Nathan Benton, full-blood Choctaw, and wife Aline Benton, full-blood Cherokee, meet with Chief Gary Batton at the Wichita Cultural Meeting on Oct.5. Mr. and Mrs. Benton met in youth while at the Haskell Institute, and Nathan’s father was an original enrollee.
Full-blood Choctaw and Full-blood Cherokee love, grow up, and spend life together.
By BRANDON FRYE
Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma
DURANT, Okla.– Nathan Benton, full-blood Choctaw, and wife Aline Benton, full-blood Cherokee, met in youth while at the Haskell Indian Institute, what was then a high school and is now known as Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kan. They have been together ever since.
“We met at a church service on Sunday night,” Mr. Benton said. “We were walking out of the building and just started a conversation, that’s where it began.”
The two of them had attended separate boarding schools during grade school. Mrs. Benton was a member of the Seneca Indian School, in Wyandotte, Okla. Mr. Benton attended the Jones Academy with the Choctaw Nation.
He recalled a story from third grade where he and his cousin Jesse James (not the outlaw) left the academy on foot for Thanksgiving break, aiming to make it all the way home to Talihina. They walked a ways and ended up hitching a ride on the back of a farmer’s wagon. Mr. Benton found a dime in the back, and the farmer let the two stay the night and eat his wife’s cooking. The next day, they made it into town on foot and bought a loaf of bread to eat with that dime, but it was molded and they did without.
“It sounds like hardship, but we took it in stride,” Mr. Benton said. The day they made it home after a three-day journey, Nathan was driven back and it only took half a day. Only Nathan got the ride, cousin Jesse stayed back.
In high school, Mr. Benton was interested in mechanics and agriculture, and Mrs. Benton took classes in home economics and core subjects.
“I was a boxer back in those days, too,” Mr. Benton said. “That was in ‘45. We had a boxing program, so we boxed around different towns in Oklahoma. I had been boxing since when I weighed 65 pounds.”
In the summers, Mr. Benton would harvest wheat with a group for a contractor, a job which took them from Texas up to the Canada/U.S. border. And when he graduated from high school, he went back to study mechanics as a post-grad.
He was drafted into the Army for the Korean War in 1950, but before he left, he married the love of his life, Aline.
After two years of service, Mr. Benton was honorably discharged after receiving a knee injury. “My wife and I moved back to Lawrence, Kansas,” he said. “I went to work as a heavy equipment operator, and when I would finish a contract, I had to look for another job.”
After finishing a contract, the man who trained Nathan in auto mechanics talked him into taking a position at Chilocco Indian Boarding School.
Mr. and Mrs. Benton worked until retirement at the school. Mr. Benton taught heavy machinery, and Mrs. Benton fed the 1,200 students three meals a day. To this day, Mr. Benton has retired from four jobs.
They had five children, 14 grandchildren, and 12 great-grandchildren, all descendants of Mr. Benton’s father, Nathan Hale Benton Sr., who was an original enrollee of the Choctaw Nation.
The two celebrated their 64th wedding anniversary on Oct. 10, 2014. When asked what it took to stay together for so long, Mrs. Benton said, “I would say you need love. That’s the key. Because when you love each other, you have consideration for each other. And we got married to stay married when we got married.”
Mr. and Mrs. Benton agreed that their faith played a large role. “The biggest factor is we are both Christians and have served the Lord all of these years,” Mr. Benton said. “We just lived by our Christian principles, and that was always our guide.”
The two have been charter members of the Hillcrest Bible Baptist Church in Arkansas City, Kans., their local church for 51 years. “The lord blesses us all, and we kept close to him,” they said.