Grant Foreman • The Five Civilized Tribes

The Chickasaw had no sooner arrived in the West than they repented their bargain which united them with the Choctaw Nation. Each tribe was jealous of the other, and as the latter were suspicious and fearful of the former lest they would find some way to appropriate or confuse with theirs, the large amount of tribal funds the recent arrivals possessed. They served notice on the Indian department that they would never consent to have their tribal funds combined with those of the Choctaw for the purpose of building schools, a plan suggested by the commissioner of Indian affairs.⁠1 The result was that while the Choctaw were building schools and making rapid strides in education, the Chickasaw had no schools of any consequence until they removed to their own country. They were constantly agitating the subject of schools with no effect. Every year from the time of their removal the report of the Indian agent contains accounts of the distrust and dissatisfaction growing out of the anomalous relation of the two tribes, and the futile discussion of establishing schools. The Chickasaw seriously considered removal to some other country, remote from the Choctaw.⁠2

In 1846 the Chickasaw met at Boiling Spring near Fort Washita and adopted what they called a constitution, though there were not more than a third of the tribe living in their own district;⁠3 but on October 13, 1848, they again met in convention at the same place, and on November 4 subscribed to a more formal document also called a p122 constitution, which repealed the former; it was signed by Winchester Colbert, Edmund Pickens, Benjamin Love, William Kemp and fifteen others. It provided for an executive to be appointed by the Chickasaw council, with the title of Chickasaw District Chief; and a council of thirty members to meet the first Monday of each October; eight members were to be elected from Pushmataha District, two from Apuckshunnubbee, seventeen from Chickasaw, and three from Mushulatubbe; thus indicating the distribution of the Chickasaw through the respective districts. The polling places were Boiling Springs, Good Spring and Perry's Court Ground in Chickasaw District; Blue Springs, Arch McGee's and Running Water in Pushmataha District; Candell's Old Shop near Doaksville for Apuckshunnubbee District; and "Foosh-na-line, where the road leading from Fort Smith to Fort Washita crosses it," for Mushulatubbe District.

Edmund Pickens was the first Chickasaw chief under this constitution and the first council was held immediately after the constitution was adopted, beside which little other business was transacted. The second session converted at Boiling Springs November 6, 1849, when it was determined to remove the deliberations of the council to Post Oak Grove. A called session was held September 4, 1850, where it was resolved that the Chickasaw tribe decline to receive the Catawba Indians living in North and South Carolina, whom the Government was trying to locate in their country. Five dollars was appropriated to pay William Kemp for the use of his house and an equal amount for beef he furnished at the council on November 10, 1849.

The most urgent business of that session, however, was a memorial to the President against the presence of the "Tonqueways, Caddoes, Keechies, Kickapoos, Quappaws, Boluxies, Cherokees, Shawnees, Ironeyes, & Witchitaws, who are intruders upon us." They represented that these wild Indians infested their country, and committed many depredations by stealing their horses, hogs, cattle, and other property; that these outrages were driving the Chickasaw to such exasperation as to endanger the peace of the frontier by threatening a general war among the Indians. And they invoked from the President the protection promised them in their treaties. They also prayed ". . . that the force at Fort Washita may not be diminished as the safety of our people from the incursions of the prairie Indians, depends upon the United States forces stationed there. They respectfully suggest p123 that mounted men or dragoons give them more perfect security than infantry."⁠4

The Chickasaw excepted from the proposed removal, however, certain Indians who had been exempted by the Choctaw from an order to remove enacted in October, 1844, by which the latter tribe called on the Government to exclude from their limits all the intruding tribes except ". . . the Caddoes, who at a previous session of the General Council, having obtained permit to live in the Nation, shall be exempt from the operation of this act; and also the following named families of Indians be allowed to remain unmolested by the operation of this act, viz.: Charley, Mike, McCoy, Cherokees; Little Boy, and Frank's family, and Strong Man, Delawares; Capt. Beaver, Panther, and Oats, Shawnees, and their families; and one family of Quapaws, living above the mouth of the Washita, on Red River."⁠5

The Chickasaw constitution was framed primarily to control the use of their large tribal funds against the possibility of their being diverted by the Choctaw, of which they were in great fear; and the business of the succeeding sessions of their council was taken up largely with consideration of their schools, the securing of their tribal funds, and measures for securing a separation from the Choctaw Nation.

