Encyclopedia of Mississippi History Comprising Sketches of Counties, Towns, Events, Institutions and Persons, Vol. II, Part 96

Author: Dunbar Rowland
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: Madison, Wis. : S.A. Brant
Number of Pages: 1020

USA > Mississippi > Encyclopedia of Mississippi History Comprising Sketches of Counties, Towns, Events, Institutions and Persons, Vol. II > Part 96

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

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required Judge Toulmin to add to his digest all the laws passed at that session, and declared that when so enlarged it should bear the title of "The Statutes of the Mississippi Territory, revised and digested by the authority of the General Assembly ;" and that, after the ensuing October, all the laws of the governor and judges, all acts of the general assembly of the Mississippi Territory, and all statutes of England and Great Britain, not contained in the said volume of statutes, should cease to be of force and validity in the Territory. Judge Toulmin was also requested by the assembly to prepare a set of forms and brief general principles for the infor- mation of justices of the peace, and to furnish the public printer with such ordinances and acts of congress as related to the Missis- sippi Territory, to land titles within the same, to crimes and mis- demeanors, and the intercourse with the Indian nations, with the articles of cession between the United States and Georgia ; and that the whole be added to the volume of statutes. The digest of Judge Toulmin, thus enlarged, is of value, not only on account of the genius and ability displayed in its adaptation, but also on account of the knowledge it affords of the origin and progress of our jurisprudence." (Lynch's Bench and Bar.) Toulmin's Magis- trates' Assistant was published by Samuel Terrell, the State printer in 1807.

Towns. The State supreme court has given the following defi- nition of a town (60. Miss., 46) : "A town, in its popular sense has been defined to be a congregation of houses so reasonably near each other that the inhabitants thereof might be fairly said to dwell to- gether." The law of 1898 authorizes the governor to proclaim any "village, town or city" incorporated, with certain boundaries and name, upon petition of two-thirds of the electors thereof, when the place contains at least one hundred inhabitants and the required notice of incorporation has been given. The governor may exercise a sound discretion, and deny the petition for good reason. (Atty- Gen. Rept., 1904).

Track, a postoffice of Scott county.

Trading Posts, U. S. The first government trading house for the Choctaws was established under an act of 1796, when John McKee was Indian agent for the eastern part of that nation. It was estab- lished a few miles from Fort Confederation, the Spanish name of Fort Tombecbé, and McKee resided there and traded goods for peltry. A more elaborate system of government "factories" was provided later.

Upon the recommendation of Governor Claiborne, the "factory" for the Choctaws was located on the Tombigbee river, in 1802, that site being chosen because it would more effectually compete with the Pensacola and Mobile trade of the British merchants. Undoubtedly, also, Claiborne desired to divert the Indians from their visits to Natchez, which were burdensome to the white popu- lation, and considered a nuisance by all the governors, Spanish and American. Joseph Chambers was appointed factor for the Choc- taws, and goods were sent to Fort Adams in the fall of 1802. The

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sudden hostile orders of the Intendent Morales very likely were cal- culated to check this competition with Panton, Leslie & Co. The United States was forbidden to ship goods through New Orleans to Fort Stoddert, and the right of free deposit was suspended for all American commerce. In November Chambers and his goods were in Natchez district, blockaded by the Spanish orders, and Claiborne was considering the advisability of establishing the trading post for the Choctaws on the Mississippi river. When it was decided to adhere to the Tombigbee location, Gen. Wilkinson was busy running the Natchez district line, and the trading post was delayed until 1803.

Chambers was joined by George S. Gaines, a native of Virginia. who came from Gallatin, Tenn., as assistant, in 1805. In 1806 Chambers resigned and Gaines became factor in 1807. In 1822 he and his partner bought out the government store, and conducted the business afterward as a private one. The system of government factories was discontinued in 1825.

Says Pickett (Alabama, II, 234) : "The parsonage of the old Spanish church was used as a skin house, and the blockhouse served the purpose of the government store. . . To this establish- ment the Indians-principally Choctaws-and sometimes the Amer- ican settlers, brought bear's oil, honey in kegs, beeswax, bacon, groundnuts, tobacco in kegs, and all kinds of skins and peltries. . to pay for which the Federal government usually kept a stock of coarse Indian merchandise, besides all kinds of iron tools, ploughs. arms and ammunition. In the fall the furs and hides were packed in bales and shipped to the Indian agent at Philadelphia." Gaines, at first, came often in collision with the Spanish revenue authori- ties at Mobile, who exacted duties, delayed his vessels, and upon one occasion came near putting him in the calaboose for venturing to remonstrate. Hence the government authorized Gaines to open up communication through the Chickasaw country, and he was able to obtain permission, not for a wagon road, but a horse path, from Colbert's Ferry to John Pitchlyn's on the Tombigbee, whence his goods could be conveyed by boat down to St. Stephens.

