Indian Pioner Papers - E. V. Arnn

Submitted by Brenda Choate  bcchoate@yahoo.com

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                    Garvin County Indian Pioneer Papers
                                      
                                 E.V. Arnn
                                      
     Interview #9500
     Field Worker: Maurice R. Anderson
     Date: December 21, 1937
     Name: Mr. E.V. Arnn
     Residence: Pauls Valley, Oklahoma
     Date of Birth: March 26, 1866
     Place of Birth: Arkansas
     Father: J.W. Arnn, born in Arkansas
     Mother: S.C. Arnn, born in Arkansas
     
     
     I was born in 1866 in Arkansas.  I came to the Indian Territory in
     1900 and settled at Howe in the Choctaw Nation and went to work
     making ties and braces for the coal mines and worked at this two
     years.  In those times I had to work at anything I could get to do
     to make a living, as I had a large family to feed.  I have worked
     many a day for 50 cents but then you could buy a sack of flour for
     75 cents and there was lots of wild game and wild hogs.  I always
     had plenty of meat to eat and there were berries, plums and all
     kinds of wild fruit and we would can everything we could get so in
     this way we always had plenty to eat, but money was hard to get.
     
     While I would be working in the woods making ties, my wife and
     children would do the farming.  We would raise a small patch of
     corn and have a garden and during gardening season my oldest son
     would sell vegetables to the coal miners and in this way we managed
     to make a fair living.
     
     Churches and schools were very few in that part of the country
     then.   There was a school house about five miles from where I
     lived but my children did not get to go more than half the time as
     I would have to pay $1.50 for each child so my children received
     very little schooling until after the free schools were
     established.
     
     I lived in a Choctaw Indian neighborhood.  Those Indians only
     raised small patches of corn and the Indian women did the farming
     and about all the Indian men did was to hunt in the winter and fish
     in the summer as those creeks and the river were full of fish.
     
     The Indians lived like most of the white people in that part of the
     country except you very seldom saw a stove in one of their log
     houses or half dugouts as they cooked over fires out in the yards
     in the summer and in the winter they would cook over a fireplace in
     the houses made out of rocks.  Nearly all the Indian homes that I
     have visited had what was called dutch ovens to bake their bread
     in.  The Indians were all very friendly and would load you anything
     they had.  Most of them were just poor people but there were a few
     who were large cattle owners.  These were the mixed-breed Indians.
     Most cases the father was a white man.  The full-bloods just lived
     from one day to the next.  They did not try to lay up anything for
     a rainy day, just so they had all they wanted to eat at one time
     they seemed satisfied.
     
     I have attended many of the Indian dances and was always welcome.
     They seemed to enjoy themselves and I have seen them go through a
     certain dance all night long.  One of them would beat a tom-tom
     while the men and women would go around and around in a circle,
     stomping their feet and singing.  It was worth your time to see
     them play ball.  They wouldn't wear anything but breech-clouts and
     each man would have some kind of an animal's tail hanging down
     behind him fastened to the breech-clout and I have seen them hit
     each other over the heads with the sticks they used to throw the
     ball with and if one got knocked out another player would take his
     place.
     
     In 1903 I moved to a place near Calvin and settled on a small farm
     and was living on that farm when the Indian Territory became the
     state of Oklahoma in 1907.   I now live in Pauls Valley.