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previous: Chapter 1 This webpage reproduces a chapter of The Five Civilized Tribes by Grant Foreman University of Oklahoma Press Norman, Oklahoma, 1934 The text is in the public domain. This page has been carefully proofread and I believe it to be free of errors. If you find a mistake though, please let me know! next: Chapter 3

[ Choctaw ]

 p35  Chapter two
Schools and Missionaries

The Choctaw Indians now occupied an advanced position in education and culture resulting from influences operating long before their removal. In the early part of 1820 the chiefs of the Northwestern District of the Nation by resolution appropriated $2,000 annually for sixteen years towards the support of a school for their children. They sent the resolution to the secretary of war⁠1 and, with the assistance of David Folsom, a second school was established by the missionaries, who named it Mayhew. The two schools, Elliot and Mayhew, were in charge of the Rev. Cyrus Kingsbury and the Rev. Cyrus Byington, each with a corps of teachers, instructing the youths in books and manual labor.

The treaty of 1825 with the Choctaw Nation⁠2 provided for the payment to it of $6,000 annually for schools in the Nation. Authority was given for the tribe to expend part of that sum in the education of twenty of their boys at the home of Col. Richard M. Johnson, who in later years was to become vice-president of the United States. Colonel Johnson lived at Great Crossing in Scott County, Kentucky; on his plantation he had two houses which he fitted up for the accommodation of the Choctaw youths and a teacher he engaged for them. He proposed that if he were allowed sufficient compensation he would clothe and feed them and devote much of his time toward establishing them in habits that would govern them through life.⁠3 Twenty-one Choctaw boys from Mushulatubbe's District, mounted on their  p36 ponies, departed October 15 under the guidance of Peter P. Pitchlynn⁠4 and arrived at Colonel Johnson's home in time to start the school on the first of November. This was the beginning of the Choctaw Academy, a school destined, through many years of usefulness, to become celebrated in the annals of Indian education.⁠5

The desire for education continued to grow among the Choctaw Indians, and four mission schools were flourishing in the Nation at the time progress was interrupted and school work wrecked by the removal of the tribe.⁠6 They had no sooner arrived in the West however, than, in 1833, they planned, in co‑operation with the Government, to expend their annuity of $6,000 in the construction of twelve log houses, the purchase of schoolbooks and the pay of teachers, and they were discussing the expenditure of their annuity of $12,500.00 granted by the treaty of 1830 for the establishment of three more advanced schools. The boys were to be instructed in "the usual arts of husbandry . . . and the girls in spinning, weaving, and housewifery," in addition to ordinary book learning.⁠7

The story of the Indians would not be complete without some account of their friends, the missionaries, who accompanied them to the West and shared their hardships in order that they might minister to them and help rebuild their schools and churches. History of that  p37 trying and interesting period is under great obligations to these same missionaries for the intelligently written accounts of the events and conditions that came under their observation.

Alexander Talley, a Methodist, was the first missionary to depart for the West; he left Mississippi in November, 1830, with some of Leflore's emigrants; though he seems to have been with the Indians in their new home until 1833, there is no record of his having established a mission. After the treaty was ratified and Choctaw removal seemed assured, the Presbyterian missionaries prepared to remove with their Indian charges. Alfred Wright⁠8 with the assistance of Israel Folsom⁠9 as translator, had completed the translation into Choctaw of part of the Gospel of St. Luke, and in October he and Mrs. Wright left for Utica New York with his manuscript to have it published. In the following October they sailed from New York and arrived at New Orleans, December 1, 1831. At Vicksburg the next month as they were about to board a boat for Little Rock, Mr. Wright was seized with a spasmodic affection of the heart to which he had been subject for six years.⁠10 Waiting until he had sufficiently recovered, they sailed February 11 and a week later reached Little Rock where Mr. Wright's condition became so alarming that he was obliged to remain until the fourteenth of the following September; he and Mrs. Wright then drove in a dearborn wagon 190 miles to join their Choctaw friends of the Six Towns in their new home.⁠11

In the meantime, Loring S. Williams, another missionary, with his family left Utica, New York, on October 13 and traveled by canal to Buffalo, then by lake to Erie, and stage to Pittsburgh; a steamboat brought them to Memphis where they took a wagon for Mayhew Mission station. Mrs. Williams became ill, they encountered storms  p38 and high water, and were obliged to abandon their wagon and continue by canoe. They arrived at Mayhew November 25, and remained until January 16, when they set out for their new station with the immigrant Choctaw Indians. They traveled in a wagon two hundred miles to Vicksburg where they joined Mr. and Mrs. Wright whom they accompanied to the mouth of White River, where they ". . . had to wait for a boat in the western trade. At length we sailed in the Saratoga first a few miles up White River, then through the 'cut-off' into the Arkansas," and up that stream to Little Rock.⁠12

