American Explorers in Oklahoma

President Jefferson believed that Louisiana would provide the foundation for a great American empire. In that role it could supply needed natural resources, living room for an expanding population, a barrier against foreign aggression, and space for the resettlement of eastern Indians. Yet Jefferson recognized that effective use of Louisiana’s resources required better knowledge of its topography, its flora and fauna, it rocks and minerals, and its people. His desire for that kind of information led him to dispatch a series of expeditions to undertake scientific exploration of Louisiana.

Early in 1806 the President ordered Captain Richard Sparks to proceed up the Red River to the Twin Villages of the Wichitas and from there to the Rocky Mountains. He was to take careful notes on the country he saw and the people he met. Sparks put together a company of twenty-four soldiers and moved upriver in a small fleet of canoes. But his party barely made it into present-day Oklahoma—if it made it all. A Spanish cavalry unit of several hundred men overran its camp and ordered the captain to return to the American settlements or face arrest. Sparks went back. Obviously the Spanish were very sensitive about any United States party exploring southern Louisiana when boundaries were still indefinite.

Since southern Louisiana remained a mystery, authorities next dispatched Captain Zebulon Pike to search out the origins of the Red River. In July 1806, Pike departed from St. Louis with twenty-three men on a route that took him up the Missouri River to the Osage villages. There he obtained horses and, dodging Spanish patrols, made his way to the Great Bend of the Arkansas River in west-central Kansas. At this point, Lieutenant James Wilkinson became ill and the command was divided. Wilkinson and five men were sent east down the Arkansas while Pike and the rest of the troops went west up the river to its source. Pike’s party pushed on to the Rocky Mountains, eventually being arrested by a Spanish patrol and subjected to imprisonment in Mexico before returning to the United States.

Meanwhile, in November and December, Wilkinson’s party worked its way down the Arkansas River in two elm bark canoes. Shallow water soon forced them to march along the riverbank. By the time they had reached northeastern Oklahoma they were barely able to navigate the river in two dugout canoes. Winter came early and hard in 1806. The Arkansas filled with ice, and snowstorms limited visibility. The Wilkinson Party suffered greatly, losing supplies of food and ammunition and experiencing severe frostbite. Some relief came from Osage hunters encamped along the river’s edge.

Wilkinson celebrated New Year’s Day 1807 by leaving Oklahoma. Although his group had limited time for observation, the journey shows that they had learned a good deal. The Osages were numerous and in “a constant state of warfare” with any Cherokees, Creeks, and Choctaws who ventured into the area. Wilkinson heard about a prairie that was encrusted with salt and about lead mines “northwest” of the Osages, and he passed over a seven-foot waterfall (Webbers Falls) on the Arkansas. He also documented that American hunters and trappers were already working the Poteau River. President Jefferson found the official report extremely interesting, especially the part about any entire prairie of salt.

It was the prospect of salt that brought the third official expedition to Oklahoma in 1811. Salt was an important commodity on the frontier, necessary for meat preservation and food seasoning. George Sibley led the expedition, and, being a subagent from Fort Osage, was given the primary mission of negotiating peace alliances between the Osages and western Kansas tribes. He also used the occasion to lead his party into Oklahoma to look at the storied deposits of salt.

Sibley’s visit to the Great Salt Plains revealed wafer-thin sheets of salt on the vast flat glistening “like a brilliant field of snow.” The sight so excited Sibley’s imagination that he pressed on to the Big Salt Plains, the salt deposits mentioned by Lieutenant Wilkinson five years earlier. The “beautifully white” rock salt, Sibley wrote, was “unquestionably superior to any that I ever saw.” Altogether, there was in northern Oklahoma and “inexhaustible store of ready made salt” just waiting to enter “into channels of commerce.”

The Long-Bell Expedition

No military expedition yielded more information about Oklahoma than did that commanded by Stephen Long. Yet it was an accident. Long was assigned to search out the sources of the Red and Arkansas rivers and to descend each to the Mississippi River. In July 1820 he led his command west from Omaha along the Platte River to the Rocky Mountains. There he divided his party, similarly to the Pike-Wilkinson expedition, sending Captain John Bell and twelve men down the Arkansas while he continued south to the headwaters of the Red.

Bell, like Wilkinson before him, found the Arkansas route tough going. Only this time the problem was not cold temperatures but hot ones. When Bell and his party got to Oklahoma in mid-August, ninety degree temperatures had worn out the animals and men and made game difficult to find. For food they were reduced to eating skunks, a fawn taken literally from the jaws of a wolf, hawks, turkeys, turtles, mussels, and boiled corn. An occasional deer, and grain and melons taken from abandoned Osage campsites restored their strength and kept them going until they reached Fort Smith on September 9.

Thomas Say, a noted zoologist, was a member of Bell’s command. His task was to make and record observations on the plants, animals, minerals, and native peoples the party encountered along the Arkansas. Unfortunately his five large journals were lost when three soldiers deserted and took those valuable materials with them. From the few remaining notebooks, Say later published the only account of this expedition.

In the meantime, Long continued southward from the Arkansas looking for the headwaters of the Red River. His party also included a noted biologist, Edwin James. Eventually Long encountered a broad stream which he took to be the Red River, an assumption that he held for nearly seven weeks. Actually it was the Canadian, the waterway the French had followed to Santa Fe. Riding horses in the bed of the river, the Long Party reached the Antelope Hills and Oklahoma on August 17. James was impressed with the wildlife he saw: “Herds of bison, wild horses, elk, and deer, are seen quietly grazing in these extensive and fertile pastures.” A prairie-dog colony, a mile square in area, filled him with awe, as did flocks of white pelicans, egrets and snowy herons, and the occasional bald eagle, not to mention tarantulas.

