Interview with Boy Pybas (p120) - McClain County, Oklahoma Submitted by: RW 10 Aug 2003 Return to McClain County Archives: http://www.usgwarchives.net/ok/mcclain/mcclain.html ========================================================================== USGENWEB NOTICE Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm ========================================================================== PYBAS, B. (BOY) INTERVIEW Robert H. Boatman, Interviewer August 10, 1937 An interview with B. (Boy) Pybas, Route #1, Washington, Oklahoma. Mr. Pybas was born March 9, 1864 in Tennessee. His parents: Kenneth M. Pybas of Tennessee and Ellen Holt Pybas, Chickasaw Indian, born in Indian Territory. At the age of seventeen Mr. Pybas came to the Indian Territory, in 1881, and settled near where the town of Ardmore is now; he located in the southwestern part of the Chickasaw Nation where there was an ideal range and where the grass was half a side deep to a horse and young calves could only be seen at a very short range, the grass was so dense. Mr. Pybas here began in the cattle business for himself with only a small herd of cows. Mr. Pybas was among the first white men of that country and as his herd grew the railroads, Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe came and the townsite of Ardmore was established and people began coming in. Mr. Pybas was the first man who ever shipped a carload of cattle over the A.T. & S.F. Railroad from Ardmore to Hutchison, Kansas. And so Mr. Pybas during this time had met Miss Dora Kernal, a half-breed daughter of a Chickasaw, and he soon fell in love with this Indian maid and so they were married according to the Indian laws. His marriage license cost $100.00. Miss Kernal was a granddaughter of the Honorable Thomas Parker, the famous Chickasaw who at the age of twenty-one years was removed from Mississippi at the time of the removal of the famous Chickasaw tribe. Mr. Pybas relates the story of the removal of the Chickasaws from Mississippi as related to him by Mr. Parker. The Chickasaws were to be given land in the Territory in exchange for their possessions in Mississippi and were to be moved to their new home without cost to them and so they came west to the Territory. Some came by boats as far as possible but most of them came by wagon and team. Mr. Parker was appointed the Governor of the Chickasaw Tribe. He was the first Governor ever to be in the Territory and he was very considerate and kind to his tribe of people and under his rule the Chickasaw form of Government was very similar to our form of Govement of today only there was no such thing as a jail house. If and Indian needed punishing he was strapped to a stake or whipping post and given from twenty-five to one hundred lashes with a rawhide. The number of lashes he received depended on what crime he had committed; then is and Indian was found guilty of a crime which deserved the penalty of death, he would be sentenced to die on a give date and turned loose to go home or wherever he wished to go until that day and then he was to return and be put to death and Mr. Pybas says he remembers that no Indian ever failed to return on the given date. About all the trouble the Chickasaws had would be a dispute sometimes as to the Boundary Line of the Chickasaw Nation and Governor Parker would nearly always get that settled without very much trouble. After they were fully established and had become accustomed to their new home, the Chickasaw tribe became a very quiet and peaceable people. Mr. Pybas continued in the cattle business for a number of years and being an intermarried white man was allotted two hundred and twenty acres of land at the time the allotment was made. On this land Mr. Pybas built his home. He built the first bridge that was ever built north of Purcell. Mr. Pybas had retained his land ever since the allotment was made and has raised his family there and they are still living at the same home which Mr. Pybas built so many years ago. The home is located some ten miles northwest of Purcell and State Highway #74 has been built close to the old pioneer home. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Return to McClain County Archives: http://www.usgwarchives.net/ok/mcclain/mcclain.html