I have previously written extensively about the life of my great great grandfather, John Lafayette Vaughan.
You can read his biography here and a series of articles about his connections to outlaw Belle Starr and her associates here.
I have since found additional source material directly from my great great grandpa himself--another series of articles by Charles H. Cowles, staff writer at the McAlester News-Capital, who had previously written the 1933 articles about Vaughan and the Starrs.
At the end of 1934, Cowles decided to interview Vaughan again, resulting in his "Memories of Bloody Days" series over a span of weeks late that year. Two years later, he also published a couple more stories from John's third wife, Florence, who my grandfather knew as "Grandma Vaughan" as a child.
She wasn't blood, but they were married for 24 years (I own their original marriage certificate, a family heirloom passed to me by a cousin) and the two knew each other long before they wed, so her stories involved some of the same people and places as John's, so I have shared them as well.
Before I share those transcriptions (a labor of love at almost 6,000 words), I also need to share three more Vaughan photos that have come to me in the past year, long after I wrote my previous two pieces on the life of John Lafayette Vaughan.
Years ago, I made contact with Kenny Brown, a retired history professor from the University of Central Oklahoma, whose mother grew up with my grandfather's people, the Vaughans, Austons, Eppses, and the rest of them around Ulan, Scipio, and Indianola, Oklahoma.
His grandfather was friends with John Lafayette Vaughan, and his mother friends with some of the Vaughan children. Additionally, his uncle was very close friends with John's oldest son, Bill, of whom I previously only had one picture.
Bill was the black sheep of the family. Loved by his siblings but a menace to most due to crippling alcoholism which fueled drunken rages that left permanent damage on more than one of his relatives. One day in the mid-1940s, a year or so after his father John's death in 1944, Bill disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again.
His siblings, particularly my great grandpa Sampson, were devastated at their brother's vanishment, and always assumed the worst--that eventually his sins had come back to haunt him in the form of revenge from the relatives of one of his previous spouses.
Bill Vaughan was never harmed during his father's lifetime out of the respect for John Lafayette Vaughan held throughout that section of Pittsburg County, but with his passing, John took Bill's protection with him, and mere months later he was gone.
The only picture we ever had of Bill was a family portrait of the John Lafayette Vaughan with his second wife, my great great grandmother Leona Waller, most of their children and John's progeny by his first marriage, Mattie and Bill.
The picture survived only because it was saved by his second wife, who threw him out but held onto the photograph.
One morning in the 1940s, years after he had vanished, his niece Colleen Vaughan, daughter of John was walking to school. A woman called to her over to her house, confirmed that she was a Vaughan, and gave her the picture, telling her she had saved it to return to the family. When Colleen returned home with the photo, her mother put together that the woman was Bill's second wife.
That photo of teenage Bill, standing behind his father, was the only one we ever had of him until earlier this year, when Kenny reached out to me for the first time in years.
In going through his family photos, he found three labelled pictures of Vaughans, including two of Uncle Bill alongside Kenny's uncle, Sam Dickens. The third was a picture I had never seen of four of John Lafayette Vaughan's young children. He sent the originals of all three for me to keep, an act of generosity I am still so grateful for.
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I must thank Kenny Brown again for sharing these photos and gifting them to our family; they will definitely be appreciated and cared for.
Finally, here are the transcriptions of John Lafayette Vaughan's "Memories of Bloody Days":
30 Nov 1934
The Saga of Belle Starr
HIGHLIGHTS IN THE CAREER OF OKLAHOMA’S FAMOUS WOMAN BANDIT,
AS TOLD BY FRANK BARNES TO J. L. VAUGHAN OF ULAN, WHO IN TURN RELATED TO THE
STORY TO CHARLES H. COWLES, NEWS-CAPITAL STAFF WRITER.
WAS HER BODY STOLEN FROM COFFIN?
After the burial of Belle Starr, noted woman outlaw of the
old days, Frank Barnes, who was living on Higherly mountain, above Younger’s
Bend, walked down to the Bend to transact some business and came upon a coffin
sitting by the side of the road,” says J. L. Vaughan of Ulan.
