No summer was complete without a trip to the Icehouse on South Spring Street in town. Not only did the Icehouse make ice, but around the Fourth of July they sold cold watermelons and we could walk into the room where they made the ice and pick out any watermelon we wanted.

The room was huge and there were massive blocks of ice sitting around waiting to go through the massive saw that cut them into smaller blocks.

My father had the “gift” of thumping. The thumping gift was being able to “thump” a watermelon and determine how ripe and sweet it would be. For some picking out the perfect Christmas tree is an ordeal. For him, it was choosing the perfect watermelon. He would go through numerous melons until he found just the right one, and he never let us down.

There were several tenants that lived in the old houses on our farm. Several worked for my father, but others found work on nearby farms in the area.

Annie Mae was a lady who helped Mother around the house, gardening, washing, and ironing. Mattie Laura was either her daughter or a much younger sister she was raising, I was never certain. But she lived with Annie Mae and she often called her Baby Sister. When I was little Mattie Laura would come to our house with Annie Mae when she helped my mother.

We would play together and I thought she was my girlfriend even though she was a few years older than me. I thought the world of her and was disappointed on the days she stayed home.

I don’t know all the details, but when she was still very young something tragic happened and she became pregnant. At her young age it was a difficult pregnancy. I didn’t see much of her after that happened.

Then one night Annie Mae came knocking on our door and asked my father to go get the midwife, she thought Mattie Laura was going to have her baby. It was common in those days for a mid wife to take care of the births in rural areas.

He found the midwife and drove her to their house that was behind the barn. As soon as the midwife arrived she realized the situation was far more serious than anything she was going to able to handle, so he rushed her into town to see a doctor, but it was too late. Mattie Laura and her baby didn’t make it.

Annie Mae’s loss was immeasurable and I was devastated. I had lost a dear friend. It was the first time I had experienced death and it hit hard. I couldn’t believe she was gone forever and would never come to my house again.

They buried her in the woods between our house and town in the old abandoned Coulter Cemetery where a lot of poor people were still being buried.

I have suspected there may have been a church near the old cemetery that probably burned a long time ago. At one time our community had been known as Coulter, but in 1914 a new church was built on the main road about a quarter of a mile from the old cemetery. The new church was called Calvary Baptist Church and the community soon adopted its name as its own.

About a mile south of the new church was an area known by the locals as The Negro Head Woods. There was a legend that a great Indian battle occurred there in ancient times. Chacta and Chicksa were brothers who had descended from the inhabitants of a Mexican tribe known as the Chickamacaws. The brothers had decided to migrate north to escape the bloody wars that were constantly ravaging their lands.

Along their way they parted company and Chicksa’s group traveled on to what is northern Mississippi and southern Tennessee. Chacta and his followers crossed the great river in the vicinity of Natchez and traveled east.

The leader of the Chickamacaws was angry because the brothers had fled to the north and pursued them. If captured they were to be brought back and face execution. The great chief was closing in and they felt their demise was inevitable. Chacta and his people prayed all night to the Great Spirit hoping he would save them from slaughter.

The next morning Chief Chickamacaw was heard bellowing orders to surround Chacta and his followers, but just as the army of Chickamacaw began to descend upon them the ground beneath them began to shake and opened up. It swallowed their chief and many of his warriors.

The event scared the remainder of Chickamacaw’s warriors so badly they fled back to their homeland. The prayers of Chacta and his people had been answered.

Legend has it the rains over the centuries have caused the earth in that area to settle and the petrified heads of Chief Chickamacaw and his men can now be seen in the form of large sandstones protruding from the earth in those woods.

The followers of Chacta finally settled a few miles east of The Negro Head Woods when the sacred spear they had been following stood still and erect where Naniah Waiya Mound is presently located.

The spear began to jump up and down until it drove itself deep into the earth. There they buried the dead that had begun the journey north with them and became the founders of the Choctaw Nation.

(To be continued)

John and Mary Coulter's headstone that lays in the woods among many graves in the old Coulter Cemetery. My childhood friend, Mattie Laura is among many of the unmarked graves in those woods beside Pearson Road.

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Rick Algood
August 27, 2021