Finding Your Native American Ancestors

By Guy Nixon

The environmental disaster of the Dust Bowl which turned days to nights in the far of cities of New York and Washington D.C. for Oklahoma tore families apart sending survivors to all corners of the country.
For many people now trying to find their lost relatives and ancestors from Oklahoma the task is often more difficult than they expected.
This is a compilation of my research of the Native American part of my families roots. Not only do I present my findings in their historical context but also where and how I looked to find them. I detailed the members of my family from the early 1700s to the present. A history you dont see in the school books that has fascinated me from little on.
For those trying to find more about their Native American roots or those simply interested in American History from the Native American point of view this book is invaluable.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 11, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462891566

Book preview

Copyright © 2011 by Guy Nixon (Red Corn).

Library of Congress Control Number:       201191034

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4628-9154-2

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4628-9155-9

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4628-9156-6

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In the Spirit of my Grandfather’s Grandfather Claws of the Red Panther

Bill Nixon Red Corn of the Middle Rivers Band of the Great Osage Tribe

Contents

Introduction

My Motivation

Using The Social Security Numbers

Using Stories

Dealing With The Tribe And Their Records.

Indian Military Records

The Indian Nations Today

Grandpa Bill Nixon

Actually Going To Oklahoma

Chief Bacon Rinds Contribution To The Osage Nation.

The Cherokee National Museum

Osage Battles

My Family Was Divided By The Civil War /The War Between The States

The Osage Weapons

The Second Battle Of Cabin Creek.

Rebuilding The Nation

Lawless Again

John Joseph Mathews

Virginia Mathews

Margaret Mcghee

Maria Tallchief

Mysteries & Alternate Histories

One More Mystery

Bill Nixon My Father.

Oklahoma Story Of Rabbit, Turtle And Lizard.

Guy Nixon

Hunting

The Ghost Bear, Jacob And The Albino Deer

A Thought For The Reader.

Bibliography

Other Books By The Author Available At [e-mail]

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Pictured on this page are grave stones of my family. Made from local stones with The names and dates etched on them, only one family member remembered who they were. The flags are part of a project to better record them.

The grave stone above is for a 9 year old son of my great grandparents. It is difficult to see the marks on the stone today let alone figure out who he was with out family help.

The grave yards are difficult to see, let alone the stones, they were made this way but the experience of visiting them is just as moving.

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INTRODUCTION

Those interested in finding their Native American Ancestors will by necessity acquire an education into the history and politics which affected to one degree or another their ancestors.

Oklahoma was created by the forced removal of Americans for political reasons. Even people with as little as one sixty fourth Native American blood were rounded up and taken from their farms, businesses and homes to be marched often at gun point, to the Indian Territory.

Once there, they created new lives only to be soon caught up in the turbulent and devastating War between the States. For many of these Americans it created a Civil War within their own Indian Nations. The conflict did forge a new Indian identity and unity of purpose. After first being abandoned by and then attacked by the United States of America they were offered help, citizenship and congressional representation by the Confederate States of America. They submitted to the Confederate Congress to be admitted as the State of Sequoyah.

After the war their lands were administered by the Indian Bureau who set up land rushes and often turned its head when criminals murdered them for their Head rights to potential oil reserves.

After numerous attempts to be admitted as the State of Sequoyah they were finally admitted as the State of Oklahoma in 1907. While Black Americans had received the Status of American Citizens and the right to vote in 1866, and women the right to vote in 1920 American Indians were still not US Citizens until 1924. Even then it would not be until 1948 that American Indians would finally get the right to vote from Coast to Coast on what was originally their own land.

The Environmental disaster of the Dust Bowl which turned days to nights in far away New York and Washington D.C. sent the survivors from its epicenter to all corners of the country.

Now their descendants find it difficult to trace their ancestry.

This work documents the unique period of history from the 1820’s to the 1920’s from the perspective of Mr. Nixon’s Native American Ancestors. This book tells where and why records were made and are now kept. It also lets the reader know why their ancestor may not have wanted to be certain records.

