Grant Foreman • The Five Civilized Tribes

By 1850 there were five schools in the Choctaw Nation under the management of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions: Koonsha, Chu-ah-la, I-yan-nubbe and Wheelock Female Seminaries, and Norwalk Male Seminary, the two latter under Rev. Alfred Wright; Armstrong Academy, a Baptist Mission school was conducted by the American Indian Mission Board; the Presbyterian Board of Missions conducted Spencer Academy; Fort Coffee Male Academy and New Hope Female Academy were under the direction of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. In these and three smaller schools there were 528 pupils.⁠1

The facilities of these schools and those maintained by the Government and the tribe were taxed to the utmost to provide for all who wished to enter and the Choctaw people evolved the interesting and novel expedient of what were called "neighborhood" or "Saturday and Sunday" schools. Within the Nation there were dozens of these schools attended by pupils who lived at home; they were taught reading, writing and arithmetic in the Choctaw language. The teachers were usually Choctaw who had gone through the mission schools. "Two p78 of the teachers are young ladies of about eighteen years of age, native Choctaws. They conduct the schools and deserve great credit for their ability and exertions in behalf of their people. They speak the Choctaw language and have the entire confidence of the Nation." The pupils were not limited to children, for so eager was the desire to learn that many adults of both sexes attended to secure the elements of an education that had been denied them when they were children. Mr. Wright reported the desire for education so keen that within the sphere of his ministerial labors there were seven of these Saturday and Sunday schools. Some of them were attended by as many as twenty-five to fifty pupils.⁠2 In Mr. Wright's school at Wheelock arithmetic, grammar, geography, natural philosophy, astronomy, botany, chemistry, geometry, and history of the Bible were taught. So avid were the Choctaw to get all they could out of their schools that Mr. Hotchkin was moved to protest that teachers and pupils were over-worked and insisted that the school should not be run more than nine months out of the twelve. It is only fair to consider also the heroism of the pupils. Vide Mr. Wright again: "In reading, the teacher has not only endeavored to have her pupils read correctly but has collected such books as will lead them to think and such also as will have a moral and religious influence — as Conversation and Common Things; Child's Book on Repentance; History of Jonah; Natural Theology, by Gallaudet."⁠3 Despite these formidable studies some of the children rode their ponies as far as ten miles to school. In 1848, both female teachers at Koonsha Female Academy died; and scarlet fever, whooping cough and mumps successfully attacked the students.⁠4

A temperance society in the neighborhood of Wheelock numbered 300 members. The Indians in that section in 1849 circulated a petition to the Texas legislature praying that body to stop the sale of whisky to the members of their tribe.⁠5 The Choctaw council, immediately after the tribe's migration, had enacted a law to prohibit the introduction of whisky which they claimed antedated the Maine law on the subject. "Indeed I think Neal Dow must have been a boy p79 when the first 'council fire' against whiskey was kindled in this nation. Their laws have been quite well executed. This people deserve credit for not ever having had a distillery or a national debt, as well as for doing so much in the cause of education."⁠6

Maj. Thomas Wall and Thomson McKenney, interpreter, erected a good grist-mill on James's Fork, one of the tributaries of the Poteau, about ten miles from the Choctaw agency on the main road from Fort Smith to Fort Towson, thus encouraging the Indians to raise wheat. In this, Mushulatubbe District, they were experimenting with the culture of cotton, which theretofore had been almost exclusively grown on Red River. The largest planter in the Choctaw Nation was Capt. Robert M. Jones, who had four plantations on Red River and in 1849 raised 700 bales of cotton.⁠7 Maj. Pitman Colbert and Jackson Kemp were also extensive planters.⁠8 "Domestic manufacture is on the increase. Cards and looms are now more used. Last winter, at late hours of night, I heard the hum and buzz of the spinning-wheel. . . . The subject of education may be termed the great subject among the Choctaws. Schools! Schools! sound on the ear wherever I go. Inquiries are often made — 'When can you give us a school teacher?' "⁠9

The Lennox neighborhood school opened in October, 1853, with forty-eight pupils. "Our last examination was attended by almost every parent and friend, and for nearly five hours they listened to recitations, interspersed with singing, followed by speeches by the Choctaws for two hours, expressing their great satisfaction in the result of the school, and their continued confidence and interest.⁠10 Indians improving; better treatment of the female sex. Formerly the wife, barefoot, followed the husband on horseback, with hose and shoes; now in our settlement if either is obliged to walk, it is the man."⁠11 "Our young brother Allen p80 Wright completed his course of study and returned to labor for his people. He was ordained to the Gospel Ministry in April last.⁠12 I. P. Folsom, graduate of Dartmouth College taught a day-school at Bennington."⁠13

