Oral History Highlights

 Interview with Robert "Rob" Trepp 

 

 

(Part A)

 

Origin of Perryman Name

Rob Trepp shares the origin of the Perryman family name which comes from seven Welsh brothers living in Edinburgh Scotland. (Edinburgh was the capital of Scotland since the 15th century.) The brothers produced a fermented beverage for King James of Scotland that was made from the pears they raised. This drink is called "perry" thus perry + man becomes "Perryman."

 

Immigration to the United States

The Welsh brothers migrated from Scotland to Virginia. Two of them continued south becoming traders with the Indigenous people of the Muscogee tribe. By 1790 there was documentation of a [full blood] living in an Indian community of the Florida panhandle, Mary Perryman. 

 

Creek War of 1813-14

The Perryman family was living in Florida and working with the British and trying to get them to land at Mobile Alabama. A storm forced the British to navigate to New Orleans, Louisiana, where they were defeated by Andrew Jackson. 

 

1860 Republican Convention

During the Civil War the federal bureaucracy was based on the patronage system, or spoil system, with the U.S. government giving jobs and appointments to office to its supporters. The spoil system was an incentive to keep people engaged in the government’s efforts. Southern states were electing secessionists who were appointing people to federal offices including appointments to the Bureau of Indian Affiars (BIA) and the War Office, located in Ft. Smith, Arkansas. 

 

William H. Seward (1801-1872) was a U.S. Senator at this time. He also served as Governor of New York and was the U.S. Secretary of State during the entire Civil War, serving under the Abraham Lincoln's administration. Seward was a key figure in the Republican Party who ran for the Republican nomination for president of the United States but lost the nomination to Lincoln.

 

Seward gave a speech at the Republican Convention announcing it was time to force Indians out of Kansas so to take control of Native lands and remove them to Indian Territory (I.T.). Recall the lands in I.T. were already legally in the ownership of the Five Tribes via Treaty Agreements with the United States. Trepp recollects the five deeds to Indian Territory, from Arkansas to Texas, belonged to the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Seminole and Muscogee/Creek nations.

 

Soon after the Republican Convention, the Five Tribes heard about the government's plan to force tribes out of Kansas and onto lands in I.T. Many of those in the Five Tribes allied with southern confederates during the Civil War because the south promised to protect them and their lands against the U.S. government.

 

1861 Trail of Blood and Ice 

Although, Chief Opothelyahola (of the Creeks) joined with other tribes and insisted they wanted to remain neutral. The tribes declared they only wanted to maintain their treaty rights but the U.S. government would not allow neutrality. In the prior  Battle at Chustenahlah, during 1861, over 9,000 Indigenous people who supported the Union Army were forced out of Kansas during a winter snow storm in what historians refer to as, "The Trail of Blood and Ice." 

 

Confederate troops attacked Native Americans, Union sympathizers, Chief Opotheleyahola and his band of Creek and Seminole Indians in Osage County, outside of Skiatook Oklahoma, and slaughtered 3,000 Indian men, women, elders, and children. The Creeks only had 15,ooo people at that time and 1/4 of them were murdered. Of the 12,000 remaining another 1,000 died walking during the winter to Ft. Scott, in, as refugees. 1,000 more died in containment camps once they reached Kansas. 

 

Civil War 1861-65

It is not uncommon to find family loyalties on both sides of the Civil War or even to find allegiance switching sides due to politics simply for the purpose of survival. This was especially true for Native people who professed being neutral but neither the north or the south allowed this position as an option. 

 

Like most Native, Black and White families in Oklahoma the Perrymans have family who fought on each side of the Civil War. The Perryman family and most people along the Arkansas River initially allied with the Confederacy of the South. During Opothelyahola's March to Kansas in 1832 three battles took place including a massacre near Skiatook Oklahoma on December 26, 1961. This is called the Battle of Chustenahla.

 

The crimes that took place against Indian people during the Civil War and during the Battle of Chustenahla turned the loyalties of many people who formerly allied with the south.  This is why the Perryman family can be found on the Muster Rolls of southern regiments then a few years later they appeared on the federal brigades that were raised in Kansas.

 

 

 

(Part B)

 

Perryman Family after the Civil War

George Perryman is considered the Founding Father of Tulsa and is one of the original signers of the city's charter. During the Civil War George's father, Lewis, left the ranch that was located in the area of today's midtown Tulsa. He took his family to Kansas seeking protection for them during the war. It is not known if he perished along the way or died in Kansas. After the Civil War George returned to his father's ranch in what is now Tulsa, Oklahoma. He and two others signed the city's charter giving Tulsa its name. 

