Antediluvian Capers in Keystone and Appalachia

Antediluvian Capers in Keystone and Appalachia

Still following Gumprecht’s ever dependable map of the whiskey towns, we are proceeding north from Stroud but now with a jog to the east to pick up the Arkansas River, which we will subsequently follow through Cleveland, Ralston, and points north. For Keystone, however, we need another map.

The town of Keystone (not shown above) was given its name early in the 20th Century because it held a key location at the confluence of the Cimarron and Arkansas Rivers. Keystone and Appalachia, both in present Pawnee County, existed as "liquor towns" during their early history and met their demise first with the passage of Prohibition and then in the great flood created by the Keystone Dam in 1960. A rough and tumble river town that catered first to cowboys and Creek Indians, and later to oilfield roughnecks and fancy gamblers off the rivers, Keystone was rumored at one time to have had more bawdy houses than family dwellings. It started out as merely a tent city in the early years in Indian Territory. The original Fort Arbuckle was located on the north side of the Arkansas River (marker east of junction Highway 64 and Highway 51A). The "Battle of Round Mountain" (claimed by some as the first Civil War action) was held on Round Mountain three miles due south of Keystone. Round Mountain is now private property, but there were still arrowheads and musket balls being found there through the 1980's.

As for the Battle of Round Mountain, the site of this event has been disputed for many years, with two locations emerging as the leading choices. One is near the present day town of Yale, Oklahoma in Payne County. The other is close to the former site of Keystone. Angie Debo, the noted Oklahoma historian, wrote an article describing the evidence for and against each site. She concluded that the evidence pointed more strongly to the Yale location. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Round_Mountain.

Blake Gumprecht, whose map provides the basis for the present series of essays, notes that before statehood the liquor industry thrived in those parts of Oklahoma Territory bordering Indian Territory where liquor was illegal. He names Cleveland, Pawnee, and Keystone in Pawnee County (between the Creek nation and the Osage Reservation, and in passing refers to the story of Pussyfoot Johnson, the colorful leader of the Anti-Saloon League, whom we will notice in the course of the present essay.

John W. Morris, whose Oklahoma Ghost Towns is our second most cited guide in our survey of background essays, is a good deal more voluble than Gumprecht. He notes that Keystone and its twin sister Appalachia began as two different towns separated by the Cimarron River, with Appalachia starting first but Keystone existing longer and both sites submerged under the flood created by the Keystone Dam. 

Appalachia, located near the mouth of the Cimarron River where it flows into the Arkansas,  was platted as scheme for selling town lots in 1903. . . . ‘the plan was designed to appeal to the credulity of the gullible. Flamboyant, bird’s-eye view, three color maps were printed. Regardless of the fact that both rivers are sand beds for great periods of the year and can scarcely float a canoe, these maps show steamboats on both the Arkansas and Cimarron. An alluring red-line prospectus sets forth the advantages of owning lots in the new Oklahoma town.’

One of the first settlers was a former sheriff from Texas named Lee McAfee. He recognized the potential of the topography with Appalachia in wet Oklahoma Territory while within fewer than five miles was Indian Territory in the dry, so he opened a saloon. Business boomed. (112). 

The chief problem for the patrons was crossing the Cimarron River, for many who visited Appalachia came from Sapulpa and Red Fork to the south. The Appalachians’ civic spirit manifested itself in the construction of a narrow, swinging footbridge across the river. Horses with wagons, buckboards, and buggies were hitched near the south bank while their owners crossed the shaky bridge. It was soon named the “Carry Nation Bridge.” Sober persons could negotiate it successfully, but those returning with a full load of liquor under their belts were usually ducked in the shallow waters below. 

A deputy sheriff, sent to Appalachia to keep order, after looking the situation over also decided to open a saloon, but on the south side of the river, thereby eliminating the trip across the shaky bridge. Thus Keystone was born. (112-13). 

