Texas Tales -- True Story Honoring A Great Indian Cowboy

I consider myself fortunate, as by happenstance or perhaps fate’s design, I've met some pretty amazing people in these 70+ years – some famous, some unique and a few almost indescribable.

My childhood friend “Deafy” was definitely one of the latter. He was a one-of-a-kind human being who 62 years after his death is still indelibly pressed both in my mind and my heart. He’s one of the few folks I’ve known in my lifetime that I truly believe had a direct line to the unexplainable and mysterious -- the “other side” so to speak.

Back in those childhood days I lived with my maternal grandmother Hirstine Greer Hughes – my “Granny” – and had since birth. Kopperl, Texas was my home (population 250) and my Granny had been born in the house where we lived, all her children had been born there and I was born there.

It was at the old cotton gin in Kopperl, Texas, that Granny’s husband, and my maternal grandfather, Steve Hughes, was injured in a ginning accident and died which left Granny a tragically young widow with four small children to raise. Granny never remarried, never left Kopperl and raised her kids and me. Kopperl and Bosque County, Texas was my world.

The Greers (Granny’s side of the family) were always considered a bit more prosperous than most folks in Bosque County and were a large family which included multiple generations that often visited (and sometimes lived) at the ranch.

Granny’s daddy was the Reverend Billy Greer (or “Brother Billy” as most old timers called him) and he was, I believe, the loudest -- and perhaps last -- hell fire and brimstone Baptist preacher in this part of Texas. He’s also said to have been the last circuit riding preacher in Texas as a very young man. Before all that he was the undisputed town drunk. One of nine children of Matthew Simeon (“Babe”) Greer and his wife Sophia, he was born and raised on the old Greer place just outside of Kopperl.

Two of his sisters, Aunt Wilma (who had never married) and Aunt Maude (the widow of Dr. Jim Burnett who had delivered me) still lived on the old ranch and kept it up although they were already up in years when I was a small child. They were ably assisted in the running of the ranch by a very, very old, very dark skinned man known simply as “Deafy.”

The time and place of Deafy’s birth was unknown – even to him. He was stone deaf, could not speak, was orphaned when still a small child and taken into the home of a Dr. Pohl, a prominent doctor in Brenham, Texas. He became the companion of Dr. Pohl’s young son and later did the doctor’s driving. That was during the horse and buggy era when a general practitioner needed this assistance. Deafy gained valuable training and experience in nursing and care of the sick and the rest of his life he was somewhat of a “medicine man.” Members of the Pohl family kept in touch with Deafy throughout his life and highly valued his friendship.

After a brief period in a school for the deaf, Deafy came to the home of the late “Babe” Greer and his wife Sophia (my great, great grandfather and grandmother) and remained there the rest of his life in faithful and devoted service to the Greer Family. He cared for at least three generations of children and I suspect I was probably fourth or maybe even fifth generation to him – as nearly as I can ascertain.

Most of the Greer children down through the years, including myself, learned to sign with Deafy and could carry on long and interesting conversations with him up to a point. Deafy alone decided when that point was. Usually when a child was between 10-12 years of age there was no more signing with him. He picked the child, the time and the reason and shared that information with no one.

It seemed he preferred the company of younger, teachable children and not the company of “smark alecky” kids so when he decided you were no longer in his loop he’d just ignore you and refuse to “sign back.” As one of the signors, and I’ve never known why, I never experienced the signing cut-off Deafy imposed on most of the family kids as they matured. He loved and adored children although never married, had kids of his own or even had a girlfriend to my knowledge. If he ever had any kinfolk none of us ever knew it.

Deafy had an amazing gift with both wild and domestic creatures and all would come to his call. He particularly loved black cats and fed and loved somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 or so individuals at all times. At one time Aunt Wilma told him he was going to have to get rid of some of the cats as the ranch had become overrun with them. Never one to disobey her wishes he gave away probably 30 mama cats and all the Tom cats except two. Within a year he again had over 50 black cats and Aunt Wilma didn’t have the heart to broach the subject again.

He enticed wild ducks to stop on the creek where he soon tamed them and had them eating from his hands. A randy horse or a mean bull was putty in his presence. If an animal was “dangerous” it was always Deafy that calmed the critter and eventually they turned into one of his pets. He could ride, rope, herd and doctor cattle proficiently.

He was a spectacular “old timey” cowboy and had quite a reputation for taming the wildest, meanest, orneriest broncs in Central Texas. He could well have been the first “horse whisperer” as there’s no one that ever saw Deafy whip or mistreat a horse in any way. Suddenly, they just did what he wanted without question. His patience was beyond comprehension.

He was also an avid student of the heavens and kept up quite accurately with eclipses and phases of the moon and his weather predictions were infallible. For some unknown reason Deafy was enamored with Life Magazine and Aunt Wilma kept a subscription going for him. He knew more about world events and what was going on by simply looking at the pictures in his magazines than most adults that could read – which he couldn’t.

