As a teenager, I was seated on an overturned empty wooden nail keg on the front of the College Hill Store, located a few miles northwest of Oxford. There were two men present: my father, George W. Galloway, and Lucky Pettis.
My father owned the store, and he had been Justice of the Peace for a number of years. Most people in the community referred to him as “Judge.” Lucky was the scion of one of the early settler families of College Hill. Lucky was also a friend of William Faulkner and belonged to Faulkner’s “Bear Hunters Club,” which made yearly treks to the Delta and had never been known to kill, shoot at or even see a bear.
Lucky was seated on a wooden Coca-Cola case, turned up on its edge, and the Judge was seated in the only straight-back cane-bottom chair that the store owned.
I was much more interested in drinking a Dr. Pepper that my father had provided than listening to their conversation until I overheard Lucky ask the judge if he had heard the story of the “Indian Gold.” Of course, this peaked my interest.
The judge assured Lucky that he had heard the story, but he had classified it as an old wives tale. Lucky agreed, but said he continued to hear more and more about the gold from the old-timers in the community. He said that everyone knew about the old Indian chief who had continued to frequent the woods along Toby Tubby Creek, long after the other Indians had left the area. He said that a small boy from a local family had roamed the woods with the old Indian chief. No one knew for sure what had become of the chief, but it was believed that, as he aged, he had moved closer to his tribe so he could be buried using Indian rites.
Lucky said that sometime around the turn of the century a female Indian, whom everyone envisioned to be a princess, appeared on the scene with five or six braves. They went into the woods and spent several days excavating along the creek. Finally, they came out of the woods and departed. They did not appear to have been successful, but they must have had some indication of a hidden treasure.
Judge said he had heard of Indian treasure being buried by excavating a hole, carefully burying the cache, carefully sealing the hole and building a campfire over the site. Usually there were other campfire sites in the area to further aid the secrecy of the hiding.
Lucky said he didn’t know where the old chief could have acquired a lot of gold. Judge told Lucky that he could show him where the gold might have come from.
They went into the store, and Judge produced a sheepskin parchment deed from President Van Buren to Chief No-Sak-A-Tubby for two sections of land in North Mississippi. Along a folded seam of the parchment, something had eaten a sizeable hole. Fortunately, the written material was not destroyed. I was impressed by the handwritten statement saying that this instrument was being signed in the 65th year since the formation of the Union.
Lucky asked how Judge had acquired the deed. Judge said that a member of the Buford family, Robby, had lived with us for a number of years, due to family disagreements, and he had given the deed to Judge to be donated to some historical group.
Lucky noted that the son-in-law of the family estate, who had been managing the estate, suddenly took two or three of the sharecropper families and moved to the Mississippi Delta. In a very short time he had become one of the most successful and most progressive farmers in the area. Lucky wondered if the man might have located the Indian Gold and used it to assist with his Delta operations. Judge agreed that could have been the case.
When Judge passed away, my sister Pearle and I discovered the deed. I contacted Dr. Bill Ferris, then-director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at Ole Miss, and inquired as to whether they would like to have the deed. Bill came out and received the instrument with pleasure. I have not visited the Faulkner Exhibit at the university; however, I have been informed that the deed has been placed there and is available for viewing.
Lucky indicated that if the gold had been located anywhere near the point at which the Indians had searched and the gold had not been found, it probably would never be found. He said the location was in the area that later was inundated by the backwaters from the Sardis reservoir.
Everyone involved with the deed had assumed it to have been for property in or around College Hill. A very enterprising young reporter for The Daily Mississippian pursued the described location and discovered it was acreage in the Ripley area, about 60 miles from College Hill. This would have more interest as the Chief could have sold the property for gold and he would have brought the gold back to be buried somewhere with which the Chief was familiar.
The son of the family who roamed the woods with the Indian may have known enough to have pinpointed certain places of interest to family members to excavate.
David E. Galloway lives in Bedford, Tex. Email him at dave19gallo@att.net. This article appears in Issue 54 of Oxford So & So.
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