By Carol Mowdy Bond
Contributing Writer
Their original barn fell down in the 1990s.
But the property in eastern Canadian County has been in the family for six generations, surviving everything from the Dust Bowl to World War II and the Great Depression.
Today, Robert Treece, and his wife Aimeé, live in a home on the original 160 acres. Robert Treece is a direct descendant of homesteaders James and Sara McGranahan.
Robert and Aimeé Treece, both attorneys, rebuilt an exact replica of the original barn after it collapsed, placing the new barn on the same site as the original. They have two daughters – Mareé Treece Lunsford and Melissa Treece Prigmore. Robert was born in an Okarche hospital, and raised in Piedmont, about three miles north of the family homestead.
The McGranahan Homestead is now listed on the State and National Register of Historic Places as a documented crossing of the Chisholm Trail. Also, there are preserved buffalo wallows on the land.
Located on the 160-acre homestead land, the McGranahan Barn, at 12310 Northwest Expressway in Yukon, is now a popular venue, hosting weddings and other events.
Buffalo herds, which often moved along the same traces or paths, created the wallows as a place to roll in the dirt, getting the flies and bugs off. At least 17 wallows are on the property, with each being about 10 to 15 feet in diameter. It’s considered bad luck to mess with the wallows, because Native Americans consider them to be sacred ground. The wallows have remained extremely hard to this day. When it rains, they fill with water. Robert’s mother splashed in the wallows when she was a child, as though they were little swimming pools.
Commander of the Confederate States Army Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, commander of the U.S. Army, on April 9, 1865. The event, which took place in the McLean House in the village of Appomattox Court House, Virginia, signaled that the South aka the Confederacy, surrendered to the North, aka the Union.
With the American Civil War officially ending, the U.S. military shifted its focus to the nation’s Native American issues. The U.S. Native American population was about 340,000 at the time, with about 50,000 living in Indian Territory or today’s Oklahoma. But this number increased between 1867 and 1884, when the U.S. moved more native people groups from Kansas, Nebraska, and elsewhere into Indian Territory as part of a Second Trail of Tears. At that point, Indian Territory was home to all or part of at least 67 native groups, with the area becoming a forced dumping ground.
But Plains tribes had already been part of the area’s landscape for hundreds of years. Those tribes likely included the Caddo, Wichita, Kaw, Osage, Shawnee, Cheyenne, Pawnee, Comanche, Kiowa, and Kiowa-Apache aka Prairie Apache. And they weren’t always sending out the welcome wagon when the U.S. forced other native groups into the Plains tribe homelands.
Primarily nomadic tribes, the buffalo served not only as a primary food source for many of the Plains tribes, but also as their commissary, with every part of the majestic animals used for some purpose in their lives. But by various means, the U.S. government destroyed the massive buffalo herds, to force the Plains tribes to settle down and rely on U.S. rations. But the rations did not always arrive.
The tribes were in upheaval. They watched as white settlers and other native groups moved into their lands. They cringed as railroads scarred Mother Earth. And without the buffalo, they had to find other food sources for their families. They often waged bloody revenge against settlers and native groups, and in the process found food for their tribal people.
Members of the Plains tribes were used to their lifestyle on the prairies. The wind, the sun, and the plethora of animal groups were all part of their culture. They didn’t want to be enclosed within walls, cities, fences. So, the Plains tribes continued with bloody rampages against those who moved into the area, and even against each other at times.
Due to ongoing mayhem, another meeting occurred in October 1967, just north of the territorial line in Medicine Creek Lodge, Kansas. Seven thousand Apache, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche and Kiowa arrived. To clarify they meant business, U.S. commanders forced the native men into a hollow square and then aimed a Gatling gun at them. It was a somber and eye-opening moment, as well as intimidating.
As a result, the U.S. signed three treaties with the Kiowa, Comanche, Plains Apache, Arapaho, and Cheyenne. The U.S. would move the groups onto Indian Territory reservations, protect them from white settlers, provide schools, implement an agrarian economy, and so forth. The native groups were not allowed to hunt for buffalo.