On the second of March Williams set out with his family for the Choctaw country. He attempted to travel over the roads recently cut up and rendered almost impassable by the thousands of emigrants with their wagons, oxen and horses. He traveled on foot, driving two ox teams hitched to his wagon, and his family rode horseback. But finding it almost impossible to make any progress with a wagon he abandoned it before reaching Washington, Arkansas, and continued with three horses, on one of which they packed their tent, ax, clothing, blankets, and provisions; and on the other two, five persons, including three children, rode, while the remainder walked. When they arrived at Washington, Mr. Williams left his family while he continued to the Choctaw Nation, and on March 24 he arrived at a white settlement on the line. Across the line he found the Indians, some of whom had taken possession of old houses and fields formerly occupied by white people who, by the Government had been removed from the Choctaw land; in some instances several families were industriously tending one field, for the food they so much needed; some of them had put up tents and other temporary quarters and were building houses. Companies of Indians were arriving daily.⁠13

Mr. Williams, the first of the Presbyterian Missionaries to arrive in the Choctaw country, located on July 12, ten miles west of the Arkansas line, on Mountain Fork, the stream called by the Indians Nonih Hacha (or Mountain) River. Here he bought a house and other improvements and a fine spring formerly owned by a white man. This was at a crossing or ford on Mountain Fork River where all the emigrants passing to the west were obliged to cross. With a pretty sentiment  p39 he named the place Bethabara. Bethabara of old, he said, was beyond Jordan and at or near the crossing place of the children of Israel where they entered the Promised Land. Here on the west side of the stream on August 19, 1832, they organized the first church, embracing fifty-six persons, which they called Nonih Hacha. It was to this home of Mr. Williams that Rev. Alfred Wright came September 14, 1832, when he was sufficiently recovered to leave Little Rock.

In December Mr. Wright was able to leave the Williams's and establish himself at a place ten miles from Fort Towson centrally located between the Mountain Fork and Kiamichi rivers, which he named Wheelock, and here, in December, 1832, he organized the church of Wheelock.⁠14 The next year, that of the devastating fever, when hardly one in twenty escaped, the little log house of the Wright's had to accommodate also the family of Rev. Ebenezer Hotchkin during the period of six months that they were helpless. They arrived in the West the early part of the preceding winter and were received in the home of Mr. Williams after Mr. and Mrs. Wright had left. Here they remained until March when Mr. Hotchkin, with a little native assistance, constructed a log house fifteen feet square on Clear Creek, in which he and Mrs. Hotchkin and their children established themselves. It was not long, however, before they were taken ill and Miss Eunice Clough, a teacher recently arrived, went to their house to care for them. Soon she also became desperately ill, and the whole household thereupon, was carried to the little cabin of the Wrights, which they shared for six months.

On their arrival in the West the Indians concentrated on the streams near⁠15 the stations where their rations were to be issued; many were  p40 influenced also by the prospect of being near their missionary friends, and the churches and schools they hoped would soon be established. As a result, within what are now McCurtain and Choctaw counties, there were nearly five thousand Choctaw Indians located in the early part of 1833. They erred in settling in dense communities along the streams⁠16 instead of scattering out on the more healthful prairies; when warm weather came in the summer of 1833, accompanied by excessive rains and flooded lowlands, they were stricken with an epidemic of what the missionaries called remittent fevers. In some families every individual was down, and in seventy families within a radius of three miles of Mr. Wright, seventy deaths occurred that year. Almost every individual in the Red River settlement was ill. Mr. Hotchkin reported that in his neighborhood embracing four to five hundred souls, not a single child under one year old was left.⁠17

The nearest doctor was sixty miles away and his charge of $70 for coming to see Miss Clough appalled the little household. Indian doctors or medicine men were in great demand, but as their impotency was exposed by the fearful mortality of the stricken ones, the Christian Indians placed their reliance in the feeble Mr. Wright, and he was called upon from near and far. Mrs. Wright, a most competent helpmeet  p41 and observer of events, writes on August 13, 1833, that she has found on Mr. Wright's desk part of a letter "which he commenced, to send by to‑day's mail, but he was called up at midnight to attend to a sick patient"; his "whole time has been taken up with the sick — since the first week in June he has attended 322 individual cases; he is frequently called up in the middle of the night, though he is still very feeble, and can't sleep well on account of obstructed respiration and circulation." The convalescent Indians often suffered relapse from want of suitable food. Tea was very expensive and quinine twelve and a half cents a grain.⁠18 "The wretchedness of the people without suitable food or medicine or nursing, was heart rending and altogether beyond description."⁠19

