I seem to be getting a good bit of information from my e-mail – this seems to be the fastest method for communication these days– for those of you who can’t come in the store or don’t have time to mail a letter.

I read my e-mail two or three times a day, and sometimes find myself corresponding back immediately, which helps me document my conversations throughout the day. Sometimes Jackie makes me get off the computer so that she can run a credit card transaction through the phone line. I am always happy to make a sale even if I am on the computer with a friend.

Our Texas Cherokee tribe chief, D.L. Hicks e-mails me that one such write up that I made a year or so ago about a log cabin that was built during the year of 1858, when the settlement of Onega was prospering fairly well, which was built by George Key. When George Key built the log school house and church combination, the village of Onega had already been in existence for a number of years. Cherokee Chief Hicks’ wife, Margie, said that the photo of the log cabin reminded her of a hot sauna that they had on their farm back in Minnesota when she was a child growing up. This photo consisted of a combination of oak and blackjack tree logs that were stunted and slow in developing and the logs were left out at the top to allow heat out in the summer and the sunshine in during the winter months. Margie grew up in Minnesota while Chief Hicks grew up in the East Texas Pines with a deep Cherokee ancestry.

Rev. Dr. George Key had just moved into the beautiful cross timbers region to establish a Methodist Church. Rev. Key was a historian and Methodist preacher, and he recorded that the people were both friendly and neighborly as well as hard-working and honest people having a hard time but were very pleasant. The people were mostly of the Cherokee and Black Dutch lineage and were wanting to find a place of happiness and friendship to settle down and make a home for their families without interferences of the various governments and as they seemed to be land seekers rather than governing bodies.

The village of Onega had already been in existence for a number of years before the 1867 rush of another group of Black Dutch people who were also becoming friends to the native Cherokees. When the tired and worn families came across the black land prairies to the east of Onega and the cross timber region there were many comments and recordings written on how beautiful the small scrub and brush oaks and briars were. They provided a shelter from the raiders and was a good location to build a log house. The area of Onega was a beautiful setting and many of the 1840 and 1850 settlers described the area as hilly, rocky, with a lot of light (onega) colored soil that would grow easy crops.

The sapling trees did however yield enough hard blackjack and oak logs to make fourteen foot square houses. As the economics of the times improved, a 1x12 lap siding was installed in a vertical pattern over the logs both inside and outside making an attractive dwelling and comfortable living quarters for the families.

When the Black Dutch people rushed over the black land prairie to the east of Onega, the beauty of the trees of the Cross Timbers area attracted them. As they began traveling through the sparsely growing trees that had never been cut through by human hand or axe, it became apparent that the briars and other climbing vines had so thickly penetrated the aging blackjacks. They found that going further into the trees required much tree trimming just to take their wagon and teams with household furnishings into the thickly established group of trees. After days of traveling and hacking their ways through the creeks and gullies and approaching the other side of a creek or river, a few miles of prairie would again appear and the traveling would become more pleasant and the encounter with other native Americans seemed too be a beginning way of life.

As the settlers hacked their way through the briars and blackjacks, they discovered that the trees were of a different character than any of the threes they had been acquainted with. When the young and healthy adventure seeking family provider would draw back with the axe to make a swing into the blackjack limb, it was immediately discovered that the sagging limbs were leafless and bark free. The attempt to hack down a limb would result in the limb springing back and hitting the tree trimming settlers in the mouth and face which created an iron will and challenge to go further because they had never before encountered a tree that appeared to be planted and maintained by some big green giant from above that was fully qualified to set a tree of this size in the ground and space that it looked like the trees were set in an ordered pattern.

At some point in time, I have mentioned that I don’t have a birth certificate and couldn’t prove that I was born because my mother and her friend Mrs. Babe Maynard delivered me without all of the fan fare of hospital when they lived in the former Pilot Grove, a small community to the north of Onega. Millie Howell Carroll, a Black Dutch descendant, e-mailed me that she too didn’t have a birth certificate, but later found someone who knew that she was born and helped her in the Court House. Since I made this statement, I have found that many local Cherokees didn’t have birth certificates either. Most of us have kept to ourselves and didn’t spread the news around because we were just glad to be born and living with a family oriented history that so many of us locals have been able to enjoy.

As kids at about the age of four or five we got the honor to tag along with our older brothers and learned how to fish, catch rabbits, throw rocks at squirrels, kill polecats, hunt opossums and raccoons. We brought the rabbits home to our mother who cooked the rabbits into a gravy and dumpling delight. The delight really just happened to be an almost necessity on different occasions. I could go on discussing with you about my youth, but I can still hear in a small still voice, "Bouncer, shut up, everybody is going to know what we did." I knew if I told everything that we did, I would not be allowed to go along with my older brothers, so I kept my mouth shut until one of the elders slapped me in the mouth. At this time, I knew I would prepare to tell on them. And if I got really mad, I could tell my Daddy, but if I ever told him anything, I would suffer too, he would make me line up on the belt line simply because I was a tattler.

The pastor from Rock Hill Baptist Church came in this past week and told me that his ancestry was Black Dutch ant that he too suspected that the family was descended from the Cherokee tribe. His last name is "Jones," I have mentioned that my mother’s maiden name was Jones. He said that he grew up on the other side of the river and that he wanted to come in sometimes and look at my old artifacts. I told him he was welcome anytime that he had twenty minutes to spare.