Let me tell you
what little I know of my mom, Mamie
Blue Jacket. She was a Shawnee Indian born in
the Indian Territory of
Oklahoma near the little town of Vinita on January 7,
1883, the daughter of Stephen S. Blue Jacket and Emily Tiblow
Silverheels.
My mother's father was an intermediary between the Shawnees and the U.S.
Government. He had custody of a lot of treaties that later burned up in a shed
outside of his home.
Stephen's dad, Henry, had a Lodge that he rented out to travelers that
happened to come by. He had a beautiful Indian girl working for him known as
"Spotted Fawn" (see attached excerpt from the letters of William H.
Hutter). Stephen married her after she had divorced Silverheels. Divorce, Indian
style, was very easy. All you had to do was move out and you were divorced. She
had a daughter named Frances who married a Cherokee named Rick, divorced him and
married William E. Brown. This information came from the files of Virginia
Blue Jacket Slack who was also tracking down the genealogy of the Blue Jacket's. I also met Jim
Blue Jacket and it was his mother who verified that
Henry Blue Jacket (my great grandfather) married Eliza Blackfeather. At that
time, I was accompanied by my brother Kermit and my nephew
Carrol, the son of my
brother Winston. We were attending a Blue Jacket Picnic in the town of
Blue Jacket,
Oklahoma about 1984. I got a wealth of information for mom's genealogy,
especially from Virginia.
Now comes the little that I know of my mom's youth. She attended a local
school until her dad decided that he wanted her to have a better education. In
1893, he sent her, her sister Caroline, and her brother
Pearl to the Carlisle
Indian Institute in Pennsylvania. As a freshman, one of her classmates was Will
Rogers, a Cherokee Indian who became a celebrated newspaper columnist in the
1930's. The first time she saw him, he was war whooping while sliding down a banister
at the school. She knew of him because his dad owned a large ranch
near Claremore, Oklahoma. Another classmate was Jim Thorpe, a tremendous
athlete, who went to the 1908 Olympics and then played professional football for
the Chicago Bears.
My mother was a very talented young lady. She could type, take shorthand and
could really play the piano. In June 1896, her mother died. My mother couldn't
come home to the funeral because she was only 13 at the time, and in those days
they didn't embalm the dead so she was buried real quick like. I understand that
she didn't get to finish at Carlisle because her dad was lonely and sent for the
kids to return home.
She had an older brother, Edward, and a younger brother
Pearl Tecumseh. She
also had two older sisters, Rena and Caroline (Carrie on the Indian Rolls) and a
cousin Rose all of whom were raised by her dad. Rose was Charles' daughter;
Charles was her dad's uncle. He was called "Boss" by all who knew him.
He was the last elected chief of the Shawnees. He had been married at least
three times. Nevertheless it was quite common to have to raise other relatives
in your household at that time.
Rena, Caroline and Rose had beautiful voices and performed throughout the
area. They even performed at the World's Fair Exposition in St. Louis in 1892.
Naturally they were all dolled up in their Indian dresses. Later on, mom was
their accompanist on the piano.
Mom was very petite. She was five feet tall with beautiful black hair; she
must have inherited her beauty from her mother, "Spotted Fawn". Her
brother, Pearl Tecumseh, evidently didn't like to work but whenever there was a
pageant, he always dressed up in his Indian head dress and with his beautiful
doeskin suit and moccasins, he would ride on to the stage carrying the American
flag. He spent most of his time trying to sue the government over land and oil
rights. It seems as though the lawyers always kept things in litigation so as to
keep drawing out their fees. I think that the largest amount of money that my
mom ever got was about two thousand dollars. I got to see Uncle Pearl only one
time when he came to visit Aunt Carrie, who was then living in Artesia, and
my mom, when we were living in Manteca in 1928. Of course he made a big show of
it. He'd previously had his picture taken while on horseback all decked out in
his Indian costume and it appeared in a Long Beach paper. He said he was out
here to see his friend Will Rogers who might put him in the movies. I was only 9
years old at the time when he put on a War Dance for us in our home in Manteca.
