Great post Fossis! I have done a lot of reading on Skullyville and there is just so much history there...I would love to come explore this place....
Just a little southwest of Skullyville is Charby Prairie, one of great Choctaw ball grounds. George Catlin tells of attending a great game here in 1834 when some three thousand Indians were present. The games were generally played between districts, and there was much rivalry, many people, especially the women, betting everything they had on the outcome of the game. The players, said Catlin, were naked except for the breech-clout, with a sort of tail or appendage of horsehair as a decoration. The game lasted from nine o'clock in the morning until almost night, the winning party being the first to secure one hundred goals. It was a scene of wild confusion with many a bloody shin and broken nose. Indian ball was not a lady's game.
The old cemetery of Skullyville has all the interest usually attached to these ancient places. Untold hundreds if not thousands of people lie here in unmarked graves, while the engraved stones date back into the eighteen thirties. It is a peaceful spot; from one point in it the Arkansas River can be seen, while numerous trees cast their shade over the last resting place of the dead. Two chiefs of the Choctaw Nation, Colonel Tandy Walker and Edmund McCurtain, rest here. Perhaps the most elaborate monument in the cemetery marks the grave of Edmund McCurtain. Among other sentiments in the long epitaph inscribed on the stone are these: "He was kind and generous as the brave only be. When the years have come and gone and the Choctaws be few, this stone shall mark the place of one of the purest, bravest and most patriotic sons of that nation."
The decline of Skullyville was rapid after the Civil War. One by one stores and residences were burned or otherwise destroyed never to be rebuilt. As usual with the old towns, the railroads passed it by, and Spiro a mile to the west, came to be the place of importance. Today, in addition to the Agency building, perhaps a half dozen others still stand within the bounds of Skullyville. The descendants of its first families are scattered far and wide. But as one who lived there years ago well said: "Let Old Skullyville be remembered long as the principal town of the Choctaw Nation before the coming of the railroads, for here were some of the flower of the tribe; a set of people who always stood for honesty, education and the general welfare, whose men were always noted for their hospitality and generosity, the women for their charity and purity of character."
Most of the site of Skullyville was underlaid with sand and gravel. During the past few years untold tons of the very dirt upon which those early people trod have been scattered over the roads from the Winding Stair to the Arkansas border—a fitting reminder of the way in which the original settlers scattered their own culture and refinement throughout their tribe and section
http://digital.library.okstate.edu/chronicles/v016/v016p234.html
. Fossis Your posts make me want to visit Oklahoma, what beautiful country full of history. I am adding OK to my wish list.
![:-\](https://www.treasurenet.com/smilies/undecided.gif "Undecided :-\")
