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October 14, 2004 |
Class of 1922 |
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On June 6, 1987, the Aubrey School Reunion Committee included in its "Memories" a fitting memorial for one of its own scholars of the community, business and historians. It was a story by Skeet Smotherman. I remember when Skeet would come into the store about once a week to buy a bottle of white correction fluid and a 49 cent package of typing paper. Skeet would often tell me of many of his experiences as a youngster and his friendship with my Daddy and family. Skeet was interested in local sports and would always have something to discuss. He would talk about the many games that Aubrey played with neighboring communities, such as Little Elm and the community of Loyd. These two communities offered challenging sports activities. My Dad was 8-10 years older than Skeet. Skeet would tell me that he had always wanted to develop strong legs like my Dad’s. He said that the legs of Jim Goin were very muscular and strong. He developed his leg muscles in the many soft ball games that they played. Skeet went on to be a teacher and local businessman that all of Aubrey admired. Skeet was a successful long time merchant in the grocery business. I want to share one of Skeet’s stories as it appeared in the School Reunions book of 1987: Indians Bore Great Hardships If you will bear with me, here is just one more story about the Indian and his relationship with his great white brother. Undoubtedly the most dastardly deed ever perpetrated against the Plains Indians was the wanton massacre and mutilation of a small band of these Indians living on a reservation at San Creek in eastern Colorado. Col. J.M. Chivington, a Methodist minister, believed that he had been commissioned by God to destroy every Indian on the face of the earth, or, at least, to so decimate their numbers that they would never again threaten the superiority of the white race. He and his men methodically murdered and mutilated the bodies of some 500 Indians. Most of them women and children who were occupying a reservation set aside for them by a commission of peacemakers chaired by Col Chivington himself. They were to be issued rations and given a small dole. After the massacre Col. Chivington told the Denver papers that he had met the enemy and they were his, that he had killed 500 warriors and that they would never again threaten the destiny of the white race. The truth is that there were only 500 Indians present, and only 80 of them were warriors, the rest women and children and very old men. The colonel told that he and his band of men had killed them and had scalped them and they paraded the scalps through the streets of Denver as proof. They were accepted as heros by the Denver citizens who did not know at that time the facts. A number of military men believed the only solution to the Indian trouble was to kill every one of them. During the war between the states, the Plains Indians had ridden rough shod over the settlers in the West. They stole their livestock and murdered the settlers with impunity. So it was only natural that the military should believe as they did. There was General Sherman, who had ravaged the South at the close of the four years of war, and there was Kit Carson, noted explorer and Indian fighter who recommended that the buffalo and the food supplies of the Indians be destroyed, leaving a parched earth for them. He marched his band through the West, destroying everything the Indians had managed to raise on their dry lands on the Indian Reservation. He encouraged the buffalo hunter to kill and skin all of the buffalo and to deny the Indian even the offal from the kill. So the red man, faced with starvation, had no recourse but to submit to the dole. Often their rations were late arriving, and the braves spent their small subsistence check on rotgut whisky sold them by unscrupulous traders. No wonder their children were potbellied and hollow-eyed as they ate dirt they trod upon in an effort to live. Capt. Silas Soule and his men were part of Col. Chivington’s command who took no part in the massacre. When Congress learned the true story they recommended the court martial of the minister Chivington. I am legally an Indian. My grandfather was an Englishman, and my grandmother a Cherokee. They escaped the dread March of Tears only because my grandfather had legal title to his lands in Texas. I resent the plight forced on my ancestors by the whites, but I know, too, that they were taught to torture by the whites who offered a bounty on Indian scalps in the French and Indian War, and a special bounty was paid if the scalp included the ears of the victim. One general made the statement that an Indian, if skinned alive, would live several days to regret that he had ever opposed the march of the master race. I know there is no one left alive today, white man or red, who had any part in these atrocities. I know that their compassion for their ex-enemy is as great as my own, and I bear the present generation no ill will for the ill treatment their ancestors forced upon the Indians. I am ready to forgive and forget. The policy today is to try and blend the races and thus have only one race, and they Americans, who are proud of their heritage. But, we Indians have a pride of our own, and we hate to see our identity destroyed. We hate to see the Indian, the first native North American, disappear forever from the face of the earth. |
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