“It was moonlight. His first impulse was to go up and kick
it and see if it was really a coffin. But when he got close enough to do it,
his heart failed him as he concluded it was Belle Starr’s coffin and that her
body was being stolen.
“It was just before he got to the Starr place on the
hillside. The moon was so bright that he could see almost as well as in
daytime. He said he knew it was a coffin as he walked right up to it and looked
it over.
“Frank Barnes never told me that until three years ago. He
is my wife’s brother[-in-law] and now lives at Bowell, Okla. He is a very
reliable man. It wasn’t well to say anything back in those days in that
country; and no investigation of the grave was ever made but he says he always
felt convinced that Belle’s body was carried away from its burial place that
night. I recall that many were trying to steal souvenirs. Why, some years back
I met a man at Hanna and he had a piece of a tombstone in his suitcase. He said
he had chipped it off Belle Starr’s tombstone. I asked him what he wanted it
for and he replied ‘just to satisfy his curiosity—just for a sort of keepsake.’
“I was at Belle Starr’s burying and well remember it. I
helped dig her grave.”
ARREST OF EDGAR WATSON RECALLED
“Belle Starr was killed in the Choctaw country by the side
of the Taylor farm, just across the river from the Cherokee country and
something like a mile below the crossing into Younger Bend.
“I can never forget the stampede when three officers
arrested Edgar Watson for killing her. There were probably 40 persons there. I
was standing out in the front yard when this all began. [Jim July, rather than
John] Starr, Belle’s husband, went into the house in his shirt sleeves and came
out with an overcoat on. I noticed his face looked ashy but I did not realize
what was going on. He walked right by Watson and passed him some six feet. He
wheeled, slinging a revolver, just as Belle’s son appeared on the porch with a
Winchester. I heard the click of a shotgun in my ear and found myself right in
range of a shotgun in the hands of Charles Acton, one of the Starr gang. I
stepped back and to one side against a sapling and saw everything that was
going on. I did not know which way the shots were going to be fired but I stood
still and watched.
“The crowd was making an awful rush to get out of the way.
The house was so filled no more could get in and the others ran around and
knocked down a fence, some falling down behind the rails and lying there. I saw
two of them run a nice footrace to their horses. They were long, slim fellows.
Then I began to wonder where my partner had gone. I had to laugh to think that
even he had disappeared and left me there, although I didn’t feel any too safe
myself. I did not know what might happen. Some went to the river to keep the
boat from being taken and I thought that was a good excuse for getting away
from the bullets. It looked like there was going to be some shooting, but no
shooting was done. Edgar Watson gave up after bucking and jumping all over that
yard.”
RATTLESNAKE MEAT SERVED TO MARSHAL
“One time when I lived near Belle Starr’s place, the head
marshal from Fort Smith came there with a posse and he asked Belle for
something to eat. She treated him very nicely and very cleverly. She asked him
if he would like some eel and he said, fine. He was hunting Sam Mushon and Sam
had been dodging around in the mountains and they could not get hold of him. He
was killing diamond rattlers and Belle was rendering oil from them. This oil
brought a high price. Belle served the rattlesnake to the officer and he made a
hearty meal of them. He was very emphatic in declaring them good. She was
living then at Younger Band, a few miles below Standing Rock on the Cherokee
side.
“I’d like to have a correction made in regard to Tom Starr
and the woman and the baby, which was published some time ago. Tom and another
man went to the house one day and asked for something to eat. The woman told
them she did not have anything for them. Tom told his partner to watch the
woman while he went in and got something. When he came out, the man had killed
the woman and her baby. To avenge their deaths, Tom killed this man and left
the bodies of all three on the porch. He said he often wondered what the people
would think when they arrived home and found all three dead on the porch.
“I remember a couple times when officers came after Belle
and the first time she was distrusted and next time the opposite was the case.