Epidemics took a sad toll of lives in the autumn of 1852. At Fort Coffee Academy says Rev. John Harrell, the superintendent, ". . . 32 of the boys were prostrated with measles, in their worst form. They all, however, partially recovered, when whooping-cough, pneumonia, and the flux followed. The scene was truly appalling. Every room was a hospital, and the groans of the sick and dying were heard in every direction. In vain did we resort to physicians and medical aid, all was unavailing; and for four long weeks the angel of death, with his raven wings, hovered over us. . ." Fifteen of the pupils died; the school was suspended and did not resume until the next fall;⁠14 in the meantime the buildings were repaired and whitewashed and eight fireplaces added to rooms that formerly must have been cheerless and unhealthful habitations through the winter months. The epidemic involved the pupils at New Hope near by, and there were a number of deaths including that of one of their teachers.

On March 27, 1853, occurred the death of Rev. Alfred Wright⁠15 and the next report of Wheelock was made by his very capable widow, Harriet B. Wright, who submitted the following sketch of Mr. Wright's life:

". . . Mr. Wright was a native of Columbia, Connecticut, and was born March 1, 1788. He received his collegiate education in Williams College, Mass., commenced the study of theology in Andover, Massachusetts, but was compelled by ill-health to go south, where he was licensed and ordained to the work of the gospel ministry. In December, 1820, he joined the mission of the Choctaws, and has been for thirty-two years devoted to this work. He found them without a written language, without the instruction and restraints of the gospel, without written laws, and with but few of the usages and habits of p81 civilized life. Amid many hindrances and difficulties he learned the language, assisted in reducing it to writing, and translated and published some sixty books and tracts in the Choctaw language for the use of those who can never learn English. He also translated and printed the New Testament and six books of the Old Testament. Besides, he was the only physician in this part of the country, his calls in sickly seasons amounting to fifteen or twenty patients daily. He was also superintendent of the schools at Wheelock and Norwalk, and had a large pastoral charge. From the time that Wheelock church was organized in this country, in December, 1832, till his decease, in March, 1853, he had been permitted to receive to the communion and fellowship of this church five hundred and seventy members."⁠16

The 383 Choctaw immigrants who came in 1853 brought cholera with them and fourteen deaths occurred on Arkansas River; but ". . . by camping the Indians in the woods in small detachments, and by proper remedial agents, the progress of the disease was arrested."⁠17 Buyers went among the Indians, purchasing all their cattle which they drove through to California to supply the great demand there;⁠18 Indian Territory was thus so nearly denuded of cattle as greatly to increase the price of meat, bringing prosperity to those who had it to sell and distress to others.⁠19 This situation was greatly aggravated by an unusual drought; during 1854 and 1855 little rain fell⁠20 for fourteen months and there was almost a complete crop failure in 1854. There was much suffering among the Indians as they had not been able to raise enough grain to sustain them; the water in Red and Arkansas rivers had been too low to permit boats to ascend with grain or other provisions, and many of the poorer Indians were forced to scour the woods for wild vegetables and other sources of food. This lack of water in the rivers, however, had been a blessing in disguise as it prevented the introduction of large quantities of whisky usually p82 brought up the streams by boat, and the cause of temperance was greatly promoted. The drought compelled the Indians to renewed industry and improved methods of farming, with the result that in spite of slight precipitation in 1854 some good crops of corn were made, though their oats failed entirely; the next year their crops were nearly destroyed by grasshoppers. In the spring of 1855 some of the Choctaw people were in a starving condition and were depredating on others who were more fortunate. And after these years of adversity the hopes of the Indians for a fruitful year in 1857 were blasted when on April 16 the thermometer registered a temperature of 18 that destroyed all the corn, fruit, and most of the wheat. At this time the Indians were much indebted and excited by events in Kansas and Nebraska, and the bill introduced in Congress by Senator Johnson of Arkansas to "erect the Cherokee, Creek, and Choctaw countries into qualified Territories of the United States."⁠21 Nothing came of it however.