It really scared me because he was using mom's butcher knives at the time. So
much for "Old Blue" as he was affectionately known in Oklahoma.
Once when mom and dad were traveling on a train, she ran into one of her
classmates from Carlisle. The young lady was once again dolled up in her Indian
dress and carrying her baby on her back. This really surprised mom because at
the Institute they brainwashed the students to take up the white man's way of
dress and life style. Mom was so brainwashed that when she was asked to put down
how much Indian she was, she said only three eighths (see the excerpt from the
article by W. A. Daddario). That was in 1896 for the Cherokee-Shawnee Payroll,
page 5, Number 90. Mom thought that she had French in her bloodline.. But as I look at the family
tree, she was almost certainly about 94% Indian.
Her sister Carrie, married Henry Luther Bingham, my dad's brother. And
through them, mom met my dad, Charles Wilson
Bingham. She was 18; he was 31.
My dad really had a colorful life. What little is known is worth telling. The
first thing that comes to mind is that he and his younger brother Henry were
known as the two "meanest white men in the Indian Territory". What
happened was that Henry had a dog and when he and dad walked into a saloon in
Vinita, someone said dogs were not allowed and proceeded to kick him out. Well
that just didn't set too well with the Bingham boys, so they took on all the
characters in the saloon. After they'd cleared them all out, someone heard about
the incident and wrote a song about them. Some of the words were "Every
time I go to town, the boys keep kicking my dog around". Some day, I just
might learn all the words because I hear it played occasionally on the radio,
western radio that is.
The foregoing story about my dad was told to us in Boulder City by Will
Rogers. Will was being shown around Boulder Dam by the Bureau of Reclamation
brass when he happened to spot dad who was doing carpentry at the time. Will
politely excused himself from the brass and said that his friend 'Charlie' would
show him the rest of it. Little did they know that dad and Will were the best of
friends from way back and had worked together on Will's dad's ranch in
Claremore, Oklahoma. Dad used to be a rod-and-chain man for the US Geological
Survey and was hired to survey the ranch and lay out bench marks. Dad said that
when he and Will went into Vinita, Will would bet that he could rope the left
leg of a chicken walking down the street or what ever happened to walk by. He
was mighty handy with a rope and proved it when he joined a Wild West circus in
the late 1920's and later, in the 1930's, by stage twirling his rope as he spat
out his humorous narrative of the events of the day. As he always said,
"All I know is what I read in the newspaper". Even when he attacked
the politicians, or even the president, it was always taken in a humorous vein.
After a long stint with the Ziegfield Follies on Broadway in the late 1920's and
early 1930's, he started writing a syndicated column and later went on to
Hollywood to make movies.
I have included some pictures of dad before he was married; one shows him
carrying his gun on the left side of his body in a style known as a "cross
draw". Will also told us about one time when dad was a sheriff, he told a
bad guy to get out of town. The guy didn't, so dad went up the back steps of a
saloon to throw him out bodily, but the guy drew his gun. Dad went for his and
ended up splattering the guy's brains all over the mirror behind the bar. I'm
definitely inclined to believe these stories. My brother Max told me about an
incident that happened when we lived in Boulder City. Dad and mom went to
Railroad Pass Casino to do a little gambling and dancing. Some fellow made a
remark about mom dancing with some young fellow (my brother Stuart), so dad
called him a blankety-blank so-and-so, and decked him. Dad was 65 at the time.
Dad was about 5 feet 11 inches and weighed about 170 pounds when he enlisted
for the Spanish-American war. He was sent to Cuba along with Teddy Roosevelt's
Rough Riders. He got dysentery so bad that when he was discharged in 1894, he
weighed only 130 pounds. A doctor asked dad to take him and his party on a
hunting trip and also to be their cook. He also gave orders for dad to take a
swig of booze every hour or so. Not to get drunk, but just to feel good all the
time. A week later when they returned, dad had gained 20 pounds and was on his
way to recovery.