When the Long Party arrived at the Arkansas on September 10, 1820, they recognized to their “mortification” that they were not on the Red River, but the Canadian. Both Long and James were embarrassed and disappointed, even more so because they knew that they did not have the energy, the time, or the means to go back and do the job rights. Instead they pushed on to Fort Smith, where three days later they were reunited with Bell and the remainder of the original party.

The most useful and complete information assembled about the resources and people of Oklahoma did not come from government-sponsored expeditions. Rather it was gathered by the English botanist Thomas Nuttall. In 1819 he spent several months in Oklahoma gathering botanical samples. His expedition followed a route up the Poteau River and then down the Kiamichi River. Along the way Nuttall marveled at the wildlife he saw (bears, bison, panthers, and snakes) and the loveliness of the prairies and mountains. “Nothing could at this season exceed the beauty of these plains,” he wrote, “enameled with such an uncommon variety of flowers of vivid tints, possessing all the brilliancy of tropical productions.”

The quest for economic success of Anthony Glass took him up the Red River only two years after Sparks had been turned back. In July 1808, with permission from American Indian agents, Glass and ten others went to participate in a trade fair hosted by the Wichitas and involved all of the Southern Plains tribes. Because of Spanish apprehensions regarding American intentions, Glass was supposed to following the north bank of the Red River to the Twin Villages. Actually he took a route parallel to the Red on the Texas side.

Glass presented the greetings of the President to the Wichitas and expressed his own desire to trade with them and their Comanche allies. He stayed in the area for six month swapping horses and tracking down a meteorite revered by the Indians. His final report tells much about Wichita cultural habits. Particularly important were his observations that the Wichita were a people under siege and held virtually as captives in their own villages by the Osages. Also significant was Glass’s report that an American trading party has already passed through the villages on it way to Santa Fe.

Glass was able to ascend the Red River when two American military expeditions (Sparks and Long) had failed. Other commercial explorers would follow him to the Twin Villages and beyond, but most focused their activities in southeastern Oklahoma. These hunters and trappers are nameless today, but they were an independent lot who had little respect fro the needs and rights of Indians. The army tried to expel them from the area in 1819—but with little success.

American traders along the Arkansas tended to concentrate in the Three Forks area where the Arkansas, Verdigris, and the Grand rivers merge. Near there the Arkansas band of the Osages resided. French traders out of Arkansas Post frequented the Osages’ Verdigris River villages from the time they were established.

With the onset of the American period, there was even more commercial activity at the Three Forks. The Chouteau brothers accounted for much of this. Pierre and Auguste Chouteau had made fortunes trading with the Osage along the Missouri River. The brothers had lost their monopoly of that trade, granted by the Spanish, and in 1802 they relocated their considerable operation among the 3,000 members of the Arkansas Osage band.

Joseph Bogy was another early Three Forks trader. Of French extraction, he had operated trading establishments earlier at Kaskaskia, Illinois and at Arkansas Post. On the Verdigris he constructed a post of picket logs and traded extensively with the Osages. That commerce in part accounted for his loss of a boatload of trade goods to a Choctaw war party in 1807.

With the general westward movement of the American people after the War of 1812, both the population and the range of activity in the Three Forks area increased. Joining Bogy—the Chouteau family was temporarily absent—were merchants, hunters, salt manufacturers, and even farmers.

The Chouteau interests returned to the Three Forks area when Colonel A.P. Chouteau, the son of Pierre and a graduate of West Point, opened a post on Grand River at Salina in 1817. Chouteau had just completed a prison term in Mexico, his reward for taking trade goods across the plains of Santa Fe without Spanish permission. He immediately purchased the interests of a few competitors near the mouth of the Verdigris and even added a keelboat construction operation. Fluent in the Osage language and the husband of one white and four Indian wives. For the next decade Chouteau reigned as the merchant prince of the Three Forks area until the commercial activity of the region shifted from hunting to agriculture.

In 1819 the United States negotiated the Adams-Onís Treaty with Spain. This agreement finally defined the southern boundary of the Louisiana Purchase from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean. Spain negotiated the treaty in part to help ensure continued control of its Mexican provinces. The idea was to protect them from North American aggression by a well-defined boundary. But Spain’s problem was not external; it was internal. Two years after the Adams-Onís Treaty, Mexico declared it independence from Spain and made it stick. This had important implications fro the traders and merchants at Three Forks and St. Louis because it offered hope that the new government might liberalize its trade policies and permit Americans to trade with Santa Fe and other Rio Grand settlements.

Although Mexican policy did allow these traders the economic freedom to pursue trade with Santa Fe, the routes to get there were long and rough. Several expeditions by various traders showed that it was possible to get to the dreamed destination, the profits, due high costs for the trip, were not enough to remove the focus from Three Forks and St. Louis.
What is the Meaning?
In 1803 when the flag of the United States rose over Oklahoma very little was known of its resources. Official and unofficial scientific expeditions discovered much about Oklahoma, especially along the Arkansas, Cimarron, Canadian, and Poteau rivers. Hunters and traders operating out of Three Forks and along the Red River discovered even more. By 1825, the “nature and extent” of the land that is now Oklahoma—what Jefferson had set out to know—were reasonably known. Adjoined to “the Great American Desert” and bounded on two sides by Mexico, the area was not likely to attract even the energetic American farmers. Given those prospects, Oklahoma was idea—from a white perspective—as a resettlement zone for eastern Indians who, federal officials assumed, wanted to escape the pressures of civilization.

