Problems of a New Home

AS OUR aborigines are disappearing into oblivion a few of them have tenaciously retained a place in the progress and culture of the country. Five great tribes of Indians from time immemorial occupied the land that now comprises most of what are known as the Southern States. At an early day white settlers from the East coveting this beautiful country began pushing their settlements into it. Treaties were negotiated from time to time by which the whites were established in the country of the Indians who were thus subjected to a progressive divestiture of their country and corresponding limiting of their habitable domain. As the movement gathered momentum the resistance of the Indians began to take form and manifested itself by an intelligent demonstration of their rights. But this unequal conflict of interests resulted in the inevitable decision—the subjugation and spoliation of the weaker race of people who were driven from their ancestral domain to find homes in a wilderness region west of the Mississippi River lately acquired from France.

These Indians, the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Creek and Seminole, through their contact with the white settlers and missionaries, the struggle to retain their homes, and their innate intelligence, had acquired the rudiments of the white man's culture and were making amazing progress in civilized ways when this achievement was wrecked by the ruthless expulsion from their homes during the decade following the year 1830. But even after this desolating experience their courage and fortitude and resourcefulness enabled them to mend their broken institutions and renew their progress towards an enlightened and cultured existence.

The Choctaw Nation included a few leading men who entertained advanced ideas on the subject of education and industry long before the tribe emigrated from Mississippi. In 1801 the chiefs of the tribe requested to be furnished agricultural implements, to have a blacksmith settled among them, and instructors employed to teach their women to spin and weave; one chief asked for cotton cards, as his people already made cloth; and another complained that a cotton gin which he had applied for the year before, had not been sent to him. Doctor Morse furnishes an interesting picture of the Choctaw people in 1822: Within a few years, he says, they had made great advances in agriculture and other arts of civilized life. They raised corn, pulse, melons, and cotton. In one year they spun and wove 10,000 yards of cotton cloth. An ingenious Choctaw for a series of years raised cotton and with cards and spinning wheels made by him, he spun and wove it, and then made it into clothing. The Choctaw also raised a great many cattle. "They are friendly to travelers, for whose accommodation they have established a number of public inns, which for neatness and accommodation actually excell many among the whites."

At this period the Choctaw Indians were coming under the influence of the missionaries to whom they were indebted for much of the progress that characterized their condition. In August, 1818, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions established a missionary station in the Choctaw Nation, which they named Elliott after the celebrated New England missionary. Rev. Cyrus Byington was one of their earliest missionaries and many years later he wrote an account for the purpose of comparing their early condition with their improved state in 1852:

"There was a period, previous to the time when the missionaries went among them, that the Choctaws used the teeth of beaver, and the outer bark of cane and reed dried hard for knives. They made bags of the bark of trees, twisted and woven by hand. Ropes were made of the bark of trees. Blankets were made of turkey feathers. Fire was formerly produced by friction. Two dried pieces of ash wood were rubbed rapidly across each other till fire was produced. When they planted corn, it was not secured by any fence, nor was the land plowed—it was dug up with hoes, and planted without rows, or any order. This labor was performed by the women. The men were hunters, and followed various amusements, talked, smoked, and danced, and attended councils and feasts, weddings and funerals. The women also attended these.

"When the missionaries arrived in 1818, it was a rare thing to see a Choctaw warrior wear a hat, pantaloons, or shoes. Inquiry was made, and but very few were found who would not get drunk, when whiskey was offered them. In very few houses were there floors, windows, tables, beds or chairs. The principal articles of food were corn, sweet potatoes and beans. A species of hominy called tamfula was prepared from their corn, and served up in an earthen bowl with one spoon in it, made of the buffalo horn or of iron. The men ate first, and by themselves. The women and children ate afterwards. At times they had bear meat, venison, wild turkeys and pork for food.

"But many families suffered much for want of food. Their fields were small and poorly cultivated. There were few among them who could read..... The late Dr. Cornelius passed through the Choctaw Nation in 1817, and preached at the Agency. A white man who attended the meeting has since stated to the writer, that he had then resided among the Choctaws seven years, and during that time had not heard a sermon preached, a prayer offered, or a blessing asked at table. They had at that time no written form of government, no written laws, no trial by jury. The widow had no dowry, and children no inheritance in their father's property."

In another account written by Mr. Byington descriptive of the early condition of the Choctaw people, he said "they were ignorant of religion, and letters. Some eight or ten men had been partially educated, when we came here. They could read and write, and some of them understood figures a little. I do not remember a native Choctaw woman who had learned to read before the missionaries came to the nation. They were a nation of drunkards. Only one man was pointed out as an exception, when the first missionary came. We found three more afterwards.

