by Tositoya
as told to Montie McBride Rockwell
Tositoya was a little white boy with an Indian name. Tositoya is the Indian name for “White Chief.” When Abigail Stringer came west from Indiana to help in an Indian school in Fort Sill, Indian Territory, she met Dave McBride from Illinois and as you people do, the young couple married, and as the years went by three sons were born to them, Robert (Tositoya), William and Amos.
Later there were two more sons and two daughters making a family of eight, as William Wallis (we speak of him as Wallis) died in infancy. Robert was a great favorite of the Indians and as my father was a good friend to the Indians, they loved and fetted (sic) Tositoya.
One day an Indian woman came to my mother and talked at length in her language. Mamma would say ,”yes, yes,” so when she went to look for Robert he was gone and it dawned on my mother at once that that was what the other woman was saying. But with two younger babies, she could do nothing but wait till my father came home in the evening and she was terribly frightened, for fear she would never see her baby again.
But Father had great faith in the Indians and was not worried at all, and tried to pacify my mother. Later Father went down to the creek to water his horse and the old Buck Indian was there. He asked the Indian if he had seen Tositoya and he said yes, he was up at the tepee and they were making him some moccasins and when they were done they would bring him home.
But when father went home and told Mother she was almost in hysterics and said “After they will wait till night and carry him off.” But father tried to pacify her and said for her not to worry, they would bring him home.
And sure enough about nine o’clock the Buck and Squaw came horseback, the squaw behind with the little Tositoya in her arms asleep with his new moccasins on. The Indians teased the folks and said he had eaten a dimes worth of supper.
Mother gave me those little moccasins many, many years later, and I had them for many years, when my brother Robert visited me, even after his family was grown. I gave him the moccasins thinking they were really his. But after he was gone I visited in his home in Arizona. His wife said she did not find them among his things.
I have wished many times I had kept them. They would mean so much to me now.