EXPERIENCES OF A TRAPPER AND HUNTER 
FROM YOUTH TO OLD AGE 
By T. ALEXANDER 
CHAPTER IX. 
When Bill Reading and I reached his home in the Cherokee na¬ 
tion, I was hospitably introduced to his family which consisted of his 
wife, two daughters and three sons, as well as Bill Parrish, a half 
breed Cherokee Indian employed as a farm hand. 
Bill Parrish was a typical Cherokee, showing but a little of the 
white man. We were well met as we had an instinct somewhat 
similar. He was a good hunter and loved it. Bill wore his straight 
black hair bobbed just like the women bob their hair now. I think 
he was a little ashamed to wear his hair in a long plait as the full- 
bloods do but at the same time I could see that he was proud that he 
was an Indian. Bill and I became friends at once and the same old 
Sunday deer hunting started the following Sunday after I arrived at 
Bill Reading’s. There was but one deer killed on the first hunt, and 
Bill killed that. Reading had two half-breed dogs. They were a 
cross between the shepherd and bull-dog. He would tell these dogs 
that there was coon in the corn and they would start at once to search 
the farm. Often we would hear the dogs tree them and Bill and the 
younger Reading boys and I would go to the dogs to see the coon fight. 
I remember one night the dogs treed an old coon and four of her 
young up one tree, which had been deadened and was partly rotten. 
I climbed the tree and gave it a shake and most of the rotten limbs 
broke and let the coon fall. It was a wonder some of the limbs did 
not strike me and knock me cold, but being a fool for luck, I was 
unharmed. 
Bill and I had several deer hunts during the summer and had 
fine success. 
In August I decided to go back to southeast Arkansas and take 
up my trapping. Having left my outfit with my friend Andrew 
Climan, I did not return on the train, but decided to purchase a row 
boat and row down the Arkansas River, about 350 miles distance 
by water. I thought it would be a fine trip, wlhich it was. I secured 
a’large skiff near Fort Smith and bought myself a frying pan, coffee 
pot and one tin cup as my cooking outfit. 
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