For the person perusing family roots or just interested in this unique part of American history this work is invaluable.

MY MOTIVATION

My motivation to find my father’s father’s side of the family came from several sources.

First, I understood he was part Indian from the Osage Tribe. This alone was enough get me to read everything I could find about this tribe.

Second, was my mother’s interest and success in researching her family tree. As I grew up my mother and her cousins were in contact doing research on their family history.

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Some of my mother’s relative’s farms border the farms of Daniel Boone and his family in Missouri. While on a family visit to Missouri, I was keenly interested in learning, that contrary to the television series, Daniel Boone’s Indian friends were actually Osage.

By looking up historical records for the more unusual family names mom was able to get a lot of information. A prime example was the Blaufuss (German for Blue Foot) who came from Wiesbaden and Württemberg in the 1810’s. With my mother’s cousins research some even found distant relatives living in Fussgonheim who came out once to visit.

The Bogert branch can trace kin back to the 1400’s. Then there are the Apels and Zastrows. One of the Bogert ancestors served in the US Army during the Mexican American War.

For all of her ancestors the port of entry was New Orleans so the records were some what defined.

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My mother and a neighbor lady were so interested in researching the family tree that they made a trip, for a week, to the Genealogical Library in Salt Lake City Utah. The technology of the 1980’s was at best microfische where they could see US Census forms, marriage licenses, obituatiaries, wills, probate records and old newspapers.

While dad’s mother knew all about her Phillips family and can trace back family members to different wagon trains and their service records for the War of 1812, my father’s dad was more or less a college educated Osage Indian from Oklahoma and not much else.

With my mother, the family was fairly easy to find. The family Bibles with living kin who were still in contact and who lived within a reasonable drive made family research rather easy and a lot of interest for her family.

When the Internet came out my mother’s family got into sharing their findings on family research much faster. But try as we did, dad’s Indians were a mystery. The usual places to look just didn’t seem to have anything.

It was a dead end as far as Mother’s resources could find.

USING THE SOCIAL

SECURITY NUMBERS

I had limited success in finding my ancestors with the Social Security Death Index, but I did find one interesting fact for people looking for Indian ancestors.

For people born in the Indian Territory they often wrote their state of birth as Indiana. This was technically true. In an effort to become more white they were told to write their place of birth as being Indiana, The land of Indians. Since the Indian Territory was not a state and the Indians themselves were not US Citizens before 1921, it was desirable to make this their state of birth.

I also found my kin went to some effort to change their birth names to be more Yankee friendly. Fredrick Lee Nixon was written a few years later as Freddy Brown Nixon.

One record you wouldn’t realize was kept as a Grooms Marriage Certificate. In the Matrilineal tribes a record was often made of the grooms maiden name so to speak. For many Confederate Veterans, who wanted to get a new identity, the Indian Nations were ideal. By marrying an Indian wife they legally got a new last name with all records written in the native language using the Cherokee alphabet.

I found the names of my Great Grandfather’s parents and his in-laws on this document. This one for them was recorded at Iron Bridge in the Choctaw Nation. In other words, you didn’t have to be a tribal member to get and have recorded, this document in the various Indian Nations.

USING STORIES

My parents had tried to locate grandpa’s family farm in Oklahoma as well as his College records but came up empty-handed. Years later I tried the Social Security Index but only got as far as the 1940’s. The census was not very thorough in the Indian Nations in 1900 or the new State of Oklahoma in 1910.

One evening I remembered a story of grandpa’s where he had to keep the cattle off a hill on the farm to prevent them from being struck by lightning. I asked dad what he remembered about the story thinking maybe the hill would be large enough to be a landmark in an otherwise flat landscape. Dad said no, the hill wasn’t described as being all that high. However, it sometimes took days for a herd to get through the ford on the river on their way to the H up and H down. This part I had vaguely remembered and it stirred me to ask Which river and what were the names of the ranches? Dad remembered only H up and H down to the 101. This gave me an idea. I contacted the Oklahoma Historical Society and asked them several questions. First; Where were the 101, H up and H down Ranches? Second; How many cattle trails connected these ranches that would have crossed any rivers?

