estate, consisting of livestock and the home place, was divided in an amicable way among the heirs -- the widow and the three sons.  When it came to dividing up the livestock, it was herded together and the widow and sons would choose an animal in turn until the entire herd was divided and each owner's stock was then branded on the spot.
    My brother Wilburn, who was at that time married, inherited the home place and the widow returned to her former home.  My brother Jules and I were still minors so we stayed with Wilburn and his wife and took care of our stock and helped Wilburn with his until we were old enough to strike out for ourselves.
    In 1870 Mr. Wilson Jones and an associate of his in the cattle business, Mr. Jonathan Miles, were sending a herd of cattle to market in Baxter Springs, Kansas.  Mr. Miles was the herd boss and Ellis Jones and I joined up for the trip as young cowboys.  We were both about sixteen years old at the time.  We were thirty-seven days on the road with this herd.  Mr. Jones met us in Baxter Springs and when the cattle had been sold, he bought new wagons, mules and harness, filled the wagons with all kinds of merchandise for the general store he owned, and these wagons were the first brought into Indian Territory after the war.
    Ellis Jones and I went from Baxter Springs with Jonathan Miles to his home in Richmond, Missouri.  The two of us boarded with a Mr. Woolard's family and went to school in Richmond that winter.  This following spring when Jones and Miles sent through another herd of cattle, Ellis and I returned home with the wagons.  On our return we found the hunting fine, and there was so much going on of interest to a seventeen-year-old, I didn't find time for any more schooling.  (Ellis Jones was doubtless a son of Wilson Jones).
    I remember on one of these cattle trips a pair of mules that hauled the chuck wagon were named Adam and Eve.  Often the roads were very muddy and sometimes the cowboys would have to pull a wagon out of the mud, which they would do by tying their ropes to the wagon tongue.  With a combination like this, three or four cowboys could sometimes out pull the mules.
    Stampedes were common occurrences and often were started by the most trivial noise.  When this happened there was nothing to do but try to keep ups the herd.  If the cowboys could sing, that often helped in quieting down the herd.  We were driving cattle through the vicinity of what is now Muskogee, Oklahoma, when a stampede occurred.  We rode seven or eight miles before we stopped the stampede and in the excitement I lost my hat --something that rarely happened to a cowboy.
    I have seen lightning play on the horns of the cattle during an electric storm at night until the entire herd would be outlined by the glow.

 (From the following Notes, it is apparent that Ben Hampton lived at the home of Wilson Jones from 1871 until about 1876.  It is not known just how this came about, but may have been for the reason that his brother, Wilburn, had died and Mr. Jones again offered Ben Hampton a home and probably work of some kind in connection with his business enterprises.)

    It was in the year 1876, when I was twenty-three years old, that I started in the cattle business for myself.  I had three large pastures near the town of Caddo in the southern part of Indian Territory.  I also became associated with the firm of Jones and Morris, engaged in the merchandise business in Caddo.  This connection lasted for some two or three years.
    During my residence in Caddo, I became acquainted with Miss Frances Simms, who later became my wife and the mother of my daughter, Phoebe, and three sons, Perry, Ed Ray and Howard.
    The principal trading points for the Caddo community were Paris, Sherman and Dallas, Texas.  We would often go to Dallas or Sherman for entertainment.  I recall hearing Jenny Lind sing in P. T. Barnum's Circus at Dallas or Sherman.  My wife and I also made a trip to Sherman once to hear the famous Patti sing.  Phoebe was a baby at the time and we took her with us.  We went by train to Denison, Texas and on arrival there found we had missed the connecting train to Sherman.  I went to a livery stable and hired a horse and buggy to complete the journey.  In urging the horse along as rapidly as possible, we struck a stump or some other obstacle in the road, almost upsetting the buggy and spilling out the baby.  Fortunately, she was not seriously injured.  On arrival in Sherman, my wife went on to the concert, but I decided to remain at the hotel with Phoebe.  We had paid $10.00 each for our tickets  to the concert, which added to the railroad fare, livery hire, and hotel bill, made a Patti concert come rather high.  But I guess it was worth it to my wife who was very fond of good music and sang very well herself.
