Indians

Indians. Settled 1852. , No Indians resided on Ten Mile Creek, then known as Plesant Run, upon arrival of the first white settlers in this area in 1844. Game, however, abounded, with buffalo and antelope on the prairie and deer, bear, panther and other wild life within the thin Ten Mile cover. These attracted frequent hunting parties, presumably the Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Seminoles and Creeks, who had been resettled in the eastern part of the Indian Territory to the north, and who were having a difficult time subsisting themselves. The first such party, well over a hundred strong, including women and children, approached Hardscrabble in the spring of 1845 at a time when all the men were absent except its white leader, Elder Roderick Rawlins (1776-1848). Putting the women and boys in the best defensive posture possible, Rawlins rode to meet the Indians. By extraordinary coincidence the savage chief recognized him as the "white man, Rawlins" who had, on some previous occasion befriended and saved the life of a tribal member. For several days the whites joined the Indians in a hunt, then the visitors departed having done no injury to the settlers., Such parties entered this area until shortly following the Civil War but never harmed a white beyond an occasional theft of a horse. Indians frequently came to settler's cabins to trade, usually asking for lead and gunpowder. When they found a woman alone they sometimes engaged in teasing, and Margaret Lavender (1814-1894), remembered all her life her momentary fright when a party of Indians, fascinated by the black curly hair of her young son, Tolbert, tried to trade for him.