Oral history interview with Nathan Benton

Little ThunderMy name is Julie Pearson-Little Thunder with the Oklahoma Oral History Research Program at Oklahoma State University. I'm interviewing Nathan Benton for the Chilocco Alumni Association here at Chilocco Indian School outside of Newkirk, Oklahoma. Mr. Benton, you trained soldiers as a tank commander, and you attended school here at Chilocco. I look forward to learning more about your experiences here. Thank you for talking with me today.

BentonHow far back do you want to go?

Little ThunderWell, where were you born, and where did you grow up?

BentonI was born in Antlers, Oklahoma.

Little ThunderOkay.

BentonThat's down southeast from here. July 22, 1929.

Little ThunderWhat did your folks do for a living?

BentonWell, let's see. Mostly my dad was local labor. Let's see. Then my mother 1:00was a homemaker, raised a family and stayed at home. She was a stay-at-home mom. That was about the--.

Little ThunderDo you have brothers and sisters?

BentonWell, I had a one full sister, and then my mother and dad divorced. Then my mother married again, and in our household she raised nine children. My dad went off to some other part of the country. About when I was starting grade school, my dad came and got me from that situation, that home, and took me to 2:00live with him in Muse, Oklahoma, which is down in that part of the country--

Little Thunder Oh, okay.

Benton --McAlester, Talihina, that area. I lived with him until I started grade school. I think I was about third grade. For what reason, I don't know. I guess the economic times. This was in '29, '30 somewhere in there. He enrolled me in Jones Academy Indian School at Hartshorne, Oklahoma. I stayed there until I was going into the ninth grade. I was in the first semester of ninth grade, and they 3:00closed. They closed ninth grade at that time. I was a boxer--and I had boxed in the Muskogee, Oklahoma, tournament. The president of that college was interested in that type of activity. He was a speaker at a church camp that I attended. My dad introduced me to him. His name was Dr. Riley, and when he found out that I was a boxer and that had won the tournament there, he offered me a working scholarship to come to Bacone [College] and to be on the athletic program.

When they closed the school at Jones Academy, (it closed in ninth grade, I'm 4:00sorry) I got on a train and went to Muskogee, enrolled there. I went there one year, and at that time it was (I suppose it still is) a religious school. It was just a little bit too strict for me, and so I didn't fit in well. Then I enrolled at Haskell Indian School the following fall. Went there to high school and one year of postgraduate school there. Then I graduated, and I worked in the local economy and construction work until I followed a wheat harvest with the 5:00custom combine for three summers. I went away to Texas and all the way to the Canadian state line. You were required at eighteen, seventeen or eighteen, to register for the draft. The company I worked for was out of Lawrence, Kansas, and we were working a harvest at South Dakota.

By law, I was required on my eighteenth birthday to register, so I went to the local draft board up there and registered. They sent my information to my draft board in Talihina, Oklahoma, Poteau, Talihina, that area, in that jurisdiction. At any rate, I went back to Lawrence and started to work in construction work 6:00there. I got to dating pretty heavily with a young lady I'd met there. We got married, and I was in construction work. We got married, and after we got married, I thought, "Well, I'm married now. It may change my status as a draftee, with my draft status. I better call my draft board or write them and tell them that I'm married." I did. I sent a letter to the draft board. I think it was at Poteau, Oklahoma. They fired me a letter back and says, "Where you been? We've been looking for you!" (Laughter) That's when they called me up in 1950. I said I should have never called them. (Laughter)

Little Thunder Can we go back just a little bit? I was just wondering the differences between, you know, Jones--you went from Jones to Haskell, and, of course, Jones, mainly more around Oklahoma tribes and mainly Choctaws, I would think. Was it different at Haskell? What was the different atmosphere like?

Benton Oh, well, way back when I first went to Jones Academy, I had a choice of coming to Chilocco or going to Haskell. Well, as I remember, they used to be, the full name was Chilocco Indian Agricultural School, okay, and I wasn't interested in agriculture. I was interested in the type of procedures at Haskell. It was a vo-tech school at that time, high school vo-tech. That's the 8:00reason I went up there. I went to school up there at Haskell for that reason.

Little Thunder How about sports? Did you participate up at Haskell in sports?

Benton Sports?

