WALKINGSTICK, SIMON #12018
Interviewer, Elizabeth, Ross
October 27, 1937
Interview with S. R. Walkingstick
Attorney, Okmulgee Grandson of Archibald Scraper
Scraper
Postoffice
Scraper,
a postoffice near the northeastern border of Cherokee County, bears the name of
a Cherokee of considerable consequence in a long ago period. There are quite a number of the native
Cherokees by the name of Scraper. Two
of them reached the rank of Captain in the Union Indian brigade in Civil War
times. One of these was Captain George Scraper, who fell in action at a contest
at Shirley's ford of Spring River, Missouri, in the period of the war. The other, Captain Archibald Scraper, tall
and erect until in advanced age, participated in a number of the contests in
which soldiers of the Indian brigade were involved in the war time period some
of such contests being outside of the Indian Territory, but others within the
Territory. A coo1 and valorous man,
often in the thick of battle, Captain Archibald Scraper nevertheless escaped
serious injury and was among surviving members of the brigade who were mustered
out at Fort Gibson on the 31st day of May, 1865.
After the war
Captain Archibald Scraper returned to his home in the hill country some,
distance east of Tahlequah and resumed his usual activities. He was of influence among his people, and
was elected on occasion to serve in the national capitol building at Tahlequah.
There was a
picturesque gray cliff, in the vicinity of the home of Captain Scraper, out in
the Cherokee hills, and near the brink of this cliff the Civil War veteran,
when becoming somewhat advanced in years, set out a row of young cedar trees,
below the c1iff wound the mountain road and a portion of the road was
overlooked by the cedars, which in course of years, attained to large
size. Nearby was the old fashioned and
substantially built house in which the gray headed former military officer and
legislator spent the declining period of his lifetime.
When this old
man was past the allotted span of three score years and ten, his wife having
died, he decided to procure for himself another wife, and in casting about
found a young girl who was of the white race, not yet out of her teens,
according to those who had knowledge of the old Captain's romance. The youthful maiden was not adverse to
marrying the veteran who had fought upon Civil War battlefields in past
decades, and as was narrated in a Tahlequah publication, the "Indian
Arrow," in past decades, the marriage was duly consummated and the couple
departed for the home in the hills in vicinity of the rows of cedars on the
cliff.
Some years ago
the necessity of a postoffice became apparent in the locality lying near the
Illinois river, some twenty miles northeast of Tahlequah, and the postoffice
department signified that an office would be established. A name for the office was requested and a
granddaughter, of Captain Archibald Scraper, Mrs. Leona Walkingstick Saunders,
living in the locality, suggested the surname of the old Civil War Indian officer. The name was accepted and during several
years a number of persons have received their mail at the Scraper postoffice.