Discovering links between Guilderland and Kiowa, Oklahoma

A very interesting message from a telephone correspondent near Kiowa, Oklahoma caught this historian's attention this week with a call from that state. A 45-minute conversation was filled with surprising connections of Guilderland and Kiowa.

Sherrill Wilkins, born in California, has lived in Oklahoma for about 25 years and is married to a Chickasaw Indian.  She notes that Oklahoma was "Indian Territory" before statehood in 1907. 

Sherrill is a former schoolteacher. She has no computer service in her home because the nearest hookup for service is 30 miles away.  She is seven-and-a-half miles from the nearest store, called a "Double Quick" like a 7-11 store here.

A pharmacy is 26 miles away.  Medicines are obtained by mail.   Their house and her husband's father's land total 250 acres.

Sherrill says proudly that an Indian family with children will not have to pay for college.   Many other benefits are available.  There are food benefits in the grocery store, and fuel for heating a home is free.  She said tribal members’ needs are met by the tribe

Our conversation covered names of early Kiowa residents like Veeder and Grote and Lainhart, which belong in both Kiowa and Guilderland history.   It is known that long ago Indians sometimes took the family name of English soldiers who had befriended them.

This historian informed Mrs. Wilkins of the Mohican Indians that lived near the Waldehaus Creek at Dunnsville in Guilderland.  Those Mohican Indians did the job of weaving basketry around demi-john bottles made in the glassworks factory in our town.

She also now knows that our town park has the Indian name of "Tawasentha," meaning "Hill of the Dead," and that Red Man's Wigwam on Route 20, an important  building in Guilderland's history, is now gone.

There is an Indian Cemetery near Sherrill Wilkins’s country home.  She has promised to climb a few fences to get pictures of the place.  She also mentioned the huge casino gambling places in the state that are owned by Indian tribes.

Four days after I first talked by phone to Sherrill Wilkins, a large white envelope from Oklahoma arrived in the mail; it held a July 2015 issue of the Chickasaw Times, the official publication of the Chickasaw Nation.

Front-page stories told of the Chickasaw Nation's 2015 Hall of Fame Ceremony to be held July 21, and another front-page story and picture revealed that a new van was to be used to deliver preventative health-care services to young Chickasaws in small-town and rural areas.

The 20-page large-size newspaper carried community and society news of the area. The paper wrote of how a Chickasaw Lighthorse Police Force had helped rescue eight people in a flooding incident in Pickett, Oklahoma.

The inside pages were filled with pictures of Chickasaw graduates from many local high schools and colleges, a remembrance of a Chickasaw Woman Aviatrix, agendas of the Chickasaw Nation Tribal Legislation, and a story about Chickasaw quarterback Bruce Petty who had been drafted by the New York Jets filled.  Petty had led his Baylor University Bears team to a conference championship last year.

An Indian arrowhead, a roserock from their soil, and pictures of Indian burial grounds were included in the mailing.  In addition, a book titled "Oklahoma Indian Country Guide: One State — Many Nations,” told about the 39 Indian Tribal Nations.

A handmade "dream catcher" was enclosed.  The legend tells that the air is filled with both good and bad dreams.  The good dreams will pass through the center hole to the sleeper while the bad dreams are trapped in the web and perish with the light of day. I do hope it works!

A great breath of history washed over the conversations with my new Oklahoma friend. I will  tell her of the Veeders and Grotes and Lainharts of Guilderland.

I hope to share more with you.