The missionaries labored long hours to cheer the despondent, homesick, and suffering immigrants and they were called on almost daily to minister to dying members of their churches. Rev. Mr. Williams was summoned to the home of a Choctaw captain named Walking Wolf, who was near the point of death. While twenty-five of his neighbors looked, the missionary held a service over the dying man who lay on a bearskin in his dooryard between his friends and a fire. "The sick man as he lay lifted up his withered hands & in a low faltering voice prayed fervently to his heavenly father."⁠20

The suffering of these poor people who came begging to the homes of the missionaries evoked their compassion, but they could do little for so many. Mr. Hotchkin wrote in April, 1834, that "many Choctaws are suffering for food. I know of families that have not an ear of corn nor the least bit of anything that is eatable. What will they do before corn is raised?" In June he said "The Choctaws are suffering extremely. More than ever they suffered before are hunger. It is not uncommon for persons to call who have not eat any bread or meat for 10, 12, and 15 days. It is enough to draw tears from a rock to hear some of them relate their trials and distress. One woman said the other day 'for myself I can bear all without a murmur but when my children cry for bread day after day it almost breaks my heart'."⁠21

 p42  Earlier in the year Choctaw Agent Armstrong reported to the Stokes Commission at Fort Gibson that there were 1,100 Indians on the point of starvation from the lack of corn which they could not secure by their own efforts until autumn. Armstrong had neither money nor authority to buy corn for them and the commission, though uncertain of their power, adopted a resolution directing the agent to purchase for the starving Indians, 2,750 bushels of corn which they sent to the commissioner of Indian affairs with a resolution requesting Congress to make an appropriation to pay for it.⁠22

The Missionary Board in Boston sent devoted young teachers to the mission stations in the West, which they reached after laborious travel; some overland and some by long ocean voyage from New York to New Orleans. Among the Choctaw they labored for a stipend of twelve to fifteen dollars monthly. Invariably they succumbed to the unhealthful climate in which they labored, and suffered through long sieges of enervating illness, and often their emaciated bodies were interred in the malarial soil of that far-off wilderness. But in spite of difficulties, with the co‑operation of the Indians a few schools were provided; but there was difficulty in securing teachers as soon as the more progressive Indians desired them. Of this class were the Indians who settled at Nonih Hacha, or Mountain Fork, in 1832. Prominent among them were the brothers Israel and David Folsom,⁠23 merchants who improved the opportunity for enterprise. Thanks to the terms of the treaty of 1830 by which they were signally favored, they arrived in the West in a considerable degree of affluence; to their credit it must be said, however, that they were public spirited and used their influence and means for the advancement of their people. Israel Folsom⁠24 loaned Mr. Williams $200 with which to purchase the improvements for his station at Bethabara. Early in 1833 the people of this settlement began the construction of a schoolhouse without waiting for outside assistance and engaged Miss Eunice Clough to teach their school in the fall. Some of them decided to call their settlement a village and fifty captains, headmen, and whites signed a petition to the post office  p43 department asking that a post office, to be named Eagletown, be established at that place. The petition was granted on July 1, 1834 and Rev. Loring S. Williams was named postmaster.⁠25

However, in the autumn of 1834, Israel Folsom decided that the Mountain Fork settlement was too unhealthful for a home, and after an exploring tour of what was then called the "far West," selected a new home⁠26 on Blue River, to which he removed some years later. Rev. Loring S. Williams desired to leave the unhealthful surroundings of Bethabara for a location three miles away in the pine woods, where there was no water but a living spring. Peter P. Pitchlynn had built a cabin there and was taking his family to it in the hope of restoring his broken health.⁠27 Many other members of the tribe wished to remove in 1833 from the dense settlements to the Blue River, but were deterred by fear of the "whiskey traders who immediately settle on the south bank of Red River opposite any settlement of Indians."⁠28

The Choctaw were essentially a temperate people, but the demoralization by which they had been overwhelmed in the recent few years brought much intoxication among them. "We came here sober," said their chief to the United States commissioners in 1801; "we wish to go away so; we therefore request that strong drink which we understand our [white] brothers have brought here may not be distributed."⁠29 And when they made the treaty⁠30 at Doak's Stand in 1820, it was provided in section 12 that "in order to promote industry and sobriety among all classes of red people in this nation, but particularly the poor," the agent should have full power to seize and confiscate all whisky brought into the nation without his permission, or that of three chiefs.

 p44  Dr. Alexander Talley, the Methodist missionary, planned to remove west with the Indians. They were alarmed by talk of abandoning Fort Towson, which was proposed with a view to constructing another post farther west, to give better protection to the emigrant Indians.⁠31 Nitakechi, who lived above the Kiamichi River, and about eighteen miles from the post, protested against the move. Colonel Vose said the fort was necessary to preserve peace between the Choctaw Indians and the inhabitants without the boundaries of the United States, and would be necessary any way as ". . . long as Miller County contains a population of the present description."