She told Tine Hughes and Charley Barnhill: “Now boys, don’t try to cross at
Younger Bend with me. It’s dangerous and you might be fired on.’ Barnhill said
to Tine, ‘We will cross here.’ He thought she was trying to get them into a
trip. When they got about halfway across the horses wanted to drink. While the
animals were drinking, the marshals were fired on from the brush above and back
where they had entered the river. A bullet cut Barnhill’s bridle rein at the
bits.
“Belle told me that Tine Hughes was much the bravest man. He
shot in the direction from which the bullets came. Barnhill shot in to the
skies, anywhere to hear the gun pop.
“The next time, Tine came alone. She warned him again about
the Starr crossing, suggesting they go back through the mountains and cross at
the Crowder farm. Tine took her advice, risked being dragged into a snare, and
made the trip O.K. I know, because I was there at the Crowder farm and helped
ferry them across.”
Confused Story of Jim Reed’s Death Explained
“I can easily explain how Dr. G. E. Hartshorne and others
became confused about the death of Jim Reed, first husband of Belle Starr. He
was killed in Texas. Another Jim Reed, an outlaw, was killed at Whitefield on
the Cherokee side under a large elm tree. The man drowned in Poteau River was
not Jim Reed, as Dr. Hartshorne thought, but his name was John Middleton, known
as Ples Middleton. He was a friend, and a great friend of Belle Starr, and I
can bring a man and prove that I am right. He has a brother-in-law in Indianola
now. Belle left Sam, her husband, at Younger Bend and went to Fort Smith with
her daughter, Peral. This man, Middleton, stole Albert McCarty’s mare and he
was to meet Belle at Sugarloaf mountain on some business—I don’t know what.
Albert McCarty started out in search of his mare. When Middleton got to the
Poteau River in the night, it was swollen clear out of its banks and near the
mouth of Holeyturch Creek he was following a cow trail and drove off a bank 10
feet high into water about 25 or 30 feet deep.
Being heavily armed, he was drawn down and drowned. He had
two or three six-shooters, a breech-loading shotgun, and a heavy saddle. On the
east side of Poteau there lived an old bachelor by the name of Hamp Talley and
he was down on Poteau River after the water had gone down quite a bit and saw a
fine sorrel mare standing half side in water and wound up in drift, with a
brand new saddle. He called neighbors and they got the mare out and took care
of her. They were curious to know if she had a rider and they back-tracked her
to some loose brush that they knew she would not have gone around and then they
knew there must have been a man on her back. They began a search and found his
body in the drift. A buzzard had picked out his eyes.
“He was taken out and Belle went and identified him. He was buried there. McCarty heard of the mare being found and he want to see the old bachelor who wouldn’t believe McCarty owned the horse. McCarty described her and said her mane lay half one way and half the other and that under the mane on the left side he would find the figure 31. The old bachelor said he knew what he said about the mane wasn’t right although it might fall that way in grazing. And he declared there was no brand on the animal. McCarty said if the horse was not according to his description he did not want her. The old bachelor found the description O.K. and said: ‘I have no more to say; she’s yours.’ I know all this so well because Middleton was carrying a gun on his saddle that belonged to me. McCarty returned it to me.”
7 Dec 1934
Memories of Bloody Days
CLIMAXES IN CAREERS OF COLORFUL CHARACTERS WHO FIGURED IN
TRAGEDIES OF INDIAN TERRITORY AS RELATED BY JOHN LAFAYETTE VAUGHAN OF ULAN TO
CHARLES H. COWLES, NEWS-CAPITAL STAFF WRITER
CRIPPLE SHOT FOR $2.50
“Back in the days when six-inch turning plows and Georgia
stocks were all we ever thought about,” says John Lafayette Vaughan of Ulan, “I
was living on the George Washington Oshcubby place near Old [Skullyville]. I was
working for Ott Hickman, uncle of Bud Hickman, who now resides at Panama,
LeFlore County. Jim Hickman and John Hickman were then living at their father’s
house. Bud Hickman is now a resident of Scipio.