    Ranching in the Caddo country was not altogether satisfactory on account of the bogginess of the soil which made the necessity of pulling cattle out of the bogs almost a daily occurrence.  Phoebe, who was a mere child at the time, says she can remember very well seeing me with my field glasses, looking over the range and then remarking that I would have to get a rope and go pull a cow out of the mud.  In dry weather, as the water receded from the banks of the water holes, this difficulty became more serious, and finally I decided it would be advisable to move my stock elsewhere.
    It was my intention to settle somewhere along the Arkansas River.  I wanted to locate where I could find enough desirable land so that when the government allotted land to the Indians, the allotments of my family could be adjoining.  I could not find good land in sufficiently large tracts along the Arkansas River, and hearing there was an opportunity to obtain good land in the vicinity of what is now the town of Chickasha, I brought my wife and daughter to Purcell and I came by train from there to Oklahoma City and on to the terminus of the Rock Island Railroad at that time, which was Minco, a thriving cattle shipping point, twenty miles north of Chickasha or what was to become the town of Chickasha.  I had been informed that Mr. Ned Sparks had some desirable land, the possession right to which could be purchased, so I went to see him and for $3,000.00 cash, I bought his possession right to about 1200 acres of land lying between the Washita River and what is now the northern boundary of Chickasha -- but at that time the township had not been established.  In this tract of land I obtained from Mr. Sparks, there were four quarter sections as level as the top of a table.  It was this land I had in mind having allotted to my daughter and three sons, which did eventually become their allotments from the government.  I thought then (and still think) those four quarter sections are as pretty a piece of farming land as can be found anywhere in the United States.  The allotments of my wife and myself consisted of land lying on the outer boundaries of the four quarter sections belonging to our children.  We built a home on land included in our allotments.  In addition to this land, I also bought about 1500 acres of land now occupied by the Aviation Grounds and the city cemetery of Chickasha, which I later sold.
    When the members of the Choctaw tribe first came to Indian Territory, they were permitted to take up for ranching or other purposes, practically unlimited tracts of land, the only requirement being that no one should come closer to the land occupied by another than a quarter of a mile.  It was inevitable that sooner or later restrictions of some kind would have to be made, which finally resulted in allotments of equalized value to each member of the Choctaw Nation and those who had intermarried with Choctaws.
    When I was ready to leave Caddo, I was looking around for a man to drive a two-horse wagon for me.  A young fellow came to my place one evening to talk with me about this and when he left, he practically agreed to come the next day and drive the wagon.
    That night some one went into my stable and took one of the nicest horses I owned -- a draw horse, about half trained, but promising to develop into a very good horse.  He was not the horse that a man should have picked to make a get-away on, but as it turned out, he answered the purpose very well.  The thief also took a fine cow saddle I had.  Fastened to the saddle was my lariat rope, my waterproof coat which was never taken off of the saddle, and my gun case for my Winchester rifle was also attached to the saddle.  I always hung the saddle on a peg in the barn when not in use.
    The next morning when I discovered the horse and saddle had been stolen, I reported it to the U. S. Marshal, never suspecting the thief was the fellow that talked to me the evening before about driving my wagon and team.  I said to the Marshal, Andy, I will give you $100.00 to get that man.  I didn't say anything about the horse and saddle, but just told him I wanted to get the thief.  He started east and I rode west.  I was at Tishomingo, a pretty good ride from Caddo, before noon the next day.  It was snowing when I got there.  As it turned out, Andy was on the right trail.  The thief had ridden east until he came to a ford crossing over Boggy Creek, where he inquired of Joe McClure about crossing and the best way to get over, as there was some ice over the creek.  Joe recognized my horse and asked what he was doing with Hampton's horse.  he answered right off that he was going over to the Pine Mills to borrow a pair of mules for me.  This sounded reasonable to Joe I guess, and when the thief had trouble getting the horse across, Joe even went out and showed him how to cross.  In about an hour Andy came along, but he never did catch up with the fellow.  He followed him on to Arkansas where he finally found the horse in a pasture near a house.  When he inquired at this house, he found the young thief was a nephew of the man who lived there, but he was told the man he was looking for had left.  Andy got the horse and saddle and brought them back.  The only thing of any consequence that was missing was my stirrups, which were a little out of the ordinary.