Several Choctaw schools were in operation in 1835 and more the next year. The missionaries were occupying the field in Pushmataha and Oaklafaliah districts, but in Mushulatubbe District the Government constructed five log schoolhouses. One of these near the agency was occupied by Francis Audrain, who was termed a "Treaty Teacher." His school began in April, 1835, with eight pupils in a log building eighteen by twenty feet in size, with no benches or desk. The other teachers were called "United States teachers"; of these Dr. Alanson Allen occupied a schoolhouse near Cavinole Mountain. Another school was being prepared by Rev. Joseph Smedley near a fine spring at Pheasant Bluff on the Arkansas River; but in the midst of his labors Mrs. Smedley died of bilious fever July 6, 1835, survived by her husband and eight children. A school was constructed near the Sugar Loaf Mountain taught by Eben Tucker, and later by Thomson McKenney, a Choctaw. Another school was located on the Fourche Maline River.

Henry K. Copeland, a "United States school teacher" at Eagle Town on Mountain Fork River had forty pupils through 1836, though many of them thought more of their "ball plays" than they did of their studies.⁠32 Moses Perry had a prosperous school at Shawnee Town on the Red River. One hundred women in the neighborhood, he said,  p45 could spin and weave, but only eighteen of them had wheels and looms promised by the Government in their treaty of 1830.⁠33

H. G. Rind, a "Treaty Teacher," began a school at Rattle Snake Springs in Oaklafaliah District with twenty to thirty-five pupils, all boys but one. He said an apparatus had been purchased that year to manufacture salt from a spring near by, and two smith's shops were operated by Indians. "Numbers of them have fine stocks of horses, cattle, sheep and hogs; the men are getting to wear pantaloons, the women to dress like the whites, and in general the people of the Oaklafaliah district, a thickly settled section, are on the rapid advance to civilization." Another school was conducted at Fort Towson by J. B. Denton.

The Government did not establish a school in Pushmataha district for some years but there were two "common schoolhouses" constructed by the Indians. Rev. Ramsey D. Potts, in 1835, at his own expense erected a schoolhouse in this district, in a neighborhood populated principally by full-blooded Indians who were indifferent about schools; he employed a woman teacher for the girls who attended, and boarded the teacher in his house. The next year Mr. Potts reported that his school was not adequately provided with books and stationery, and he said he had seen only one spinning wheel and no looms in the district. About forty miles above the mouth of the Kiamichi River was a salt spring which yielded a large quantity of water and had been worked for family use. Two years later a white man manufactured considerable salt from it. There were 200 slaves in the district. Another United States district school named Bennett was started in 1838 by Charles G. Hatch, four miles north of the Red River on a bluff forty feet above the bed of Standing Whiteoak Creek.

The missionaries had in operation twelve schools attended by 300 children in 1835 and 1836; the names of eleven of these schools with  p46 their teachers were: Ah Pah Kah (A pe ha) east of Mountain Fork, Elizabeth A. Merrill and John Q. Adams, a Choctaw; Eagle Town, Louisa M. Williams; Lukfata Creek (White Clay or Greenfield), Eunice Clough; Glover's Fork, Ellen Carney; Wheelock, George Reed; "Near Col. Garland's," Samuel Moulton; "Near Clear Creek," Mrs. Ebenezer Hotchkin; Pine Ridge (Chuahli), two miles northwest of Doaksville, Miss Anna Burnham; "West of Mountain Fork," J. Cogswell, a Choctaw; Boktuklo, seven miles northwest of Lukfata; Red River, James Brewer, a Choctaw.

The missionaries Rev. Cyrus Byington and Rev. Cyrus Kingsbury did not accompany the Choctaw people on their migration. It was not until the summer of 1834 that they crossed the Mississippi River at St. Louis and under orders of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions proceeded on an inspection tour of some of the western missions. In October they entered the Indian Territory from the present southeastern Kansas and on the twentieth of that month reached Union Mission, then scourged by an epidemic of cholera. A week later they arrived at the mission of John Fleming in the Creek Nation and on the thirty-first reached Dwight Mission. Some weeks later they made their way to Fort Towson. After planning their locations and future labors they returned to the East and brought out their families in 1835.

