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JOHNNY CAKE AND THE BEAR THAT LOST ITS PAW
(Excerpt from Romantic Arkansas, contributed by John Talburt)

"Mr. W.R. Jones, who is an authority on Indian subjects, wrote the following interesting tradition for the "Mountain Echo": Fourteen years after Thomas Jefferson bought the great territory known as Louisiana, and in 1817 ceded to the civilized Cherokees, east of the Mississippi, all of northwest Arkansas and between the White and Arkansas Rivers, the Cherokees, who had been really in possession on this vast area since about 1790, but did not claim it as their very own until after the treaty of 1817, kindly allowed the broken remnants of other civilized Indian tribes of their blood to come into their territory in Arkansas and make their home therein. The Cherokees belonged to the great Algonquin family that once owned about all the Atlantic coast. Among those that come were quite a lot of Shawnees that settled mainly in the Crooked Creek valley, in what is now Marion County. A smaller remnant of Delaware Indians were allowed to occupy the west side of White River, from about the mouth of Fallen Ash Creek on White River, to about the mouth of Sugar Loaf Creek, near the present town of Lead Hill. The local Chief of the Delawares was named Johnny Cake. This headquarters was in and adjacent to what is now known as the Tucker bottom, where drilling is to begin in a few days by Mr. Couch's Power and Light Company. Johnny Cake, though a full blood Delaware Indian, is believed to have built, on a fine spring near his home, the first mill dam in what is now Marion County. He is said to have ground the corn that the Delawares and Shawnees and Cherokees needed for bread, for many miles up and down White River; and along its tributaries coming in from the west and south. At that time all east and north of White River still belonged to the white people. But the lands, even on that side of the river, were several years in being sectionized. A pioneer by the of "Fed" Talbert, a white man, had squatted on the land he hoped to enter as soon as it was sectionized, about the time that Chief Johnny Cake and his little tribe had settled a few miles above on the Cherokee side of White River. Talbert had settled on the farm that was afterward the crossing place of the eastern Cherokees, after the treaty of 1828. Talbert's ferry used to be known from East Tennessee, Northern Alabama and North Georgia; or wherever a Cherokee east of the Mississippi lived, all the way into the newer Cherokee Nation in what is now Northwest Oklahoma. Johnny Cake and the Talberts go along famously; and this band of Indians did not go west until after the government had sectionized the land on which Mr. Talbert had lived for many years. As soon as Talbert could describe the lands he wanted to enter (I think it was around 1828) he crossed over the river and told his friend Johnny Cake he wanted him to send over some of his men every day to see how his wife and children were getting along. Johnny readily agreed to do this. Mr. Talbert called his bear dogs, shouldered his rifle, and kissed his wife and children, struck out on foot northeast for St. Louis, then the seat of the Land Office nearest the Territory of Arkansas. St. Louis was so distant and unhandy, that Squatter Sovereignty prevailed in all North Arkansas until about the year 1810. Mighty few entries were made in Marion and Baxter Counties before that, except when a squatter feared some "mean" man might attempt to enter his improvements. It was almost sure death to attempt this. And, if the one attempting such a thing succeeded, and yet lived, he was forever thereafter ostracised by the other pioneers. Evidently, Talbert was afraid, because of the fine ford, where people up here believed DeSoto crossed White River, and (according to Theodore Roosevelt) reached northeast Oklahoma, before turning toward Hot Springs; and knowing it to be a fine site for a ferry, he determined to enter the land, even if he did have to go to St Louis to do it. Next morning after the husband left, Johnny Cake's braves came down on the west side of the river and Mrs. Talbert waved, from the other bank, the signal agreed on that all was well in the strongly built log cabin. Not an hour after the friendly Indians had gone away, Mrs. Talbert happened to look across to the west side of the river and saw a mammoth black bear going down to the water. At first she supposed that he was going down for a drink of water, but instead of stopping, he threw himself into the water and began swimming across; possibly he had scented a newly slain venison that Mr. Talbert had