Indians who had immigrated during that period, homesick and discouraged with the prospects of life in the West, had wandered back to Mississippi. Their agent, Douglas H. Cooper, visited Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana, and reported there were more than 2,000 ignorant Choctaw Indians remaining there leading a vagrant life after their primitive customs.⁠22 But encouraging accounts continued to find their way into official reports. Rev. Cyrus Byington reported in 1855⁠23 "within fifteen miles of me [Stockbridge, Eagletown] there are five horse-mills and one water mill, and a sawmill. At some of these mills they have made, or are making, preparations to grind and bolt wheat. There are five cotton gins. . . . I can count ten wells and as many chimneys built of rock. In some of these wells there is the old fashioned pump, and in others the chain pump. . . . There is a good ferry boat on Little River and another on Mountain Fork at Eagletown. There is a store at Eagletown. There are three cotton gins within six miles of this place. Last winter and spring about 200 bales of cotton were ginned at these gins."⁠24 "The Arkansas synod will meet at Doaksville on September 21, 1854,"⁠25 and a little later, "a good saw and flouring p83 mill has been erected at the bridge on the Blue. This will afford encouragement to the people in regard to raising wheat."⁠26 Farmers were already raising some wheat. From Goodwater, Rev. Ebenezer Hotchkin reported: "Within the bounds of this church we have eight places for preaching. At six of these places we have meeting houses; four are built of logs; two are frame buildings, forty-two by thirty-two feet; one has been built this year at an expense of $700.00; and no debt on that account." In the warm seasons their meetings were held under brush arbors.

Injection of the slavery question into local affairs resulted in the withdrawal of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions from the conduct of the schools in the Choctaw Nation. Armstrong Academy was transferred from the American Indian Mission Association to the Domestic Board of the Southern Baptist Convention located at Marion, Alabama.⁠27

The National council in 1853 enacted a new school law creating a board of trustees and a general superintendent. It was provided that no slave nor child of slave should be taught to read or write in any Choctaw school. And the school authorities were required to remove "any and all persons connected with the public schools or academies known to be abolitionists or who disseminate or attempt to disseminate directly or indirectly, abolition doctrines."

There was always the handicap of the flood of whisky from Texas and Arkansas to demoralize the Indians, against which the Choctaw government waged a constant but ineffectual fight; the occasional drought, the cholera, smallpox, and epidemic of measles took their toll of strength but the resolution of the Indians continued to carry them forward in spite of these obstacles. By 1856 it was reported that the farms of the Indians were not only more numerous but were larger and better fenced than formerly, for the protection of both stock and crops. The farmers were raising cotton, wheat, oats, rye, corn, peas, potatoes, turnips, and pumpkins. Some of them had apple, peach, pear, and plum orchards. Other evidence of the increase of industry was seen in the number of wagons, carts, plows, hoes, axes, carpenter's tools and in the opening of new wagon roads. To a large extent the p84 people dressed in cloth of their own manufacture. Few attempted to support their families by hunting.

Their horses, cattle, cows, working oxen, hogs, sheep, geese, turkeys, guinea fowls and chickens testified in their favor. Many families kept track of the days by notching sticks which they laid away weekly and monthly; but good cabins with plank floors, stone chimneys, and glass windows; roofs put on with nails instead of "rib poles"; dug and walled wells . . . improvement in their household furniture and wearing apparel; the great number of horse mills, cotton gins, grist- and sawmills, blacksmith shops and ferry boats; all these things indicated a people who were not only industrious and provident, but who were heartened by their situation to a sense of permanency, and who were in fact a nation of good citizens, fit progenitors of the civilization they were so surely establishing.

Rev. Cyrus Byington was not only a zealous laborer for the spiritual welfare of the Choctaw Indians, but he learned to speak their language fluently and continued his translations; in this work he was assisted by the Rev. Alfred Wright. Mr. Byington assembled his manuscripts and left home in the autumn of 1850 for New England and New York to look after the printing of his translations, which included a Choctaw hymn book, the Books of Joshua, Judges, Ruth I and II, Samuel, and an abridgment of Gallaudet's Sacred Biography and the Choctaw Definer. He did not complete his work and return to his family until the spring of 1853.