President Jefferson’s Indian Policy:

Combined with these views, and to be prepared to against the occupation of Louisiana by a powerful and enterprising people, it is important that, setting less value on interior extension of purchases from the Indians, we bend our whole views tot he purchase and settlement of the country on the Mississippi, from its mouth to its northern regions, that we may be able to present as strong a front on our western as on our eastern border, and plant on the Mississippi itself the means of its own defense. . . . Of the means, however, of obtaining what we wish, you will be the best judge; and I have given you this view of the system which we suppose will best promote the interest of the Indians and ourselves, and finally consolidate our whole country to one nation only; that you may be enabled the better to adapt your means to the object, for this purpose we have given you a general commission for treating. The crisis is pressing: whatever can now be obtained must be obtained quickly. The occupation of New Orleans, hourly expected, by the French, is already felt like a light breeze by the Indians. You know the sentiments they entertain of that nation; under the hope of their protection they will immediately stiffen against cessions of lands to us. We had better, therefore, do at once what can now be done.

I must repeat that this letter is to be considered as private and friendly, and is not to control any particular instructions which you may receive through official channel. You will also perceive how sacredly it must be kept within your own breast, and especially how improper to be understood by the Indians. For their interests and their tranquility it is best they should see only the present age of their history.
Address to the Wolf and People of the Mandan Nation, December 30, 1806
My children, the Wolf and people of the Mandan nation—I take you by the hand of friendship and give you a hearty welcome to the seat of the government of the United States. The journey which have taken to visit your fathers on this side of our island is a long one, and your having undertaken it is a proof that you desired to become acquainted with us. . . .

My friends and children, we are descended from the old nations which live beyond the great water, but we and our forefathers have been so long here that we seem like you to have grown out of this land. We consider ourselves no longer of the old nations beyond the great water, but as united in one family with our red brethren here. The French , the English, the Spanish, have now agreed with us to retire from all the country which you and we hold between Canada and Mexico, and never more to return to it. And remember the words I now speak to you, my children, they are never to return again. We are now your fathers; and you shall not lose by the change. As soon as Spain had agreed to withdraw from all the waters of the Missouri and Mississippi, I felt the desire of becoming acquainted with all my red children beyond the Mississippi, and of uniting them with us as we have those on this side of that river, in the bonds of peace and friendship. I wished to learn that we could do to benefit them by furnishing them the necessaries they want in exchange for their furs and peltries. I therefore sent our beloved man, Captain [Meriwether] Lewis, on of my own family, to go up the Missouri River to get acquainted with all the Indian nations in its neighborhood, to take them by the hand, deliver my talks to them, and to inform us in what way we could be useful to them. Your nation received him kindly, you have taken them by the hand and been friendly to him. My children, I thank you for the services you rendered him, and for your attention to his words. He will now tell us where we should establish trading houses to be convenient to you all, and what we must send to them.

My friends and children, I have now an important advice to give you. I have already told you that you and all the red men are my children, and I wish you to live in peace and friendship with one another as brethren of the same family ought to do. How much better is it for neighbors to help than to hurt one another; how much happier must it make them. If you will cease to make war on one another, if you will live in friendship with all mankind, you can employ all your time in providing food and clothing for yourselves and your families. Your men will not be destroyed in war, and your women and children will lie down to sleep in their cabins without fear of being surprised by their enemies and killed or carried away. Your numbers will be increased instead of diminishing, and you will live in plenty and in quiet. My children, I have given this advice to all your red brethren on this side of the Mississippi; they are following it, they are increasing in their numbers, are learning to clothe and provide for their families as we do. Remember then my advice, my children, carry it home to your people, and tell them that from the day that they have become all of the same family, from the day that we became father to them all, we wish, as a true father should do, that we may all live together as one household, and that before they strike one another, they should go to their fathers and let him endeavor to make up the quarrel.

My children, you are come from the other side of our great island, from where the sun sets, to see your new friends at the sun rising. . . . I very much desire that you should not stop here, but go . . . and visit our great cities . . . and see how many friends and brothers you have here. . . . I wish you, my children, to see all you can, and to tell your people all you see; because I am sure the more they know of us, the more they will be our hearty friends. . . .

My children, I have long desired to see you; I have now opened my heart to you, let my words sink into your hearts and never be forgotten. If ever lying people or bad spirits should raise up clouds between us, call to mind what I have said, and what you have seen yourselves. Be sure there are some lying spirits between us; let us come together as friends and explain to each other what is misrepresented or misunderstood, the clouds will fly away like morning, fog, and the sun of friendship appear and shrine forever bright and clear between us.

Cherokee Women
By Theda Perdue¹⁷
Prior to contact with Europeans, the Cherokees lived in the fertile valleys of the southern Appalachians. They conceived of their world as a system of categories that opposed and balanced one another. In this belief system, women balanced men just as summer balanced winter, plants balanced animals, and farming balanced hunting. Peace and prosperity depended on the maintenance of boundaries between these opposing categories, and blurring the lines between them threatened disaster. The balance their categories and, in particular, between men and women may not have permitted equality in a modern sense, but their concern with balance made hierarchy, which often serves to oppress women, indefensible. Men did not dominate women, and women were not subservient to men. Men knew little about the world of women; they had no power over women and no control over women’s activities. Women had their own arena of power, and any threat to its integrity jeopardized the cosmic order. So it had been since the beginning of time.

