"There's a story my grandmother used to tell me. Her grandmother was a Cherokee Indian from the then Oklahoma territory. She wound up marrying a cowboy who later moved the family somewhere near Corinth, Miss.
During the war, her husband was off fighting and later the area she lived in became occupied by union troops.
As the story goes, the union soldiers took livestock from the local population and if anybody objected, as did a neighbor, they were summarily executed.
So my great-great grandmother took what livestock they had and hid them in a wooded area in some kind of trench or sendero.
She had something like 6 children and one day was riding her mule down the road and she was accosted by a union patrol, who demanded she turn over her mule to them.
She refused to give it up.
The soldier leading the patrol then said.= "he would stick his hand up her dress" if she wouldn't get off the animal and let them have it.
To which she is alleged to have replied..."You wouldn't be the first man to put your hand up my dress"
This is said to have shocked the union soldier to the point he stepped out of the way and allowed her to proceed, and she never did give the mule up.
Via bohica, SWR