Some of Morris’s account is echoed by Gumprecht, but the latter adds some luminous details:

A second saloon opened nearby a short time later. Soon after, the local agent for the Blatz Brewing Company opened a third saloon, which doubled as a wholesale beer distributorship. The town of Keystone grew up around the saloons and quickly dwarfed Appalachia in size. Eventually, there were six saloons on the south side of the Cimarron. They included the A. V. & W. Bar, the Eagle Saloon, and the Yellow Stone Bar, which advertised itself as “headquarters for North Carolina corn whiskey, $2.50 a gallon.” The River Side Bar proclaimed in newspaper advertisements that it was the distiller of “famous white mule whiskey” (163).

James Edward Klein in his “Social History of Prohibition” adds some details to this overview:  Congress created Okla Territory in 1889 to satisfy the demands of white lobbyists for white settlement lands in the region, and it legalized liquor in the new territory.  By the turn of the century, a thriving liquor industry had developed in such counties as Pawnee and Pottawatomie bordering the dry Indian Territory . . . . [Like Pottawatomie County,] the Cherokee Strip, jutting into the Osage and Creek lands, also saw the rise of liquor communities. Ponca City by 1903 had fourteen saloons, three breweries, and a whiskey distillery. The liquor industry provided the early economic basis for such Pawnee County communities as Blackburn, Cleveland, Jennings, Keystone, Osage, Pawnee, Ralston, and Sinnett (63). The female bandit, Little Britches, companion in crime with Cattle Annie, lived for a time at Sinnett, site of the Muskogee (Creek) Nation in Pawnee County. Glenn Shirley retells some familiar tales of the two women’s association with Bill Doolin and his gang (265-71)--familiar because the biggest of the tales was first told by Bill Tilghman in a pamphlet written by Richard Graves that accompanied Tilghman’s film The Passing of the Oklahoma Outlaw. Pawnee County was always blessed by a numerosity of outlaws: It seems that a large number of the early day badmen at one time or another worked on the huge Bar X ranch bounded by the Arkansas River to the north, by Keystone to the east and Jennings to the west. Its western boundary extended to only a few miles southeast of Cleveland. These bandits are too familiar for their histories to be rehashed here.

Goldie Turner, a Keystone historian who did many interviews for the Indian Pioneer Papers, adds a few colorful details to the above sketches by interviewing herself in 1937. Her contribution is called “History of Keystone”: 

Since it was the nearest point to procure liquor, Keystone became the center of illegal liquor traffic into the Territory. Six saloons served numerous patrons. On Sundays, the only day on which the authorities could not molest the illegal transportation of liquor, as many as thirty-five wagon loads of whiskey left the town for points in the Indian Territory. Keystone supplies all the surrounding towns with liquor. (336)

Thirty-five wagon loads is a considerable quantity of goods. This does not seem to be bootlegging, based on what individuals could carry, but a large scale export freight business.

One more source, an archaeological assessment from 1980, provides still further details, albeit some (the swinging bridge) we have heard before.

Appalachia and Keystone were established virtually simultaneously in 1893. Keystone was situated on the south side of the Cimarron and Appalachia was just across the river on the north side. The two communities were joined by a precarious, swinging foot- bridge. A spirited rivalry grew up between the towns concerning local saloons. Appalachia claimed to have the better establishments and indeed the saloons on the north side of the river turned a faster profit. The saloon owners in Appalachia--Lee McAfee, a former sheriff from Paris, Texas; and Joe Wierman, a former deputy United States Marshal--consistently sold their liquor for less than the saloons in Keystone. However, Appalachia was cursed by the foot-bridge, and it was dubbed the Carrie Nation Bridge [as noted earlier]. Clients who lived in Keystone could cross the bridge with little danger while on their way to the saloons, but the return trip was not as easy when one was not sober. The result was that the trip proved too dangerous and soon business for the north-side saloons dropped off. (53)

Of the two figures mentioned above, Lee McAfee and Joe Wierman, it is easy enough to find references to the latter in the social columns of the old newspapers, which report the doings of his wife (Mrs. Joe Wierman), but it is impossible to find any secure reference to the former. Joseph A. Wierman was born in Illinois in 1867 and was buried in Stillwater OK in 1940. His obit proclaims him “one of Oklahoma territory’s first officers” and a one-time deputy U.S. Marshal who “served several years as deputy sheriff” of Payne County. It has proved impossible to identify Lee McAfee, unless he is the same Lee McAfee who served as sheriff of Bryan County (OK) ten years after statehood brought in prohibition. No burial information is listed in Oklahoma for this man, unless he is the Robert Lee McAfee who died in Sherman Texas in 1947.