“Two Indians, Levi James, a cripple, and Jimmie Fulsom came
there from Fort Smith. They were riding along the trail and had had no trouble
of any kind when Levi, just out of pure meanness, I guess, shot Jimmie and
killed him. Levi was sentenced to death. He was told to come up to the Buck
Creek court house and be shot at a certain time. Levi went on crutches. He was
on the spot on the appointed day.
“Sheriff Robert Ward hated to shoot a cripple and he
inquired around to find if anyone would take the job for $2.50. Old Jim Darneal
told the sheriff he would shoot him for $2.50. They placed the cripple on a
palette. Jim took the old courthouse rifle, kept for the purpose, and fired.
The blood spurted back 20 or 30 feet, falling on Darneal’s hands. He ran around
to the other side of the court house and waited to be sure Levi was dead,
collected his $2.50, and went on.
“I remember one time Sheriff Robert Ward and Tom Burns, an
intermarried citizen, had a falling out. A duel was suggested and put into
execution. They took it on horseback. I have seen the knoll where they shot it
out. They started their horses and loped around the mound, firing upon each
other. Their funs were about empty before either hit. Then the sheriff got in a
shot. He lifted Burns from his saddle with a fatal chunk of lead.”
Sixkiller Stomps Milo Hoyt to Death
“Four or five years later, near Whitefield, in Haskell
county, Sheriff Robert Ward took a prisoner named Squirrel Hoyt. There was some
excitement that night outside the cabin where they stayed. I don’t know what it
was. Hoyt was playing a fiddle. The sheriff was lying on a palette and he rose
up and shot Hoyt though the hand, fiddle, and breast, killing him.
“Milo Hoyt, the victim’s father was part Cherokee and he was
what was known as a ‘bad man.’ He lived in the Choctaw country with his Choctaw
wife. He wasn’t satisfied about the killing. He had it in for the Choctaw
government and burned the Choctaw court house. The Choctaw governor called out
the militia and 100 men went in search of Hoyt.
I went out with Jim King, a bad old Choctaw who had killed
six or seven men. I remember how his wife cried when he got orders to go after
old man Hoyt. Her name was Mary Y. King, a white woman. She was crying to Jim
and telling him what a brave man he was and he said, ‘Hush, hush, hush,’ as he
started out after Hoyt. Mary died later at Kiowa. John Gillis of Ashland is her
son by her first marriage.
Hoyt was chased around all over the country. A good-sized
bunch saw his son ride away from a barn one time but they did not tackle him.
Finally, Hoyt went to the Cherokee country and he and old Sam Sixkiller got
into a shooting scrape near Tahlequah. Hoyt shot his gun empty and Sixkiller
knocked him down with his six-shooter and stomped on him with his feet until he
had killed him.
“Black Hoyt and his father, Milo Hoyt, sold a herd of cattle
one time and got into a poker game with the money which was paid to them. They
could not understand how they were losing so fast until the buyer won back all
the money. Then Black Hoyt got up and killed a negro who had been giving his
hands away. Black Hoyt was charged with murder and when the case came up in
Fort Smith it was proved that the negro had Choctaw Indian blood and the court
was without jurisdiction. The case when to the Indian court where Hoyt beat the
case, it not being so hard in Choctaw court to do this when a negro was
involved.”
Hoyts Run Into Man Names Jones
“Down on the Hoyt farm, near Whitefield, in Haskell county,
there was a dance one time. Black Hoyt stepped on the skirt of a woman who had
been brought to the dance by a young man who was small of stature and crippled.
He walked with a limp. His name was Jones as far as we knew and he worked for
Ed Pearcy and Cash Pearcy on their farm.
“’Don’t do that,’ Jones said to Black Hoyt. ‘I carried that woman here. Don’t tramp on her clothes that way.’ Black Hoyt replied: ‘My shells say I can tramp all I want to on that girl’s clothes.’
“’Maybe so,’ said Jones, and he called the woman and
suggested they go home. He took the woman home and returned with a .38 caliber
gun. Hoyt had a partner by the name of Jeff Horne who rushed up with a big
six-shooter when Jones called Hoyt out. ‘Why don’t you shoot him?’ came from
Horne, and about that times Jones shot Jeff Horne dead. Then he started to
shoot at Black Hoyt who jumped behind his father, Milo Hoyt, who did not have a
gun.