While in New York he wrote an interesting account for the New York Evangelist descriptive of the improvements achieved by the Choctaw people. He said that now instead of the labor of the field being performed by the women with hoes,

"the men plow the fields with cattle or horses, and plant them or else help the women to do it. Instead of a brush fence the laws require fences to be made ten rails high. Instead of seeing men without hats, shoes, and pantaloons, it is rare to meet them on public occasions without all these. The houses are now to a great extent furnished with floors, chairs, tables and beds. The meals are taken more regularly and the table is supplied with plates, knives, forks, metal spoons, with bread, meat, sugar, and coffee." He mentioned their constitution and trial by jury secured to all. "Marriage between one man and woman is regulated by law, and is to be solemnized by a judge, or minister of the Gospel. The legal fee p85 is $2. Widows are entitled to dower, and children inherit their father's estate. Their laws forbidding the introduction of ardent spirits, first enacted nearly thirty years since, before there was a Christian Choctaw to be found, and before the chiefs could read or write should not be forgotten."⁠28

Among the teachers in the Choctaw Nation were graduates of Mt. Holyoke, Dartmouth, Williams and other eastern colleges, as well as native Choctaw, who had been graduated from good schools. The course of study in the schools was practical, and calculated to make youths into useful citizens. Attached to each of the academies was a farm cultivated mainly by the boys who were instructed in agriculture. In the girls' schools after recitations from their books they were instructed in spinning, weaving, sewing, knitting and ornamental needlework, and by turns performed the duties of the household and dairy. This work prepared them for usefulness in after life and fullblood graduates formerly indifferent and ignorant, cherished the knowledge so gained to bestow it on their daughters in after years. Girls returning home from these schools proudly carried with them bed quilts or clothing they had made for their parents. At Chuala Female Seminary they made a large quantity of clothing for the boys at Spencer Academy, and the boys at Fort Coffee Academy wore clothing made for them by the girls at New Hope Seminary six miles away. One year the girls of this school made 100 pairs of pants and shirts for these boys, besides making much of their own clothing.

Boys in Fort Coffee Academy were instructed in spelling, reading, arithmetic, geography, English grammar, chemistry, algebra, geometry and Latin grammar. The girls at the branch school, New Hope, had the same studies except chemistry, algebra, geometry, and Latin grammar. Some of the girls from this school were sent to more advanced schools in Mississippi and Tennessee. Among the Choctaw boys in the sophomore class of Delaware College in 1849 were Pitchlynn, Hall, Wright, and Garland.

As about two thirds of the Choctaw people were living on the Red River, Choctaw Agent Douglas H. Cooper and Superintendent Thomas S. Drew in 1853 recommended the abandonment of Fort Towson as an army post so that it could be occupied by the Choctaw agency which p86 would then be more convenient to the great majority of the Nation. Drew suggested that if this were done it would draw to that part of the Nation most of the Choctaw Indians living on the Arkansas River, thus "opening up for a cession of the Arkansas and Canadian districts, one of the most eligible routes for a Pacific Railroad."⁠29

Fort Towson was abandoned by the army the next July; and the quartermaster general directed that the buildings of the post be delivered to the agent for the Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians except those occupied by white people. Agent Cooper turned over the buildings of the old agency to Tandy Walker and went to Fort Towson to set up his office there.⁠30 He found at the abandoned post seven sets of officers' quarters and soldiers' barracks for two regiments together with a large hospital and blacksmith shop, not only in an advanced state of decay, but badly damaged by a hurricane that had swept thru them in the preceding June. The buildings, he said, were too numerous and extensive to be kept up for the use of an agency unless disposed of for residences and stores.

The Choctaw council had requested that some of the buildings at the post be turned over to the Nation for council house, courthouses and other uses and Cooper recommended that their wishes be granted. After permission had been given for them to use the buildings at the post, the council passed a resolution reciting: "Be it enacted that hereafter the meeting of the General Council shall be held at Fort Towson on the first Wednesday of November, and the law directing it to be held at Doaksville is hereby repealed."

"It is a pity," said Cooper, "to allow so many valuable buildings as are here, to rot down, and I would respectfully ask authority to dispose of them in such manner as will be most beneficial to the public and in such way as to keep the place in good repair; otherwise the decaying timber will render the Post too sickly to be used for the residence of the Agent. It will cost more money to tear down & remove the buildings (which are of logs) than the department will be p87 willing to expend for the purpose. It is difficult even to determine how to arrange & repair buildings for Agent's residence, Offices, dwelling for Interpreter &c., without knowing what disposition will be made of the residue.