However the lack of an identifiable burial may be for Lee McAfee, he is remembered clearly by a garrulous old man named Sherman Ackley (born 1860, Greeg County PA), along with his fellow tavern keeper Joe Wierman, in an item posted to the Indian Pioneer Papers. 

This land [I acquired] was just across the river east of Keystone. There we lived (I had married) for five years--I ran a ferry boat across the Cimarron at its mouth. We charged according to the stage of the water from 50 cents to $2.50 per wagon. Then in 1893 I took up this 80 and have lived here ever since. I gave that plot of land adjoining me to the old timers for a cemetery--all white. 

I remember the opening of the strip here. It was amusing, you know where that little stone filling station is now right at the bend of the hill as you come west into Keystone--well, that was neutral ground, so two old maids, Frances and Salina Cox, took up their stand there and at the stroke of the hour they ran for a claim--all of three hundred feet west--and that gave them most of what is today Keystone (that is, the land on the south side of the road) and their descendants still own most of it.

In the meantime Fr. Philander Reeder, Dr. “Charlie’s” daddy and Frank Chesley, bought out a claim and put up the first store and doctor’s office in 1893 in Keystone.

The most exciting time was the war of saloons between Keystone south of the Cimarron and the “ghost” town of Appalachia across the swinging bridge north of the Cimarron --but that’s another story.

Perhaps Mr. Ackley just needed a moment for a swallow of water, for he continues on the next page:

If “Mr. Ghost came to Town” to hunt or haunt the former location of Appalachia he would find only a raised strip of broken concrete walk and a few shattered descending steps along the highway. This walk and others like it were once merry promenades in front of the rollicking saloons in the thirsty pre-statehood days.

Keystone, nineteen miles west of Tulsa, at the intersection of National Highway 64 and state highway number one, had been settled in 1893--rather sparsely but enough to give the Monarch investment Company of Kansas City an idea--why not a new town, boom town on the Oklahoma Territory side to satisfy the thirst of the growing population across in the Indian Territory where traffic in liquor was taboo.

So in 1903 the Monarch Investment Company bought two farms near the junction of the Cimarron and Arkansas rivers and converted them into town lots. They paid at the rate of $6000 per quarter section and peddled them out at $20.00 per lot--or tried to. Possibly twenty lots were sold. A great barbecue was held, gaudily dressed salesmen mingled with the merry-makers, but luck was not so good; homes at the best were not much more than shacks and most frequently tents. Not so the saloon. Soon there were seven of them flourishing, some rather makeshift, some only in tents. So Appalachia was born, a name given in honor of the hills surrounding the district, which reminded some of the old timers of their native eastern mountains. Since it was in Oklahoma Territory, its saloons could flourish while a few hundred feet east and south of the new city was Indian Territory, where prohibition rules. So when the thirsty throng heard of saloons so hear at hand, they greeted the news with a stampede to Appalachia. Some came by horseback, other jolted overland in wagons, and the more prosperous arrived in buckboards drawn by spirited teams. The roads of the territory at that time were nothing more than trails.

Long wagon trains hauled supplies for the saloons from Pawnee, fifty miles away but the nearest point on a railroad. More than a day and a half were required to make the trip of fifty miles.

Great wagon trains hauling goods over long distances. This is not small-time bootlegging as we have known it but import-export commerce.

With business booming, Appalachia confidently constructed a swinging bridge across the Cimarron--two cables stretched across then boarded for a foothold. Most of the men from the Indian Territory came from the south--Red Fork and Sapulpa, the leading cities of the district, supplied most of the business. Parking their horses, buckboards and wagons on the south side of the Cimarron, the riders had a dizzy journey across the shaky bridge, and often a dizzier journey back, if the cold waters of the river could tell the tale.