At the meeting of the Chickasaw council at Boiling Spring in November, 1849, Chief Edmund Pickens, Pitman Colbert, and Cyrus Harris were appointed delegates to go to Washington.

At the annuity payment an extra session of the council was called and Jackson Frazier introduced a resolution appropriating $200 of their funds to be donated to the construction of the Washington Monument "in such a way as to have the name of the Chickasaws inscribed on the monument,⁠a to perpetuate their love and remembrance of their Great Father, who always gave his red Chickasaw children good advice."⁠6

With the establishment of Fort Arbuckle⁠7 the Chickasaw moved p124 from the Choctaw country to their own domain in larger numbers until in 1851 approximately two‑thirds of their total population were living in their own country. As Fort Washita supplanted Fort Towson in usefulness, so Fort Arbuckle, being still further west, rendered both of them of diminishing importance.⁠8

Discontent on the part of the Chickasaw over their relations with the Choctaw people steadily increased. In 1851 the delegation in Washington presented their grievances to the commissioner of Indian affairs and urged a separation from the other tribe. They claimed that in their joint council they were ignored by the majority and

"their voice is neither felt nor heard in that body; practically they have no participation in making the laws to which they are subjected. . . . They are completely at the mercy of the Choctaws, and every Chickasaw feels that he is oppressed by them. . . . The Choctaws regard and treat the Chickasaws everywhere out of their own district as intruders and it is frequently thrown up to them as à reproach that they have no rights in the country. This is the cause of many private difficulties frequently ending in the death of one or the other of the parties, and the number of these are constantly increasing.

"The boundary between the Chickasaw district and the rest of the nation has never been designated. A margin about twenty miles wide from one extremity to the other is disputed — both parties claim and exercise jurisdiction over it. The Choctaws have repeatedly refused to enter into any fair arrangements to have it settled, but exercise their own laws in violation of their constitution and the compact between the two peoples. This has recently created much excitement and irritation and came near producing an open rupture between the two tribes."⁠9

Jealousy of their financial interests and disbursements of tribal funds provoked and kept alive animosities; their association tended to alienate rather than to unite them and amalgamation appeared more and more impossible. "There is I find a deep and abiding feeling on this subject." They believed themselves "oppressed and down-trodden by their more powerful co-partners in the government. The Chickasaws number about one-fourth as many as the Choctaws, and the depressing influences p125 of such a conviction are plainly visible in their conduct. They act as a people who feel as if they had no country. Restless and dissatisfied, they are continually breaking up their homes and securing new locations; and the same unsettled and distracted spirit pervades their councils and mars their enterprises. For evils so momentous there must be found a remedy, or the Chickasaws must perish."⁠10

However, at this time 3,134 Chickasaw had already settled in their own country and on October 6, 1851, they met in convention to amend their constitution. By this document and the laws then enacted, they set up a government for themselves in which the executive power was vested in a district chief, theirs being one of the four districts in the Choctaw-Chickasaw union. They provided also a council of thirty members with a president and secretary, to meet once each year. They were thus armed to cope with a real or imaginary peril of aggressions by the Choctaw. The agent reported⁠11 that the Chickasaw council was composed of intelligent men; they disbursed the funds usually handled by the agent ". . . and have taken on themselves the entire management of their own affairs." Many of the Chickasaw maintained trading houses in the Nation.⁠12

While the Chickasaw people had not established a school system, they succeeded in 1851 in beginning the operation of the Chickasaw Academy, long in process of erection. Under the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, this school began with Rev. Mr. J. C. Robinson as superintendent; sixty pupils attended at first though in a short time the full quota of 120 for which the school was planned were in attendance. It was located twelve miles northwest of Fort Washita, two and one‑half from the Washita River and fourteen west of the line dividing the two nations. The girls in the school made fancy work that was exhibited on examination days and sold to the visitors, the proceeds from which were used to purchase books for the library. Six "neighborhood schools" also were soon put in operation.⁠13

p126 The "Female Labor School" an imposing structure of stone was located "on the grounds of Wah‑pa‑nucka" in the eastern part of the Chickasaw Nation and forty miles north of the Red River. It was conducted under the auspices of the Presbyterian Board with James S. Allen as superintendent; the ten teachers received from $100 to $150 annually, beside their board and room and traveling expenses to their homes once in three years when they desired to go there to visit. The Chickasaw council having appropriated $6,000 to complete the buildings⁠14 the school under the name of Wapanucka Female Institute was opened in October, 1852, with a capacity for 100 girls.⁠15