Jones told him to get from behind his father. Black kept
shooting at Jones around his father and keeping behind him. Jones told Milo to
step out of the way but he did not move. Jones then shot Milo through the
overcoat, in which he had a large book. The bullet lodged against his hide and
knocked him down. As he was getting up, the gun that Jones had got out of
repair and he went away to fix it. When he returned, everyone was clean gone.
There wasn’t a Hoyt to be found. Next day Jones started to leave the community
and met Milo Hoyt face to face in the road. ‘I hated shooting you last night,’
said Jones. ‘Next time a fellow tells you to get out of the way you had better
do it.’ Jones went on and never returned.”
14 Dec 1934
Memories of Bloody Days
CLIMAXES IN CAREERS OF COLORFUL CHARACTERS WHO FIGURED IN
TRAGEDIES OF INDIAN TERRITORY AS RELATED BY JOHN LAFAYETTE VAUGHAN OF ULAN TO
CHARLES H. COWLES, NEWS-CAPITAL STAFF WRITER.
“Fifty three years ago, when I first came to this country,
the Indians complained to the government about intruders and a bunch of
soldiers came in to put them out. One man, Billy Hughes, a fine little fellow,
was one of those put out. Joe Lanyera, Choctaw deputy sheriff, had been
exercising a little authority over him and, when the soldiers came, he was even
more authoritative.
“When Bill was put over the line, Lenyera said: ‘Now Bill,
don’t let me ever catch you over this line.’
“Bill replied: ‘Joe, I’ll see you again when you haven’t
those damn Yankees at your back.’
“That was in August, 1881, and early in September, Bill rode
back into [Skullyville], which was near the present town of Spiro. Tyne Hughes,
his brother, was there, sitting on a drygoods box and whittling. He continued
to whittle all during the killing.
“Lanyera found Billy Hughes in the store and he said to him: ‘Bill, I told you not to let me find you here.’ Bill replied: ‘Remember what I told you, Joe.’
“Someone pulled Joe’s shoulder and said to come ahead and do
some writing. Joe was pulled away from Bill and went into the office. When he
returned, Bill was standing there, waiting for him. Bill was a small man and
Joe very large, weighing over 200 pounds.
“Lenyera grinned at Billy Hughes and both went after their
six-shooters. Bill was too fast for Joe. He got his fun and hit Joe over the
head with it. When he fell, Bill reached and took him by the hand and raised
him up, placed his sixshooter against Joe’s head, and let it go. He let him
down gently on the floor.
“The high sheriff and several deputies were in a corner of
this store when this happened. Billy stood quietly over Joe and said: ‘Boys, if
any of you want any of these whistles, I’ve got five more.’
“There was no response. Billy turned and walked out, got on
a horse, rode back to the front of the store, looked in and called: ‘Now, boys,
if any of you have got any business with Billy, this is the time. I am here
now. I won’t be very long. If you have anything to say, now is the time.’
“No one said anything and he turned his horse and loped to
the blacksmith shop where George Persley, the blacksmith, was working on his
gun, trying to lock the double barrel. Persley did not know then of the killing
at the store. Billy took the blacksmith’s gun.
Some of the folks around there kept telling Sheriff Ward
that he ought to get out and arrest Bill Hughes, who was then out of sight.
Ward gathered up a couple sixshooters and some shells and a belt and rushed out
to a horse that belonged to Tyne Hughes.
Tyne still sat on a box, whittling, and never said a word.
When the sheriff got on Tyne’s horse, he said: ‘Bob, that’s my horse.’ The
officer paid no attention and Tyne repeated it two or three times times and
then said he would shoot him off if he didn’t dismount. He told the sheriff he
would not interfere if he got another horse. ‘If you want to arrest Bill, you’ll
ride some other horse,’ was his ultimatum and the officer took another horse.