Little Thunder Yes.

Benton I never was very good at sports. I participated and made the team. I did that because I could watch the good guys, travel with the good guys.

Little ThunderRight! (Laughter)

Benton I was just a mediocre athlete. I always tell everybody, I went Haskell. It was vo-tech trade school. They offered, I think it was five or six vocational courses. I took auto mechanics up there so I could learn to drive. (Laughter)

Little Thunder Tell us what happened, then, after the draft board said, "We've 9:00been looking for you."

Benton Oh, okay. They said, "Report here," the next day or something. They said, "Report immediately." I had to go to my draft board. Then they assigned me to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, which was the area, I think they call it 405. That was Fort Sill--but I never could understand that. We had guys from New York State in our division, in our company. I was called to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and from there that's where, like I said, they were reorganizing the 1st Armored Division after the deactivation of the 1st Armored Division in the Second World War. This was 10:00in '49, '50, about '51, I think. That's when the Korean War was on. I got married in 1950. It was just shortly after that, so it would've been '51, I think.

They sent me to Fort Hood, Texas. I went through all the classifications, and, like I said, they were reorganizing. Since I had previous military training, this guy, the sergeant who was interviewing me--I had come back, and I was working in construction work. I worked on the Kansas Turnpike. I built the Kansas Turnpike. When I got in the Army, they lined you up, and you go through a classification. They classify you. What's your activity in the military? What's 11:00your civilian occupation? The sergeant said, "What'd you do in civilian life, Private?" I said, "Well, I operate and run heavy equipment, bulldozers and tractors and loaders." "You'd be a good tanker. Next!" (Laughter)

Little Thunder That's why you got plugged in there!

Benton Yeah.

Little Thunder That makes sense. Roughly how many Native Americans were in your group there at Fort Sill?

Benton I think only about one or two, about one or two.

Little Thunder What were the differences between Fort Sill and Fort Hood in terms of--

Benton Well, I really wasn't at Fort Sill. All I did there was got my shots, got my hair cut, and got my issue of military stuff. Then they put us on a train and sent us to Fort Hood.

Little Thunder That's where you did, kind of, basic training?

Benton Yeah.

Little Thunder What are your memories of your instructors there?

Benton Well, at that time, my instructors were, some of them were returnees already from Korea. A lot of them were recalled, not necessarily recalled, but when they got out of the Army and the Second World War and their services ended, they put them in Reserve. Whenever the Korean conflict started, they called them back up, our trainee instructors and some military people. They weren't too happy about being called back from their activities after they had been in the service--.

Little Thunder So soon.

Benton Oh, they weren't bitter or anything, but they just weren't happy about 13:00having to come back in and being recalled from Reserve status. Like I say, I never could understand that 405 is an area, like Oklahoma, Texas, and Louisiana. We had guys from New York State in our company. That was 405 area. They put us in Armored Division. He said, "You'd make a good tanker," so that's what I got into. Like I said before, I'd had previous military training, so I was made temporary squad leader. A company is made up of two different platoons, and a 14:00platoon has two sections, and it's overseen by a lieutenant and a sergeant. A lieutenant is a platoon leader, and a sergeant is a second section leader. That's the position I got because of my previous training. I was a squad leader, plus being the leader of the second section.

Little Thunder Was the previous training from serving in the National Guard?

Benton I'm sorry?

Little Thunder Was it from serving in the National Guard in Lawrence, the previous training?

Benton Just basically infantry, yeah. We took our military training at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. That was Kansas. We were just, at that time, we were just a bunch of high school kids, kind of on a lark, we thought. (Laughter)

Little Thunder When you did training at Fort Hood, what was the thing that surprised you the most? What surprised you?

Benton Really not a whole lot because I had gone to boarding school prior to being drafted. Along that line, my wife, Mrs. Benton, she worked in the student dining room when we were here. Of course, students worked detail, so to speak, to pay tuition. It didn't cost you to go anything here, but every student had to work two hours institutional maintenance for tuition purposes. They would work 16:00for her there. One time, we were at a meeting similar to this. We was joking around, talking about--. This one boy said, "Yeah, I was called into service. They made you get up, and I did that. Wasn't no problem with that. Made your bed. Wasn't no problem with that. Had to do institutional maintenance." That's what they called it. He said, "Mrs. Benton there taught me how to mop, so when they said, 'Grab a mop,' I knew what to do." He'd been trained in boarding school, institutional maintenance. You do that kind of stuff. You do two hours. They didn't clock you on it or anything, but you do two hours' institutional maintenance. It could be working in the dorm, mopping the halls, bathrooms, or be outside cleaning up around the building, or you know, something like 17:00institutional maintenance, upkeep of the place, so to speak. That's what military service did for us when I was there.