In his latter years George S. Gaines wrote: "If our Indian agents were all as patriotic, able and indefatigable in the discharge of their duties as the late Col. Silas Dinsmore and Col. John McKee, they would rarely attain to as much influence with the Indians as respectable private traders. The Choctaws were fortunate in their private traders and white inhabitants. Major John Pitchlyn, United States interpreter, was an excellent man, of sterling integrity, great liberality and devoted to the government. The brothers Lafleur and Charles Juzant, Frenchmen, were very worthy men; Benja- min James, a Virginian, was a good man ; William Riddle, a Scotch- man, and John Garland, an Irishman, were honest and well-dis- posed. Indeed, there were but few white men mong the Choctaws of bad character, and they were despised by the Indians."

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Tralake, a postoffice and station of Washington county, on the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley R. R., about 18 miles southeast of Greenville, the county seat. Leland is the nearest banking town.

Trapp, a post-hamlet of Neshoba county, 6 miles west, south- west of Philadelphia, the county seat. Population in 1900, 40.

Travis, a postoffice of Amite county, on the east fork of the Amite river, 8 miles southeast of Liberty, the county seat.

Traxler, a postoffice of Smith county, 6 miles west of Raleigh, the county seat.

Traynham, a postoffice of Coahoma county, situated on Hopson Bayou, 8 miles south of Clarksdale, the nearest banking town.

Treaty of Beaufort. "In 1:85 South Carolina instituted suit against Georgia before congress, under the ninth article of the Confederation. On June 1st of this year Georgia was summoned to appear on the second Monday of May, 1786. The case was adjourned from time to time until September 4, 1286, when both States appeared by their agents. Proceedings were then in- stituted and a court was appointed to try the case, which was to sit in New York, June 4, 1787. No judgment was ever rendered by this court, in consequence of the compromise of the suit be- tween the parties." (Garrett, in Confed. Mil. History.) Both States appointed commissioners early in 1787, to settle the dis- putes, and they concluded a convention at Beaufort, April 28, 1787. The claims of South Carolina were these: (1) for lands "lying between the North Carolina line and the line run due west from the mouth of Tugaloo river to the Mississippi, because the river Savannah loses its name at the confluence of the Tugaloo and Keowee rivers, consequently that spot is the head of the Savan- nah;" (2) for all the lands from the Mississippi river eastward, north of Florida and south of the south line of the Georgia char- ter, that is to say, the line the latitude of Atlanta, Ga., and Gren- ada, Miss. Georgia excepted from this claim what had been assigned southward on the coast to Georgia by royal proclamation in 1763, and would make the westward limit of Georgia, south of the Atlanta line. a line from that locality to the head of the St. Marys river. The commissioners agreed that the Savannah river boundary line should be continued in the Tugaloo river and its most northern branch, as the main source of the Savannah, up to the North Carolina line, if there were any stream to follow so far north, if not, then South Carolina should own west to the Missis- sippi along the northward of a line due west from the ultimate source of the Tugaloo. As to the other and more important west- ern region. south and west of the Georgia settlements, South Carolina relinquished all claim.

On March 8 of the same year, however, the South Carolina legis- lature, declaring "this State is willing to adopt every measure which can tend to promote the honor and dignity of the United States and strengthen the Federal Union," authorized the cession to the United States of a part of the northern strip in dispute, namely, all north of a line due west from the head of the southern

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branch of the Tugaloo. This cession was accepted by congress, August 9, 1287, and this Twelve-mile strip was the first area in what is now Mississippi to become public domain, under the policy of westward cession. For this reason the first congressional en- actment regarding Mississippi territory, refers to the region "south of the cession made to the United States by South Carolina."

Treaty of Chickasaw Bluffs. This treaty was negotiated by Gen. James Wilkinson, Benjamin Hawkins and Andrew Pickens, with the mingo (or "king") and sixteen head men of the Chicka- saws. Presents of $700 worth were made, and permission gained to build a wagon road on the Natchez trace, northward to the mouth of Bear Creek, on the Tennessee river, and on to Miro dis- trict, or Nashville. The United States had been granted five miles square at the mouth of Bear Creek in 1984, but this had never been occupied, as the Spanish party among the Chickasaws had remonstrated. Of the Chickasaws the commissioners said: "We with pleasure bear testimony to the amicable and orderly dispo- sition of this nation, whose greatest boast is that they have never spilt the blood of a white man; but, with these dispositions they are not so far advanced in the habits of civilization as their neigh- bors the Cherokees, though they discover a taste for individual property, have made considerable progress in agriculture, and in stocking their farms, and are desirous to increase their domestic manufacturers." After this convention, Col. Butler and eight com- panies of the Second infantry were ordered up the Tennessee, the route was changed to east of Bear Creek, and Samuel Mitchell, Chickasaw agent, and two Indians were deputed to mark the line.