"I shall still delay extensive repairs, or the final appropriation of buildings for use of the Agency, until I know what conclusion the Department will come to. It is necessary I think, to authorize the Agent here to dispose of all buildings not needed for the Agency to the Nation and to Traders. As long as the present system is kept up, Trading Posts will be required. This place will make a delightful village where the Council & Courts of the Nation can be accommodated and the Traders occurred under the jurisdiction of the Government Agent. And in the event of the adoption of the Territorial form of Government, suitable buildings can be had for the Governor and other public officers."⁠31

Following the abandonment of fort Towson the country was plagued by a great increase in the amount of whisky introduced from Arkansas and Texas. Peddlers from Fort Smith in violation of law undertook to ply their trade without giving bond and securing a license. One firm that dealt in so‑called patent medicines made by itself and composed mainly of intoxicants, constructed a peddler's wagon full of compartments and drawers stocked with these "medicines, liquors, and fancy articles without end," wrote the superintendent Charles W. Dean. Much of the contraband went into the Indian country under the name of sarsaparilla.⁠32 Merchants and so‑called doctors were introducing into the Choctaw country other nostrums called "John Bull," "John Brown," "Johnny Jump‑up," p88 "Bay Water," and "Schnapps."⁠33 The purchase of horses from the Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians that had acquired the name of "pony trade," had developed to such an extent that it required special regulations.⁠34

The ill-advised situation under which the Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians occupied the same country and shared in the same government, with its endless contention leading to the verge of disorder and violence, was terminated by a treaty of separation in 1855⁠35 though the agencies for both were consolidated under Douglas H. Cooper⁠36 with headquarters at Fort Towson. The tribes, requested to indicate preference for a new location, did so in their autumn councils. The Choctaw chiefs voted in favor of Boggy Depot and the Chickasaw divided, eleven voting for Boggy Depot and ten for Upshaw's old agency near Fort Washita as some of the buildings of that agency were standing and the location was near the Chickasaw council grounds. William R. Guy wished to sell the Government his house at Boggy Depot for the sum of $4,500 to be used as an agency.

Cooper retained his post at Fort Towson for some time and in the autumn of 1855 he was engaged as a sort of examining magistrate in connection with the killing at Doaksville a mile from the post of Noah Folsom in April, 1855, by W. E. Gildast a white man. Cooper reduced to writing voluminous depositions given by witnesses from which one learns the names of several residents of that once important trading village of which scarcely a trace remains. Folsom and Gildast were playing cards and drinking in the store of Henry Folsom when a quarrel arose between them and Gildast killed Folsom with a butcher knife. Dr. Francis Pugh, Dr. A. E. Greenwood, a Mr. Bourland, Henry Berthelet a merchant, and Simpson Folsom, brother of the deceased, all of Doaksville, gave testimony which Agent Cooper forwarded to the commissioner of Indian affairs.⁠37

The Choctaw council held a special session at Fort Towson in the summer of 1856 with Daniel Folsom, president of the house of representatives, p89 Kennedy McCurtain, speaker of the house, George W. Harkins, N. Cochnaner, and Peter Folsom, chiefs respectively of Apuckshunnubbee, Pushmataha, and Mushulatubbe districts. At the regular session in the following October the Choctaw council adopted a resolution authorizing Peter P. Pitchlynn to enter into arrangements for establishing at Fort Towson an academy of a high order and in connection therewith an orphan school. The removal here of Spencer Academy and the establishment of an insane asylum at the old post were planned.⁠38

Still at Fort Towson, Agent Cooper in November 1856 made a payment to the Choctaw orphans. But the next month he temporarily located at the old Chickasaw agency near Fort Washita, "bringing with me the archives of the Choctaw agency, those of the Chickasaw agency having never been removed from this place." However the chiefs of both tribes agreed that in the future the agency should be located at Boggy Depot. In 1857 the commissioner of Indian affairs directed that in view of the difficulties between these two immigrant tribes and the wild Indians of the prairies, the Chickasaw agency should be removed to Fort Arbuckle and a separate reserve was laid out for the agency south of the fort.⁠39

After the separation of the two tribes it became necessary for the Choctaw people to adopt a new constitution appropriate to their new situation. A convention of delegates representing a faction of the tribe met at Skullyville⁠40 on January 5, 1857, and adopted a constitution for the Choctaw Nation vesting the supreme executive power in a governor. The terms of the constitution were devised with a view to its further p90 adaptation to the forms of a territorial government⁠41 and it therefore met with the bitter hostility of the majority of the tribe. Soon after its adoption, persons opposed living on Red River assembled in Blue County and recorded their objections to it. The authorities holding under the new constitution called an extra session of the legislature, adopted amendments to meet these objections and provided for their submission to a popular vote in accordance with its provisions. The opponents then held a convention at Doaksville, framed a constitution, and elected a rival legislature and chiefs under it. The first legislature again offered to submit to the people any amendments to the constitution they desired, but their opponents insisted upon holding to their new constitution.