Little Thunder You already had what you needed when you--.

Benton Oh, yes!

Little Thunder Had the background you needed.

Benton We used to get so tickled at the guys that had never been away from home. That severe training during the day, run, run, push, push, run, run, late at night those boys that hadn't ever been away from home, you could hear them crying. You could hear them crying in their bunks. (Laughter) Boarding school guys never did that.

Little Thunder I was going to ask you if you had ever been in Texas very much before you went to Fort Hood. Had you been in Texas?

Benton No. Let's see. I went on wheat harvest when I was in high school. I went 18:00to work for a contractor, and we started in Texas, just barely inside of Texas, down around Vernon and that area. We would work out west, up through there. No, that's the only time I was there, that I can remember, anyhow.

Little Thunder Once you started doing the training, the tank, you know, training people in how to take care of tanks, where were you located, and what was the most challenging aspect of that? What was the hardest thing about that, doing the training for the tanks?

Benton Well--I was adventurous type, so I really didn't have any qualms about 19:00something like that. I took it for granted and lived it.

Little Thunder Was it both maneuvering them and repairing? Was it both things, maneuvering and repairing, when you were training people?

Benton Oh, no, we did maintenance, gas and oil and grease, but we didn't do any repair, per se. In other words, if your tank was broke down, they took it to the repair people. You just operated it. It was really, it was a thrilling experience. You'd take those big olʽ things, run up and down hills, run up and down big olʽ trees. You'd just run over them, and you'd stand up there. As a 20:00tank commander, you had five people: a driver, assistant driver, a gunner, a loader, and me. My job, you stand on top and look out. In other words, you're up on the tank, commander style. You take orders from the leader, platoon leader. You go right, or you go left, or you stay behind. Each one of those men had a particular job. The driver, that's all he did.

The assistant gunner, if we came to a spot and it was, (this was in training) and it looked like it might be hazardous or something, he had to get out and go be the guard, like under the brush and stuff. A tank, you could close all the doors and everything, and they could shoot at it all day long. The way to stop a 21:00tank was to disable it where it couldn't move. Then they had to just sit there. Then they could come up with the big guns and poke a hole in it, you know. We had to have a guy that took care, watched that. The tank would rotate; it could rotate at the top. It had a machine gun on it. Like I say, put you in a tank, close it all up, had them to shoot weapons at you to show you they couldn't penetrate it. That was part of the training. Then we'd go out on the range and shoot those big olʽ long canons. Boy, they--. That's probably what's happened to my ears.

Little Thunder So you did that for two years or one year?

Benton Two years.

Little Thunder Then you went back to civilian life?

Benton Yes. I was medically discharged. I had a tremendous knee problem during my high school days playing football and all that kind of stuff. It just got worse. I tried to get an exemption because of that because I knew that if I got out there and had to run up and down them hills with my knee like it was, it was going to kill me. They wouldn't hear me. They just said, "Next." I was in there for two years. I finally got a discharge on medical disability, discharge on traumatic arthritis in the knee joint. I came out with 10 percent disability. 23:00Besides that, that was my military experience.

Little Thunder How did you--what year did you come to work at Chilocco, then?

Benton Oh, okay, when I came back from the Army, I went back to Lawrence. I picked up where I had been when I got drafted. I went to work for a construction company, like I say. I worked for--let's see. I got out in '50, '51. I came here in '56. Well, in that length of time, I was working in heavy equipment and construction work all over the state of Kansas. We worked on dams and ponds and roads and things. My biggest project I worked on was Interstate 70 that runs from Denver to Kansas City. I worked on there. I worked on it from Topeka, 24:00Kansas, to Bonner Springs, Kansas. They awarded contracts every five miles. Dirt work, and all that stuff that goes on construction work. When this contractor would finish his, being in a union, they had lined up jobs for you. You could get on somewhere pretty--. I worked on that until they'd finish it. While I was there, like I say, I run heavy equipment all that time. There was a man that was interested in Chilocco. He was here. Mr. Kelley, [Keith] Kelley, he was school superintendent here.

