MY GRANDFATHER, JOHN HUTCHINGS

John Hutchings (1879-1927)

My mother’s father was of probably half-Indian blood, though perhaps more. His family had been marched from Georgia to what is now Oklahoma in 1838-1839 in what is called the “Trail of Tears” in which 4000 out of 15000 Cherokee died. The original family itself was half Cherokee and half-Scots-Irish and may have been split in Georgia when the US Army took the darker complected ones and left the red-haired, light-skinned ones. My mother’s grandfather, whom I believe was also a John Hutchings, was a Cherokee medicine man, who branded himself as a medical doctor, since the white culture frowned on Indian medicine people. He ministered not only to Indians but to whites, as a “country doctor” known as “Grandpa Whitecotton.”

My mother’s mother, Lena, referred to her husband, John, as a “reverend,” which indicates that he may have been an itinerant preacher, probably Southern Baptist, though a lot of Indian medicine people also took the title of “reverend,” for they were considered by the Indians as holy people with magical and healing powers. John and Lena had eleven children of whom my mother was the youngest, born 1927. Her father died in 1927 before she was born—of a heart attack as he tended his corn liquor still. He was 48. He had once had a farm in Arkansas but it was apparently foreclosed upon, forcing him and his family to become migrant workers, picking cotton and corn, and also as sharecroppers. My mother talked about how they would manage corn storage bins, moving the corn between bins before the rats could get to it, but this would have been a story told to her by her mother or her siblings. Speaking of good stories, in early May, 1934, when my mother was six years old, Bonnie and Clyde stopped at her home, either around Paris, Texas, or Hugo, Oklahoma (since my mother never acknowledged that she was born on the Choctaw reservation in Hugo, Oklahoma, always saying that she was born in and lived in Paris, Texas). Bonnie and Clyde and their gang asked if they could stay in her barn for the night. My grandmother, perhaps knowing who they were and perhaps being afraid, since they were not particularly picky on whom they shot, let them stay in the barn. They gave her a dollar. They were ambushed and killed by a posse of lawmen a few weeks later on May 23.

My grandfather had other skills. He was such an expert fly-fisherman that he brought CEOs of large corporations (probably oil and gas and railroad magnates) on two or three-week wilderness trips into the forests of the Choctaw Reservation in Mississippi. He also played a wild fiddle and could sing. As already noted, he was a migrant cotton and corn picker, along with his family of ten children and wife to help. He worked a corn liquor still which was highly illegal during Prohibition (1920-1933).

A further digression. John Hutchings was probably really only of Cherokee blood (of the 50% or so Indian that he was). When the Cherokees got to Oklahoma from Georgia, the original Oklahoma Cherokees were not welcoming at all. However, the freshly-arrived (and starving) Cherokees were accepted into the Choctaw land of Oklahoma, essentially becoming members of the Choctaw Nation (or Band).