killed just before leaving home. Mrs. Talbert feared so, and ran back to the yard and got the little children inside the cabin, and carefully barred the only door with a heavy bar with which all cabins were supplied in pioneer days. The bear first tried the door, shaking it fearfully, but could not open it. He next marched around the cabin several times in a great rage. The cabin was not well chinked and the bear could be seen rearing up and looking into the cabin through these chinks. Finally he seemed to decide to climb up to the loose board roof, believing these chinks would enable him to scale the wall. When the bear first began to try to enter the cabin, Mrs. Talbert had seized the only available weapon in the cabin -- a sharp broadaxe. When the bear reared up on his hind legs and thrust his paws into a chink, one of them went clear through. Swinging the broadaxe with all her might, Mrs. Talbert severed some six inches of the paw from the rest of the leg. With a great roar of pain, the bear gave it up, and limped away up a hollow, leaving a trail of blood behind. Next morning, when Johnny Cake's men came, Mrs. Talbert signaled for them to cross over. She told them her story, showed them the bear's paw, and took them to the trail of blood. The Indians found the bear holed up in a sort of cave, about a mile and a half away, and finished him. They skinned him, and coming back by the cabin, left a hindquarter with Mrs. Talbert and her children. Nothing else happened to them while Mr. Talbert was away. At this time buffaloes were as plentiful as deer. Even after Mr. Stallings, father to Captain Tom Stallings, of early White River steamboat fame, had settled in the Tucker bottom, near where Johnny Cake then lived, Uncle Tom Tabor, who built the first cabin in Flippin Barrens, used to tell how Stallings, Johnny Cake and himself, used to kill buffalo and take them down to Johnny Cake's spring to skin, wash, and cure; sometimes they cured by fire and sometimes only in the sun. Dried buffalo meat in those days was as plentiful as corn bread -- even more so. There is said to be living at this time, in Oklahoma, a grandson of old Johnny Cake. He bears the name of the grandfather -- Chief Johnny Cake. John Flippin, son of Honorable T.W. Flippin, was living with this Johnny Cake in Oklahoma a few years ago. In fact, he died in his home. The above really historical story is vouched for by "Uncle" Jack Hurst, yet living in Marion County, born here, and now over eighty years old. He had it from both his father and uncle, who were among the very first white settlers of upper White River, with the Talberts living just across the river in what is now Baxter County. At least three of the pioneer Talberts seem to have been brothers. All settled around 1820 in what is now Baxter. They were "Fed", "Wat" and "Sim". One of them was, by three wives, the father of 36 children. One had a son, "Wat" or "Uncle Watty", that died in Baxter a few years ago, nearing his hundredth year. Mr. J.N. McCracken now owns the farm and the two springs that came together and formed the small water power that Johnny Cake utilized a good bit more than a hundred years ago. Mr. McCracken now grows corn in the bottom where Johnny Cake and his tribe used to grow it in the long ago. The Power and Light Company drilled on the very site of Johnny Cake's old corn field. It will be fitting, for the first mighty water power in Marion County to be within a stone's throw of the first water power that was developed by Johnny Cake, the civilized Delaware Indian, around 1818. Mr. McCracken says that all his life he had heard the story of the bear that lost its paw by Mrs. Talbert's broadaxe. He is also of the opinion that Johnny Cake, or his father, died on what is now his place, and was buried before the Delawares removed, with the other Marion County Indians, to what is now Oklahoma. He says there is a lone Indian grave that is marked in such a way that makes him believe an Indian chief was buried there, and that a huge slab of rock used to cover this grave; some of his neighbors, some years ago, thinking Indian treasure might have been buried there, began, without his permission, to dig after it. But about every six inches they encountered a heavy slab like the other covering the grave. Then they would encounter about six inches of "pounded" clay; then another heavy slab. Before the party got to the bottom of the grave, Mrs. McCracken forbade the desecration, and the grave, still partly uncovered, is yet to be seen. It was evidently a deep one. It was the Delawares, then, in the far north, that stood by the colonists during the darkest days of the Revolution."