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Indian Pioneer History Project for Oklahoma
Date: April 27, 1938
Name: Hattie Chandler
Post Office: Altus
Residence Address: South Jackson Street
Date of Birth: April 8, 1855
Place of Birth: Howard County, Arkansas
Father: Robert Rowe
Place of Birth: Georgia
Information on father:
Mother: Susanne Thompson
Place of birth: Georgia
Information on mother:
Field Worker: Zaidee B. Bland

My husband's people lived in Arkansas and we lived in Wichita Falls, Texas. Once when we had started back to Arkansas to visit the kin we stopped at Webbers Falls for a few days and my husband leased land from the Indians and I have never left the state since except on a visit. I have lived nearly all my life among the Indians and like them for neighbors. I have only been in the west part of the state about ten years.

Squaw men wanted so little rent that it was cheaper to farm their land than it was to come here and homestead. We lived at Webbers Falls until we could not get land to farm nearer than thirty-five miles away and we thought that too far away to go back and forth. We never knew about cotton but it was always corn, peanuts, cane, garden stuff and fruit with us. We raised a little stock and hogs always. We lived in a big box house with a shed along on the side. Good soft water was always abundant in the eastern part of the state. We took our corn to the mill and had our meal ground and made enough hominy and (soap?) every fall to do all winter. All the schooling my daughter ever got was with the Indians.

Transcribed for OKGenWeb by Catherine Widener, March 2001.