A Chickasaw Heritage, January 20, 2020

We did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills and the winding streams with tangled growth, as 'wild'. To us it was home. Earth was beautiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery.  ~Chief Standing River

Today is Martin Luther King Day, an occasion to remember one of the greatest Americans. Celebrating MLK is also a reminder of what many call America's "Original Sin," the sin of Slavery. Hand in hand with the historical enslavement of millions of Africans was the treatment of Native Americans by our United States government. Today therefore is an unpleasant but important reminder of a dark chapter in our country's history, a chapter that is all too close to many in our family tree.

Last month I wrote the first of a few postings about my wife Cindy's Native American ancestry. The lineage of her and her mother Paula Hicks Harris (1923-2018) includes 6 generations of Chickasaw women, beginning with her GGG Grandmother Sha-thlock-kee Hawkins. It is a maternal lineage that stretches back 200 years on American soil. Her Chickasaw heritage actually goes back much farther than that but scant records are available for indigenous people whose home was this continent before our Europeans ancestors arrived. Here is a list of those 6 women and their spouses.

• Cindy Harris Shepard (b. 1948), husband Steve Shepard (b. 1948)
• Paula Hicks Harris (1923-2018), husband Sammie Joe Harris (1922-1999)
• Rosa May Krause Hicks (1896-1940), husband Jenkins Arthur Hicks (1895-1967)
• Frances Newberry Krause (1854-1915), husband Christian Krause Jr. (1846-1909)
• Lucy Hawkins Newberry (1824-1907), husband Robert Newberry (1826-1886)
• Sha-thlock-kee Hawkins (d. before 1897), husband (unknown) Hawkins

Frances Newberry Krause (1854-1915)

Cindy's Great Grandmother, about 1880

A Transitional Figure. Cindy's Great Grandmother Frances Newberry Krause (1854-1915) was a key person in this family line as a transitional figure. She was the first in this lineage to have been born in Oklahoma. Her parents were both from Mississippi where the Chickasaw nation was rooted until the 1830s when the Nation was forcibly relocated to Indian Territory in what is today Oklahoma. The account of that historic relocation along "The Trail of Tears," I will write about in an upcoming post.

As a young Native American woman in Southeast Oklahoma, Frances Newberry met and then married a 31 year old German immigrant named Christian Krause who was 8 years her senior. He had only been in Oklahoma a few years before they met and then married in the spring of 1877. Because of his marriage to Frances, Christian applied for and eventually became a citizen by intermarriage of the Chickasaw Nation. He went on to become a successful businessman who owned and operated a cotton gin on Indian Territory in what is today Bryan County, Oklahoma. Frances and husband Christian had an impressive family of 8 children who were all raised on Indian Territory in and around Bryan County. The Krause family, at the turn of the 20th century, included Frances' widowed mother, Lucy Hawkins Newberry, a full blooded Chickasaw.

The family of Cindy's Great Grandparents Christian and Frances Krause

Picture taken in early 1890's in Oklahoma

The Krause-Newberry Family. This family picture, from the early 1890s, shows Christian Krause (seated on the left), his wife Frances Newberry (seated in the middle), her mother Lucy Hawkins (seated on the right), and 6 of their 8 children. One of their daughters had died at 4 years old, several years before this picture was taken. Their youngest daughter, Rosa May Krause (Cindy's Grandmother) had not yet been born at the time of this picture, and may have actually been "on the way" when this picture was taken. Does it appears to you that mother Frances is with child? The other Krause children in this family picture are Martin, Lucy, Johnson and Lewis across the back, and young daughters Margaret and Lena in front.

The father of the family, Christian (who died in 1909), and his wife Frances (who died in 1915) are both buried in Yarbrough Cemetery alongside Lake Texoma, 19 miles southwest of Durant, Oklahoma.

Lucy Hawkins Newberry, Cindy's Great Great Grandmother, is the elderly lady on the right in the family picture above. She was the last person in Cindy's maternal lineage to have been born in Mississippi. She was born there in the Chickasaw Nation in 1824. She was just a young person when the Chickasaws made the arduous trek in the 1830s from Mississippi to Indian Territory in what eventually became the State of Oklahoma in 1907.

Frances Newberry Krause and her mother Lucy Hawkins Newberry appear in the 1900 US Census. The 2020 U.S. Census is coming up this year with its own controversies about what questions should be asked of citizens. It is worth noting how different the Census process was a century ago. In that 1900 Census, apart from the regular questions, were a series of questions called "Special Inquiries Related to Indians." The Census taker asked people if they were living in a "Civilized" or in an "Aboriginal Home." Furthermore they asked couples whether or not they were living in polygamy, and if so, whether or not the two wives of the polygamous household were sisters. Thankfully we've come a long way in our Census taking in the last century.

Cindy's proud maternal lineage is an important part of our family's multi-faceted history. It reminds us once again how deeply rooted we are in American soil.
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Steve Shepard
(he, him, his)