The most prosperous saloon on the Appalachia side was owned by Lee McAfee, formerly a sheriff in Paris Texas. Then came Joe Wieman, a deputy U. S. Marshal on the scene to keep law and order in Appalachia. He looked the situation over and decided to open a saloon. Since most of the business came from the south of the river he decided it would be wise to locate on that side and thus eliminate the risky trip across the swinging bridge.

Saloons in those days were not pretentious structures, usually small frame buildings with high, false fronts. Some of them only bars set up in tents. Bars were made of rough planking and tables and chairs were of the simplest construction. Smoky gasoline and kerosene torches supplied light. Windows were painted over with advertisements of wares offered within. Free lunch counters offered a surprisingly large choice of food. Various kinds of cheese with the inevitable rye bread was most popular, and always the handy dish of cloves for killing whiskey breath. On certain festive occasions, the saloon keepers offered special dinners to their customers free of charge. ‘Possum dinner, especially cooked by an old German woman who lived near Keystone, found great favor.

According to Wierman the crowds that thronged the streets were fairly well behaved. Cowboys who wanted to shoot up the town were soon quiet; outlaws caused the most trouble. On one occasion, when Wierman was still deputy U. S. Marshal, a tough rode into town and got drunk. He proceeded to shoot up the town--especially calling for Wierman, who stood for the law. The drunk hid between two buildings, yet pointing his gun to get Wierman. Wierman cautiously approached, seized him and put him in the haphazard structure that composed the Keystone jail. The prisoner promptly set it afire. Before they could tear the door off to release him he had received a good scorching--and probably a good lesson. 

Before looking how other outlaws fared, whether for better or worse, we should bear in mind the words of lawman Joe Wierman above that “the crowds that thronged the streets were fairly well behaved. Cowboys who wanted to shoot up the town were soon quiet.” All things considered, Keystone and Appalachia were quiet towns. Such action as there was would have begun about 1903 when the first town lots were surveyed and sold, but a local paper called The Triangle (probably a reference to the three largest towns, Pawnee, Cleveland, and a third not yet identified) reports trouble in November of 1902, reprinting an article from the Pawnee Times-Democrat:

It is a comparatively light criminal docket this term. One of the most important cases to come up is that of Willard Wilson and Charles Parks, who are charged with the killing of Charles Porter. The alleged murder occurred on A. E. Wilson’s lease in the Osage reservation sixteen miles northwest of Pawnee on April 25th last. It is charged that Wilson attacked porter with a pitchfork and inflicted wounds which caused his death a few hours later. Parks is accused of being an accessory to the crime.

Another killing mentioned in the same article occurred over a year earlier:

Much interest will be centered also in the reappearance in court of Jas. Brummett and George Barclay who were convicted more than a year ago of the murder of Capt. J. I. Pool near Hominy. They were sentenced to be hanged, but an appeal was taken to the supreme court and the carrying out of the sentence was temporarily stayed. Last July the supreme court affirmed the death sentence and the date of their execution will be fixed by Judge Hainer.

To retrieve the article above, we had to cast a wide net. The next required only a small mesh and takes us directly to Keystone, as reported in the Times-Democrat for May of 1904:

Yesterday afternoon, in a drunken row at Keystone, a man by the name of John [or possibly Tom] James shot one George Ashby, the ball going clear through Ashby’s head. James was brought to Pawnee this morning by Deputy Stallard and lodged in jail.

A report in another paper informs us that “The men were drunk and quarreled over a woman. Ashby is accused of being a whiskey peddler.” Still another tells us that both men were from Tulsa and came to Keystone together. James was arrested by our acquaintance Joe Weirman, whom we recall as stating that the crowds in Keystone were “well behaved.” It would appear that at least one misbehaving bullet disturbed the angelic voices singing “all is calm, all is bright” around the Keystone carousing. If it was a holy night, the hole was through the head of George Ashby. 

The next incident also has a curious twist, as reported in the Pawnee Courier-Dispatch for December 1904:

John Conklin, the man who was brought up from Keystone last week as a victim of a shooting scrape at Keystone, died last Friday at the White House hotel. No more is known of the shooting except that the deceased was in sore need of money and had said he was going to get  it if he had to kill somebody. The supposition is that he tried to rob someone and picked the wrong one. 

