Scattered Graves

Scattered Graves - Col USA (Ret) Roy Sullivan



Stand Watie, Confederate general and Cherokee chief, died alone September 9, 1871, as he plowed new furrows on a small farm on Honey Creek, Indian Territory. He was readying the old farmstead for occupancy by Sarah, their daughters and himself, after deciding that Saladin’s house near Webbers Falls was too large and held too many memories.



The sad history of the Watie family did not end with the death of its patriarch. Daughters Jacqueline and Jospehine died within a month of each other in 1875. Sarah Watie outlived the entire family she and Stand raised, except for their adopted son, Bill Kemper, and granddaughter Trissie.



The War Department in Washington reassigned Kemper to Fort Huachuca, Arizona Territory, as a brevet major, first as deputy commander, later, commander of the 10th Cavalry Regiment, the famous black “Buffalo Soldiers” stationed in the desert near Cochise’s Stronghold.



Trissie Rose Kemper eventually married an Army officer whom she met at Fort Huachuca. By their combined hard work, they established Bacone Indian College near the present city of Muskogee, Oklahoma. Trissie’s pet mule, Anguish, was the school’s unofficial but well loved mascot for several years.



Bill Kemper was promoted to lieutenant colonel, eventually to colonel. He received a Keetoowah pledge for a plot in the burial grounds near Webbers Falls where he could rest next to his wife, Rose and their still-born son whose small hand-carved marker read “Stand Saladin Kemper.”



Stand Watie was interred far from his family in a small cemetery in what is now Delaware County, Oklahoma. There were few visitors to the site near the Arkansas border. Watie’s wife, Sarah, came as often as she could, always accompanied by a tall graying man who, curiously, wore an old fashioned pistol and a big, beaded knife