At an election held in August, 1857, called by the Skullyville government to fill the offices, some of the counties on Red River failed to vote, and in October the council provided for another election to be held the first Wednesday in December; again these counties refused to vote at the call of the opposition. Operation of law throughout the Choctaw Nation was about to be suspended, peace of the country was seriously threatened; and the efforts of the United States Government were engaged to restore peace destroyed by its schemes for forcing a territorial government on the Indians in violation of their treaty stipulations. As in the case of the Cherokee nearly twenty years before, the department of the interior espoused the cause of the minority; the majority were characterized as rebels and warned by the secretary of the interior that if they did not cease their opposition to the constitution of Skullyville, a military force would be sent into their country to compel obedience.⁠42 Great excitement and disorder prevented the peace and quiet that should have prevailed in the presence of bountiful crops.⁠43

The opposition wanted to return to their old system of having a chief for each district, and charged that the more modern system of government adopted at Scullyville was but a subterfuge to promote p91 territorial government. Gov. Alfred Wade, who had been elected governor of the nation under the Scullyville constitution, resigned on January 12, 1858, and the duties of his office were assumed by Tandy Walker, president of the senate of the general council, who, within a few days, called a special election of the legislature to meet on April fifth next, at Boggy Depot, the seat of government.⁠44

In October, 1858, the Skullyville council adopted conciliatory measures which averted further disorder in the Choctaw country then at the brink of anarchy. A compromise was reached whereby it was provided that the Skullyville government should be regarded as controlling until another constitutional convention could be held.⁠45 The office of chief in each of the two districts, Apuckshunnubbee and Pushmataha, was recognized, to be filled by the two leaders of the opposition. This, of course, was but a makeshift, but it restored order; and October 24, 1859, at the general council, a new constitution was adopted, providing for a principal chief, and three subordinate chiefs representing the three districts, all to be selected at the general elections. The legislative functions were vested in a body composed of a senate and a house, and a judicial department was provided. Their new government, modeled on the laws of Mississippi, was installed in October, 1860, and with the return to the old system in accordance with the views of the majority, peace again rested on the country. The opponents to the Skullyville constitution prevailed, vindicated their opposition and forced the removal of the seat of government from Boggy Depot to Doaksville.⁠46

An extensive commerce had "sprung up between the Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians and the adjoining, and even some of the remote states of the Union, in cattle, horses, and hogs, of which both the Choctaws and Chickasaws rear a large surplus over their home consumption and wants." But they were handicapped in this commerce by archaic intercourse laws which the Government, though often solicited, had not taken steps to liberalize.

"Their legislature and general councils consist of a senate and house of representatives, with the usual presiding officers; and their deliberations are characterized by a degree of order and decorum worthy of p92 imitation by their white brethren of the United States. These tribes have each a governor, national secretary, auditor of public accounts, treasurer and attorney general. . . . As yet they do not quite understand the working of the new system; their laws are defective, the machinery of their government and the practice in their courts do not work smoothly. But it is not to be expected that any people can suddenly throw off their dependence on chiefs, captains, and head-men, and become at once fitted to take part in the administration of a new, and to them, complex form of government."⁠47

"The Chickasaws in proportion to numbers, appropriate a much larger sum to educational purposes than the Choctaws; while their school system lacks an important feature, which is obtaining prominence in that of the Choctaws; I mean the system of common or neighborhood schools. These among the Choctaws are mainly taught by natives and form an interesting and important adjunct to the academies."⁠48

A route for a wagon road from Fort Smith to Texas was now being surveyed by Lieut. E. F. Beale along the Canadian River and the Indians were greatly concerned about it, as it involved the project also of constructing the railroad contemplated by Lieut. Indicates a West Point graduate, Class of 1841: a link to his biographical entry in Cullum's Register.

Indicates a West Point graduate, Class of 1841: a link to his biographical entry in Cullum's Register.