    Andy kept on searching and traced the thief from Arkansas into Texas, finally locating him in a town about fifteen miles from Sherman.  He wired to have the fellow arrested and put in jail until he got there.  It turned out the young man was the son of a prominent doctor and at the time of his arrest was about to be married -- friends and relatives having already arrived for the wedding.  I suppose it was due to the influence of his family and also sympathy for him under the circumstances, that a way was provided for the prisoner to escape.  At any rate, when Andy arrived, he was informed the thief had escaped and made his get-away.  Andy was one mad man.
    During the early years of my cattle ranching experience, cattle and horse thieves were well organized, very much as the gangsters of the present day are organized.  The operations extended from the East through to the Panhandle of Texas.  They had stations at regular intervals for the handling and disposing of their stolen stock.  While I was living in Caddo they became such a nuisance, we decided something would have to be done about it, so we formed protective association, the members of which contributed so much a year for maintaining the organization and prosecuting thieves.  I do not recall the exact name of the organization, but as far as I know, it was the first one organized in the Indian Territory.
    Not much trouble was caused in this connection by the Indians.  The law of the Choctaws was that a third offense of this kind was punishable by death from hanging, and as a Choctaw could be sure of paying the penalty, this crime among the Choctaw Indians was proportionately small.
    The Choctaw law with regard to murder was death by shooting.  When a convicted murderer was to be shot, he was made to kneel on a blanket spread on the ground, an officer holding each hand, and a round black cloth about the size of a half-dollar was placed over his heart.  He was then shot by the Sheriff, who never missed the mark.  I witnessed two such executions in one day at Armstrong Academy, where District Court was held.
    The Choctaws had no jails or places to confine criminals.  When a man was accused of a crime,  he was tried without delay and placed in the custody of the Sheriff, if convicted, until the day set for the prescribed punishment.  I do not know of any cases where the accused failed to appear for his trial or attempted to evade punishment.
    I had some strange experiences in connection with cattle and horse thieves.  The first was when I was ten or eleven years old and going to school in Bonham, Texas.  I was out in the street on evening standing near a crowd of men.  Some of them had a string of horses and they had stopped to inquire about directions or something of the kind.  Having a natural interest in horses, I saw a pony that belonged to my brother Wilburn's wife.  The first thought that came to my mind was that my brother's wife had sold the horse -- but somehow that didn't seem likely.  I wanted to talk to someone about this, but not knowing any of the bystanders very well, I kept quiet and returned to the home of the parson where I was boarding.  I told him about the incident, but I guess he thought the less said about it, the better.  At any rate, nothing was done about it.
    Another time, while living in Caddo, I was riding home from town one evening and stopped at a water hole to give my horse a drink.  While the horse was drinking, I noticed the tip of a cow horn just barely visible on the other side of the water hole.  I didn't think so much about it until I heard a shot just over the ridge.  I rode over to investigate and found two negroes with guns,  also some cattle.  I noticed one of the animals was bleeding at the nose.  I asked the negroes what they were doing and they replied "shooting prairie chickens."  I reported the incident to our Association.  It so happened that hides were bringing a very good price at the time and these negroes were suspected of going out on the range and shooting cattle, skinning them, and selling the hides.  On investigation, the negroes were found guilty and eventually hung.