By the summer of 1836 Mr. Byington was able to report that they were quite comfortable in their log dwelling. "I have a slab floor in my study and a window of 6 lights. In our house we have a floor made of plank but they are not planed or 'laid' by a joiner . . . We have two glass windows in our house which is more than many of our neighbors have." Where dirt floors were common even a slab floor was a sign of affluence.

Mr. Kingsbury stationed at Pine Ridge reported in September, 1836 that there had been no opportunity to establish boarding schools and that the attendance at the day schools had been irregular. However those who came studied in books and some of them learned spinning in which they could have been instructed by their mothers had they been furnished the spinning wheels promised them in the treaty. "Some of the men weave well. George Hudson who was educated and learnt his trade at Mayhew in the Old Nation, makes wheels on Mountain Fork, the best I have seen in the nation." Crops were good that year  p47 and the Indians began putting up some good improvements, including a saw and gristmill by Colonel Nail, to be operated by water power. Two salt springs and two sulphur springs were known and preparations were being made to work one of the former. David Folsom was making salt at a spring near Eagle Town, reported Rev. Mr. Byington.

The Indian department reported in 1837 that there were 15,000 Choctaw Indians in their western home and that they were prospering and improving.⁠34 They were raising corn, potatoes, peas, beans, pumpkins, and melons and those located along the Red River were raising more cotton than they required for their own use. They had erected two cotton gins which were expected to stimulate the growing of cotton. They had a surplus of 50,000 bushels of corn, most of which was sold to the garrison at Fort Towson. There were six native traders in the Choctaw Nation doing considerable business; two gristmills and sawmills were operated by water power and three others were being erected. There were 217 boys and 46 girls taught in the ten public schools, and 98 boys and 82 girls taught in the twelve missionary schools in the Nation.⁠35

But in the dense settlements on Little River and Mountain Fork there had been an appalling death rate that is not noticed in any official published reports and there was such a thinning out of settlers that several schools were broken up and abandoned. The Folsoms removed from here to the vicinity of Blue River⁠36 where they were  p48 joined by a large number of their friends; many others of the Mountain Fork settlement left there for a more healthful and desirable location on Red River, within what is now Bryan County, Oklahoma.

David Folsom developed and operated a salt works on Boggy Creek near Blue River and about fifteen miles from the Red River. Here he made twenty bushels of salt a day and had an accumulation of 1,000 bushels which he planned to market down the Red River as soon as possible. He had a ready market also for his output in the Choctaw Nation and across the Red River in Texas.

The missionaries and other teachers regarded their field of labor with much optimism at first; they said the Indian pupils learned as readily as white children, but they found their labors involved in many difficulties. Many parents and children were only mildly interested in education; the equipment of the government schools was woefully inadequate; the parents who were engaged in farming needed the labor of their children during the warm season and in the winter many of them had not clothes to keep them warm enough to attend school. One teacher reported that some of his pupils wore only a shirt. Neither did many have food to eat away from the taful-la kettles at home. Always in season the pupils were more interested in their "ball play" than in their lessons. The Rev. Cyrus Byington at Eagle Town found the Indians too fickle to keep their children in school regularly. His neighbors, he said, were poor farmers and much of what they raised was taken across the line into Arkansas and traded for whisky.

A great change for the worse took place in 1838. A serious drought had ruined their crops which, added to a great deal of sickness and many deaths, thoroughly discouraged the Indians. In this state they yielded to the lure of intoxicants, brought into the country by the white people, in large quantities, which they were everywhere drinking. A wave of intemperance swept the country. The Indians were neglecting their crops, their stock was dying from lack of attention, and their schools were sadly neglected. The Indians spent their time  p49 attending "ball plays," drinking and carousing. To combat this situation, the missionaries organized temperance societies that recruited large numbers of Indians; some of the prominent Indians themselves, even those who were not members of the churches, alarmed at the situation, took a leading part in the temperance movement. Rev. Cyrus Byington reported much drinking in the vicinity of Fort Towson where he performed most of his labor. He organized temperance societies in a number of places in that territory.