The Chickasaw Manual Labor Academy as it was later called, soon passed through a serious epidemic of typhoid fever. Many of the students left to attend the local schools now being started in their several neighborhoods. They had just burned 170,000 brick to erect an additional building three stories high, fifty feet long and twenty-two wide, having six rooms nineteen feet square with a fireplace in each end. A disastrous flood had done much damage to the school property, including the water-mill. The school had also a horse-power mill.⁠16 Colbert Institute, also a Methodist school, was opened November 8, 1852, in the settlement called Perryville, and continued there until 1856, when it was removed west on the headwaters of Clear Boggy, eighteen miles north of Wapanucka, when it was resumed in November. It was on the military road constructed between Fort Smith and Fort Arbuckle. This school contained sixty boys and girls.⁠17

p127 The early fifties brought the handicap of a great increase in the traffic in whisky, which was introduced from trading houses on the Texas side of Red River. It was impossible to induce state authorities in Arkansas⁠18 or Texas to promote any effective measures to prevent the introduction of liquor into the Indian country. The Chickasaw agency was then conducted in a one-story log building⁠19 constructed with four rooms and a passage through the center located in a clump of trees on the edge of the prairie 600 yards west of Fort Washita, and near a fine spring of soft limestone water. Here the annuities⁠20 were paid to the Indians and much criticism was directed at the authorities in Washington for causing these payments to be made in the winter when the Indians, including infirm and aged people, were compelled to travel long distances and camp out through the most inclement weather, a measure of administration that was attended with much suffering and loss of life by the Indians.⁠21

The year 1851 saw the Chickasaw settlers around Fort Washita p128 entering upon the cultivation of corn and oats to a considerable extent,

"and bid fair in a few years to be able to supply fully all the requirements of forage for this post. . . . The Chickasaw district commences a few miles to my east and runs west to the 100° of west Longitude about 120 miles from here; their settlements however, are principally confined to the Washita River on either bank from its mouth, to about 20 miles northwest of this. Within this district is located the Caddoes, about 300 in all, near the oil spring and not over 15 miles from where Capt. Marcy is ordered to locate a post on Wild Horse Creek [Fort Arbuckle]. They are disposed to cultivate the soil and live peaceably and friendly.

"On the headwaters of Cache and Beaver creeks near the Witchita Mountains live the Witchita and Wacoe's; in number the former have about 300 warriors; the latter fortunately not over 80, as they are much the most warlike and will hold no intercourse with the whites. These tribes are really the wild people of the Prairies; although I think the Witchitas an amiable people and could be easily turned to cultivation of the soil, if encouraged by the Government. The Wacoes are like the wolves, untameable and at war with every tribe they can war with. The northern band of Keiches, about 90 warriors strong, live on the Washita near the Caddoes; they never raise anything but roasting ears and pumpkins, are regarded friendly. There is a tribe recently come into this district from Texas — driven from their former country by all the tribes, and they are kicked and cuffed about by all here, that would seem as if the curse of God was on them. I mean the Tonkaways, numbering about 150 warriors. They roam from the Canadian to Red River and dodge about, east to west, too glad if let alone for any brief space of time in any location. They are cannibals; they not only eat their enemies when taken dead or alive, but eat their own people when they die.

"The Northern Comanches under the chieftainship of Pa‑ya-ho‑kee roam with his numerous bands through this district, like lords of the soil — all pay homage to him; all court his protection. Whatever he orders is obeyed, if even to cease war among the small bands and make peace. It is only late in the Fall and during the winter that Comanches approach near here. The chief has been once to visit me but brought no one with him but his servants. As he was encamped then not over 100 miles west from here, with, as was estimated about 5,000 p129 warriors, I considered his visit then as a reconnaissance and held myself in readiness to give him a proper reception should he come nearer. Since then no Comanches have visited the settlements. All the Tribes I have named except the Caddoes, live upon Buffaloes, horses, and mules, and all steal; the Wacoes kill."⁠22

The next year it was reported that the Chickasaw were improving in spite of difficulties. They had large numbers of cattle, horses, and hogs; several mills and gins operated along Red River beside others scattered through the country.⁠23 They said they could be happy if they were only separated from the Choctaw; they had made an appointment to meet delegates from that tribe at Doaksville to discuss the subject of a separation, but they charged that most of the Choctaw treated them with contempt and refused to keep the engagement. There was continued complaint of the Kickapoo, Caddo, Creeks and Seminole, who were engaged in trafficking in whisky they introduced from Texas into the Chickasaw country and beyond.