    I happened to be in Dallas once when some talk was going around about a bunch of cattle that had been brought there and sold by some cattle thieves who had then gone to Cleburne, Texas where they were reported to be having quite a gay time with the proceeds of their sale.  I obtained a description of the cattle and the brand and discovered they belonged to a rancher I knew well -- Harris Carnes.  I reported this to an officer who went after the thieves and they were convicted without even my appearance as a witness.
    After I moved to my new ranch location, I was riding along the road one day, when a quarter of a mile off I saw a bunch of 15 or 20 head of cattle approaching.  The thought flashed across my mind that this was a bunch of stolen cattle.  When I came up to them I recognized one of the men in charge.  He was a young fellow from Texas who had been operating in cattle in a small way.  I kept thinking about this after I got home and the next day when I went into town I called on a representative of the Texas Cattle Association which had offices in Fort Worth, Dallas, San Antonio and other Texas locations, as well as in Oklahoma, including Chickasha.  I told the Association representative of my suspicions and the name of the young man I had recognized.  He got busy right away and it developed the cattle had been stolen from a government reserve.
    This experience came very near getting me into a lot of trouble.  The men I had identified turned out to be connected with a prominent family in Texas and an attorney came to Chickasha from Texas to defend the case.  The young fellow was convicted, but his lawyer appealed the case to a higher court and got his client out of jail on bail.  I met him one day with some of his companions on the street in Chickasha.  He came up and said something to me about reporting him to the officers and got pretty rough.  There was not an officer in sight anywhere and as I was badly outnumbered, I eased out of the situation as best I could.  Later on we met again and this time each of us was alone.  He said something offensive to me and I hit him a lick on the jaw.  He came back at me and we were going after each other in earnest when someone came along and separated us.  About a year later his case came up for trial again and the same lawyer came from Texas to defend him.  This lawyer was a very affable man and seemed to have a personal interest in his client.  He said he could get his client cleared if I would drop the prosecution, which I decided to do.
    I never held an elective office of any kind, but had more or less contact with the political leaders of the Choctaw Nation.  I served as clerk and interpreter through many sessions of the Choctaw Legislature which convened once a year.  I also served as clerk and interpreter in the preparation of claims of Choctaws who lost personal property of various kinds during the migration from Mississippi to the Indian Territory, which claims when duly established, were eventually settled by the United States Government.  Many of the claimants, of course, could not speak English, so they were required to come in and state their claims, which were written down in Choctaw and then translated into English.  It was necessary to have the claims attested by a certain number of witnesses.  All in all, this created a vast amount of work.  Many years intervened from the time of the arrival of the Choctaws in the Indian Territory and the final adjustment and settlement of the claims.  The work was not completed until some time in the 1877.  These claims included wagons that broke down and had to be discarded, horses and stock of various kinds that died along the trail and various household equipment.
    The sessions of the Choctaw Legislature were held at Armstrong Academy until a Capitol was built at Tuskahoma, where future sessions were held until that body ceased to function.  All proposed bills were read to the assembly in English and interpreted in Choctaw.
    In addition to serving as clerk and interpreter during Legislative sessions, I also served in the same capacity at Council meetings before which all court proceedings were held.  The testimony of full-blood Choctaws was, of course, always given in Choctaw language and translated to English.
    My brothers served as members of the House of Representatives of the Choctaw Nation and both were at some during their terms of office, Speakers of the House.
    The Choctaw Nation was divided into districts, four counties to each district.  There were Sub-Chiefs for each district and a Principal Chief for the entire Choctaw Nation. 

(In the Sunday edition of THE DAILY OKLAHOMAN, dated February 6, 1938, there was an article about the sale of the 14-room ranch home built by Wilson Jones, former Governor of the Choctaw Nation.  After reading this article, Ben Hampton recounted his memories in connection with the building of this home.)

    After my father died, Wilson Jones, who was a very good friend of my father's, offered to take my brother, Jules, and me to live in his home under his guardianship, but we decided to remain with my brother, Wilburn, and his wife in the old home place.  However, I did later spend a few years in the home of Wilson Jones and his family and was living there when he built the new home, referred to in the newspaper article.  In fact, I lived there until I came to the western part of Indian Territory to go into the ranching business for myself.
