ORAL HISTORY: Original enrollee Dan Collins

By Richard Green, Contributing Writer

Editor’s Note: Dan Collins spent much of an hour and a half interview talking about his father--a man he never knew. The interview was conducted when Collins was 92 in 1996 at his Austin, Texas, home by Bill Welge, director of Indian Archives and Manuscripts at the Oklahoma Historical Society. The taped interview was edited for this oral history by Richard Green.

I was born October 13, 1905, in Ardmore. I was a new born enrollee of the Chickasaw tribe. One-eighth by blood. I never knew my father; he was a lawman named Ben Collins who was murdered outside our house about nine months after I was born.

My father was the son of Dan and Liza Collins. Their parents were from Mississippi. In fact, one of the family stories was that my great great grandmother won a barrel of flour by swimming across the Mississippi River, which was thought by some to be impossible.

My mother was Hettie Heald, the daughter of Charles Hobart Heald, after which the town of Healdton was named. He married Elizabeth Guy of the well-known Chickasaw family and fought with the Chickasaws and Choctaws in the Civil War. He and my grandmother had five children, of which Hettie was born in 1878 in Mill Creek. Another child, Jane, married Dr. [Walter] Hardy who owned and ran the first hospital in town [Ardmore] at the corner of Caddo and Main. When he started out, one floor of the building was his hospital and one floor was a saloon. Some went directly from one floor to the other.

He was our family doctor and an important and influential man in Ardmore. Dr. Hardy won all sorts of civic awards there. He was the first to have an airplane. He converted the back part of it into an ambulance and flew to the oilfields [to tend to injured workers]. Once [in about 1918] I went with him to Healdton, which he called ‘Ragtown.’ Well, they give him a big turkey. On the flight back to Ardmore, I had to put it between my legs--and it was alive--and before we got home a ‘blue norther’ come in and the wind was so strong, we were so glad to get down on the ground.

Grandpa Collins, who I was named for, was a respected member of the Chickasaw Nation, but he couldn’t sign his name. He came from Kentucky in a covered wagon and got to be a prominent businessman and rancher. He worked all the time and got to be pretty well off. I believe the [Chickasaw school] Collins Institute was named after this side of the family but I’m not sure.

My father, Ben Collins, was born in about 1863, making him about fifteen years older than my mother. He was a marshal and then resigned to go with the Indian police. He used to travel about a good bit on horseback [on his job] and once he was going through this town and heard that a child’s mother had died. The father, this old farmer, was letting different ones [people] handle the child. Well, my Papa arranged to adopt the boy and just brought him home with him. His name was Ernest Berry and I thought he was my natural brother all during the years I was growing up.

They say that children really took to my Papa [just the way children have always taken to me]. Then, my parents had a son named Vernon and then me.

Everybody used to tell me stories about my father. He had more friends, seems like. One was the governor of the Chickasaw Nation; I forget which one [Douglas Johnston] but he gave my father a set of pistols. When I was born, this governor came to see me and told my father, “That boy looks like an Indian (he is one-eighth Chickasaw). I’m going to name him Miko.” I went by that name for some time.

In the family, they called my father Uncle Bud. They said he was a very kind man but tough in certain circumstances. Buck Garrett, who had been a sheriff, told me this one story. He told me how my father had come in one night after he had taken a prisoner somewhere by train. He just arrived when across the [railroad] tracks they were having a dance and it was reported that some drunks were causing trouble. Buck said he and my father went down there to see what was going on. This one of boy had thrown his hat in a ring and was daring any SOB to step on it. Papa took him outside the building and slapped him a few times [to get his attention] and then offered him the opportunity to return to the dance and act like a gentleman. The man took him up on his offer.

According to my Uncle Ben Heald, Papa once cleared out a restaurant of men who had been gunning for him. Told them they would have to get out because he couldn’t eat his meal in comfort with them around. He told Uncle Ben, “I know they’ll get me one day. But when they do, I’ll get two of them.”

This picture I’m holding shows my Papa about a week before he died. It came about like this. [On June 27,1903] Papa was sent to a picnic where there were a lot of drunken destructive men. Even though this wasn’t within his territory, according to my mother, they asked him to go and get control of the thing. He wound up shooting a man named Pruitt.

The next day the following story ran in The Daily Ardmoreite under the headline: “Pote Pruitt Fatally Shot by Deputy Marshal Ben Collins”:

“Just before dinner was served, Chas. Hare and Pote Pruitt got into a difficulty and Deputy Collins told them they must quit fighting. Pruitt turned to Collins and asked him who he was and what he had to do with it, and that he wasn’t afraid of him. It seems that Collins then shot him, the first shot striking Pruitt in the front of the neck, ranging around and coming out at the back, the other shot striking him in the back. This is the shot that will no doubt prove fatal .... His lower limbs were paralyzed immediately after the shooting. Pruitt was removed to the home of his brother, Clint, in Orr. Collins and Hare were placed under arrest by Deputy McLemore and will be given an examining trial Monday.

