Memoirs of fried squirrels and war
Historians like nothing better than primary source materials—eyewitness accounts of events in the past.
Especially valued are accounts written contemporaneously with an event: letters from California during the Gold Rush, diary entries by witnesses to a battle, etc.
Often, however, many people did not get around to systematically recalling their past until old age. The researcher has to be careful in evaluating such memoirs because they are often sanitized, a construct purged of self-incriminating information. Now and then, the history gods will take pity on me and I will stumble onto a memoir which is frank and straightforward, admitting to more than a few warts, but probably made more reliable by this open approach.
While recently doing research in a 1963 issue of the Arkansas Historical Quarterly, I stumbled upon a brief memoir written by an unreconstructed Confederate veteran named William Franklin Avera of Camden, Ouachita County. Joining the Confederate army at age 16, Avera saw action in several battles, including the Red River Campaign of 1864. He stayed for the duration of the war, then continued to resist federal authority throughout Reconstruction.
Following Reconstruction, Avera rose through the ranks of the Redeemer Democrats, serving as Ouachita County judge, spending three terms in the state Legislature, and serving as Camden postmaster when presidential politics allowed. He was the owner and editor of the Ouachita Herald newspaper, served on the board
of the Arkansas Industrial University, and received many honors before he died in November 1904.
Only a few months before his death, Avera agreed to a request from his daughter-in-law to write an account of his life. It is too bad that Avera did not write a full-scale autobiography, because he witnessed a great deal of Arkansas history, played no small role in that history, and was a good writer.
Avera provided an interesting account of floating a raft of timber down the Ouachita River. With the use of a winch he described as “a Spanish windlass,” the loggers were able to navigate the muddy waterway.
He also served as cook, his specialty being fried squirrel. “The squirrels were very fat,” Avera recalled, “and the best eating I ever saw.” Before the job was finished, Avera killed and cooked 76 fox squirrels. “I cooked them myself every day, and none of us got tired of them.”
Much of the memoir was given over to the Civil War, the defining moment in the lives of many Southern white men. Avera’s account of his first battle on April 25, 1864, at Marks’ Mill in modern Cleveland County, is summed up in a few words: “After a severe battle we captured all the Infantry and part of the cavalry, 2,500 men in all and 300 wagons, teams, and drivers, and six guns [artillery pieces].”
While Avera over-estimated the number of federals captured—the number was about 1,800—the battle was a resounding victory for the rebels.
Following the battle, Avera was able to eat “the first full meal for some days. We camped in the field and reveled in hard tack, sugar, coffee, and bacon”—presumably from the rations intended for the captured federal soldiers. He also recalled some of the other loot from the wagons: “My partner also got a box of cigars which we enjoyed very much. He and I also got a good blanket each … and some overshirts and other clothing, and a good supply of paper, pens and envelopes.”
The victorious rebel soldiers entertained themselves by reading letters taken from the federal mail wagon. “We found much amusement in reading letters for days afterward,” Avera remembered.
Avera recalled in his memoir seeing the Confederate Indians the day after they participated in the Battle of Poison Spring in Ouachita County: “We met them in the road and a tough looking lot they were. There was 400 or 500 of them, mounted on ponies, dressed in all sorts of clothing, including buckskin and feathers in hats … They had been in the battle of Poison Springs the day before and I was told that they were worth but little but to plunder the captured wagons. Some of them were anxious to scalp the killed negroes, but were not allowed.”
There is no doubt that Confederate soldiers committed atrocities during and after the Battle of Poison Spring, and Avera admitted later in his memoir that “in spite of all [our efforts], they did kill and scalp some.” This was not only an attempt to minimize the killings; Avera was guilty of trying to shift the blame to Indians.
Historians have carefully researched the killing at Poison Spring, and the evidence is conclusive. Professor Thomas A. DeBlack, author of a recent history of the Civil War in Arkansas, sums it up clearly: “At Poison Spring the Rebels shot wounded black soldiers as they lay helpless on the ground, gunned down others as they tried to surrender, and deliberately drove the captured wagons over the heads and bodies of wounded blacks.”
As you might expect, William Avera had nothing but contempt for Reconstruction. He described the members of the 1868 Reconstruction constitutional convention as “a motley assembly of rascals.” He blamed Republicans for creating “much trouble between the negroes and the whites.”
When the Ku Klux Klan was organized in Ouachita County, the 21-yearold Avera joined quickly: “Of course I was a member of the Klan,” he wrote as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Avera recalled with pride the role he played in overthrowing Reconstruction in Ouachita County. He made no effort to disguise the theft of the local county election of 1872 using fake ballots: “I freely admit that we were as ready to swindle them as they were us, but we did it for the good of the people and they did it for the benefit of a few men.”
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I will give a free lecture in Pocahontas on the history of mussel shelling, button making, and pearling in northeastern Arkansas during the early 1900s at 6:30 p.m. July 29 in the Joe Martin Annex to the Randolph County Heritage Museum.