A. W. Whipple's survey six years before. Choctaw Agent Cooper reported that an abundance of cedar along the Canadian would furnish the necessary cross-ties.⁠49

Upon the completion of the survey Beale in 1859 directed H. B. Edwards to contract for the erection of bridges where the road crossed the Poteau River, Sans Bois and Little Sans Bois, Longtown and Little rivers, according to plans made by "Mr. Crump the civil engineer ordered by the War Department to accompany me as my asistant." The Poteau bridge was to be at McLean's ferry about ten miles above the mouth of the stream; but the people of Fort Smith and officers of the Overland Mail Company protested the location vigorously as they desired the river crossed at the edge of the village and near the fort. The result was that work on the bridge was suspended and available information does not disclose whether it was renewed before the p93 breaking out of the Civil War.⁠50 Remains of three of the other iron bridges destroyed during that war are yet to be seen; in Little River at Edwards' Trading Settlement two or three miles above the mouth when the water is low one may see the bases of two of the piers. In Sans Bois Creek near a locality known as "Iron Bridge" fragments of the metal of the old bridge project above the water. On Red Bank Creek about seven miles northwest of Spiro are to be seen abutments of the bridge over that stream.

They were "at liberty to move from place to place as inclination or their interests lead them," said the missionary O. P. Stark of the Indians near Goodland. "I have known families to move four and five times in the course of a year. This state of things has the effect to perpetuate habits of vagrancy and idleness, and to counteract the benefits which, in other circumstances, they might derive from the establishment of churches and schools among them. Another serious difficulty arises from the low estimate in which the marriage relation is held. Separations of husband and wife are common occurrences, and the effect upon children is disastrous. They are left uncared for, with no homes, to wander about and grow up addicted to the worst of vices. We have been accused too of being abolitionists, and the emissaries of abolition societies," Mr. Stark added with great indignation.⁠51

Elias Rector of Arkansas, recently appointed superintendent for the Southern Superintendency, could not see the Indians in the favorable light with which others viewed them. He reported that most of the five tribes cultivated the ". . . soil to a small extent; but having no individual propertyship therein, they are continually on the wing, moving from place to place; and one sees, in travelling through their country, more deserted than inhabited houses.⁠52 They are generally poor farmers and poorer livers, without gardens or orchards, with plenty of cattle, but no milk or butter, caring to surround themselves with few of the luxuries or even comforts of life." And with this background for justification he urged his views in favor of authorizing the p94 sale by the Indians of their lands, to facilitate the population of the country by white people; for, he said ". . . The country possessed by them, picturesque and fertile, must at some day become a State of the American Union. . ." The good faith of the United States toward the Indians must be maintained, ". . . But necessity is the supreme law of nations. All along the Indian border the country is now populous, and the railroad will soon reach the frontier. Necessity will soon compel the incorporation of their country into the Union, and before its stern requisitions every other consideration will give way, and even wrong find, as it ever does, in necessity its apology." This highly immoral view candidly expressed those held by most of the white neighbors of the Indians and shows how, in spite of the Treaties made with the Indians, in their execution the promises to keep whites out of their country were flouted and entrance made easier rather than harder; it shows what tremendous difficulties opposed the Indians, presaging the final surrender by the Government to the whites. Rector was very impatient with and intolerant of the Indians because ". . . they will not now hear to any proposition for parting with any portion of their land, and cannot be made to see the advantages of retaining part and selling the residue to individuals. And their aversion to parting with their land, of which they do not need one acre in a hundred and their strong feeling of nationality, are played upon by the more intelligent, who find it well enough for them to use without price as much land as they want and pay no taxes. . ." Ever since these Indians had known the white man they had been wheedled and ravished of their lands on one specious pretext and another; and now that they were located on what was promised them to be their last home, within which white people were not to be allowed to intrude, and which would "never be made part of a state of the Union," where they could maintain their own government, an Indian official joins the white people in trying to justify and facilitate the breaking down of those promises.

A devastating drought brought destitution and suffering to all the Indians in the Southwest in 1860 and Rector warned that many of the Choctaw and Chickasaw would perish from want of food if the Government did not go to their relief. New Hope School was closed by whooping cough and measles from March 1 to May 1, and Fort Coffee Academy was closed by measles.

The Author's Notes:

1 Armstrong Academy was in successful operation until November 15, 1858, when it was closed by an epidemic of malignant measles, and it was not reopened until the first Monday of the next February. In addition to the four schools at this academy a new brick building was erected here at a cost of $10,000 in time for the opening of school the first Monday in October, 1859. One hundred and thirty-six boys were instructed in 1852 at Spencer Academy by four teachers. At the end of the school year the pupils were examined in the presence of two of the trustees, Col. P. P. Pitchlynn and Stephen Cochausur, for a period of twenty hours (Report of commissioner of Indian affairs for 1852).