The twist is that we don’t know the name of the wayside flower John Conklin picked on his primrose path to solvency, but it was the wrong flower. The further twist is that we don’t care. Conklin rapidly found his way way down to the dark where the dimwitted dead are camped forever in anonymity.

The man Conklin might have tangled with could have been Red Roe--the next killer up in this slideshow of heavy hitters. We first hear of Roe under the alias of James Baird, the name under which he is employed at the rock crusher. The Pawnee Courier-Dispatch for March 1905 carried this brief notice:

On Saturday, Feb. 4th, it will be remembered that a man by the name of Albert Reynolds was reported to have fallen on the ice at the rock crusher and from the effects of this fall died in a few hours.

On last Saturday County attorney Conley had a warrant issued for a man by the name of James Baird who was employed at the crusher, charging him with the murder.

It is alleged that Baird is a desperate character, and the men who saw Baird strike Reynolds were afraid to tell of the occurrence. Baird was arrested Saturday by Under-Sheriff Skinner and Joe Wierman and lodged in jail. 

Baird is more than “a desperate character.” He’s a badass--not a wannabe badass but the genuine article. We note too that our old acquaintance Joe Wierman is still on the job, and quite a job--a fine bit of police work--it turns out to be.

The Pawnee Courier-Dispatch for March 1905 carried the full story. It seems that officers were not satisfied with the story they got from the man who called himself James Baird. Patient investigation from Deputies Skinner and Wierman convinced them that the culprit’s usual moniker was Red Roe--”a vicious character, who lost no opportunity to start a fight”: 

His associates were in absolute fear of him. It is said he took savage delight in beating a man, and was never known to “bluff.” One of two quarrels in camp had demonstrated Baird’s willingness and ability to whip two or three ordinary men on the slightest provocation, and the fest of the fellows shunned him

  The morning of Reynolds’ death, just after breakfast and before it was fairly light, witnesses claim to have passed Baird and Reynolds, who were outside the tent, and to have heard Baird say to Reynolds. “I am going to hit you right there.” This was followed almost immediately by a blow, and Reynolds fell to the ground like an ox, his head striking the ice with terrific force. Baird then passed the men who had seen and heard him saying: “I wonder if I killed him.” So great was their fear of Baird, that neither of the witnesses dared to say anything, and thus the cause of death was deemed accidental. 

The Pawnee paper reported the key that unlocked the case when the officers came “into possession of information that leads them to believe that Red Roe had served a term on Blackwell’s Island” and “is a genuine tough, to whom crime is a pastime and would hesitate at nothing when aroused.” The striking term here is “Blackwell’s Island.” Now refurbished and renamed Roosevelt Island, it has a dark history as a place for the incarceration of the criminal and the disabled. A New York website explains that:

For much of the early 1900s, New Yorkers nicknamed the island Welfare Island after the asylums, prisons, and almshouses that were built there. While most of the buildings have long since fallen into disrepair, the ruins are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The dilapidated structures are also listed as a New York City Landmark, and they are the only ruins in New York City to be a local Landmark. This unique designation points to the social and historical significance of this island. New York City purchased the East River island in 1828. In 1832, a penitentiary was built on the island. This physically isolated prisoners from the city and from the mainland. ( https://www.nps.gov/places/blackwell-s-island-new-york-city.htm)

Blackwell’s Island

Before its refurbishment as a humane residence for the handicapped, Blackwell Island was a word of fear--the sort of place associated with the Bowery Boys and similar hoodlums told about in Herbert Asbury’s 1927 book The Gangs of New York and familiar to us from Martin Scorsese’s 2002 film of that name. I don’t find the name Blackwell’s Island in Asbury’s book, but the name Sing Sing can readily take its place.

Though the papers credit County Sheriff Pumroy with the capture of this badman, in fact the sheriff was out of town most of the time. The credit for the legwork and the arrest should go rather to Deputies Skinner and Weirman, who had the foresight to keep Red Roe in jail until the sheriff’s return and the criminal could be properly charged with his crime. 