Oil Springs in Chickasaw country were attracting attention ". . . as they are said to be a remedy for all chronic diseases. Rheumatism stands no chance at all, and the worst cases of dropsy yield to its effects. The fact is, that it cures anything that has been tried. A great many Texans visit these springs, and some from Arkansas. They are situated at the foot of the Wichita mountains [now called Arbuckle mountains] on Washita River, and also on Red River."⁠24

Contention between the tribes was reaching a critical stage in 1854 and commissioners were appointed to confer on the subject permitting the Chickasaw to exercise exclusive jurisdiction over their country. There was bitter controversy also over the location of the boundary line between the tribes. The dispute was submitted to the p130 agent, Douglas H. Cooper, with right of appeal from his decision to the President. Hostilities seemed to be within the range of possibilities which Agent Cooper hoped he would be able to avert; but he expressed the opinion that there could be no peace between the tribes until they had dissolved their union. He employed Capt. R. L. Hunter to run and mark the line described in their Treaty of 1837; part of this line followed the old military road run and traveled in 1834 by General Leavenworth⁠25 from Fort Gibson to the Washita River; but it was so nearly obliterated in places as to be impossible to locate. Some claimed that where the treaty located the lower part of the line by "Island Bayou," "Allen Bayou" was meant. Cooper arranged a conference at Doaksville and November 4, 1854 commissioners from the two tribes agreed upon a new boundary line that disregarded the military road.⁠26 It was emphasized that the new line⁠27 should be run so as to include within the Chickasaw domain their new Wapanucka Female Institute, which was in peril of being left on the Choctaw side of the line by the old survey. As if the Indians did not have enough to plague them, in 1854 they were aroused by Senator Johnson's bill to incorporate their country in a territory.

The inevitable separation of the tribes was achieved in a new treaty⁠28 executed June 22, 1855, at Washington, which dissolved the union, though retaining the mutual right of living in either country and the boundary lines established in the Treaty of 1854 were preserved. In this treaty these tribes leased to the United States all their lands west of the ninety-eighth degree of longitude for the permanent statement p131 of the Wichita and such other tribes or bands of Indians as the Government might desire to locate therein.⁠29 But the Choctaw and Chickasaw retained the right to settle upon the leased territory. For this lease⁠30 the Choctaw received $600,000.00 and the Chickasaw $200,000.00.

August 11, 1856 the Chickasaw assembled in mass convention⁠31 to initiate the independent government secured to them by the new treaty. They adopted as their organic law a written constitution and provided for the election of a governor⁠32 and other officers assimilated in name and scope of their several duties to those of the state governments.⁠33 But their troubles were not yet at an end; the treaty gave to each Choctaw who should settle in the Chickasaw Nation all the rights, privileges and immunities of citizens thereof, except the right to participate in their tribal funds; and the Chickasaw feared enough Choctaw people might settle within their territory to control their elections and thus their tribal revenues and finances.⁠34 So there arose a new controversy as to whether an unlimited right to vote in their elections was meant by the treaty.

In the meantime the Chickasaw people, uncertain as to precisely what had been accomplished by their new constitution, and what advantages had been given over to the Choctaw people, sent this document into Texas to be printed, and the messenger who carried the p132 original, and only, manuscript of it disappeared,⁠35 and all trace was lost of their precious document.⁠36 The Treaty of 1855 provided that until other laws should be enacted the Choctaw laws would control in the Chickasaw Nation, but with the loss of their newly adopted constitution, no one knew what law was in force. Great disorder prevailed, murders and other crimes were committed, but in time their difficulties were adjusted. An abundant harvest in 1857 placed the people beyond want.