The U.S. failed to honor numerous parts of the treaties, as did the tribes. The tribes continued raiding for several reasons. They needed food, and they were resisting the U.S. destruction of their way of life and sovereign nations.
Kiowa chief Santana’s statement speaks to the messy situation: “I love to roam over the wild prairie, and when I do it I feel free and happy, but when we settle down, we grow pale and die.”
In November, just three years after the Civil War ended, U.S. Army cavalry and infantry troops moved in three columns from forts Bascom in New Mexico, Lyon in Colorado, and Dodge in Kansas during 1868. Enduring a hard winter, the troops moved through a winter blizzard and heavy snow.
Ordered to converge on Indian Territory, the troops were under command of the Civil War’s decorated Yankee Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan, now commander of the Department of the Missouri, as part of a military campaign into Indian Territory. His goal included forcing the Plains tribes onto their reservations so migrating American settlers could move north and south. Sheridan planned to attack the mounted Southern Cheyenne, Southern Arapaho, and other Native American groups he deemed “hostile,” during the winter months. The native groups were encamped and thus more vulnerable during winter.
Sheridan established Camp Supply for the military’s winter campaign. Located near today’s Fort Supply, in Woodward County, Oklahoma, the camp was northwest of today’s city of Woodward.
Sheridan sent his fellow Union horse soldier, the legendary Lt. Col. George A. Custer, and Custer’s 7th Cavalry marching from Fort Dodge, near today’s Dodge City, Kansas.
The hard winter was rough on the troops. They moved through bitter cold, and deep snow drifts.
Regardless, on November 23rd, Custer and his troops went after Black Kettle and the Southern Cheyenne. Off their reservation, Black Kettle and his people were encamped along the Washita River, near the present-day Oklahoma town of Cheyenne in Roger Mills County.
The Cheyenne were still asleep in their snow-covered village. At dawn on November 27, 1868, Custer and his troops roared into the village and began their slaughter. The bloody battle involved numerous atrocities committed by both sides. Black Kettle died in this infamous Battle of the Washita.
James McGranahan entered Indian Territory in 1868, as part of this raging, bloody, and confusing mess. He was about 22 years old. Under the commands of Sheridan and Custer, James drove a team of about six to eight mules from Kansas, as part of a 360 wagon military entourage that moved along a very straight line. These wagons went to forts Supply, Reno, and Sill. He arrived just after the Battle of the Washita.
The Sheridan-Custer campaign continued into 1869. The troops waged war on the Plains tribes, while building forts.
Amazingly, James survived the turmoil and chaos of the Plains Indian Wars. And from 1888 until the day of the 1889 Land Run, James served as a postmaster of Oklahoma Station, now Oklahoma City.
James claimed land in the Run of 1889. He and his wife Sara, from Caldwell, Kansas, are credited with operating one of the first hotels in Oklahoma Station, or today’s Oklahoma City – the Arbeka Hotel. Apparently they built their hotel on the land he claimed, and lived there. Then, they bought a 160-acre homestead where State Highway 3 and State Highway 4 converge in Canadian County. There was a stage stop, running from Oklahoma Station to Fort Reno, that ran near their homestead. The home they built in 1895 still marks the southwest corner of what is also known as the intersection of Piedmont Road and the Northwest Expressway. The McGranahans had four children, though one died at about age 20. And James and Sara resided in their home on the 160 acres until James died in 1939 at age 93, and Sara died in 1940 at age 78.
No one lived in the home after they died. And all their possessions were left in the rooms. Unfortunately, thieves broke in and stole everything.
Known to be very social, James and Sara also built a barn. They would clean out the barn periodically, to host their many barn dances, complete with fiddle players and musicians. In fact, they built a staircase, instead of a ladder, up to the hayloft, because of events they held in the hayloft.
It’s possible that many travelers zoom past the location and never take a second look at the aging ghost of a home that has stood for 125 years. But if you listen, the prairie winds have stories to tell, while the wild prairie grasses swirl and sway.