"They were very indolent, poor, wretched, sickly, and dying very fast. They indulged in gross sensual vices. They were guilty of some destructive crimes such as infanticide and murder. They were given up to believe in witchcraft, which they punished with death. Hundreds have been killed for this belief. They were a very superstitious people; believing in signs, birds, dreams, ghosts, wood-nymphs, conjurors, spectres, and the like. They had been greatly reduced in numbers by the small pox, measles, and other diseases. They had never had a missionary located among them, from the foundation of the Christian Church, that we know of, till Brother Kingsbury came.

"They had been compelled to sell tract after tract of their lands, and were broken hearted. In 1830 their ancient inheritance all went at once. While moving west, hundreds perished on the road, and their property was lost. And thousands have died since. We rarely meet an old man or woman now." The bright side of the picture when Mr. Byington describes the amazing progress and improvement of these people in their western home, will be given in its place.

Soon after the missionary influence began to manifest itself, the chief of the Six Towns division of the Choctaw tribe enacted some wholesome laws, that an early observer believes to have been the first printed laws of the Choctaw people: "Six Towns, Choctaw Nation, October 18, 1822. 'Hoolatohooma (or red fort,) Chief of the Six Towns, to the Society of good people, who send Missionaries to the Choctaws:'

"Brothers:—The first law I have made is, that when my warriors go ever the line among the white people and buy whiskey, and bring it into the nation to buy up the blankets and guns and horses of the red people and get them drunk, the whiskey is to be destroyed. The whiskey drinking is wholly cast among my warriors. The Choctaw women have long been in the habit of destroying their infants, when they did not like to provide for them. I have made a law to have them punished, that no more innocent children be destroyed. The Choctaws formerly stole hogs and cattle, and killed them. I have appointed a company of faithful warriors, to take every man who steals, and tie him to a tree, and give him thirty-nine lashes.

"It has been the custom of the Choctaws, where there are three or four sisters, and they marry, that they all live together in one house. I do not want it to be so any longer. I have told them to move away from each other and settle by themselves, and work and make fields and raise provisions. The Choctaws have taken each others wives, and ran away with them. We have now made a law, that those who do so shall be whipt thirty-nine lashes. And if a woman runs away from her husband she is to be whipt in the same manner.

"The Choctaws some of them go to Mobile and New Orleans. I have told my warriors to stay home and work; and if they go and do not get back in time to plant their corn, their corn is to be burnt down. The number of men, women, and children in the Six Towns is 2,164.

"I want the good people to send men and women to set up a school in my district. I want them to do it quick. I am growing old. I know not how long I shall live; I want to see the good work before I die. We have always been passed by, and have no one to assist us.

Other parts of the nation have schools; we have none. We have made the above laws, because we wish to follow the ways of the white people. We hope they will assist us in getting our children educated. This is the first time I write a letter. Last fall is the first time we make laws. I say no more. I have told my wants. I hope you will not forget me. 'Hoolatahooma'."

This letter, evidently written with the aid of an amanuensis, was regarded by the contributor as having an important connection "with the Mission at Goshen in the old nation and at Wheelock in this land. In looking at the history of the Choctaw Nation it appears that the Rev. Alfred Wright went to Goshen, August 1, 1823, the next year after the above letter was written. In the spring of 1826, Jeremiah Evarts, Esq., from Boston, and Corresponding Secretary of the American Board, in passing by Redforts house, called in to see him; the Rev. C. Kingsbury, Samuel A. Worcester and C. Byington were with him. But the chief was very infirm and made hardly any conversation with his visitors. Not long after, he died. The company pursued their way to Goshen, which place they reached at a late hour in the night."

In 1830 the Choctaw people "were spinning and making their own clothing of good homespun cloth. I have myself bought many yards of cloth from full-blood Indians of their own make." At a recent camp meeting they observed good order and "were dressed many of them in cloth of their own manufacture—all clean and decent."

Before the enactment by Congress in 1830 of the measure known as the Indian Removal Bill, there were about 2,000 Choctaw Indians scattered through Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas Territory. A treaty had been made with those living in their eastern home in 1820, by which they were given a vast domain west of the Mississippi River, including the southern half of the present State of Oklahoma. The next year George Gray of Natchitoches was appointed agent for the western Choctaw Indians and he established his agency on the Sulphur Fork near Long Prairie. After the Treaty of 1825 Maj. William L. McClellan of Mississippi, formerly of Tennessee was appointed Choctaw agent and he located his agency at the abandoned Fort Smith in 1826. Vain efforts were then made to induce the Choctaw Indians both east and west, to remove to their new country. Finally the Choctaw treaty of September 27, 1830, known as the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, provided the means for effecting the removal of the tribe from the East. A few emigrated that winter but the movement was organized the next year and by 1833 a majority of the tribe had reached their new home in the West.