Daniel G. Major completed his survey of the ninety-eighth meridian, the western boundary of the Chickasaw Nation in August, 1858. He was under contract to proceed with the survey of the one hundredth meridian, the west boundary of the "Leased District," but on account of the numerous bands of hostile Comanche, Kiowa, and Cheyenne Indians collected about the Antelope Hills it was considered too hazardous to proceed without an escort able to resist encroachments of a thousand savage warriors, and the work was necessarily postponed. H. M. C. Brown and A. H. Jones surveyed the west boundary of the Creek and Seminole domain with a company of twelve people protected by an escort of fifty Creeks and fifty Seminole warriors against a large force of Comanche Indians assembled between the North Fork and the Main Canadian River.

Because of the hostile attitude of these plains Indians, Douglas H. Cooper recommended that a military post be established in the Wichita Mountains.⁠37 The secretary of the interior also urged upon the secretary of war this military protection, a plan that was later realized in the creation of Forts Cobb and Sill. In June, 1859 two companies commanded by Capt. Indicates a West Point graduate, Class of 1845: a link to his biographical entry in Cullum's Register.

Indicates a West Point graduate, Class of 1845: a link to his biographical entry in Cullum's Register.

D. B. Sackett from Forts Smith and Washita departed with a train of ninety wagons containing baggage and supplies bound for Antelope Hills. This expedition resulted in the establishment of Fort Cobb near the site of the present Anadarko, Oklahoma.

The Author's Notes:

4 Laws of the Chickasaw Nation from 1848 in manuscript, in custody of superintendent for Five Civilized Tribes. These prairie Indians said they would fight before they would remove (Fort Smith Herald, June 15, 1850). The establishment of Fort Arbuckle the next year was expected to relieve this situation.

7 The first location of this post, called Camp Arbuckle, was on the south side of the Canadian River, near where is now the line between McClain and Pontotoc counties, Oklahoma. See, Advancing the Frontier by Grant Foreman.

9 Colbert, Folsom, and Frazier to commissioner, April 26, 1851, OIA, Chickasaw File.

10 Harper to Drennan, September 1, 1851, Report of commissioner of Indian affairs for 1851.

13 Ibid., for 1851. An interesting account of the Chickasaw Academy and the superintendents who served there is to be seen in Chronicles of Oklahoma, Vol. IV, p116. After 1880 the school was badly damaged by fire and by authority of an act passed by the Chickasaw legislature October 20, 1885 a new school was constructed here that became known as Harley Institute from Joshua Harley, the principal. It was located about a mile north of the present town of Tishomingo on the bank of Pennington Creek. It was a large two-story brick building with a two-story addition making it a T shaped structure.

14 Laws of the Chickasaw Nation. In October, 1852, $1,600 was appropriated to complete the buildings at Bloomfield Academy, and $2,500 for those at Wapanucka Institute.

16 Bloomfield Academy, a Methodist school for girls, was established in 1852 with J. H. Carr (ibid., for 1856).

17 Ibid. for 1856 and 1857. In 1859 there were applications for the admission of forty more pupils in Colbert Institute who could not be accommodated (ibid., for 1859). Bloomfield Academy had 45 pupils; "it was suspended for seven weeks last fall by measles and whooping cough;" then when an effort was made to resume the school measles again broke out from which three pupils died. Chickasaw Manual Labor Academy twelve miles northwest of Fort Washita has 100 boys. All three were conducted by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (ibid.). Wapanucka with 100 girls has a department of domestic "or family training" (ibid.). "I have not seen an Indian drinking or drunk for four years" (ibid.).

The Chickasaw laws were not well enforced from the fact that the nation "is composed of two or three very numerous and influential families. In almost every case brought before the Chickasaw Courts, judges and jury are related by consanguinity or affinity to one or other of the parties litigant" (ibid. for 1860). At their boarding schools 305 boys and girls were being taught in 1860 (ibid.). There were "four academies among the Chickasaws and another will go into operation this fall" (ibid.).

18 Governor Drew of Arkansas in 1844 submitted a special message on the subject to the legislature which paid no attention to it. The governor reported that public sentiment did not support the effort to give this protection to the Indians (ibid., 1847). However, about ten years later Texas passed laws prohibiting the sale of liquor to members of the tribes of the Indian Territory, but they were not enforced.