    The lumber used in building the new home was sawed out of oak trees cut from Mr. Jones' land, and it was kiln dried on the Jones ranch.  They hauled an immense amount of oak wood for the fires to cure the green lumber.  It took about a year to complete the new home.  Mr. Jones employed three Germans, who were very fine carpenters, to do the building.  They had large tool chests filled with all kinds of tools, for they had to make all the flooring, window frames, doors, etc.  The hardware, nails and glass were brought from the states.  While the house was being built, I was a pretty close observer of the work of these German carpenters, and I suppose that Bennie, as they called me, picked up quite a lot of information about carpentering that has been useful ever since.  After I had a home of my own, I acquired a large chest of tools that I was always careful to keep locked and the key hidden while the children were growing up  Phoebe says I must have gotten the idea of a tool chest of my own from the German carpenters, and she is probably right.
    Mr. Jones was very enterprising, progressive, and a successful business man.  He did everything on a large scale.  Around the home he had a number of small houses occupied by servants and people who worked on his ranch; also, quite a village of full-blood Indians who worked for him.  He also owned a general store where all kinds of merchandise was carried.  Before anyone else in the Nation had ever thought of building an ice house, he built one on his ranch and stored ice in the winter.  He had a fine, large apple orchard and stored apples for the winter.  He not only accumulated money fast from his own enterprises, but his sister, Mrs. LeFlore (who became my stepmother), loaned him money she received from time to time from the sale of cattle she owned.  He paid her interest and invested the money in his various enterprises.  In this way he became a man of considerable wealth for the times in which he lived.
    Large flocks of fowl of all kinds were kept around the place.  I remember there were a lot of turkeys that roosted in the oak trees near the house, the year round.  In the early morning they would make a great noise and commotion, waking up everybody.  Mr. Jones would go out on the portico and ring his large bell, which could be heard all over the place.  This was the signal for everybody to be up and start working.  He paid good wages, but expected a good day's work in return.
   While I was living there, prominent Choctaws would frequently come to visit.  Sometimes there would be three or four at a time.  They would sit up almost all night sometimes, talking in Choctaw.  I would sit around listening to them until I was too sleepy to sit up any longer and would go off to bed leaving them talking.  The McCurtains, who were very prominent Choctaws, were close friends of Mr. Jones and held him in such high esteem that it was mainly through their influence he became a Governor of the Choctaw Nation.
    The Wilson Jones Ranch was on what was then known as Shawnee Creek.  My father was buried in the Jones family cemetery, and before his death, Mr. Jones left a substantial sum of money in trust with one of the bands in Sherman, Texas for the upkeep of this cemetery, which should be sufficient to insure proper care for many years.
    When the war between the states started, Mr. Jones had on hand a considerable amount of money which he converted into gold coin and buried in a chest somewhere around his home, where it remained until the war was over.  I saw the chest opened when it was brought from its hiding place and Jonathan Miles, who was also present said to me, "My!  What a lot of money we could make with this gold if we had it to invest in cattle."
    During the war, Mr. Jones had working for him four men who had drifted into the vicinity and went to work for him as common farm laborers  No one knew anything about them but they were suspicious looking characters.  They may have heard about the money Mr. Jones had buried, and went to work for him with the intention of searching for the chest and making off with the money.  If that was the case, they must have given up hope of finding it.  After they had been there about six months, they disappeared one night, taking with them, boots, clothing, and new saddles from Mrs. Jones store and also some of his best horses.  No attempt was made to find the men and recover the stolen property, as they were thought to be desperate characters and a good riddance to the neighborhood.  They were supposed to have escaped into the Texas Panhandle.

Note: The artwork on this page was done by George Carlin, who lived among the Choctaw ca. 1835-1850, and painted the scenes from life among the Choctaw.  His work is unique, and the only pictorial evidence of family life of the Choctaw at that time.