The Tulsa World
August , 1983
‘Hill’ Loyalties Tested at Trial
By Chuck Ervin
World Capital Bureau
MUSKOGEE- They came out of the hills from Greasy and South Greasy and Brushy Mountain and Bunch.
The women have faded eyes and dresses, and they stare fearfully about them, trying to find something familiar or comforting in this alien setting.
There are Cherokee Indians here, with long, black shiny hair and brightly colored shirts, who speak in their own dialect, as they wait to enter the courtroom and sample white man’s justice.
Many of them can neither read nor write.
They represent a Cookson Hills subculture that most Oklahomans would find as strange as the federal courthouse here is to these people from the obscure backwaters of Adair County.
They come from places less than 100 miles from the universities and theaters and shopping malls of Tulsa, but are a half –century removed in time.
They are government witnesses in the mail fraud and conspiracy case against Dan Draper Jr., the speaker of the Oklahoma House of Representatives, and Joe Fitzgibbon ….
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