He was interested in starting this heavy equipment course, but, see, this is an 25:00agricultural school. We got twelve hundred acres, so ideal place for it. He got in touch with my previous instructors up at Haskell: Mr. Posh, who was an auto mechanics instructor, and Mr. Anderson. Those two worked together in that part of the training. Well, Mr. Kelley came up. He got them, and they come to see me and talk to me about the possibility of coming here. At that time, I was making pretty good wages at construction work. I said, "Well, I'm making good money now." "Oh, you could do this. In a few years, four or five years, you'd be up to 26:00that level." Then they talked to me about all the benefits, retirement and advancement. The wish pretty well came true. We, me and my wife, we prayed about it and talked about it. We said, "Yeah, we'll come." At that time, we didn't have any children, and we came here in 1956. One of the conditions, I had to enroll in OSU. OSU has, well, all these colleges, they have schools, a school of this and a school of that. Okay, they had one they called a trade industrial education course.

I wasn't the only one in that category, taking a job at a school like Chilocco. The welder that used to be here, the electrician, if you were a journeyman in your trade, you could go to OSU. I forget now how many--I went three summers 27:00straight. They teach you how to teach the course, certify you with a teacher's certificate. Like I say, I wasn't the only one. There was about four. They strengthened their vocational training. Well, just to show you what they did, welding school, it used to be blacksmithing school. They called it blacksmith. The guy that came and took it, took that job, he didn't like that at all, we called it blacksmithing in Oklahoma back in the old days. He was a certified welder. We all were. They called us a tradesman in the vocational area or 28:00industrial area to which we were. With that, some of them went to school at Pittsburg State, that type of school. OSU was an agricultural school, and Chilocco did a lot of inter-training with them. We used, in the agriculture program, we used animals. We traded animals for breeding purposes and did experiments with different things.

We were a school that they could--because we had livestock. At that time, we had livestock. We had one of the finest herds of livestock in the dairy industry. 29:00Had white faced Hereford cattle, and we had horses, Morgan mares, sheep industry, and then the swine, mutton, sheep. We had all those things. Of course, OSU was involved in that. Just came out real good together. Like I say, our ag teachers, they were involved with it. Some of them were graduates of OSU or were going to school there. That's the way it came about. When I got an opportunity to come to work here, they said that his would happen and this would happen, which did. I started the course; they didn't have any heavy equipment at the 30:00school. I think that when I came here they had one small bulldozer and a crane. Well, they just used it wherever they needed around. After I got here, all the equipment that we got to use, being in a government agency, we were on a mailing list of all government agencies, Army bases and Air Force bases.

They had a system which they used equipment. They had it on a prorated thing, spent so much on it, then had to get a new one. The armed services did. They would put it in a magazine and send it to all the schools like us. They called 31:00it excess property. Most of it was good, but it just wasn't up to date for that time and the industry. If I saw it in the magazine and I talked to my superintendent and he approved, we'd send for it. It was first come, first serve. If I was first on the list and got it, I had to go haul it home. I had to go get it. I had to go down to Sheppard Air Force Base [Texas], and had to go to Rolla, Missouri. Had to go to Omaha, Nebraska, and Wichita up here, and load it up, load it on the truck and bring it home. We had an old Army truck, a semi-truck, to haul it back. That's the way I got--

Little Thunder Acquired heavy equipment.

Benton Yeah, that's how I got my heavy equipment.

Little Thunder Who was the superintendent at the time?

Benton Superintendent?

Little Thunder Here at Chilocco when you were working.

Benton Let's see. Mr. [Lawrence] Correll, L. E. Correll was retiring when I came on board in that process. Mr. Kelley, like I say, he was interim, Walter Kelley. He was trying to keep these things Indian preference, so to speak, unemployment and things. He was the one responsible for me being here.

Little Thunder What was it like teaching your first class?

