Preserving his heritage

Driving across 600 acres of Oklahoma prairie southeast of Duncan, Pruitt stops his truck at a creek to get out and point at a rock bearing deep etchings. The etchings include a date — March 17, 1884 — and names or initials. Pruitt believes it is the work of soldiers or cowboys who passed that way in the days of Indian Territory. He says the creek crossing was made by pony soldiers traveling to Fort Sill. “This is the old military road from Fort Sill to Fort Washita.” The creek is part of old East Mud Creek, he shares. “We’ve been running cattle on this creek for 128 years, since the 1880s or thereabouts.” The Pruitt Ranch land has been in the Pruitt family since just after 1880. He knows that from family lore and original deeds and other documents. He says his grandfather and grandmother, Henry and Orinthia Pruitt, brought 450 head of cattle into southern Oklahoma around that time. Orinthia is buried near Comanche in an unmarked grave that will soon have a headstone, he says. He knows his grandparents were included in the Fort Worth, Texas, census in 1880. One of those original documents is a deed of unallocated land from the Choctaw-Chickasaw Nations, bearing the signature of Quanah Parker. It’s dated May 1, 1917, and is for the sale of 120.09 acres to Nannie F. Pruitt, in Jefferson County. “My grandfather was a pioneer Texas rancher. He finally settled on Mud Creek and was a fiddler. The old home place is 13 miles east of Comanche and a mile south,” he says...DuncanBanner