Besides other disastrous influences, when the Chickasaw Indians arrived in the Choctaw Nation in 1838 they brought with them the smallpox⁠37 which, spreading through the Nation, was particularly devastating on the Arkansas River where it caused the deaths of four or five hundred Choctaw people, the breaking up of schools and neglect of crops.⁠38 During this epidemic there occurred near the Choctaw agency the death of Mushulatubbe, the famous Choctaw chief. He died August 30, 1838, at the age of seventy-five or eighty years.⁠39

Ravages  p50 of this disease had "been truly appalling. Some large families have been entirely swept off. And in others perhaps one or two survive to mourn the loss of all that was near and dear to them." This summer also some of the benighted Six-towns Indians killed an old woman charged with being a witch. In addition to the visitation of smallpox, droughts and prairie and timber fires caused great destruction of crops, and hostile Indians continued to disturb the peace of the Choctaw people.

Disorder developed at this time along the Red River in Pushmataha District. It was caused in part by Mexican emissaries seeking recruits among the Choctaw for service against Texas. There had been much friction between citizens of that republic and their Indian neighbors north of the Red River, a number of whom departed for service under the Mexican flag. The reactionary old ex-chief Nitakechi had not forgiven the more progressive people of his district for choosing Thomas Leflore in his place; "since that election the old chief has been in constant and violent ferment. His malicious feelings have been mostly directed towards white men and half-breeds." Nor was he on good terms with his white neighbors, and he made his home a rendezvous for Mexican agents. Efforts were made by the military and Choctaw officials to arrest at the home of Nitakechi one of these agents for whom a large reward was offered by Texas. This greatly exasperated the former chief and his partisans, and a small civil war impended. "Powder and lead were procured & a day fixed upon for the parties to meet. But a timely letter from Col. Vose prevented. In the meantime the old chief has been using his utmost endeavors to break down all civil law and institute in its place the ancient customs & he had succeeded so far that two old women within the last year have been most unhumanly murdered on the supposition that they were witches."⁠40

---

The Author's Notes:

1 Calhoun to McKee, April 14, 1820, OIA, "Choctaw, War Department."

2 Charles J. Kappler, Laws and Treaties, II, 149.

3 Johnson to McKenney, September 27, 1825, OIA, "1825 Schools (Choctaw Academy)."

4 Johnson to McKenney, October 22, 1835, ibid.; Report of Thomas Henderson, December 1, 1835, ibid.; Public Advertiser, November 9, 1825, p3, col. 3. Mushulatubbe was called a pagan who was opposed to the work of the missionaries; and Indians of the other districts resented his sending boys to Kentucky to be educated at the expense of the tribe (Folsom to McKenney, June 27, 1826, OIA, "1826 Schools (Choctaw Academy)." The other districts were soon represented however; the next autumn twenty-seven more Choctaw were entered in the school, and in November Opothleyohola brought thirteen Creek boys including his eight-year-old son.

5 For an extended account of the Choctaw Academy by Carolyn T. Foreman, see Chronicles of Oklahoma, Vol. VI, p453, and Vol. IX, p382, and Vol. X, p77; Col. Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky, by Leland Winfield Meyer, p336.

6 On the removal west of the Choctaw Indians, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions filed the following claims for improvements at the missions abandoned in the old nation: At Elliott, $6,000; Mayhew, $7,200; Bethel, $1,300; Emmaus, $1,230; Goshen, $1,185; Hebron, $670, and Yakanckchaga, $900 (OIA "Special File" 260). Before their removal was completed Peter P. Pitchlynn was writing to the secretary of war for the approval of teachers selected by them (Document II, 890).

7 United States Senate Document No. 1, Twenty-third Congress, first session.

8 "Mr. Alfred Wright, a licensed preacher, on a mission from the South Carolina Presbyterian and Congregational Missionary Society," called on the missionaries at Brainerd on August 6, 1819. Three days later he "took an affectionate leave of us this morning, to prosecute his mission in east Tennessee" (American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, ibid., vol. XVI, No. 2).

9 Israel Folsom and McKee Folsom were students at the Indian school at Cornwall, Connecticut, in 1820 and 1821 (Morse, ibid.).

10 Harriet B. Wright to D. Greene, April 6, 1832, Missionary Records, ibid., Vol. LXXII, No. 136.

11 Missionary Herald (January, 1832), Vol. XXVIII, 26; Williams to Greene Missionary Records, ibid., LXXII, No. 100.

12 Religious Intelligencer, Vol. XIV, 723.

13 Loring S. Williams Report, April 12, 1832, Missionary Records, Vol. LXXII, No. 100.

14 Wheelock was named in memory of the first president of Dartmouth College, who was a devoted friend of the Indians, and first opened his Indian school (afterwards transferred to Hanover, New Hampshire), in Lebanon, Connecticut, the native town of Mr. Wright. "That portion of the Choctaws among whom he labored before their removal, are settled compactly around his station, there being as many as 2000 within the distance of 10 or 12 miles. . . . The church there was organized on the 2nd Sabbath in December, including 87 members, 80 of whom belonged in the old nation." At Mr. Williams' station, about twenty-five miles north of Wheelock, ". . . there is a dense settlement of Indians amounting to 1500 within a distance of 5 miles, and not less than 3,000 within 25 miles." (Account in New York Observer, copied in Cherokee Phoenix, April 19, 1834, p1).