“The fight is the result of an old grudge which has existed between the parties for some time. It is said that much anger has existed between Hare and Collins on the one side and Pruitt on the other. Some time ago Hare’s home was entered by unknown parties and some goods were stolen and Hare and Colliins, who worked on the matter, intimated that Pruitt had had some connection with the theft.”

[Collins, who claimed self-defense, was later cleared of any wrongdoing. Despite the headline Pruitt recovered and lived several more years.]

Well, the Pruitts swore revenge and he knew about it. But nothing happened for a few years. Then, one night [ probably August 5,1906] at 9:30 when I was nine months old, Papa, returning home after a long day, rode up to this rail fence in front of our house [near Nida.] When he got in range of the men hiding behind the fence, they opened up with their shotguns. The first shot tore up his stomach, but he opened up with his .45s, shooting in the dark, in the direction that the shots came from. But these murderers were protected by the rail fence. Their next shot tore part of his skull away. In the newspapers the next day was the announcement of Papa’s death: “His body was riddled with bullets. Marshals from here (Durant) with bloodhounds left for Nida as soon as the report was received.” One of the marshals was Ben Colbert, who years later wrote to me about Papa and his death:

“Your father was a deputy while I was Chief U.S. Marshall in Ardmore. A better deputy never carried a gun! Was absolutely fearless. Your father was assassinated by these cowards, shooting under cover of darkness. A load of buckshot tore away the top of his skull, felled him to the ground from his horse. Most any other person would have remained down for good, but as evidence of his courage, he drew his pistol and emptied it into the rail fence....

“We arrived at your father’s house about 1 a.m. We took up the trail from there. I followed the killers to Ardmore, Durant, Ft. Worth, El Paso and Santa Fe, N.M. The hirling Jim Smith resided in Ft. Worth. [By this Colbert means it was alleged that the Pruitts had hired the Jim Smith gang to assassinate Ben Collins.] His wife was a sister of John Wesley Hardin.

“In Guthrie, Oklahoma I gave a full description of Miller to a deputy who was a former Rough Rider comrade [Colbert had been one of Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders]. He arrested Miller the following evening. (He was later released for lack of evidence.) While visiting with the sheriff on the street to my great surprise Miller came walking by. So I told the sheriff if anyone was killed that would be the first man for him to arrest. Two days later, Gus Babbitt, an ex-deputy U.S. Marshall was waylaid and shot with a shot gun similar to the weapon used to murder your father. This time lady luck deserted him. He was jailed with the 3 hirlings and during the night following all four were hanged in a livery stable in Ada, Oklahoma. Citizens of several states have slept much better since the Ada event.”

In the August 7 issue of The Daily Ardmoreite, this anonymous tribute appeared:

“Yes, he has left us. Never again can loved ones hear him say I will be back darling as soon as I can; take good care of yourself and the little ones. If God had called him we could say as did Job of old, God giveth and God taketh away. But this was not so. Just at the time of evening when his wife and little ones were anxiously waiting and listening for his approach, what did they hear but the report of guns.... “Yes, Ben, we will miss you. There is an aching void that can never be filled; but as we lowered your noble and brave body into Mother Earth at the sad and lonely hour of 4 in the morning, just as the moon was setting in the west, all that was mortal of this man was covered with earth and flowers.

“Methinks that when he knew death had come he called on God for help and that he knew he was forgiven, then he called to his wife to come to him for he could not go to her, for angels had come to waft his soul to the haven of rest. Although his face was shot and burned, yet there was the smile that showed no fears, and we will always remember him thus. And we long and pray that the assassins will be brought to justice.”

After Papa died, Mother and us kids went to live with Grandpa (Dan) Collins near Colbert. Lived there until I was about 8. We walked to school about a mile, but didn’t go very often. When we moved to Ardmore I was way behind [in his studies]. Mother had married Henry Davis, a building contractor. Later, he got into the oil business and the money started coming in. I would visit Grandpa Collins in the summer. When I was 10 I took the train by myself from Ardmore to Colbert. Spent the night alone in Durant that time. Me and my grandfather were crazy about each other. He’d take me everywhere. He once bought me a pony, but never could tame it. So he sold that pony and gave me the $75.

Those was rough days in Ardmore. Ku Klux were there and they were strong. The KKK told sheriff Buck Garrett, my father’s friend that they were coming after him. He told them to come on. He positioned machine guns around the jail and put out announcements warning the public to stay off the streets. The KKK never showed up.

Buck’s father-in-law was chief of police. Once he gave me a ticket for speeding. In court, he said ‘Are you kin to Ben Collins?’ Yes, I said. He said, ‘Son, your father was a fine man. I marshalled with him many times. Son, that’ll be $19.’