Like their ancestors, the Cherokees divided labor according to gender. Men hunted because the first man had been responsible for providing his family with meat. Women farmed because their ancestral mother was the source of corn. Men helped clear fields and plant crops, but the primary responsibility for agriculture rested with women. When women accompanied men on the winter hunt, they confined their activities to gathering nuts and firewood, cooking for the hunters, and perhaps preparing skins. By modern standards such a division of labor was not very efficient. Men spent many summer hours gambling, smoking, or talking while women worked in the fields. And in winter, most women stayed in warm houses while men traveled great distances in bitter cold to search for game. But the Cherokees were not particularly concerned with the optimum use of their labor supply because for them, tasks involved far more than the production of commodities. A person’s job was an aspect of their gender, a source of economic and political power, and an affirmation of cosmic order and balance.

Theoretically, the division of labor was very rigid, but in reality, men and women often willingly helped one another. Men assisted in several agricultural chores, including clearing fields and harvesting crops. Although, they did not hoe and weed, Cherokee men helped women plant the large fields that lay on the outskirts of their towns. Between planting and harvest, the men retired from agriculture and the women assumed total responsibility. Women not only tended the crops in the large fields but also planted smaller gardens near their homes. These they fenced with hickory or oak saplings tied to stakes. In their “kitchen gardens” the women cultivated another kind of corn, which was smaller than field corn and ripened in only two months, and they grew beans, peas, and other vegetables.

Although they probably spent far more time farming than European men credited them with, women did have other means for supplying their families with the earth’s bounties. In particular, Cherokee women were prodigious gatherers. In the fall, they burned the underbrush in the woods and collected vast quantities of nuts, which they used in bread or for oil. In summer, they picked berries and fruit. Throughout the year, they relied on wild plants for seeds, leaves (which were never eaten raw), roots, and stems to add variety to their diet and to tide them over in case provisions ran out before harvest or the corn crop failed. The women searched for bee trees and collected honey, and they made sugar from maple sap.

The responsibility for a bountiful harvest, though, fell to the women. If the Cherokees experience a drought, the women summoned a priest who tried to produce rain. In addition to ensuring favorable growing conditions, women were also responsible for protecting the crops from predators, one of the more dangerous and demanding chores associated with farming. In the outlying fields, the Cherokees built large scaffolds from which they could watch for crows and raccoons. The task of sitting alone on scaffolds all summer, the season for war, fell to elderly women.

Cherokee women also made a variety of other things not directly related to food but necessary to the well being of their households or for their own pleasure. They made their cooking utensils and other pottery from clay. Vessels included pitchers, bowls, dishes, basins, and platters. Cherokee women constructed baskets, which served as containers and sieves, out of river or swamp cane, which they cut into strips. Dyes for baskets included bloodroot, walnut bark, and butternut. Rectangular baskets usually measured about 3 feet long, 1-½ feet wide, and I foot deep. In addition to baskets and pots, gourds and skins served as containers. Women hollowed out large bottle gourds for carrying water. For storing oil and honey, they turned whole deerskins into flasks by cutting off the head and feet and sewing up all openings except the neck. Women made their clothing from a number of materials, including buffalo hair they collected after the animals had shed, which they wore into garments and pouches. Deerskins as well as fabrics made of hemp and mulberry bark were sewn into clothing with bone needles and thread of sinew. For their houses, women wove cane mats and hemp carpets, which they painted bright colors. They also probably carved the soapstone pipes they smoked. Women provided wood and water for their households. Carrying water, associated with fertility, was a gender-specific task.

Cherokee women, then, had relatively little free time. Even in the winter they had to keep the fire going, prepare food, and make any items they could indoors. In addition, some women followed the men on long hunts lasting three or four months in order to perform their customary chores—carrying water, gathering wood, and cooking. Consequently, it is not surprising that Europeans generally believed Cherokee women to be victims of male exploitation.

It was certainly true that beyond their help at planting and harvesting, Cherokee men had no role in cultivating gardens or fields, which Europeans attributed to the men’s laziness. However, the men were not idle; their obligations to the community differed from those of women. Perhaps women willingly performed most of the work in Cherokee society because they also controlled the fruits of their labor, the crops; the means of production, the land; and the result of production, the children.

The primary landholding unit in Cherokee society was the household, and the produce from the household’s fields went into its own crib. A household consisted of an extended family linked by women, typically an elderly woman, her daughters and their children, the women’s husbands, and any unmarried sons. Married sons did not live in the household. They resided with their own wives because the Cherokees were matrilocal; husbands and children lived in the households of their wives and mothers. A husband and wife, therefore, occupied buildings belonging to the wife, or rather to the wife’s family, and marriage did not alter a woman’s right to her property. Such an arrangement gave women control over the crops they produced and a sense of ownership in their houses and fields.

The connection between women and corn gave women considerable status and economic power because the Cherokees depended heavily on that crop for subsistence. Corn was the preferred food, particularly for those who faced competition or danger. Warriors, for example, ate only parched corn. Apparently, the Cherokees considered meat to be more weakening than corn and its consumption problematic for those who faced various kinds of trials. In the 17^th century before the advent of the deerskin trade, hunting conceivably had become so insignificant to the Cherokee economy that it was largely ritualistic. Traditional Cherokee ceremonial life may, in fact, reflect the relative importance of agriculture and hunting; most public ceremonies, and in particular the Green Corn Ceremony, were associated with farming; none directly related to the chase.

