Elleta Nolte

Deeds and Misdeeds of an Indian Territory Doctor Elleta Nolte

If we scrape the bottom of the barrel of our mind and keep it open and our humor intact, we can each write a novel. Life dishes out gifts and surprises, so we may find several saints and a scoundrel or two. Skeletons may line the closet of many families if we rattle the bones. But history never reveals all it knows and often leaves a cache of unsolved mysteries. The thrill is in the chase. The chase began when two writers rattled the family bones and grabbed onto the coattail of their grandfather, Andrew Charles Bullard, as the 39-year-old venturer fled Illlinois in 1885 and practiced medicine in the Choctaw Indian Nation of Oklahoma for 41 years. Before law enforcement was firmly established, he was often taken at night, blindfolded and forced to treat the shot-up outlaws hiding in the rocks and caves.