One popular attraction was to watch the drums and drummers performing while Texas Tribe Chief, D.L. Hicks, performed his prayer in the Native Cherokee language with an English interpretation.

Some of the Cherokees were wondering how this site was obtained, and I explained to them that this beautiful ranch was a part of a handsome spread that was settled back while the Onega settlement was coming into existence. The Plunk family originally settled this area; they had a daughter that became a Cagle and that this ranch was much a part of Onega because they were on the tax roll back in 1858. The town of Onega didn’t become Aubrey until 1881.

At this time, during the late 1850's, the people in the area developed a code for communicating with visitors and local people. This code allowed the visitors and the local natives to know if they were talking with Northern sympathizers or someone from the confederacy. The area to the north of Cagle Hill and up around the southeastern part of Cooke County and Gainesville within the Cross Timbers region developed a code which helped them determine if visitors were friends or enemies. The code generally was simple and precise, and when two strangers came upon each other, there was a code where scratching the hair on the right side meant one thing and scratching on the left side meant something else. These secret codes were performed before they would begin talking to each other.

The secession of Texas while Onega was settling created many problems and the people didn’t desire secession, which caused many blacks and whites to leave this area because they were running from the Civil War, which was just in the talking stages at this time.

Some people left this area in fear of war while others settled in the area in an effort to evade the duties of being enlisted to fight. The families were loyal to the Confederacy and quickly responded to the call to arms. I have a list of the local Civil War soldiers from Onega. Soldiers from the Onega area were from the David Plunk Sanford Slaton, George Goin and John Williams families. When the war began, the demand for soldiers in the north and east was drawing local attention. The Onega area was an area where disloyal settlers were hiding out. I have mentioned before that some of the local families were Cherokees from the removal and the heartaches of the war and the fear of losing Cherokee men in the Civil War was also likely on the minds of the deserters that were in the area.

The Cherokees were not a warring group, but they supplied five soldiers out of ever 100

Cherokees to the Civil War. The many settlers during the 1860's in this region were hiding out and dodging the war draft.

Texas seceded from the Union on March 4, 1861. James W. Throckmorton and Sam Houston did not want Texas to secede from the Union. Sam Houston was kicked out of his office on March 16, 1861.

Onega was no different from any of the other regions, as the Union sympathizers were beginning to arrive in the 1860's, but their reasons for coming here were to flee their duties of fighting in the war by moving west.

Slaveholders paid taxes on 340 slaves in Cooke County in 1860 and by 1862, this assessment had gone to 500.

The governor of the Indian Territory couldn’t muster up enough strength to enlist the Indians, however, by the fall of 1861, the Cherokees, Creeks, Seminoles and other tribes including the Comanche were in support of the Confederacy. A few months later the Comanche withdrew their support.

I recall having codes when I was a youngster growing up, but my brothers would always change the code and I was always the last one, since I was the youngest, to find out about the new code signs, and I never knew what was being discussed.

This past week, I had the honor of meeting and talking with Mr. Richard Rogers. Mr Rogers is a grandson of Bob Venable, and to my amazement, I discovered that he is very much interested in improving our area. He has recently acquired more land by the railroad tracks and was cleaning up the area he had just purchased. He was in the process of installing gates on his 3,500 acre spread which includes land that is just north of the Cagle Hill Lockout point.

Mr. Venable’s grandson invited me to come horseback riding on his land, which I have not had the privilege of being on since I was a teenager. I told him that this large spread of land holds many memories for me to when I was doing the code talking with my older brothers as we were gathering up fish for my mother’s table.

I have many secrets when it comes to fishing, but my secrets were for the protection of the evil doers while I tried to figure which side of my head to scratch when the game warden would come up from nowhere.

While I did visit the Cherokee Heritage gathering on and off during the celebration, I accidentally came up Tracy and her mother, I never did get to see Shawn Cagle, as my ins and outs didn’t coincide with his busy schedule. I was able to catch Tracy and her mother for a photo for today’s paper, as they were talking to the Texas Chief D.L. Hicks. My apologies are that I am not a talented photographer, but Holly was gone to Austin for the weekend and allowed me to use her camera.