The Cherokees’ understanding of the cosmos helped them understand their place in the world. Although the Cherokees did not have “deities” in the sense of physical representations of spiritual beings they worshipped, they did personify many things in the natural world and assigned them religious significance. A female spirit sometimes appeared as corn, while the Cherokees regarded thunder and rivers as male spirits. The most important “deities” were the sun and the moon: the sun was female and the moon was male. In some ways, this description of the sun and moon symbolizes Cherokee gender roles. The day belongs to the sun, the night to the moon. Rarely can both be seen in the sky at the same time. Similarly, men and women had separate and distinct responsibilities. But the Cherokees viewed the tasks both women and men performed and the contributions they made as essential to their society and, like the sun and moon, to the integrity of the universe.

The Southeastern Indians
By W. David Baird and Danney Goble¹⁸
The name of our state, Oklahoma, is a Choctaw Indian word. The seals of five Indian nations—the Choctaws, the Chickasaws, the Creeks, the Seminoles, and the Cherokees—appear on the great seal of Oklahoma. From Atoka to Wewoka, countless place-names in the state originate with the Five Tribes. Today, nearly two-thirds of all the Indian people within our state are members of one of the Five Tribes.

How do we explain this close connection between Oklahoma and the Five Tribes? Primarily, it is because people of those tribes dominated the history of our state for most of the nineteenth century. They were the first to develop the land rather than just exploit it. They organized Oklahoma’s earliest schools and churches, as well as its first constitutional government. In sum, the real pioneers of modern Oklahoma were not Spanish, not French, not European American; our pioneers were people of those Southeastern tribes. To help us appreciate their contribution, we need to know something about them before their arrival in Oklahoma. Although there were many differences, all of the tribes held many beliefs and customs in common at the time of the arrival of the Europeans.

There were three worlds in the universe. The perfectly harmonious Upper World was the residence of gods like the Sun, the Moon, Thunder, and Corn. Monsters and witches lived in the Under World, which was filled with chaos. Southeastern Indians lived in the third world, or “This World,” which they conceived of as a flat island floating on water and hanging on four cords. This World benefited from fire, which was a gift on the Sun, but it was often troubled by the activities of spiritual beings from the Under World. These visitors from the Under World had to be treated carefully. If they were slighted, they might strike the offender with disease or even death.

The Five Tribes believed that ghosts were the source of great misery. When a person died, friends and relatives shouted and made noise to frighten the dead person’s ghost up into the western sky. Unfortunately, the ghost did not always stay away but might return when it was lonely and haunt its relatives. In contrast, spirits known as the Immortals were friendly beings, who looked after tired hunters and helped defend villages from enemy attack. They were invisible except when they wanted to be seen. The Immortals lived on high peaks where no timber grew.
Traditional Political Organization
The Southeastern Indians lived in political units known as chiefdoms. The territories of a chiefdom could extend over several miles and contained at least one village, where residents would gather to discuss matters of common concern, play games, and participate in religious ceremonies. Often several chiefdoms joined together to form larger political units. The Choctaw chiefdoms coalesced into three to five divisions that together comprised the tribe as a whole. Among Creeks, however, some fifty or more chiefdoms, known as “towns,” were virtually autonomous. Cherokee chiefdoms were independent too, although a National Council composed of representatives from the chiefdoms, had some influence when the interests of all were involved.

A council of leading men chose the head of the chiefdom, generally from one of the more important clans. At their meetings each member of the council, seated according to his rank, listened politely to all speeches. The purpose of the council was to achieve a consensus of opinion and harmony of action. The objective was the same in district or national councils.

There was no money system among the Five Tribes. Goods changed hands in barter transactions where on Indian might swap grain for the meat of another Indian. Products also moved from person to person as gifts. Members of the Five Tribes wee more impressed with generosity than individual wealth. They chose their leaders because of their willingness to share their possessions with the rest of the chiefdom. In turn, the leaders had an obligation to be generous, especially in the distribution of the fruits of a common hunt or harvest.

In relationships with the Indian, the goal of the United States was quite simple. Its leaders wanted to transform the tribes people so that they behaved like white Americans. The Indians were to set aside their natural way of life in the wilderness for one dependent on agriculture and domestic arts (spinning and weaving), facilitated by reading, writing, and arithmetic, and redeemed by the beliefs of Christianity. In other words, the United States officials wanted to civilize the Indians and then assimilate them into American society.

The Five Tribes responded to the civilization program differently. Some made it clear that they did not want any part of it. Others welcomed it, because they saw it as a way or preserving their tribal independence, since “civilized” people got more respect from the whites than did “savages.” To win respect of the outside world, the leaders of the Five Tribes set a course of change. Although the members of the prominent mixed-blood families were most receptive to the changes, “progressives” in favor of the changes came from every level of tribal society.
New Religious Beliefs
The Southeastern Indians, as a general rule, had little interest in the spiritual opportunities presented by the Christian missionaries. At first the Cherokees permitted missionary societies to open schools only if the teachers kept their religious convictions to themselves. Until 1822 the Creeks kept missionaries out of their domain. The Choctaws were so impressed with Presbyterian gospel that ten years passed before thee was a single convert among them!

The removal crisis of the 1820s and 1830s both helped and hurt the cause of Christianity among the Five Tribes. In despair Choctaws by the thousands attended both Methodist and Presbyterian camp meetings and professed belief in Christianity. On the other hand, the Creeks became stridently anti-Christian, attributing some of the pressure for removal on the missionaries. There was similar feeling among the Cherokees.

