Indian Pioner Papers - James R. Reed


Submitted by Brenda Choate   bcchoate@yahoo.com
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                    Garvin County Indian Pioneer Papers
                                      
                             James R. Reed



Interview #10325

Field Worker: Maurice R. Anderson

Date: March 24, 1938

Name: Mr. James R. Reed

Residence: Pauls Valley, Oklahoma

Date of Birth: December 9, 1875

Place of Birth: Texas

Father: John Reed, born in Missouri

Mother: Mary Rowland, born in Missouri





I was born in 1875 in Texas, and worked on the J.R. Young Ranch

in that state prior to 1895, at which time I came to the 

Indian Territory.



My father and mother had both passed away before I was fifteen 

years old and this left me to shift for myself.

  

During the five years I worked on the Young Ranch I saved enough 

money to buy a team and wagon and a few plow tools, including 

a turning plow and Georgia stock.   There were some walking 

cultivators then but very few people owned one. 



I settled a few miles south of Pauls Valley in the Chickasaw 

Nation where I rented a small farm.  I had to live in my wagon 

until I cleared up part of the land and built a one-room log 

house out of the timber I had cleared off of the land.



I had heard so much about the Indian Territory I loaded up what 

few things I owned and came to Pauls Valley and after renting a 

place I went to Mr. Zack Gardner, a Chickasaw Indian, who owned 

a grist mill on the river east of Pauls Valley.  Mr. Gardner let 

me have enough corn to run me until I made a crop and Mr. C.J. 

Grant stood good for my groceries.



That year I cleared up about ten acres and built a log house and 

made a cotton and corn crop with no one to help me.  I was out in 

a strange country and it was do or die.  I planted about ten acres 

of corn and four or five acres of cotton and that year I made about 

five hundred bushels of corn and three bales of cotton.



After paying my grocery bill, which wasn't very much, I had so little 

money left I lived on cornbread but there was plenty of wild game at 

that time so I always had plenty to eat.  Rabbits, squirrels, quail 

and turkeys were plentiful then.



I paid Mr. Gardner back in corn what I had borrowed from him and 

that fall I traded him fifty bushels of corn for a milk cow.



The only taxes we had to pay then was a permit to live in the Indian 

Territory, which cost five dollars ($5.00) per year.  I only paid this 

two times and they never came around any more.



I farmed in the Indian Territory for five years then sold out and went 

back to Texas and learned the barber trade.  I put in a barber shop 

at Gainesville in 1901 and worked in that place for ten years.  

After leaving there I came to Ardmore, Oklahoma and went in the 

barber business and lived there until I came to Pauls Valley a few years ago.