Dad met and married my mom on June 4, 1901 in Vinita, Oklahoma. He wasn't so
dumb; she had already been allotted 200 acres of land by the government. He
built a home and started farming. He adored her; if she wanted something, he got
it for her if it was humanly possible. She was a feisty little thing and did
just exactly what she wanted to do. He was very obliging.
Because of the weather, she was sick quite often and so they moved to
Dennison, Texas. Tom and Kermit were both born in Vinita in 1902 and 1903
respectively. Winston was born in Dennison in 1904. Tom, Kermit and Winston were
all on the Dawes Indian Rolls maintained by the US Government. The purpose of
these rolls was to identify persons of Indian descent who were eligible to
receive certain US Government benefits at the time.
I'm not sure exactly what my dad did for a living in Dennison. Most likely
carpentry. My Uncle Lute (Henry Luther) and Aunt Carrie were already down there.
They lived in Dennison from 1905 to 1906, but moved back to Blue Jacket, Oklahoma
where Helen was born. In 1912, they sold the farm and moved to California. They
ended up in Whittier where Emily was born.
Dad bought an orange grove in the little town of Orange Cove, California,
southeast of Fresno. Max and Stuart were born there in 1915 and 1917
respectively. My little sister Mary was also born there, but she died when she
was only a year and a half. She was buried in Manteca.
They had a bad freeze early in 1918 and lost their crop, so they sold out and
moved half way between Manteca and Ripon. They moved to the "Green
House" near Calla Corner on Austin Rd out in the country. That is where I
was born. In a large two-story house surrounded by a vineyard with rich sandy
soil and plenty of sunshine.
We reached Blue Jacket's---a sort of Shawnee boarding house, by night. Blue
Jacket lives at the crossing of the Wakarusa, and has two houses--one double and
one single. But let me explain what a double Indian house is. They are the most
commodious and pretending houses that the Indians have in this country, and
consist of two, or one and a half story log houses. Inside we found one Indian,
three squaws and all the preparations for supper.
One of the squaws was a beautiful girl, who had been named "Spotted
Fawn." Her color was not good, but her features were as though they had
been chiseled by the most critical and skillful sculptor. She was not dark or
white, but of that sallow hue which many Indian girls have--but her eyes and
teeth were unexceptionable. If she had had a little of the red or warm brown
coloring thrown into her cheeks, she would have been admired by man or woman
that looked upon her.
The decor of the house, we all ascribed this to the taste of
"Spotted Fawn," but ascertained, to our surprise, that she was only
employed to assist, and was not a daughter of the house. Her name, she told us,
was Emily Tiblow, and she had been educated at the Quaker Mission. She spoke
English well and had a very soft and musical voice.
Condensed Excerpt from
"Nebraska History"
A Quarterly Magazine
Published by the Nebraska State Historical Society
1500 R Street, Lincoln, Nebraska 68508
Spring 1992, Vol. 73, No. 1, page 2
Article by Wilma A. Daddario
In 1879, General Richard Pratt
opened the first non-reservation boarding school for Indian children in
Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Pratt had to begin his school with Sioux children
because the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Ezra A. Hayt, wanted the children to
be hostages for the good behavior of their people led by Spotted Tail and Red
Cloud.
All the schools, ideally were to
be located far from reservations to reduce the contact between the children and
their parents and Indian customs. Their education was to be both academic and
vocational.
Most schools did not tolerate any
elements of Indian heritage. They were taught that their native culture was
worthless. They were to learn the same manners, morals and religion as white
children.
General Pratt expressed the
sentiment: "I believe in immersing the Indians in our civilization and when
we get them under, holding them there until they are thoroughly soaked."1
Full assimilation of the Indian
children into white society did not occur as General Pratt and other late
nineteenth century reformers had hoped.
1. Richard H. Pratt, Battlefield
and Classroom, Four Decades with the American Indian, 1867-1904, University of
Nebraska Press, Lincoln, Nebraska (1987)
Kansas Historical Quarterly
Vol. XXXV, No. 3, Autumn
Written at Soldier Creek, Kansas Territory, Nov. 14, 1854