In none of the Five Tribes did Christianity replace traditional Indian religion. The sacred fires continued to burn in most villages. What the Indians took from the missionaries they took on their own terms and adapted to their own needs and perspectives.
New Political Organization
The forms and functions of tribal government changed dramatically under the pressures of white civilization and the encouragement of a small group of wealthy mixed-blood Indians. In 1808 the first written law of the Cherokees established a police force that was to find, try, and execute criminals as well as assure the descent of property through the father’s line. To make government more efficient, the Cherokees established an executive committee of thirteen members, and by 1817 the National Committee had become a powerful and independent executive body. In 1819 the Cherokees adopted a written constitution modeled on that of the United States, creating a government with legislative, executive, and judicial branches. The Cherokees even established a capital city at New Echota, Georgia.

In 1826, the Choctaws wrote their first constitution. It provided for a central government with an executive of three district chiefs and a council of elected representatives. Among its first laws were those ordering the construction of a national council house, providing for inheritance through the father’s line, and discouraging polygamy. The Chickasaws began adopting written laws in 1829. The Creeks and the Seminoles did not enact written codes of law and establish constitutional governments until after removal to Oklahoma.

As United States currency began to circulate within the tribal domains, Indians opened their own stores and trading posts. One of the most successful merchants was James Vann (Cherokee). Still others, like John Ross (Cherokee), built and operated ferries at crucial river crossings.

In the household, the introduction of spinning wheels and weaving looms changed the work patterns of many women. No longer did wives and daughters labor in the fields planting and tending the corn crop. Rather their days largely were spent in the house manufacturing cloth and sewing clothes.
Resistance to Civilization
Not all Southeastern Indians embraced the “civilization.” These “traditionalists”, who held fast to the old way, are often associated with tribal members with no white ancestors, the full-bloods. However, there where mixed-blood traditionalists, but they were usually aspiring leaders who adopted traditional perspectives to primarily to win their political support. John Ross (Cherokee) and Alexander McGillivray (Creek) were two prominent mixed-blood traditionalists.

Resistance to “civilization” was found in many different forms. The Bowl (Cherokee) and his followers chose a peaceful path of resistance by leaving their traditional homeland, crossing the Mississippi River, and settling in Arkansas. A small, militant group of the Creeks known as the Red Sticks would go to the other extreme by taking up arms against the American during the War of 1812—a decision that would bring increased antagonism from white Americans on all members of the Five Tribes once the war was over.

The Southern Indians were far advanced in civilization prior to the time of their first contact with the whites. Their economy was based on agriculture, and corn constituted the chief food in their diet. In addition, they raised pumpkins, several varieties of beans, squash, artichokes and tobacco. They utilized the wild fruits of the forest, and made oil for cooking from acorns and hickory nuts. They fished and hunted to secure their meat and fat for cooking, while bear, deer, beaver, otter, and other skins constituted most of the sources of their bedding, carpets, and clothing. As soon as white contacts were made with them, they adopted many of the white customs and methods and made quick adjustments to them. This ability to adjust themselves to competitive society was of immense benefit when the frontiersmen began to press heavily upon them.

Four influences seemed to have predominated in the transformation of these Southern Indians. One influence was the whites who infiltrated into the Indian country, became members of the tribes, intermarried with them and came to exert a large influence in Indian life and government. A second force for regeneration was the United States government which through its Indian agents, trading stations, and protection by the United States soldiers exerted a salutary influence on the tribes. The missionaries were a third influence which induced the Indians to accept, at least in part, Christian ideals and customs for the more repulsive primitive Indian customs. Finally the Indians themselves definitely accepted the white man's civilization and government in order to compete with the white civilization and combat the pressure of the States about them.

The first white man to come in contact with the Southern Indians was De Soto in his expedition 1539-1541. The Spaniards did not immediately follow this expedition up with further explorations of settlements. The French who settled Biloxi, Mobile, and New Orleans had considerable contact with the Choctaws and Creeks. They incurred the enmity of the Chickasaws and were never able to win their friendship. A French mission existed among the Choctaws for some time in the early part of the 18th century but with little evidence of converting the Indians to Catholicism or of permanent results. Christian Priber, a French Jesuit, was among the Cherokees from 1736 to about 1745. He seems to have taught many Bible stories to the Cherokees and laid a foundation of knowledge that the Protestant missionaries built upon when they came to the Nation about 1800. Many French intermarried among the Choctaws and Creeks. Greenwood LeFlore, Chief of the Choctaws at the time of removal, was the son of a French father. Alexander McGillivray, Chief of the Creeks during Washington's administration, was the son of a French-Creek mother.

In the English colonies the Germans and particularly the Scotch or Scotch Irish usually occupied the frontier positions and often served as traders in the Indian trade. Such men naturally formed marriage alliances with the Indian women and came to reside in the Indian country. The Revolutionary war gave an added momentum for white men to press into the Indian country. These men were often Tories and sometimes caused friction between the Indians and the United States. They often came from families of wealth and culture. They took their slaves with them and set up farms in the Indian country. The sons of these pioneers were educated in the States. After the Creek War 1813-1814 and Jackson's attack on the foreign traders in Florida in 1817, they supported the United States more loyally and came to exert a wholesome influence in Indian culture and government. Their homes and farms were, whether intentional or not, models of excellence for the Indians to copy and their home methods tended gradually to be absorbed by the Indians. The tribes, from about 1810 until the time the removals to the west were completed, were controlled in a large measure by these mixed blood Indians.

The early Indian policy of the United States, strangely enough, was stated by George III, King of England, in a proclamation of October 7, 1763. In this proclamation the Indians' right of occupancy was recognized over their hunting grounds and they were not to be molested in that possession. Subjects of Great Britain were to remove from recognized Indian lands and to refrain from future settlements. The right of purchase of Indian lands was reserved to the government and private parties were forbidden to make such purchases. The right to trade with the Indians was strictly limited to persons licensed by government officials.