He returned in two hours.
Then the father of Bill Hughes and Tyne Hughes went to Fort
Smith and bought rifle and pistol shells till they would not sell him any more,
I was told. He said: ‘Well, I guess I’ve got half a bushel anyway.’
Bill Hughes was never seen in those parts again as far as I
know He was a deputy U. S. marshal, holding his commission under Judge I. C.
Parker of Fort Smith. Tyne Hughes and his father were gone for some time and
then Tune returned and went to Bill’s wife. She was a young woman with a baby.
He said he had brought her a message and it was a hard one. It was: ‘Billy told
me to tell you if you find anyone to tie to, to take him.’
As far as I ever learned, she never married again.
Tyne Hughes got a commission later as a U. S. marshal and he
made a good one, too. He went to the Choctaw governor, who had offered a reward
of $500 for Billy Hughes, and told him if he would put the money in a bank in
Fort Smith, he would put Billy in court. I have never met anyone who ever
learned what became of Bill Hughes. In those days one could ride half a day and
never see a man and there is a possibility he lived in some other section. One
report was that he had gone to South America.
I’ve seen the spot where George Pavehouse shot Dr.
Stephenson. The doctor took a saddle from George and would not give it up. I
presume the doctor had a claim against George, perhaps for medical service. There
was a tree close to the road, so close that the hubs of wagons hit it.
Standing behind this tree, George shot the doctor off his
horse and took the saddle. George disappeared and it was said he went to
Kansas. His people lived in this country and they told me that when George was
on his death bed up in Kansas a doctor was called to attend him. George had a
sixshooter under his pillow. He was sore for some reason. Some speculated that
he hated doctors because of his trouble with Dr. Stephenson. As this Kansas
doctor stepped in, George pulled his weapon out and shot the doctor dead. The
doctor’s daughter then came running in, and he killed her, too.
Before I came to this part of the country, an aged man named
Seratt lived a mile west of Whitefield with his sons, Jeff Seratt and Cooper Seratt.
The home was on the Hoyt farm near Machar creek. One morning six Choctaws came
to the farm to kill Mr. Seratt. He killed three of them right there and killed
the fourth by the time he had crossed the creek. A short distance west of the
creek he overtook the other two, completing the six killings before breakfast.
On the Taylor farm, near where Belle Starr was killed, John
Taylor killed Sam Brookins. Taylor ran away to the Cherokee country. Jim King
and Elias Fulson went to get Taylor but they could not find him. It was the
Indian custom, in case a wanted man could not be found, to kill a relative.
They found General Taylor, father of the man they were
after, in bed with his wife and baby.
Jim King shot Taylor with a double-barrel shotgun as he went
into the room and called to Wilson Forrest to shoot.
‘I can’t, I can’t,’ cried Forrest as [King] shot three or
four times.
I have hunted with the gun that Jim King used.
21 Dec 1934
Memories of Bloody Days
CLIMAXES IN CAREERS OF COLORFUL CHARACTERS WHO FIGURED IN
TRAGEDIES OF INDIAN TERRITORY AS RELATED BY JOHN LAFAYETTE VAUGHAN OF ULAN TO
CHARLES H. COWLES, NEWS-CAPITAL STAFF WRITER
Six Men Killed At One Time By Desperado
“A desperado who killed six men at one time was Dick Glass,”
says J. L. (Lafe) Vaughan of Ulan. “I was told this story by those who knew him
and by officers who had tried to capture him.”
Glass ranged through the Chickasaw country and the Arbuckle
mountain region and he was a man who was as black at heart as his skin. He
hauled many barrels of whiskey out of Texas and sometimes carried as many as 30
head of stolen horses.
Jack Van [Zandt], who was a member of the marshal’s force near
Hoyt, told me he was in a posse that camped one night at a spring and it made
them all uneasy when they learned old Dick had camped there the night before.
One time a posse got after him in the west. The men were armed
with Winchesters and sixshooters. Glass told men who told me that the members
of the posse were shooting too close for his food health with their rifles, so
he dropped from his horse as though he were dead and lay in the grass. The
posse of marshals rode right up to him. Thinking him dead, the officers placed
their guns back in their cases.