Benton Well, there was a lot, like, in heavy equipment. You get up and go in the morning. Everything looks good. You go down there, and you have a class of at 33:00least ten. You were going to do this out there or something, and all of a sudden here comes rain. You know you can't do any work outside with equipment in the rain. Well, you had to have a plan B. There was like, training aides, movies, and maintenance on equipment and shop. That's when you taught your maintenance. I had to teach students, a lot of students, from class A, tools, hand tools, because I had students from Navajo reservation. Their idea of a getting out was get in the pickup and turn the key and go. They never more or less used a wrench. Never had to service a vehicle. Had to start them from scratch. I had 34:00some funny incidents in that. One of them I remember mostly, a guy, you'd teach him how to do something, tell them to do that. You had to teach him what size of wrench, and what the wrench was, what it was called. Then show him how to do this or do that, then to get on the bottom to hold it and it was upside down and backwards. (Laughter)

You had to teach him. (Demonstrates) Thumb, thumb. Thumb, thumb. It was a basic training course until you had them four or five weeks. Sent a boy in one time, (we were doing some work) and he was a Navajo boy. I said, "Go in there and get us a 9/16ths, two of them. One for holding the bottom and one for holding the top. He goes in and brings the wrench back. There's a bolt size and a wrench 35:00size. The [wrench] size is how big a wrench goes around it. The bolt size is how big a hole it is. He come out there with two different sizes. "Want this one or this one?" (Laughter) On days that you had weather problems or something, you had to teach them, always things you need to know, nice to know, and ought to know. At that time, they had a big refinery here--.. Well, they not only made gasoline. They make petroleum products. You would teach them that, too, also, and you had to teach a boy how to grease, use a grease gun, not necessarily you 36:00just grease them, but all that pertains to that.

These area contractors were my school board, an advisory board. I'd go to them. I'd say, "I'm teaching this course, and I'm getting raw material. What should I teach them?" "Teach them about this." I'd say, "What should I teach them?" They'd say, "Show up!" (Laughter) -- I had to teach them. I did. I didn't have to, but I felt like I needed to because you get out on a job, and a lot of times you had to do your own grease job. You park, clean your tracks out on a bulldozer, and maybe grease the moving parts by hand. They had a grease 37:00maintenance truck. He come by and did all the heavy work and stuff, fill the grease tanks and all that. You had, maybe, some that you had to grease daily. They needed to know what weight was considered. Used to, I could probably ask you, and you would think along the same way right now. A car used thirty weight, (they used to call it thirty weight) and you had a can of ten weight sitting here and a can of forty weight, but you didn't have any thirty weight. You would add this to this, and it would make it a thirty, but it doesn't. (Laughter)

Little Thunder It doesn't work that way!

Benton Yeah. It was simple things like that. You just didn't want your students to show up--you had trained this student, and you didn't want him to show up on a job asking dumb questions, so to speak. On top of that, I had to train a 38:00student, and whenever he was within, let's say, a month of graduating--. It was a two-year course, and I felt like he was ready to go on a job. I had to go take him and go to this next town up there, and see the contractor and if they were hiring. If they were hiring, they'd say, "Yeah, we can use a guy that can do this and do that. Start him next week." I had to take that student and go get him a place to live, make sure he had finances to eat, and transportation to get to the job every day. Well, the contractor usually would help mostly in that. They'd have somebody there to haul him in a company pickup from the town or wherever he was. Then you had to work with people who were in the rooming 39:00business, room and board, things like that. It was quite a task.

Little Thunder That's a wonderful way to help them transition!

Benton Yeah. I've got a student here now. You've met Maurice?

Little Thunder Right, I did.

Benton I took him out on his first job.

Little Thunder That's wonderful.

Benton He's still in town, but he's been all over the world, been in the service, been in stuff. I liked it. I mean, really loved it. It was doing something for my people, so to speak, and opportunities they never had. We have different things in the culture that are comical. They say, "What colors are Indian cars?" "Rust and blue, blue and green, rust and green." (Laughter) That's 40:00Indian culture humor.

Little Thunder How long were you here, then? How long did you work here, you and your wife?

Benton How long did I work here? Okay, twenty-five years.

Little Thunder And you raised a family here, too?

Benton Yeah. I started in, like, 1955. I think it was '55, '56. When they closed the school in 1980--

Little Thunder You were still here.