The Congress under the Articles of Confederation followed the lines of the Proclamation of King George and in a Chickasaw treaty of 1786 with the United States, certain specified lands were guaranteed to the Indians, white intruders were to be removed from there, the Indians, pledged themselves to trade only with traders licensed by the United States government, and both sides pledged themselves not to injure the innocent of the other by retaliation. The United States made treaties with the Cherokees in 1785 and the Choctaws in 1786 in which like terms were made.

The white settlers continued to press on to Indian lands and new treaties were soon made in which the Indians were forced to cede additional lands. A topic common to most of these treaties of the 1790's was the insertion of clauses regulating horse stealing between whites and Indians along the frontier. The Indians except the Choctaws had been friends of the English during the Revolutionary War. They had foraged along the frontier and obtained a supply of livestock. They learned to conserve and propagate these horses, cattle and other livestock. These stock, increased by many introduced by the whites, served to lift the level of the Indian life. The food supply of the Indians was increased and horses were beginning to be used, for plowing to replace the crude hand methods of earlier days. As beneficial as the acquisition of livestock was to the Indians, horse stealing was one of the very surest means of friction between the white frontiersmen and the Indians. The Indian agents made strenuous attempts to repress horse stealing. Benjamin Hawkins, the United States Agent to the Creeks, required horses offered for sale in the Creek country to be registered. Soon the conditions improved and less and less friction arose from horse stealing.

The Creek Treaty of August 7, 1790 pledged the Creek tribe to restore to the troops of the United States such whites or Negroes as they might have in their possession. The treaty of June 19, 1796 added property taken from citizens of the United States to the list. The treaty of January 8, 1821 specified that the Creeks should pay to the State of Georgia in five annual installments the value of property taken before 1802 provided that the five payments should not exceed $250,000.00. Undoubtedly the Creeks were held responsible for Negroes who fled through the Creek Nation and into the Seminole country. This led to much later controversy. At the time of the Seminole removal, the Creeks and other tribes assisted the United States in despoiling them of their Negroes. Although many of such slaves were the legitimate property of citizens of the United States, the matter became a racket in which Indians and whites participated. This matter delayed and sorely complicated the Seminole removal and advancement problem.

The Indian agents, blacksmiths, and interpreters did fine work for a number of years inducing the Indians to use horse culture, to raise more livestock, to change communal cultivation for individual fields, and to induce the Indian men to do a greater portion of the work in cultivating the fields. They showed the Indians how to care for, protect, and increase their livestock. They taught the Indians to plant and care for many varieties of fruit instead of depending on the wild fruits as they had formerly done. In the way of home conveniences they taught the Indian men to manufacture spinning wheels, looms, and like devices for the making of cloth in the homes. Many of these tools and articles were introduced and soon the primitive Indian clothing gave way, almost entirely, to civilized dress.

The traders from the Spanish territory in their trade relations with the Southern Indians were a source of much trouble to the United States. They plied the Indians with whisky and drove hard bargains with their drunken customers. They, further, incited the Indians to hostilities against the United States. These conditions were aggravated by the Seminoles who were in the Spanish territory and freely harbored slaves fleeing from the adjoining states. Alexander McGillivray, Chief of the Creeks during Washington's first administration, was in league with the traders and benefited by the trade. He played British, Spanish and Americans off against each other and was under the pay of each. Such situations were very detrimental to our relations with the Indian tribes.

Congress under the Articles of Confederation had already evolved a plan that aided materially in combating the menace of the foreign traders. The government established trading houses with goods owned by it. These goods could be provided to the Indians cheaper than those from Pensacola. Not only was whiskey prohibited in their trading but they cooperated in keeping it from the Indians. Between 1795 and 1810 fourteen such stations were established with four of them among the five tribes. These trading stations were well distributed and did much to break the power of the Spanish and British in these tribes. Their goods were cheaper than their competitors. They sought to cooperate with the Indian agents in introducing plants, animals, farm tools, and home utensils among the Indians. When the system was discontinued in 1822, it was found that the stations had been operated at a financial loss to the federal government. They should be given, however, much credit for the forward progress of the Indians.

These earlier treaties of the five tribes with the United States provided the tribes with blacksmiths and interpreters. The Cherokee treaty of February 27, 1819, provided for a tract of land 12 miles square to be set aside as a school fund. The lands were sold by the United States and the proceeds invested as Cherokee school fund. The Choctaw treaty of 1820 likewise provided 54 sections of land for sale and investment as a school fund. In 1825, the United States, in addition, made permanent a Choctaw annuity of $6000 which they had been using for schools. Then under the treaty of September 27, 1830, provision was made for the education of 20 Choctaw youths annually for twenty years. The Creek treaty of November 15, 1827 provided for $10,000 for education and $5,000 for relief. The sum of $5,000 was to be spent for Creek youths at "Choctaw Academy in Kentucky," $2,000 at two schools in Creek Nation and $3,000 for mills, cards, and wheels. The Chickasaw Treaty of May 24, 1834 likewise provided $3,000 yearly for 15 years for the education of Chickasaw youths in the states. The Cherokee treaty of December 29, 1835 set aside $50,000 for a fund for education and care of orphans and $200,000 in addition to existing school funds for a permanent school fund. These illustrate the beginnings of the school funds and of aid to education on the part of these tribes.

