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Indian Pioneer Papers

Turley, Belle
Interview 5943

Field Worker Hazel B. Greene
Indian Pioneer History S-149
May 25, 1937

Interview with Belle Turley
Soper, Oklahoma
Born 55 years ago at old Mayhew Court ground

Mother's name Kitty James
Father's name Ben Battiest
Mother's birthplace, in Choctaw Nation

    While in Soper yesterday, I ate lunch in the little restaurant operated by Mrs. Belle Turley, a quarter-breed Choctaw Indian. We were talking of the article in The Sunday Oklahoman, dated May 23, showing the picture of the historic old iron jail that was recently purchased by the town of Bokchito and moved over there from the Mayhew court grounds. Mrs. Turley was born and reared right there close to the court grounds and she said she had always understood that Wilson N. Jones, one time governor of the Choctaw nation, had that jail built especially to imprison the murderers of his son Willie Jones.
    It was reported that Willie Jones had been killed in a drunken brawl by Tuck Bench and Josh Crowder, perhaps others were implicated. Mrs. Turley said she remembered the report of how Josh Crowder was killed. She said that he was leaving the country; he was out on bond and was traveling down Red River in a boat, when some negroes killed him, rolled him in a wagon sheet and threw his body in the river. They then took his watch, gun, money and boat; robbery was their only motive.
    Mrs. Turley's father was a fullblood Frenchman. She didn't know where he came from to Oklahoma but thought he was from Mississippi. His name was Ben Battiest. He came into this country and married her mother, Kitty James, a half-breed Choctaw Indian woman. Her mother is buried at Mayhew, three or four miles from Boswell. Her father was buried further on over on Boggy somewhere.
    Ben Battiest was a veterinarian, who came into this country to practice his profession; married an Indian woman and accumulated much wealth and property, according to his daughter, Mrs. Belle Turley, who said: Soon after my father died my baby sister was born. He left us plenty to live on and mother never remarried, just stayed at home and raised us children. We didn't get any education. I went to New Hope Academy three months. That was at Skullyville, Indian Territory. There was a change made in the Superintendency of the Academy, and some sort of a row came up over it, and some one set fire to it and burned it through spite. So I never went to school again.
    When I was a child the government provided for only one child at the time in a family, to go to government controlled schools, and I was the chosen one. Then after new Hope burned, I never went to any school, because I was grown and married before any other school was near enough for me to attend. After I was a great big girl, a church was established about four miles away from us. We would go to it in an ox wagon and about every eighteen months we went to Paris, Texas, for shoes and things that we could not get at any place closer. We wore shoes only in the dead of winter. There were 14 of us children, so it was some problem to "shoe" all of us. We'd go to Paris in the ox wagon. That was the only way we had to go. We even went to church barefoot. Pigeon Roost was the name of our church that we finally got.

contributed by Janie Watt
transcribed by Ron Henson