Due to trivial events in my personal history, the name Roe sticks in my mind. The dictionary tells me that in its origins it is related to Middle English and Low German roge and thus conceivably to rogue in its older sense of vagrant or beggar. I remain skeptical that it could be possibly related to ROE, a contemporary military acronym for Rules of Engagement. As a phrase, “rules of engagement” comes to us from older dueling codes which forbade attacking an opponent who had already fallen. Even in the rowdiest days of the American west, such rules were observed--by gentle gunmen at least. As a phrase “rules of engagement” would have fallen on the ears of Red Roe in the same way--as we say in Japan--the words of a sutra fall on a horse’s ears: uma no mimi ni nenbutsu.

Though the criminal docket had been light in November 1902, before Keystone and Appalachia were platted, by December 1904 traffic had become heavy. Omitting misdemeanors and simple larceny, the paper shows the following for the district court in Sapulpa:

assault [with intent] to kill 1 count

disposing of liquor (illegal sales) 10 counts

introducing liquor (bootlegging) 13 counts

murder 3 counts

I’m uncertain what the difference is between “disposing of liquor” and “introducing liquor,” but the latter term appeared frequently in legal cases along the Canadian River where it meant introducing liquor into an area where its sale was prohibited--that is, selling it to the Indians, or bootlegging. 

The murder counts are serious enough to require a few words. The first killing was done by R. W. Rose and his son, two white men. The son held a shotgun on the black victim while the father beat him to death with a fence rail. The trial proved very lengthy because of the number of character witnesses for the Roses, the elder of whom was a minister.

One additional murder did not appear in the Sapulpa docket. It involved the killing of Deputy U. S. Marshal Ed Fink by Peter Fish and Albert Tiger about one mile from Weleetka. According to the Muskogee Democrat for December 1904, “Fink was on the lookout for six Indians who had gone to Keokuk to get a supply of whiskey, and while passing through a gate was shot and killed.” Fish, much the older of the two men, was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Meanwhile, the river commerce in illegal whiskey continued to prosper right up to the point where prohibition would change the whole game, as we read in the Creek County Courier (Sapulpa) for July 1907: 

Cedar Island, in the Arkansas river about three and a half miles northwest of Tulsa, has become the rendezvous of “bootleggers,” who carry contraband whisky down the river in boats from Keystone, Okla. Officers lately seized fifteen cases of whisky secreted on Cedar Island and sank the boat in which the whisky was stored.

As the fatal September 1907 date on which prohibition would become law approached, traffic may have picked up on the notorious “Keystone trail” that ran from Keystone both to Indian Territory and into the oilfields of Tulsa. Sometimes it is amusing, more often just business as usual. Of the former group, the best example breaks off before the end of the story. My apologies to the reader, but what appears below is the whole article in The Sapulpa Light, which ran the original version of the story:

Notwithstanding the close guard that has been placed on the “Keystone Trail,” the principal highway from the oil fields to Keystone, the nearest saloon town in Oklahoma, plenty of whiskey is being hauled in from that point.

The officers discovered the other day that they had been letting the liquor in right under their noses. They had been thrown off the scent by the fact that the wagons in which the liquor was contained were driven by women and the officers did not suspect them.

The other day Dan Parker, a deputy, met two handsome women driving a wagon along the road. He did not even suspect they were bootleggers until one of them accosted him and asked him if he did not want to buy some whisky. He told her he did and when she produced the liquor he placed the two women under arrest.

The women made excuses that they wanted to change their clothes before coming into town and Parker considerately retired to the shelter of a blackjack thicket while the women got behind the wagon, and it . . . 

Though I have supplied the ellipsis marks, the original story ends with the word “it.” I searched local papers and found other versions of the story, but they all ended with “it” and a final stop. The reader has to supply the ending. One assumes the women got away while Dan Parker politely turned his back. Surely that’s the point of the story.

One more tale of the drink may merit mention. It comes from a letter written by a subscriber to the Appalachia Outlook:

Mr. Editor, I looked through your valuable paper las week for some of the particulars of the riot we had in town last week. Failing to find it, I will endeavour to give it as near as possible. Last week one of the most disgraceful drunken brawls that has been our lot to see was here in Keystone. It seems there was some difference between Uncle Bill Sinnett and his Bartender and to settle matters they both got drunk. The Bartender wanted his hard earned money and Uncle Bill did not want to pay it and to make his argument good that he did not owe the amount claimed he got a gatling gun and promised to cut Mr. Bartender earthly [sic: Bartender’s earthly life short?] if he did not get out and stay out.