Glass leaped to his feet and, with a sixshooter in each
hand, killed all six members of the posse before they could do anything.
This was told me by first one and another who knew Glass—men
who had been in the Chickasaw country a great deal. They told me that when
Glass was traveling along trails, he always kept two men ahead and two behind,
giving orders to them to never let more than two men pass.
Charley Barnhill and Tyne Hughes and two other deputies of
the U. S. marshal, I was told, sought to capture or kill Glass. I believe Bud
Trainer was one of the deputies. These officers worked and worked until they
got him in one lane where they wanted him. They had men hidden there. Two
officers came in behind the rear guards and when Glass got to the spot where
they wanted him, he was shot down by a withering fire.
Brooks-McFarland Feud Near Dustin
Over near Dustin, before statehood, there used to be a man by the name of Willie Brooks. He was not an outlaw but a pretty good man in some ways, brave but rough. He would ride and practice with a high-powered rifle, shooting at fenceposts.
Brooks had an enemy by the name of McFarland about five or
six years before statehood, somewhere near [1901 or 1902]. Sometimes, I was
told, they would shoot each other’s stock and they became awful mad at each
other. Their differences reached a climax when one of the Brooks boys was
killed.
On shell creek, between Ulan and Eufaula, an old bachelor
was living whose name was Proctor. He lived on a hillside. I have been to the
house. One of the sons of Brooks went to Proctor’s home and told him to get out
his money; that he wanted it. The old bachelor said: ‘It’s in my suitcase; I’ll
have to get it for you.’ Proctor wheeled suddenly and shot Brooks before he
could pull the trigger of his gun. Brooks ran out, and rode to the home of
McFarland, where he was living, and died there. Brooks never did tell how it
came about as he did not want his father to know anything about it.
Willie Brooks had some younger sons coming on and he got a gun
and went out. It had been thought for a long time before this happened that
there would be a shooting. He had a son, John Brooks, and another by the name
of Cliff Brooks, both grown.
This morning, when Willie Brooks was fixing to ride into
Dustin, which was known at that time as Spokogie, Willie told his son of a
certain place in the burying ground where ‘I want you to bury me.’ He carried a
high-powered rifle.
At Dustin, an aged man by the name of Riddle came out and
raised a fuss with Cliff Brooks. When Cliff and Riddle went to fighting, Willie
Brooks flew mad and drew his rifle. Riddle broke and ran and Willie Brooks shot
him. He pitched on the store front and died instantly.
A steel ball went through Willie Brooks, under his arms, and
he didn’t know where it came from. He wheeled in the direction of the butcher
shop and another steel ball hit him in the breast. He saw McFarland, sitting
there in the butcher shop. He threw his rifle up and shot twice with a solid
steel 30-30. The facing of the door, where McFarland was sitting, was cut in
two. McFarland came out and then Cliff Brooks and John Brooks were wounded with
soft nose bullets, John in the hip. John crawled into the drug store and the druggist
said: ‘Now John, they went out and killed Cliff. You had better get out the
back way. They’ll be here looking for you.’ John reloaded his fun and went out
the back door.
Sure enough, in a few minutes they came in looking for John,
and the druggist said: ‘Boys, John is out the back, dead.’
If they had gone out there, John would have killed them.
John recovered but while he was still laid up, McFarland and his wife were
coming back home in a buggy one day through a strip of timber and underbrush, I
was told. There was a large tree near the edge of the road. Mrs. McFarland said
afterward that a gun was fired close to the buggy and just behind. Her husband
grabbed his sixshooter, looked her in the eye, and pitched forward. A .45
caliber ball fell out of his clothing. It was always supposed that some of the
friends of the Brooks family fired it.
Two sons of John Brooks came through here about two years ago. I talked with them and they told me John was their father.”
9 May 1935
Forget-me-nots
By C. H. C.