15 "Mr. Nail's party (known as the Christian party of the Southeast District) are settled between these two rivers (Red and Little); the Six Town people on Little River, from the bend where it turns from the east ten or twelve miles down the river. The Chickeashahoy people (Nail's people) on Red River from the mouth of Clear Creek about the same distance, in an easterly direction. East of Mr. Nail's people and between them and the line are Mr. Hotchkin's people. North of Little River are Col. Folsom's; east of Mr. Nail's people and between them and Kiamichi and extending 50 or 60 miles up that river are Col. Folsom's people — West of Kiamichi are Nitakechi's, called by the missionaries, the pagan party (Koonchas or Six Towns); Mr. Nail has from 1800 to 1900 in his party settled in nearly equal divisions on Little and Red River. These rivers are from 8 to 12 miles apart. The people are generally settled near the rivers. The intervening country is a high prairie 5 or 6 miles in width" (Alfred Wright to David Greene, January 14, 1833, Missionary Records, Vol. LXXII, No. 142).

16 An observer cataloguing the resources of Miller County where the Indians were locating, said: ". . . cane is found in abundance on the lands from Cantonment Towson to the Louisiana Line. In many places on these bottoms, are to be found, in plenty, large, tall, straight cedar trees, which are very valuable timber. This tree seldom grows except among rocks, but here it is found of enormous size, growing in the richest bottom land, where a stone cannot be seen" (Nashville (Tennessee) National Banner and Whig, January 15, 1828, p3, col. 3).

17 Cherokee Phoenix, May 17, 1834, p2, col. 2.

18 Harriett B. Wright to D. Greene, August 13, 1833, Missionary Records, Andover-Harvard Library, Vol. LXXII, No. 144.

19 Letter from Rev. Loring S. Williams to Vermont Chronicle, copied in Cherokee Phoenix, February 22, 1834, p3, col. 1.

20 Williams to Greene, April 24, 1834, Missionary Records, Vol. LXXII, No. 113.

21 Ebenezer Hotchkin to Henry Hill, June 9, 1834, Missionary Records, ibid., No. 126.

22 Stambaugh to Herring, February 24, 1834. OIA Western Superintendency.

23 Folsom had several hunters in his employ (OIA Western Superintendency).

24 In the summer of 1835 Israel Folsom got the missionaries to order for him Scott's Family Bible, Vose's Astronomy, Blair's Rhetoric in two volumes, Watts's Logic of the Mind, a history of the United States and an Indian biography.

25 Post Office records.

26 In 1833 Colonel Vose at Fort Towson reported that ". . . the Choctaw settlements extend as far up as the mouth of the Boggy — on the Kiamichi there is a dense population" (Vose to Macomb, Report, June 5, 1833, AGO, OFD, 23 V 33).

27 Williams to Greene, August 8, 1834, Missionary Records, LXXII, No. 114.

28 The Blue River country was a very remote and unexplored region for some years. Buffaloes were still very numerous on the Blue and Washita rivers. Colonel Vose reported that part of his command at Fort Towson went on a buffalo hunt in April 1833, on Blue River and they "saw large herds of buffalo very near the opposite bank."

29 United States Senate Executive Document No. 1, p193, Twenty-third Congress, first session.

30 Kappler, op. cit. II, 135.

31 Gaines to Macomb, July 6, 1833, AGO, ORD, Western Department, Letter Book No. 6, p289. This was attempted the next year by the temporary establishment of Camp Washita (Grant Foreman, Pioneer Days in the Early Southwest).

32 The farmers in the vicinity were raising corn, oats, cotton, potatoes, and some wheat. One Choctaw in the neighborhood made looms, spinning wheels, and tables. There were also a shoemaker, two blacksmiths, one merchant, and several carpenters among them.

