The Wild Frontier (31 page)
Authors: William M. Osborn
Remarkably, the Choctaw prospered once they reached Oklahoma, as did some of the other tribes. Edward H. Spicer said this about them:
Establishing themselves as the Choctaw Nation on their 3 million acres, they proceeded to make a rapid new adaptation. The wealthiest Choctaws of Mississippi had brought their slaves with them, some families with as many as 500. They immediately began breaking and cultivating the new land and were soon raising cotton, corn, pecans, hogs, and cattle. They developed transportation systems both across country and along the navigable Arkansas River.
45
The 1832 Treaty of Payne’s Landing with the Seminoles in Florida required them to go west within 3 years in exchange for the usual western
land, money, and commodities. By the required time for removal, 1835, no Seminoles had gone.
46
Seminole emigrations finally began in the middle of April 1836, when Lieutenant Joseph W. Harris took friendly Indians from Tampa Bay to New Orleans, where they were put on a steamboat. They arrived at Little Rock, Arkansas, on May 5. On the way, 25 died. Harris wrote that the deaths
resulted from the perversity of the Indians in adhering to their own peculiar treatment of the sick; which being confined to frequent deluging the patient with cold water, & to a constant kneading of the body, terminated—inasmuch as the diseases consisted of coughs, slight disentaries
[sic]
, &c—almost invariably in death. And this could not be obviated, although after having exhausted advice, entreaty and expostulation, we resorted to watching, threats and force.
47
Harris himself became ill and had to leave the party near Little Rock. A physician, sometimes 2, apparently accompanied most groups, although some had none at all. The doctor with the Harris group thought the Indians were too ill to travel. He further advised, however, that the measles would increase unless they got away from the river, where the Seminoles were constantly bathing those affected in cold water, “which was sending them rapidly to the grave.”
48
There was a heavy rain most of the time during this journey.
“A Choctaw introduced a Gallon of Whiskey into Camp, which I took from him.”
49
Indians were dying every day. By the time the party got to Oklahoma, there had been 87 deaths within a 60-day period.
50
Other Indians continued to harass them. An officer saw the bleeding scalp of one of the Seminole chiefs in the hands of a Creek warrior.
51
Captain Pitcairn Morrison left Tampa Bay with a group, picked up more on the way, and arrived in Oklahoma with 305 Seminoles and 30 Seminole blacks on June 28, 1837. Lieutenant John G. Reynolds left New Orleans on July 11 with 66 Seminoles and arrived in Oklahoma on August 5. Apparently there were no deaths during either journey, an interesting fact. Several other groups were removed with no fatalities mentioned by Grant Foreman.
52
On February 25, 1839, Seminoles left Tampa Bay. Sometime between March 28 and April 2, a steamboat boiler exploded, killing many of them.
53
A party of 200 left Tampa Bay on May 7 and arrived without deaths in Oklahoma.
54
The last Seminole emigration occurred in 1857. Superintendent of Indian
affairs for the southern superintendency Elias Rector gathered 165 Seminoles and some other Indians for removal. They all survived the journey, but later many were killed by a fever epidemic.
55
A
REMOVAL
treaty was signed by the Creeks on March 24, 1832. Its terms followed the pattern set by the Choctaw removal treaty. The poorer Creeks were starving even before removal commenced. Governor George R. Gilmer reported to the president in 1831 that the Indians were “absolutely starving or subsisting upon the bark of trees.”
56
The first 630 Creeks were removed under Captain John Page in December 1834. They were poor, with little clothing, and the winter was unusually severe. There was rain, snow, and freezing temperatures nearly every day. Children and the sick had to lie on wet or frozen tents in the wagons because there was no time to dry them.
57
They arrived at Fort Gibson in March 1835, 3 months after they started. There were only 469 survivors.
58
The Creek removal was now about to begin in earnest. On July 2, 1836, 1,600 Creeks left for the West, and their party eventually grew to 6,398. Seventy-nine Creeks died of disease during this trip, even though a surgeon went along. When one of the steamboats towing a bargeload of Indians was passing Columbia, Mississippi, many Indians came on deck to look at the town. The decayed deck collapsed, injuring some and killing one.