Benton...I was still here. I was living on the campus. We had to be out by the eighteenth of June. We had moved some stuff. I had to live here on the campus because I was on the firefighting detail because of my occupation status, heavy equipment and being available for fires and stuff. I was required to live on the campus. It was kind of odd, the fact that...my children couldn't go to school 41:00here. I don't know whether it was a tax situation or something. Newkirk school bus come up here and gathered up a busload of kids from up here, taking them to Newkirk, all the employees' children. We lived over across the lake over there. We moved stuff out and moved stuff out. My wife didn't want to leave. Last thing we moved was bedsprings and a mattress. (Laughs)

Little Thunder Well, how was it, what was it like, finding out that they were going to close?

Benton It was--I can't describe it. We had always been told or knew or educated 42:00to the fact that when they signed treaties, Indian education was a treaty obligation. Kind of, in the back of our minds, "Hey, what about that?" What is that old term? "As long as the grass grows or water flows," or something. That was always a kind of thing like the government said that they would do for Indian people. In so many words, we expected that of them. I don't know whether you're really familiar with all the factors in closing of a school. They close schools because of--. At this time when I was working here, we had a union, 43:00local employees' union. We were heavily involved with all the procedures and stuff going on in closing and moving employees to other schools.

If a school had an opening at your level, you could transfer, but in my case, I had an opportunity of only one school. That was Intermountain Utah. They had problems with that we didn't want to consider. Any rate, it was, I wouldn't say political, but it was at that time. Senator [Henry] Bellmon was on the appropriations committee. It involved the solar energy. There was a faction that came to him and wanted funds. If you're familiar with grants, the right language 44:00can get you what you want or lead the way. They came to him with this proposal. -- He was head of the appropriations committee. He said, "We've already finalized the appropriation and approved it for this year. I can close some Indian schools and give you that money." So that's what he did. Closed five Indian schools in Oklahoma, five Indian schools in Oklahoma.

It's in the federal register if you want to check it out. It has to go in there after it becomes law. That was the gist of it. We had other areas that we done. This is beside my interview with you. Newspapers can kill you if they want to. 45:00We had facts, different facts, and we had the American Indian Movement that came up, and had demonstrations there. It's kind of odd. They worked with all these grant things, within the grant. They come up here and was going to protest, and the students didn't want them. We went through all that stuff in Chilocco. Then Mr. [Jimmy] Baker came home. He graduated from our high school. Went to Dartmouth. Got his doctorate degree at one of the schools. I forget now which one. He came back. High schools were primarily college track trail, so to speak. 46:00You came here; all the teachers were geared to teaching you to go to OSU, OU.

Well, Mr. Baker got here, and he got a school board established which we never had before. They did a survey. They did a mail-in survey, and they asked what everybody wanted. It came in, (I think it was close to 90 percent) and they all said it should be vocational oriented. Mr. Baker said, "Well, that's what we're going to do, then." You know, these men can get money when they want it. He got money. That's another story. He got money, and he got us updated in our course 47:00objectives so that we could be on the same course as the town that we lived next to, producing graduates that the industry wanted. Each course got so many thousand dollars apiece to buy equipment that would train a student in use of what they needed to know when they left Chilocco.

All these courses got several thousand dollars. There was electricians, body and fender mechanic, welding, us, and aggie, so there was quite a bit of money involved. Mr. Baker got that all done. We just turned it around and was doing 48:00that, and boom. That's when they closed it, about two years later. It's been a good school. You can tell by the camaraderie that we have with students, the people today. The other area is, here we are, all brown skin, tan skin, wearing blue jeans, and all got black hair, and all got brown hair, and not a whole lot of people that are different, and consequently going to stay in school. Indian Education has been good. It has served a lot of people, a lot of people in all these schools, Haskell, good staff.

Little Thunder A lot of loyalty to Chilocco, for sure.

Benton Yeah.

Little Thunder Well, is there anything else we didn't talk about that you'd like to add before we finish up?

BentonThat's about it, I guess.

Little Thunder All right.

BentonI hope I got in what you wanted in.

Little Thunder Yes, well thank you, Mr. Benton, for sharing your story with us.

Benton Well, I'm glad I came up here.

------- End of interview -------