Five Civilized Tribes

When I was growing up, we would make a yearly trek to Oklahoma. I know, “where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain.” My father’s family lives in Oklahoma and we would go for one week every summer to visit my Grandmother, aunts, uncles, and cousins. I always associated vacations with driving great distances to someplace where you would always be hot and uncomfortable. Without indoor plumbing and paved roads and where cattle roamed the back 40.

It is always hot as this was rural Oklahoma during the summer. This was the 70’s and central air had not made it there yet so, you just sweated and hoped for the hot breeze to boil away the drops that was running down your face. One summer we drove by the bank in Stillwell, it was 110 degrees at 10:00 PM. Now that’s hot.

Every year, on the drive down, we got the lecture about the 5 civilized tribes that the US government re-settled in Oklahoma. They were the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole. Why this topic today, well the place I work supplies the GM assembly plant in Oklahoma City and the carrier GM has selected is named Choctaw. Put two and two together you get the 5 civilized tribes.

Around 1830, all five tribes were forced by our government to leave their homelands which were pretty much, Kentucky, Tennessee, South and North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi and Alabama. They rounded them up and forced them to relocate into Oklahoma where three remain today. The Seminoles have relocated back to Florida and the Chickasaw nation dissolved in the early 20th century.

For more on the history of the Five Civilized Tribes, here is an informational web site:
http://www.shadowwolf.org/five_civilized_tribes.html

Not quite the Rogers and Hammerstein picturesque idea of Oklahoma that comes to mind when you mention the state. I never saw any chicks and ducks and geese or a shiny little surrey with a fringe on the top. What are isinglass curtains anyway?

Icool

Cobb