19 Ibid., 1856. The Chickasaw agency buildings were constructed here in February 1842 after the site for Fort Washita had been selected but a few months before its establishment (Foreman, A Traveler in Indian Territory, 165).

20 The Chickasaw tribe had realized the sum of $2,000,000 from the sale of their land that was held in trust by the Government and yielded them an annuity of $70,000.

22 Col.

Indicates a West Point graduate, Class of 1824: a link to his biographical entry in Cullum's Register.

Dixon S. Miles to Jesup, February 13, 1851, QMG, Fort Myer, Book No. 32, M 430.

23 In 1854 their oats brought eighty-five cents and corn $1.50 to $2.00 a bushel, due to the increased demand by the garrison at Fort Washita and emigrant trains going to California and to the drought (Report of commissioner of Indian affairs for 1854).

24 Ibid., for 1853. A. C. Love of Texas wrote a letter dated at "Oil Springs, Chickasaw Nation July 20, 1858" to the Dallas Herald in which he said "I have been here nearly three months watering." He had recently broken the tedium of his stay by accompanying Douglas H. Cooper and the Chickasaw Indians in their pursuit of a band of Comanche Indians who had stolen a number of their horses (Clipping enclosed in a letter of H. R. Runnells to secretary of war August 12, 1858, AGO, OFD, 144 T 58).

27 By the provisions of this treaty the eastern boundary of the Chickasaw Nation was fixed:

"Beginning on the north bank of Red River, at the mouth of Island Bayou, where it empties into the Red River, about twenty-six miles on a straight line, below the mouth of False Wichita, thence running a northwesterly course, along the main channel of said bayou nearest the dividing ridge between Wachitta and Low Blue (de l'eau bleu)º rivers as laid down upon Capt. R. L. Hunter's map; thence, northerly along the eastern prong of Island Bayou to its source; thence, due north to the Canadian River. . . . Provided, however, if the line running due north from the eastern source of Island Bayou to the main Canadian shall not include Allen's or Wa‑pa‑nacka academy within the Chickasaw district, then an offset shall be made from said line so as to leave said academy two miles within the Chickasaw district, north, west, and south from the lines of the boundary."

29 "The Indians from Texas and the Wichitas and other bands affiliated with them" removed in 1859 to this country on the Washita (Report of commissioner 1860); but they were in constant fear of citizens of Texas, who wrongfully charged them with depredations (ibid., 242).

30 This lease, being in perpetuity, was treated by the Government as a cession, which was far from the intention of the Indians (ibid., 1858).

31 This meeting was held at a place on Pennington Creek called Good Spring, to which the Chickasaw seat of government had been removed in 1853. In preparation for the important first meeting under their independent government the place was improved by the erection of a brush arbor fifty feet square, with log seats and benches and a platform, and the place was called Tishomingo after the illustrious old Chickasaw chief. The first election under their new government was held there on August 17 and contracts were let for the erection of a council house, a chief's residence and other adjuncts of the new capital.

32 Cyrus Harris was elected governor, and H. Colbert was elected national secretary.

37 Cooper to Mix, August 19, 1858, OIA Southern Superintendency, C 1618. For extended accounts of the hostilities of these prairie Indians at this time see Grant Foreman, Advancing the Frontier.

Thayer's Note:

And the Cherokee and Chickasaw nations of Indians also deserve to be honored for their very liberal donations of money; commemorating also in this the eloquent sentiment of the great chief, Cornplanter, delivered to Washington in 1791: "The voice of the Seneca nation speaks to you, the great Councillor, in whose heart the wise men of all the thirteen Fires have placed their wisdom."

The National Park Service, on their page "Native Connections to the Commemorative Stones inside the Washington Monument" prominently records the stone placed in the monument by the Cherokee Nation, but no stone placed by the Chickasaw. I've put in a request for information to the National Park Service website; we'll see how responsive is the government we pay for.

[ Chickasaw ]

p121 Chapter eight
Union With Choctaw Dissolved

The Author's Notes:

Thayer's Note:

[ Chickasaw ]

p121 Chapter eight Union With Choctaw Dissolved

The Author's Notes:

Thayer's Note:

p121 Chapter eight
Union With Choctaw Dissolved