Success, at last! The Oklahoma Historical Society sent me a map showing the locations of the 101 and H up and H down Ranches with a letter telling me there was only one river with only one good ford across it that they would have used. It was the Salt Fork of the Arkansas River and the famous Chisholm Trail.

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I now went on Goggle earth and looked at the crossing. There besides the crossing was a spot called Cowboy Hill. This looked like I had struck the jackpot. Next, I contacted the County Tax Recorder’s office to find the name of the landowners for that parcel in the years 1900 to 1910.

Unfortunately, their records for those years had perished in a flood. However, they did have records for just before that time frame, and only two sections were not owned by a huge cattle ranch. The two sections were the ford itself and some bottom land down to (and including the hill). I next got a Territorial (Indian) Census just after the time of statehood in 1910. This listed the persons living there as Fred and Laura with juveniles Edgar 13, William 10, Effie 9, and Ora M 7. While the last name was not legible due to the smudge mark it had the key identifiers. One thing I knew was that grandpa was born in 1900 and had an older and younger brother as well as a baby sister. This was the layout of the children exactly with Bill as the second son with the correct age. The farm was only 5 miles west of the Osage reservation boundary. Laura as Fred’s wife made sense as the second wife since Margaret McGee (from the social security records) had by grandpa’s stories died from complications of his baby sisters birth.

I had been talking to the Osage Tribal Museum people and now told them what I had found. They now had a parcel and more names to work with. They told me the land should have been listed under their tribal last name, as that area was land available for Indians who didn’t qualify to live on their tribe’s reservation. Since the Osage were matrilineal I determined Margaret McGee must not have been the Indian who qualified.

One of the Osage explained it this way, in the book (Where the Red Fern Grows) the family only got to live on the farm in the Cherokee reservation because of The blood that flowed in Momma’s veins as they put it. It wasn’t the boy or his father but the mother that counted in a matrilineal culture.

The Osage Tribal people told me to look for the (Groom’s Marriage Record) where the name of the groom would have been recorded. This has sometimes been called a Groom’s Marriage License as well. You might find a regular Marriage license in some tribes but it is peculiar to that time and place and something you wouldn’t think to look for.

After several weeks of research I found Fred Lee Nixon and Margaret McGee in a Grooms Marriage Record recorded in December 1897 at Iron Bridge in the Choctaw Nation.

This was pay dirt! Here were the signatures of the witnesses of the married couple. For Fred Lee Nixon I had his father as Old Panther Bill Nixon Redcorn, and his mother as Jane Sarah Rush Nixon Redcorn. For Margaret McGee her father was Albert McGee and her Mother was Etha McGee.

DEALING WITH THE TRIBE

AND THEIR RECORDS.

With the name of Old Panther Bill Nixon Redcorn the Osage had records.

First, I want to point out that people are people and they don’t remember everything about ancient history on demand. It takes time and a report with many hours of listening to things that absolutely don’t have any bearing on your search. Many records are not on any data bases and even those that are,one needs to have somebody with a clue of where to look to find them.

In my case it helped tremendously that since I first learned to read I’ve searched out every book written about the Osage Indians. It helps to have a running knowledge of where the tribe was living at different times and what events occurred during those times. I went into this search knowing the major chiefs, land negotiations, battles and oil deals before ever talking to anybody.

As a teenager I had contacted the only person who was then teaching the Osage language, Mrs. Hazel Loho Harper. She took a very real interest in me and sent recordings of Osage language on tape as well as her best attempt at a written text book. I remember her telling me that she thought I was one of the smart ones because the first lawyer of the Osage was a Nix she thought.

I talked with her for about six months before she died and, after her death, her husband sent me a bunch of her work. He said she talked a lot about me and my interest so he figured I would appreciate this stuff.

Now back to when I found the Grooms Marriage Record. By this time