As a forerunner of an active missionary effort among the Indians, the Moravians were the first Protestant denomination to establish a school among these tribes. This school was opened at Spring Place, Georgia in 1801. Soon after this they established four stations among the Chickasaws.

The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, a cooperative board of Presbyterian and Congregational churches, was next in this field. The Indians had requested schools and not churches. This Board therefore placed its major emphasis upon schools, but was mildly evangelistic from the beginning. The missionaries established Brainard Mission which gave the name to Missionary Ridge near present Chattanooga, Tennessee in January 1817. The next year they established Eliott Mission on the Yalobusha River in Northern Mississippi. This station was on the border between the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations. These institutions aimed to give the Indian children training in agriculture, in mechanics, and in household arts. The missionaries worked side by side with their charges in the school homes, shops, and farms. The younger Indians progressed rapidly and soon acquired facility in the English language and in various arts. The adult Indians copied the clothing, houses and agriculture of the mission stations. The stations thus became, in a sense, experiment farms for the Indian tribes.

These first American Board stations were followed by others. In 1828 there were seven mission stations and 34 workers among the Cherokees and nine stations and 34 workers among the Choctaws and one station among the Chickasaws. This Board soon began the evangelization of the Indians. Many prominent Cherokees were converted and became members of Churches established in that Nation. Evangelization was slow, at first, in the Choctaw Nation but some definite progress was made.

The Baptist and Methodist Churches entered the field of missions to these Indians somewhat later than the Moravians, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists. The Baptists established one school among the Creeks in 1823 and two school among the Cherokees soon after. The Methodists had one school among the Creeks and four missionaries among the Cherokees in 1828. The active work of these two Churches was in camp meetings and in evangelistic effort. The more prominent mixed blood Indians often allied themselves with the Churches, and hastened the adoption of Christian ideals.

The three factors treated above constitute a great source of Indian advancement. The Indians themselves tremendously furthered the objectives of these benefactors when they began to choose the "white man's road" of their own volition. The Cherokees met in 1808 with all the 7 clans present and passed an act of oblivion for past offenses and renounced future retaliation. After this date only horse thieves might be killed without trial and a provision was made for trials for them. Regulating companies were organized to enforce the law and punish horse thieves and murderers and to probate estates.

The Cherokee legislation was amplified in 1810. The accidental killing of Indians was not to be punished. The murderer was to be punished although he might be the brother of the deceased. This law as the previous one left the thief of a horse at the mercy of the owner of the horse, and the murderer of the horse thief should not be punished.

A very distinct step forward was made in an act of the Cherokee Council of October 24, 1820. This act organized the Cherokee Nation into eight court districts and provided for a system of district and appellate courts and for district Councils. Each district was to have one Judge and a Marshal. A circuit Judge was provided for each two districts. A company of light horse police was provided to accompany judges and punish offenders. A council house was established in each district and Councils met in the spring and fall. The act provided for the collection of debts. A ranger was created to take up stray horses and if possible find their owners. A rigid system of permits to traders and white laborers was provided for in October of 1819. The occupation taxes arising from the law of 1819 were used in defraying the cost of the courts.

The Choctaws soon made some notable attempts to discard their ancient customs and adopt the white civilization. As an example, a particularly repulsive burial custom of placing their dead on scaffolds and later removing the bones and placing them in a bone-house was changed about 1800 to burial with poles about the grave. They held celebrations and "pulled" or lifted the poles out of the ground. From about 1820 to 1830 they discarded this ceremony and adopted a form of Christian burial.

This striving for advancement is shown in a letter written by Oboho Kulla Humma, a full-blood Choctaw District Chief, to Cyrus Kingsbury in October 1822. The Chief explained that the previous year his district had passed laws for the prevention of infanticide, introducing whisky, stealing hogs or cattle, or running away with another man's wife. He then made a very touching appeal to the American Board to send missionaries to organize a school in his district. He asserted that the above laws had been passed in order that the Indians might follow in the ways of the white man. He pleaded for schools and education to supplement this work of legislation.

The Northeastern District of the Choctaw Nation in October 1821, created a system of Light Horse Police. These were to have charge of the execution of criminal laws and the collection of debts. The Light Horse apprehended criminals, tried the cases and on conviction, executed the sentences. This system was quickly extended to other districts of the Nation. Greenwood LeFlore became District Chief in 1824. Under his influence and that of David Folsom and Peter P. Pitchlynn, the Choctaws made great strides in the abolition of primitive practices as witchcraft and blood revenge. Soon the Choctaws modified their district organizations and adopted a system of tribal legislation, tribal chiefs, and a code of written laws.

The Chickasaw movements have not been treated at very great length. An investigation of 1830 showed them to have a set of laws which promoted peace and good order among themselves.

The Cherokees had been among the first to accept the white standards. They still continued to advance. In 1821 Sequoyah invented the Cherokee alphabet. In 1826, a national newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix was founded. This paper was printed in both English and Cherokee for the greater part of the time until about 1900. Then in July 1827 the Cherokee Council met and formulated a Constitution for the tribe. This tribe now had a Constitution and laws very similar to that of the states about them.

The Chickasaw, Choctaw and Cherokee tribes had adopted laws and governments patterned after the whites. The Creeks had progressed in agriculture and made some progress in the acceptance of Christianity. The Seminoles had been so much involved in wars and contests that they had made the least progress. This start toward civilization would probably have become greater had not the removal problem intervened. This problem served to embitter the Indians and postpone the progress. Even though the educating influences were not given time to work out their logical conclusion a foundation for civilization had been laid that has later proved of immeasurable worth to the tribes.