 

George is the grandson of Chief Benjamin Perryman (Steek-cha-ko-me-co). Benjamin was the Principle Chief of a Muscogee tribal town, called Big Spring Town, according to 1882 Muscogee Nation census records. Benjamin Perryman brought his family to I.T. after the assassination of Chief William McIntosh (Taskanugi Hatke 1775-1825). Benjamin settled on the Verdigris River very close to the Cherokee boundary. Spring Town Church is located today there today marking the family's early territory. 

 

Note: Chief Benjamin came to Indian Territory PRIOR to the INDIAN REMOVAL ACT OF 1830 and forced removal.

Chief Benjamin signed the Treaty of February 24, 1833 at Fort Gibson, Oklahoma with the U.S. Government. In this treaty he negotiated new territorial boundaries between the Creeks and the Cherokees. 

 

Chief Benjamin was considered to be the Second Chief of the Lower Creeks because allies of the (assassinated) Chief McIntosh, who came to I.T. as a part of the Voluntary Removal, and established themselves as Lower Creeks along the Verdigris and Arkansas Rivers AFTER the Forced Removal. 

 

Lower Creeks & Upper Creeks

The English mixed with bloodlines of the Lower Creek towns and impacted their politics and social order. The Upper towns were less affected due to living farther away from the Europeans. Therefore,  the Upper Creeks remained more traditional in customs. The Creek tribal towns  who were removed from their homelands by military force and brought I.T. were considered Upper Creeks. They settled on branches of the Canadian River, the Arkansas River and Pole Cat Creek.

 

According to Trepp, the terms Lower Creeks or Upper Creeks had nothing to do with social order, class or rankings. It refers to Muscogee/Creek people living either in the plains or in the mountains before they were marched to Indian Territory. The English called Muscogee people Lower Creeks  if they originally lived on the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers. They called the Muscogee people Upper Creeks if they lived in tribal towns on the Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers in the southeastern part of the U.S.

 

Perryman Family & Early Oklahoma

The Verdigris River at Springtown where Chief Benjamin settled with is family is located ten miles northeast of Broken Arrow where George's father, Lewis, had a 60,000 acre ranch. Lewis had a trading operation along the river in that area. Rivers were the highways for the trade industry during this period of history. Lewis Perryman's trading business which was in competition with Choteau until he moved it and his family near the Arkansas River in what would become known as Tulsa.

 

Newspaper clippings from the Tulsa World Newspaper state there was a Cholera epidemic in the Verdigris and Broken Arrrow areas when Lewis moved his family to today's Midtown Tulsa district near 31st street and Utica Avenue.  Descendants of George and Rachel Perryman built this area in to an affluent district with higher end homes and properties.

 

By this time the Perryman family married into the Loachapika tribal town. Loachapika as a Creek Indian town prior to white settlement in the original Creek homelands of Alabama located in Lee County. Monetta Perryman Trepp's bloodline is from that town and from that tribal clan as is her son Robert Trepp because the Muscogee people are a matriarchal nation.

 

Creek Nation Communal Land in Oklahoma

According to communal tribal customs  the Muscogee nation owned over 6,000,000 acres of land before the Civil War and less than 3 1/2 million after the war. The U.S. government allowed Creeks to farm the land. Tribal government allowed their members to farm on as much communal land as desired so long as they fenced the land to keep cattle off. So, the land became "owned" by whomever fenced it. Any land not fenced was allowed to be used for cattle. 

 

Perryman Cattle Ranch

The Perryman family ran a huge mixed herd of cattle on a ranch that reached from Mounds to Chouteau, Oklahoma. By the 1880s the Texas Cattle Drives began moving northward and running directly through Creek tribal lands.

 

Since Texas cattlemen where driving their cattle across Creek lands and using the land for grazing pastures the tribal government  decided to charge them a fee. The cattlemenobjected and wanted their herds to graze Indian pastures for free. 

 

The tribe collaborated with the Perryman family and other Creek families to fence off everything about a mile wide from Tulsa to Chouteau. That area became a tax collection boundary. Texan cattlemen who wanted to run their herds from Texas to Kansas and graze their cattle had to go through the fenced area and pay the tribe to do it.