59
The remainder of this group, consisting of 210 Creeks under Captain F. S. Belton, went by steamboat from Montgomery to New Orleans. Settlers secretly sold liquor to the Indians, who became drunk.
60
As they proceeded, Belton reported that “the heat is excessive and the water of the worst description.”
61
By the time the Creeks reached their destination, 19 had died, 9 were missing, and Captain Belton was too ill even to keep his journal. He lay down by the side of the road, and the Creeks proceeded under Belton’s assistant, Doctor J. Jones.
62
In August 1836, a group of 3,022 Creeks, which soon grew to 3,142, left under William McGillivrey and Lieutenant R. B. Screven. Hungry Creeks in this party dropped out, and stole hogs and food to keep from starving. Only about 2,000 reached Fort Gibson.
63
Lieutenant Edward Deas took another group of 1,170 from Georgia to Oklahoma the same month. In Tennessee, their number increased to 2,000. Deas returned to Georgia for another 2,320. The
Memphis Enquirer
reported, “They are generally in good health.”
64
That same August, some 2,700 Creeks who had helped the settlers
fight hostile Indians started west under Lieutenant M. W. Batman and Chief Opothleyaholo. Batman reported that the Indians got drunk on whiskey furnished by settlers “in every town or village through which they passed.”
65
The Memphis newspaper opinion that the Creeks were generally in good health is consistent with Foreman’s failure to report any deaths at all in the 3 Creek parties, totaling 10,042, leaving in the August Screven, Deas, and Batman groups.
On September 5, a group of 1,984 Creeks left Tallassee, Alabama, in the charge of Marine Corps lieutenant J. T. Sprague. In his diary, Sprague himself argued it best that they leave:
The necessity of their leaving their country immediately was evident to every one; although wretchedly poor they were growing more so every day they remained. A large number of white men were prowling about, robbing them of their horses and cattle and carrying among them liquors which kept up an alarming state of intoxication.
66
Lieutenant Sprague then added,
If liquor could be found upon the road, or within four or six miles of it, men and women would congregate there, and indulge in the most brutal scenes of intoxication. If any white-man broke in upon these bacchanals he did it at the imminent hazard of his life.
67
Colonel John J. Abert said, “Their love of drink … will keep them in its vicinity while they have a shilling to procure it.”
68
Like others, the Creeks had little clothing. Sprague described their plight:
The sufferings of the Indians at this period were intense. With nothing more than a cotton garment thrown over them, their feet bare, they were compelled to encounter cold, sleeting storms and to travel over frozen ground.
69
They finally arrived at Fort Gibson on December 10. Sprague’s diary summed it up. “Twenty nine deaths [out of 1,984 who started] were all that occurred; fourteen of these were children and the others were the aged, feeble and intemperate.”
70
A group of Creeks wrote a letter to Sprague expressing their keen appreciation for his kindness and “for his efforts to ameliorate their misery and afford such comfort as he could.”
71
General T. S. Jesup had been ordered by the secretary of war to remove
the Creeks. Jesup wrote to the secretary in 1837, when the removal was near completion, that he
had seen an account in the newspapers of the removal of the Creek families, but was not aware of the brutal treatment which those families had been compelled to submit to…. The Creek families were plundered of the greater part of their property, and it is no more than just that they be remunerated.
72
In 1837, 3,500 Creeks were waiting at Mobile for transportation to Oklahoma. Within a 5-month period, 177 died. Every officer and agent was sick (probably from dysentery). At Pass Christian, whiskey peddlers approached the Indians, and the officers destroyed several barrels of liquor.