33 Shawnee Town was about six miles southwest of where is now Idabel, on the Red River on the road to Clarksville (Authority of Peter Hudson). Pheasant Bluff is on the south bank of the Arkansas River, five miles below the mouth of the Canadian, and twelve below Webbers Falls. Swallow Rock, or Herrold's Bluff, the site of Fort Coffee, is between Pheasant Bluff and Fort Smith (Document, I, 839, 846). For the Choctaw Schools Armstrong requested "slates and pencils, Smilie's arithmetics, cyphering books, copy books, Webster spelling books, Parley's geography, and 12 dozen good quills" (OIA, Choctaw Agency, "Schools," Choctaw File A 98, A 191).

34 In 1835 the Choctaw government enacted laws instituting marriage and prescribing its form and responsibilities (Laws of the Choctaw Nation, Edition of 1869, p70; Report of the commissioner of Indian affairs for 1837. There were then eleven public schools in the Choctaw Nation conducted by the Government in addition to the missionary schools (ibid.).

35 Ibid. Official reports, always optimistic concerning official achievements, need to be supplemented by others: Mr. Byington, writing August 2, 1837, says: "The Choctaws are not so industrious as they were. They drink more and spend more time at their plays. Since about the first of January, 1837, ten persons living within ten miles of me have died in consequence of drinking whiskey. Provisions are scarce and dear" (The Missionary Herald, XXXIV (November, 1838) 445). At Lukfata Miss Clough had taught a term of nine months and three weeks; at Bok Tuklo where Mrs. Wood taught and where the pupils gave monthly concerts, ". . . one heathen woman followed her little boy to school with a whip" (Rev. Joel Wood to Rev. D. Greene, June 6, 1838, Missionary Records, ibid., Vol. 139, No. 93).

36 In 1838 there was a considerable settlement at Pheasant Bluff including "The Widow Folsom," "The Widow Coleman," Charlie Jones, John Riddle, Robert M. Jones, a white man named John Walker, and Nathaniel Folsom, all with their Choctaw families. Robert M. Jones had a double log cabin of hewn logs which he occupied as a store. John Jones and Anderson Perry lived near the site of Fort Coffee (American State Papers, "Military Affairs," Vol. VII, 976).

37 "It was, however, in the Northwest where the greatest amount of human life was extinguished among the more savage and unsettled tribes. It is computed that among the Sioux, Mandans, Riccaaras, Minnetarees, Assinabornies, and Blackfeet Indians, 17,200 persons sunk under the smallpox" (Report of commissioner of Indian affairs for 1838). This epidemic took a heavy toll in the Southwest also (Foreman, Pioneer Days, 253).

38 Report of commissioner of Indian affairs, ibid.

39 Coleman Cole to Lyman C. Draper December 1, 1884, Draper Manuscripts Collection, Vol. 4, YY; National Intelligencer, October 30, 1838, 1, col. 3. Mushulatubbe was the son of a chief of the same name who died prior to 1820, who, under General Jackson, had led his warriors against the Creeks in 1812. The second Mushulatubbe had signed the Treaty of Treaty Ground, Mississippi, October 18, 1820; of Washington, January 20, 1825, and of Dancing Rabbit Creek, Mississippi, 1830. He took a prominent part in the conference with the western tribes at Fort Gibson in September, 1834. One of the three districts in the western Choctaw Nation was named for him. During the discussion in Congress of Jackson's Indian Removal Bill, the people of Mississippi, to win the favor of the Choctaw, made a gesture conferring citizen­ship upon them; and induced the chief Mushulatubbe to announce himself in the April first issue of the Port Gibson Correspondent as a candidate for Congress. To flatter him and his tribesmen, the press pretended to regard his candidacy seriously (Niles' Weekly Register, XXXVI, 327, 362). That these blandishments were not wasted is seen in the fact that he was one of the signers of the treaty of removal. Mushulatubbe, Pushmataha, and Apuckshunnubbee were members of the delegation sent to Washington in 1824 to negotiate the new treaty. Apuckshunnubbee died on the way, and Pushmataha died in Washington before the treaty was signed. Pushmataha, Mushulatubbe, Col. Robert Cole, and Maj. John Pitchlynn, Choctaw representatives, together with the chiefs of the Chickasaw tribe, were presented to General La­fayette in Washington November 24, 1824. Four sons of Mushulatubbe were named Peter, James King, Hiram and Charles (Mushulatubbe to Eaton, January 16, 1831, Document II, 393.)

40 Hotchkin to Green, May 22, 1839, Missionary Records, Vol. 139, No. 143. J. W. P. McKenzie a Methodist missionary who had been at Shawnee Town two years reported that "The quantity of ardent sold to the Choctaws is indeed astonishing and unless a stop is put to it certain ruin must ensue to the full blood Choctaws" (McKenzie to Armstrong July 21, 1838, OIA "School (Western Supt'y)" A490).

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