Historic Tulsa

seven thousand men, women, and children for
the trek to safety in Kansas. However, the
refugees were attacked near present Keystone
on November 19, 1861, in what has become
known as the Battle of Round Mountain. Texas
cavalry and Confederate Indians commanded
by Colonel Douglas H. Cooper ran the refugees
across the Arkansas River, through present
Sand Springs, and into Tallassee. The
Lochapokas fed the retreating refugees and
joined the exodus to Kansas.
On the day after Christmas, better armed
Texas and Arkansas Confederate forces
overcame Opothle Yahola’s band at Hominy
Creek. Many Creeks died. Some of those who
lived escaped north to Kansas—but hundreds
of prisoners were rounded up and taken back
to a sandbar on the Arkansas near Tallassee,
and executed.
Somehow, the Lochapoka people survived
and were allowed to return to their community
after the Civil War. Even though their peace
was guaranteed by the federal government,
their economy and town were destroyed.
Rather than rebuild in a cluster on the original
site, the people built cabins in the surrounding
area. The Perrymans and other families
reestablished their lives. George Perryman
married a full-blood woman of the Lochapoka
community and built a new home, the “White
House” at what is today Thirty-eighth Street
and Trenton Avenue, from lumber brought by
wagon from Coffeyville, Kansas.
For several years, George Perryman’s
brother, Josiah, informally delivered mail to
the nine hundred residents of Tulsee Town.
For his mail distribution center, he used a
log cabin that stood at present-day
Thirty-first Street and Trenton Avenue. In
March, 1879, a room added onto his brother’s
home was designated as the place for the first
post office to serve what became Tulsa. The
government shortened the traditional Tulsee
Town to Tulsa.
✧
In the northwest section of present-day
Tulsa is a point where boundaries of three
Indian nations met—the Osage, Cherokee,
and Creek.
CHAPTER I
11