4 In 1851 Spencer Academy was overwhelmed by measles and out of 100 boys present seventy were ill; of these four died (ibid., 1851).

7 Even in those early days it was said: "the Choctaws . . . who raise cotton, it is true, have lost a great deal from the ravages of the worm" (ibid., for 1846). The adjutant at Fort Arbuckle reported to the commissary general in November 1848 that mills had been erected in the neighborhood during the year that made excellent flour which could be furnished to the post cheaper than it could be purchased at New Orleans (QMG, L to P, 1849, No. 1).

10 Simon L. Hobbs, July 24, 1856; Report of commissioner of Indian affairs for 1856.

14 Some years later these schools were again suspended; New Hope resumed on November 29, 1858, and Fort Coffee Academy on the first Monday of January, 1859.

15 Mrs. H. B. Wright to S. B. Treat, May 4, 1853, Missionary records, Vol. 243, No. 360.

18 In the summer of 1850 Captain Forrest, heading a party of twelve Americans, four Mexicans and two Delaware Indians, left Indian Territory for California with a drove of 774 cows and 231 calves. They crisscrossed Arkansas River on June first, and traveled west on the Fort Smith route. Some of this great drove was collected in southwest Missouri (Arkansas Gazette and Democrat, June 21, 1850).

29 The route for this proposed railroad through their country had been surveyed in 1853 (Report of Explorations for a Railway Route near the Thirty-fifth Parallel of North Latitude, from the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean by Lieutenant A. W. Whipple, 1853‑54.)

30 Cooper to commissioner of Indian affairs, September 14, 1854, OIA, "Choctaw" 1004.

31 Cooper to Drew, November 20, 1854, OIA "Choctaw Agency," D 742. Mrs. Esther Gooding, widow of the late sutler, George C. Gooding, occupied a house on the reservation 150 yards from the fort. Her husband had built there a "house and store with the necessary outbuildings, barn, and stables, store, and ware room with the approbation of the commandant. His widow wishes to have her title to the property recognized by the Choctaw Nation. Her husband was the son of Capt. Gooding of Tippecanoe memory, in which engagement he rendered good service and was severely wounded" (Babbitt to adjutant general October 6, 1854 (with Jefferson Davis to commissioner of Indian affairs, October 10, 1854) OIA "Choctaw" D 460). The buildings of the old fort were nearly all destroyed by fire a few years later.

35 June 22, 1855 ratified by the tribes in council, and finally approved by the President March 4, 1856 (Kappler, op. cit., II, 531).

39 Cooper to Mix, June 2, 1857, C 923; Cooper to Denver November 1, 1857, ibid., C 1222; Advancing the Frontier, op. cit.; until the Civil War Cooper transacted his business as agent at Fort Arbuckle, Fort Washita and Scullyville. In September 1859 he obtained lumber to repair the old agency buildings at Fort Washita (Cooper to Rector September 3, 1859, OIA, "I. T. Misc. Agent Cooper"). The agency buildings at Boggy Depot were destroyed in 1875.

40 The payments were made at the agency to the Choctaw Indians whose name for money is "iskuli-fehna," whence the place became known as Scullyville. In the report of the Choctaw agent for 1857 the name made its first appearance in these reports. The place now consisted of "about thirty houses, the greatest part of which are stores or entrepots of merchandise for the use of the Indians" (Abbe Em. Domenech, Seven Years Residence in the Great Deserts of North America, vol. I, 155).º

43 Forts Smith, Washita, and Arbuckle had been abandoned and in view of threatened disorder in the Choctaw Nation and other conditions on the frontier, it was urged that these posts be reoccupied (Pulliam to Mix, January 27, 1858, OIA, Southern Superintendency, R 643).

50 Beale, Edwards, Montgomery, and Crocker to secretary of war, May 6 and June 30, 1859, AGO, ORD, WDF, M 162, C 124, and E 111; U. S. House executive document No. 42, thirty-sixth Congress, first session: "Letter from the Secretary of War transmitting the report of Mr. Beale relating to the construction of a wagon road from Fort Smith to the Colorado river."

[ Choctaw ]

p77 Chapter five
Threat of Civil Disorder

The Author's Notes:

[ Choctaw ]

p77 Chapter five Threat of Civil Disorder

The Author's Notes:

p77 Chapter five
Threat of Civil Disorder