The Happenings in and around Woodville Indian Territory

Written by James Thomas Bell Records
Contributed by Vicki Bell-Reynolds [email protected]

There were three tribes of Indian Territory, Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Choctaw Indians. Some of these tribes were friendly peace loving and some were very hostile and also wanted to be in was, more especially with the pale face, as they would call the white people.

They would exchange their ponies for the white man good horses, they would ride their ponies up to the white man horse lot, get down off their pony turn it loose in the lot, get on the good horse and leave, this was the hostile tribes. They would slip in at night to a farmhouse and set it on fire and wake up the people and when the people would run out of the house the Indians would shoot them down like cotton tail rabbits.

The friendly ones would try to make friends & if an Indian girl fell in love with a white boy of which they seldom did, she would knit some kind of garment or some gift she would go to the white boy and offer the present to him. If he accepted the gift she would kneel down on one knee holding out her hands and id he wanted her to be his wife, he wold take hold of her hand then she would stand up and they were man and wife.

Woodville being in the territory and no laws for any crimes committed, people would come in from all parts of the country to beat their crimes and did.

My grandfather, Robert Scott Bell, came to the Indian Territory in the early 1800's, he came from Searcy White County ARK. He was a county Judge of White County at one time before coming to the territory.

My grandfather had been twice married, one son by his first wife named Joseph and he had two sons by his second wife, one son named Robert Simon Bell of which was my father and the other son was named Alberta he died in early manhood. He never was married. My father and grandfather had the same initials but different names, which was Robert Scott and Robert Simon and the initials would be R.S., so, they signed their names SR and JR.

Upon coming to the Territory my grandfather was a preacher the first preacher in the Indian Territory.

He was a Presbyterian preacher & he would preach to the wild Indians and my grandmother whose name was Arvilla Bell, would teach to the Indians at the Indian Academy (Burney Academy).

Later an old Chief White cloud offered and gave to my grandfather and allotment of land, which consisted of 160 acres of land to preach to the Indians, and chief gave my grandfather to the choice of the whole territory to pick his 160 acres of land. So he took the choice of where Woodville was finally located. He moved his family there on the place, built a log cabin and he and the two boys mauled rails out of trees that was on the place and put a worm rail fence around this 160 acres of land, the hardware that went into the house was hauled from Fort Smith ARK. On a two wheel oxen wagon, it took 3 months to make this trip, 6 weeks to go and 6 weeks to come back, these ox wagons didn't use axle grease on them for there was none in existence. They would melt coal tar and use it on the axles, the coal tar would rub off the axles and

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