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Chigley, Wyatt
Field Worker: John F. Daughtery
Date: June 26, 1937
Birthday: December 25, 1878
Birth Place: Chickasaw Nation (Davis,OK)
Father: Nelson Chigley
Birth: Memphis Tennessee in 1835
Mother: Julie Push-shukke
My father was Nelson Chigley, a full blood Chickasaw, born near Memphis, Tennessee, in 1835.
He moved with part of his tribe to Blue Creek, near Tishomingo when he was two years old.
He came to the Washita Valley in 1854 and began farming. He broke his land with oxen and home-made plows. Father was very industrious. He tried
to teach others of his tribe who were not so ambitious to be economical and thrifty by living such a life himself. He finally owned about two
thousand acres of land and paid permits for fifty-three farmers.
He was elected to the Chickasaw Senate in 1870 and held that office for many years. He was among those who fought against the disfranchisement of
the intermarried white citizens in 1889.
He married Julie Push-shukke (Indian for Thomas) in 1859. There were three
children in our family. I was born December 25,1878, on the farm on which
Davis was later built. I was born in a log house with a puncheon floor. We
had a dug well.
My first school was attended near here, taught by Jennie Tolbert, I later
attended school at Gainesville and Savoy, Texas, and finished at Fort Worth.
I often went hunting in the Kiamichi Mountains in the Choctaw Nation. We always went in covered wagons, and several went on each trip. One member of our
bunch was always getting lost. There was a small commissary down the Creek
from our camp. Once he and another hunters started out to get us some food.
We waited all day for their return and late that evening they came slipping
up to our camp not knowing where they were. They never did find the commissary.
So I had to go get the food. I was never lost in timber.
I was married to Belle Young, July 15, 1903, and we have two children. I have
lived on the present site at Davis all my life.
Transcribed by Dennis Muncrief, November 2000.
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