Some of the immigrants who arrived in 1832 applied themselves industriously and raised a surplus of corn which they were able to sell to the Government to subsist the arrivals expected the next year. Those who began to make preparations for the future all settled on the river and creek timbered bottom lands, for they had a well-fixed conviction that they could not make a living on the uplands nor could they build homes anywhere but in the timber that provided logs for their houses, and rails for fences. They were making considerable progress in the construction of their homes and little farms when, in the first week in June, 1833, there came one of the greatest floods in the history of the Arkansas River.

"I pause to tell you something of the most awful judgment of God, on these parts and the Terr. of Ark. in the unparrallelled rise of waters; the week of our return from the Osage tour, the rains set in most powerfully and such was the effect that tho at Union and the Neosho the water did not equal the flood of 1826, yet on the Arkansas it far exceeded that one by 8 or 10 feet at least. Mr. Chouteau lost all his trading houses and all the village, or nearly. The water rose into one corner of Ft. Gibson and from the Creek Nation to the south of the Arkansas immense damage has been sustained, hundreds of families have lost everything—fields, houses, stocks of horses and cattle and even their clothes."

On the Verdigris River, besides Colonel Chouteau's trading houses, the Creek Agency was washed away; at Fort Gibson the bakery, several stables, other small buildings and fences were carried down stream. Colonel Arbuckle wrote: ".... on the 4th inst., the Grand River or Ne. o. sho for the first time since this post has been established commenced overflowing its banks in front of this Post, and suddenly rose from eight to ten feet higher than any freshet heretofore known; in consequence of which, the greater part of the public and private corn at this point was destroyed." Since the middle of May rain had fallen, several weeks without intermission ".... raising the Arkansas River to such a height as has never been seen by the oldest settlers in that section of country..... Nearly all the people who lived upon the river have been ruined..... on the bottoms near several of the creeks every house has been washed away.... all the Fork of the Canadian was inundated. At the latter place a large amount of stock, of almost every kind, was washed away; and it is said that, so powerful was the force of the water, the course of the river at Fort Smith was changed entirely, making its way through the farm of Mr. Alexander, and carrying before it almost his whole property. Mr. John Rogers is said to have lost 1,700 bushels of salt; and his works are destroyed. Mr. Webber is said to have lost in stock etc. at least $3,000, besides a small black boy who was drowned."

Prior to that time the highest stage noted on the Arkansas River of which there was any record was in 1814, and next to that was the flood of 1823. In 1837, when army officers were seeking an eligible site for the new post that was subsequently located at Fort Smith, they reported that at all other places but two, for a distance of thirty miles up and down the river, the flood of 1833 had overflowed the adjacent land for a depth of from one to twenty-five feet. The flood buried in sand Webbers Falls, that Lieutenant Wilkinson in 1807 reported as being "a fall of nearly seven feet perpendicular." The banks of the Arkansas above the Choctaw agency as far up as Harrold's Bluff or Swallow Rock, after the flood waters receded, were "covered with mud, quicksand, and the carcasses of animals destroyed by the water." Captain McClellan, the Choctaw agent, was for some time engaged in cleaning rifles and drying blankets and clothing that had been covered by water for ten days. The loss suffered by the Indians was excessive from the fact that they had all their improvements in the bottoms where they raised nearly all of their corn.

At Fort Gibson the Grand River was out of its banks for more than a week. Travel to the north and east was arrested for twice as long; the flood aggravated the pest of flies, and travelers were compelled for some time to move only at night. Much sickness followed the flood. "Not a family but more or less sick; the Choctaws dying to an alarming extent..... Near the agency there are 3,000 Indians and within the hearing of a gun from this spot 100 have died within five weeks."

In spite of the floods, however, in the autumn of 1833 the more provident Choctaw Indians had a surplus of 40,000 bushels of corn, which the Government purchased to apply on the allowance of the emigrants who were to come the next year. But that did not appease the hunger of a class of earlier arrivals who had consumed their year's allowance of rations and so had no further demands on the Government. Many of those who were not incapacitated by sickness were engaged in maintaining the strife they had brought from the East. Bitter contention over the selection of chiefs and animosity towards the authority that had caused their removal as well as against the members of the tribe who had acquiesced in it, supplemented other agencies in distracting many of them from the occupation of making homes and farms. Farming was neglected by many, and the next year there was much distress from lack of food and want of means to purchase it.