Deafy was slow to anger and in fact I don’t recall ever seeing him show temper unless the conversation turned to his heritage. He was a mahogany black color, not quite five feet tall, very, very wrinkled from my first memory of him and probably never weighed over 100 pounds his entire life so when he was displeased he was a very small bundle of dynamite!

He read lips flawlessly and was therefore acutely aware of everything that was said whether he was included in the conversation or not. He claimed to be the son of an Indian Chief and took great exception when strangers referred to him as Negro. We never knew why but suspicioned he’d perhaps been mistreated by someone of African heritage at some time in his life. On the occasions this happened, usually with strangers visiting the ranch, you’d see the tiny man stomp off to the barn in a state of righteous indignation and he’d have nothing to do with the visitor forevermore.

His heritage was high on Deafy’s list of priorities and he often told us kids that when he died everyone would know his daddy was an Indian war chief. Perhaps those of us gathered around his knee as children were the only people who ever believed him. We all loved Deafy for who and what he was and it wouldn’t have mattered to us if he was green with orange stripes.

Strangely enough, neither kids nor adults were ever allowed in Deafy’s little rock house, which was set a bit apart from the big barn on the ranch, with the exception of Aunt Wilma. She took his meals to him on a tray -- three times daily -- and he’d eat in his little house and return the tray to the back door steps of the main ranch house.

I never recall seeing Deafy enter the main ranch house or even the long, screened-in back porch which was used as a summer kitchen. A summer kitchen was where meals were prepared in the devastating Texas summer heat to avoid heating up the entire house. Air conditioning would have been the stuff of dreams if we’d even known it existed back then.

Over the years Deafy had repeatedly instructed Aunt Wilma that at his death she was to open his old trunk where he kept his few worldly possessions and there she’d find his burial garments. She was to dress him in those clothes and bury him, facing a certain direction, under a huge oak tree, on the Greer ranch which wasn’t far from his little house.

Deafy died March 29, 1950 before I was 13-years-old the following September. His age was estimated at well over 100 years old. Having gone to live with my mother for a short period of time; I was not in Kopperl, Bosque County, Texas when he died and I’ve always regretted I didn’t get to bid my old friend goodbye before he became glory bound.

I’m was told at his death Aunt Wilma opened his old trunk as he’d instructed, and was amazed to find not only a complete set of white, beautifully fringed buckskins but a feathered Indian head dress that was longer than he was when she put it on him. She dressed him in his finery, laid him out in a simple, pine box per his instructions, and buried him in the place he’d designated on the Greer ranch on March 30, 1950.

At the small, graveside service Aunt Wilma quoted from some very old papers from an Indian school Deafy had apparently attended at some point in his very early life. She’d found them in his old trunk along with his burial garments. Her words were very brief but to the point.

“Today we are gathered to celebrate the life of our old friend Deafy. He always claimed he was of Indian heritage but never made any effort to prove his claim. It appears the proof of his heritage was in his trunk of memorabilia all these years. As Deafy could not read or write it’s very possible he didn’t even know what the various papers in the trunk said or meant.

“Those papers prove the man we are burying today descended from Indian royalty. He was, in fact, Sam Moon Hill, Indian Chief.”

Author’s Historical Note:

Not long after Deafy was buried the Corp of Engineers began surveying in Bosque County as Lake Whitney was to usurp most of what we’d known as the Brazos River. Thousands of acres of ranch land would eventually be under water and the Greer ranch was part of those acres – in its entirety. To say the Greer family was distraught is an understatement. We fought against Lake Whitney with every resource available to us but to no avail.

Aunt Wilma, having long ago resigned herself to a lonely, often sorrowful life just accepted the news as another family tragedy and began preparing to move into Kopperl and a rented house. Aunt Maude, however, fought until the last moment and refused to leave the old home place. I recall the day my Uncle Buck and a cousin drove out to the ranch and bodily carried Miss Maude, her chair and all, out of the ranch house and loaded her in their vehicle for the ride to town and a “city” life she’d never known. In a few days the water began to inch onto the treasured old ranch and within a mere few weeks the Greer ranch was gone forevermore.

Knowing how Miss Wilma treasured Deafy I’m sure she had him moved to another place somewhere in Bosque County, Texas before the rising water inundated the old ranch but sadly I know not where. I choose to believe that for a gentle soul, such as Deafy, no matter where he is his spirit is now free to roam where ever he may choose and hopefully he’s surrounded by the spirits of all his critters and the many children he loved and helped raise.

I know a part of me will always hold Deafy’s hand as I stroll down my own, private Memory Lane of Exceptional Human Beings.

AngelaBlair©2012 All rights reserved.