RANDY DAYS IN INDIAN TERRITORY REVIEWED BY SAM RIDDINGS AT THE RE-BURIAL OF JOHNNIE A. POTTS, AT CHEORKEE

Submitted by: Mollie Stehno

June 6, 1940-The Hennessey Clipper

"The happening of a fast-misting past were reviewed by Attorney Sam Riddings, of Medford, author of the book, "The Chisholm Trail," last Sunday in connection with the reburial of Johnnie A. Potts, victim of a gun-battle on the T-5 Headquarters Ranch, in 1884. The remains were interred in a Cherokee cemetery after being removed from an alfalfa field near the former site of the old ranch headquarters. Many old-times of this section of the state were present Sunday. Attorney Riddings' address follows and will interest pioneer residents and others of this section:

Johnnie A. Potts was a Texas cowboy 23 years of age, who died of gunshot wound on a March day in 1884. At the time of his death he was working at the T-5 headquarters ranch, near where the town of Carmen, Oklahoma is now located. He fell in an unfortunate controversy with a friend, and was laid away in his temporary resting place some distance fro the old headquarters ranch. Over 56 years after his interment, he is now being laid away in a regularly organized cemetery in a civilized and populated country.

With the brief understanding there naturally calls for investigation and inquiry as to the circumstances and developments which existed at that time and brought this youth to the open prairies of the then Indian Territory and away from his native land of cactus and Spanish moss. In answering that inquiry it is necessary to apparently diverge much from the surroundings that then existed and now exist.

This location where this boy worked and was first laid away was in what is known as a portion of the Cherokee Outlet, and in order to ascertain the status of this portion of the country, it is necessary to go back to the year 1828 and ascertain how the Cherokees came possessed of this portion of this land. The Cherokee Indians were on of the most civilized tribes of Indians. The very name, "Cherokee," in their own dialect signified "upland fields," and they inhabited a vast portion of what is now the United states, lying in the portion of the country in and adjacent to the state of Tennessee.

In the year 1828 on account of the encroachment of the white settlers on their lands, they were compelled to make a treaty with the government of the United States, transferring to the government ten million acres of their land in the east for seven million acres in the Indian Territory, where their main reservation was established in the eastern portion of Oklahoma and they also were to have on the west a perpetual outlet to the mountains for hunting purposes. This outlet to the west consisted of a strip of land extending west from the Cherokee reservation and adjoining the south line of the state of Kansas, being 58 miles wide and, according to the terms of the treaty, extending westward as far as the limits of the United States then extended, which was then the 100th meridian, but was no surveyed or marked.

As heretofore state, the Cherokee were engaged in domestic pursuits and were not hunters any more and perhaps not as much as many of the white settler. Hence this portion of the land lay idle until after the Civil war. Also, this land extending from the Red River on the south to central Kansas, on the north was up until after the Civil war, perhaps the wildest and most uncivilized portion of North America.

It will be remembered that the time of the death of the deceased Johnnie A. Potts, was in 1884, and the Civil war was then terminated, and it was only the matter of a few years prior to that time that the buffalo had been exterminated on the Western plains.

In 1865 Jesse Chisholm had laid out and established a trail from Wichita, Kansas, to Anadarko, Oklahoma. This trail was originally laid out as a "Trader's Trail," and extended between these two points. Two years later, in 1867, Colonel Oliver W. Wheeler in the spring of that year, with his associates had assembled a large herd of cattle near San Antonio, Texas, and with great difficulty had crowded them north across the intervening wild country to the new railroad station at Abilene, Kansas and ha thus established a permanent trail and route for cattle of Texas to the north. Gradually and slowly after that for the next ten years, cattle drifted into the Cherokee Outlet, which grew to be known as the Cherokee Strip and gradually across that 58 miles ranches were established on the Indian domain, which extended also to the lands of the other civilized tribes farther to the south. Finally prior to the year 1880, all the country of the Indian Territory, except what was held under actual possession of the Indians, to whom it belonged, was used for grazing purposes.

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