By Dr. Scott White
Clement Vann Rogers began his ranch with a few supplies, 25 Longhorn cows, a bull, two slaves, and four horses. As a member of the Cherokee people, he was able to claim any land that was unclaimed in the Cherokee Nation. His parents, Robert and Sallie Rogers, had done the same before Clem was born. Robert took advantage of his Cherokee heritage to set up a ranch where he raised cattle and horses, plowed the land for wheat and corn, and even put in a fruit orchard. The couple had two children, Margeret and Clem.
Robert was murdered in a dispute that split the Cherokee tribe and Sallie remarried, keeping the ranch land. Clem was forced to attend a Baptist Mission school where he graduated. He went on to the Cherokee Male Seminary in Tahlequah at his mother’s insistence, but he defied her when he was sixteen and went to work for Joel Bryan as a cowboy. He had worked his mother’s cattle since he was a small child. He went on his first cattle drive moving 500 Longhorn steers to St. Louis, Missouri, in 1855. Clem was 18 when he set out with his slaves and cattle into the tallgrass prairie and set up a ranch in what came to be the best grazing grass in the Cherokee lands.
He met Mary Schrimsher, the daughter of his father’s neighbor, and they married in 1858 then moved out on the ranch. Clem had already built a two-room dogtrot log house near Rabb’s Creek (named after one of the slaves he was given by his mother) and a log building to use as a trading post.
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The Civil War interrupted Clem and Mary’s endeavors. Union soldiers raided the trading post and took the cattle. The Cherokee, as part of the Five Tribes, signed peace treaties with the Confederacy and promised to provide troops to fight against the Union. The Battle of Chustenahla happened just a few miles from Clem’s ranch. That action convinced him to enlist with Waite’s First Cherokee Regiment in 1861. The regiment became known as the Cherokee Mounted Rifles. He was promoted quickly to captain.
Clem sent Mary and their daughter to Westville, Oklahoma, on horseback 60 miles away to protect them from the fighting. They ended up fleeing to Texas to avoid the fighting. By the end of the war, Clem returned to a ranch that had neither livestock, buildings, or slaves. He was 26 years old. He went back into the cattle business, buying squatter’s rights from another Cherokee and building fence for his new ranch. He built a new log cabin for his growing family. (Elizabeth died fleeing from the war, but two new daughters, Maude and Sally, were born.) His two former slaves returned to work on the ranch.
Clem was one of the first Cherokee ranchers to grow crops, use barbed wire fencing, and managed to run as many as 10,000 cattle on 60,000 acres of the tallgrass prairie. As his cattle business flourished, Clem began work on a plantation-style two-story house that would become known as the White House on the Verdigris as he began to move from rancher to politician and the house became a gathering place for political and social meetings.
They had one other child there. His name was William Penn Adair Rogers, otherwise known as Will Rogers, “The Cowboy Philosopher” or “The Cherokee Kid.”
Feature image: Boston Public Library Tichnor Brothers collection #64576
Sources:
Tall Grass Big Dreams by Tom Lindley
The Real Wild West by Michael Wallis
Dog Iron Ranch – Wikipedia
Claremoreprogress.com