Deputy sheriff Marshall was driving by and placed Uncle Bill under arrest, taking his gun from him, later on arresting the bartender and took them both before the Justices of the peace, where charge and counter charge was made and both put under bond for their appearance on August 20th. . . . Later, the parties appeared in court and one pled guilty of using profane language and was fined five dollars and costs, the other waived preliminary examination and gave bond for his appearance before district court in November.

Though murder stories continue in the following years, I have observed my usual rule by stopping with 1907. After that, the story was all prohibition, a dark storm cloud that every observer had seen approaching. One man instrumental in bringing the cloud was William E. Johnson, known as "Pussyfoot" due to his cat-like stealth in the pursuit of suspects in the Oklahoma Territory. Newspapers in Muskogee, Oklahoma referred to him as “the gent with the panther tread,” which led to "Pussyfoot." Johnson said that he wore rubber heels on his shoes. In 1906 Johnson's temperance activities earned him governmental notice and he was appointed special agent of the Department of the Interior to enforce laws in Indian Territory and Oklahoma. He was chief agent of the United States Indian Service from July 1908 until September 1911 and secured more than 4,400 convictions through a practice of sweeping into gambling saloons and other disorderly places. Saloon keepers affected by Johnson's raids banded together to offer a $3,000 reward for his death. Upon learning of the reward, Johnson changed to nighttime raids and destroyed most of the raided establishments.

As this brief account of Pussyfoot Johnson suggests, prohibition wasn’t good for business, so the newspaper editors usually didn’t push it, but finally there came breakthrough editorials and after them the deluge. In 1906 the Appalachia Out-Look published a mud-covered jewell. If the writer was indeed the Editor, as we would suppose from the editorial’s prominent place on page one, he was either drunk or his prohibitionist fervor had caused him to drop the reins on his English-language horse and let it carry him willy-nilly. Below I transcribe the run-away result--spelling errors and all--called “The Whiskey Question”:

I understand today is the day, that the whiskey question is to be settled. That is, whither or not that Keystone and Appalachia will continue to drench our children with the in-furnal, distructive, Soul-damming, Brain distroying God dis-honoring vile rosten [?] stuff.

There is a temptation which besets both pulpit and pen and tongue to prophesy smooth things and to shirk unpopular truths. Paul did not make himself popular on that corn ship by predicting a storm and oposing a venture before a treacherous south wind. Yet before the gale was over he was the most trusted and respected man on board. There is a theology of south wind and smooth sea that is becoming very current, and it takes prodigiously in these days. 

It suits human nature exceedingly. It sets a low estimate on the exceeding sinfulness of sin and its desert of retribution. It treats very gingerly the primitive justice of Gob. It hoists no storm-signals in the direction whither so many souls are leading; it practically ignores hell.

Even if the voyage hers be with some [illegible] of landing, it bolds out the hope of a possible second probation in the unseen world.

However seductive and popular this unpauline theology may be, I do not discover it on God’s charts as in his weather table. If I deceive a soul with any such delusions may not God hold me to a fearful account?

Love demands fidelity.

Since language is a social convention, it too demands fidelity. Otherwise the static on the line inhibits understanding. Like the bartender and the gatling-gunner above, the editor of this rant should have been hailed before the Justice of the Peace and fined for his profane language--his assault on the public decorum of the English language. I’m happy to say that most of the prohibition editorials don’t descend into any kind of murk comparable to this one. For the most part they speak a sober and respectable language. 

State wide, prohibition was repealed in Oklahoma in 1958. Two years later the issue in the Keystone area submerged in the new lake where it sports with the catfish, turtles, and other lacustrine creatures. As Gumbrecht says, “Once one of the most notorious towns in ‘wet’ Oklahoma Territory,” after half a century of being dry, “Keystone was ‘wet’ again” (169).