“I love the good old Indian Territory days of long ago,
when, in the early morning, one could hear the prairie chickens calling, a lonesome
sort of sound, and the crack of the whip of the cowboys as they drove to the
west,” says Florence B. Vaughan of Ulan. “There was some meanness going on then
but nothing in comparison to what there is today.”
Mrs. Vaughan has lived in his section of the country all her
life. She was born at Van Buren, Crawford county, Arkansas, Sept. 13, 1866, her
maiden name being Florence B. Lytle. Her father removed to Indian Territory
Dec. 21, 1881, when there were very few white people in these parts. She bcame
the wife of H. E. Autrey, March 4, 1884, and their six children are still
living: Mrs. Stella Brock of Comanche, who was born on Christmas Day in 1892;
Mrs. Viola Blevins of Ulan, born August 13, 1895; Mrs. Dessie Wilson of Dallas,
born May 28, 1898; Rayman Autrey of McAlester, born July 23, 1903; Mrs. Marie
Blevins of Ulan, bord Sept. 23, 1906; Mrs. Beatrice Ballard of Ulan, born April
19, 1909.
While I was living at Brooken with my first husband, a
couple of Creek Indians went to Fort Smith to get some whiskey and, as they
came back with their load of liquor, their ponies gave out this side of Big San
Bois and they got two ponies off the range that belonged to Sheriff Lucas.
When they reached Brooken, my husband, who worked at J. C.
Belt’s store, sold them a pair of boots. A few days later, Sheriff Lucas, Jim
King, Hiram King, Mose Woolridge, Elias Fulsom, and Cooper Seratt came to my
house and had dinner. They asked me in the Indian tongue what they owed me for
the meal and when I told them they laughed, as they thought I would not
understand what they said. They went on and took the two thieves and, on their
way back, stopped at the store and sent word to the house that they would like
some coffee. My husband came to get it and I accompanied him to the store.
The prisoners were sitting on one end of the porch, shackled
together. No one offered them a bite to eat and Mrs. Belt got some food and we
went to them. They seemed to be delighted to get it. Sheriff Lucas asked me why
I gave them food and I said because they were hungry. I declared they wanted
something to eat as well as he did. He said he would take something to eat as
well as he did. He said he would take them and give them a taste of Choctaw law
and the two prisoners were taken to the top of Beaver mountain. On a knoll in
that solitude, they were told that if they had anything to say to hurry and say
it. The big Indian got down and started to pray but the smaller Indian did not
say anything. Sheriff Lucas told the big Indian to hurry and he just kept
praying. After awhile, the sheriff took out his gun and shot him in the back of
the head. The little Indian started to run. The sheriff shot him down. Then
they rode away and left the bodies on the ground.
My present husband, John LaFayette Vaughan, and others have
visited the top of this mountain a couple of times. My husband says the saddles
were hanging in some bushes. He examined the bodies and could see that the big
Indian was shot in the back of the head and the little Indian through the back
near the shoulder blade. All their bones were where except the finger and toe
bones. One time Colonel Flemming was out hunting and shot a couple of turkey gobblers,
then walked up on those bodies. He noticed the eyes of the dead men had been
picked out and, fearing the birds he had killed had done it, he threw them
away. My husband thinks he got scared and dropped the birds in order to get
away in greater speed.
One day I was washing down at Brooken springs and an Indian came riding up to the spring. He spoke and got down. Taking a little tin cup which he had tied to his saddle, he drank and rode away. I learned later than two Indians got into a fuss near Whitefield on their way home from Fort Smith, where they had been for whiskey. When they got to where the roads forked, one came down to Brooken and the other came by the spring. They got together on top of the mountain, where, I suppose, they renewed their fuss. About that time, Uncle Robert Turner was coming from his home at Indianola to visit his brother-in-law, John Saunders, and Mrs. Saunders, at Brooken, and he found a dead Indian on the trail. When he reported it, a bunch of men went to the scene but some of his people had taken the body away. I had looked at the man who came to the spring very closely while he was drinking and I described him to Uncle Robert Turner, who said the description fitted him perfectly.
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