73
In late October, as the Creeks were on their way to Oklahoma in several steamboats, another tragedy occurred:
The steamboat
Monmouth
with 611 Indians on board, was proceeding up the Mississippi River, when through the negligent handling of the boat she was taken through Prophet Island Bend on a course forbidden to upbound vessels; in this place at night she collided with the ship
Trenton
, towed by the
Warren:
the
Monmouth
was cut in two, and sunk almost immediately with a loss of 311 Indians.
74
The
Monmouth
was apparently overloaded as well. Steamboat owners believed that no more than 400 or 500 people should be transported at one time; the
Monmouth
had 611 Indians on board.
75
There was only one bright side to the horrible situation. The Creeks had been removed to land about which George Catlin said, “There is scarcely a finer country on earth.”
76
The treaty for removal of the Chickasaw was signed on Pontotoc Creek on October 20, 1832, and provided that the tribe would cede all its lands outright to the government. The government would then sell the land and hold the proceeds for the Chickasaw.
77
The president appointed Colonel A. M. M. Upshaw superintendent of the Chickasaw removal. The first group of 500 Chickasaw passed through Memphis on July 4. They were imposing. According to Upshaw’s diary:
They presented a handsome appearance, being nearly all mounted, and, with few exceptions, well dressed in their national costume. It has been remarked by many of our citizens, who have witnessed the passage
of emigrating Indians, that on no previous occasion was there as good order or more dispatch. Not a drunken Indian we believe, was seen in the company.
78
Upshaw delivered 3,538 Chickasaw to Fort Coffee in Oklahoma on January 2, 1837.
79
Their land, according to Captain G. P. Kingsbury, was “one of the finest ranges for horses and cattle I have ever seen at this season of the year.”
80
Upshaw’s diary refers to few deaths.
81
The negligence of the contractors, however, soon made itself felt. Upshaw wrote to Daniel Harris on May 1, 1837, that
I am here starving with the Chickasaws by gross mismanagement on the part of the contractors, and when our situation will be bettered it is hard for me to tell, for it is one failure after another without end…. I begin to think we will have to starve to death or abandon the Country.
82
The government had greater difficulty making a removal treaty with the Cherokee. Georgia passed a law providing that Georgia law extended to the Cherokee Nation, that all Cherokee laws were null and void, and that anyone who tried to persuade anyone else not to go west would be jailed.
83
Foreman reported that President Jackson
warned the [Cherokee] Indians that the government was powerless to prevent the State of Georgia from exercising sovereignty over them and that if they insisted on remaining in the state, they did so at their peril, and that they need expect no help from him.
84
Under these bleak circumstances, a removal treaty was signed by another group of Cherokee (the eastern Cherokee) on December 28, 1835, called the Treaty of New Echota. The Choctaw pattern was once more followed. A date was fixed by which they were required to leave, May 23, 1838, but less than one eighth had gone by that time.
85
When the deadline was reached, the Cherokee still resisted, were rounded up, and forcibly taken to Oklahoma.
86
Their removal was not complete until 1839.
87
Lieutenant Harris was assigned to lead a group of Cherokee west.
88
A boat across the river furnished liquor and, Harris reported, “immorality & misrule have continued to be the order of the day—dancing, drunkenness, gambling & fighting the pastime of the night.”
89
Harris also reported “an alarming change took place with the introduction
of a malignant type of cholera.”
90
The Indians, panic-stricken, dispersed into the timber.
91
Harris himself got cholera.
92
Harris left the party at Dwight Mission. By that time, there had been 81 deaths, 50 from cholera. Forty-five children under 10 “died chiefly of the measles, dysenteries, worms, &c, the result of exposure, confinement, want of proper cleanliness, the river water and the neglect of parents.”
93
Of those in the Harris party who reached Oklahoma, nearly half died before the end of the year.
94
A group of about 600 Cherokee who wanted to go west by themselves left New Echota, the Cherokee capital, in January 1837. Another party consisting of 466 Indians left Ross’s Landing on March 3, 1837, under Dr. John S. Young. Liquor was introduced at many stops, and there was drunkenness.
95
Physician C. Lillybridge also went along and was in a good position to assess fatalities on the voyage, but he reported none at all.