Treaty of Chickasaw Council House. This treaty was made Sep- tember 20, 1816, and followed the Creek war, and the cession by the Creeks of the land in Alabama southwest of the river Alabama, adjoining the first Choctaw cession on the east. Together with the Choctaw treaty of the same year, it opened up land north of those two cessions, but only east of the river Tombigbee, giving Alabama a great lead in opportunity for development, over both Mississippi and Georgia. The Chickasaws relinquished all claims north of the Tennessee river, and all title south thereof, and east of Caney Creek and the Gaines road (or ridge path), and the Tom- bigbee river south of Cotton Gin Port, where the road touches it. The treaty was made at the "long house" of the nation, at the Chickasaw Old Fields (Lee county) by Gen. Andrew Jackson, Gen. David Meriwether, and Jesse Franklin, and "the whole Chick- asaw nation in council assembled." The consideration was an annuity of $12,000 per annum for ten years; $4,500 cash for im- provements, and $100 each to Chinnubbee, king of the Chickasaws, Tishomingo, Coahoma (William McGillivray), Samuel Seeley, the Colberts, Brown, and a number of others. Gen. William Colbert was also given a life annuity of $100. Four reservations were made for the Colberts and others. The government also agreed to allow no more peddlers to enter the Chickasaw country. That part of this purchase, about 408,000 acres, which was found to lie in

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Mississippi State, was organized as the county of Monroe, in 1821. According to the present county lines, the cession in Mississippi form the eastern part of the counties of Tishomingo, Itawamba, Monroe and Lowndes.

Treaty of Choctaw Trading House, concluded at St. Stephens, October 24, 1816, relinquished, in connection with the cession by the Chickasaws in September, all the land claimed by the two na- tions south of the Tennessee river, and cast of the Gaines road and Tombigbee river, of which a part lay within the bounds of the State of Mississippi, as defined in 1817. The Choctaws ceded that part east of the Tombigbee river between the mouth of the Oktib- beha and the first Choctaw cession line. The treaty was made by Gen. John Coffee, John Rhea and John McKee, and the "mingoes, leaders, captains and warriors of the Choctaw nation in general council assembled." The consideration was $10,000 in goods, then delivered, and an annuity of $6,000 for 20 years.

Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, 1830. By the year 1829, the original two million acres in the Natchez district open to settle- ment, had been enlarged to include about half the area of the State, through purchase by the United States government from the Choctaw and Chickasaw tribes. There was not a rapid demand for the lands already opened. Only about one-third of the Choc- taw purchase of 1820, which embraced Hinds county and the main portion of the Yazoo delta, had been disposed of either to settlers or speculators. Nevertheless there was a tremendous pressure by speculators for more lands, and the people generally were easily persuaded that it was time for the Indians to move. In his mes- sage of 1829 Governor Brandon declared that the prosperity of the State was greatly retarded by such a large portion of fertile lands remaining in the possession of "savage tribes of Indians, who, as they progress in civilization, become attached to the soil and can- not be induced to remove by the policy heretofore used of treating them as a sovereign people, and will, eventually set up for them- selves a government, professing to be an independent sovereignty within our limits, in defiance of the authority of the state. These things cannot be tolerated, consistent with our best interest, honor and safety." This impatience with the established Indian policy of the government, led to the act of the legislature, 1829, extend- ing the jurisdiction of the justices and courts of certain adjoining counties over all the Indian territory.

Trouble was feared on this account, but the governor was able to report a year later that "the acknowledgment on the part of the general government, of the right of the States to exercise an unlimited sovereignty over all territory within their chartered limits, is a source of much gratification, and at once puts to rest the question which portended great difficulty between many of the states, our own amongst the number, and their Indian population." He suggested that the legislature, if it assumed sovereignty, must also take care to pass laws for the government and protection of the Indians; but that would be very difficult. The authority of

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their chiefs must first be annulled, and this would be improper until some provision was made for other officers. And the gover- nor frankly added, "The extension of the laws of the state to the Indians will be received by them with feelings of jealousy and dis- trust, from the view that such a measure was adopted with a view to harrass and thereby coerce them to remove." The legislature responded with the act of February, 1830, that proposed to abol- ish all the Indian laws and customs and extend over them the law of Mississippi, and prohibited any person from assuming the office of chief or mingo, under penalty of heavy fine and imprisonment. These laws were not seriously enforced. At the request of the United States government after the treaty of 1830 they were, in effect, suspended by the governor, so far as they related to Indians. There were similar circumstances in Georgia, involving much de- fiant talk and proceedings. But the result was the same-the Indians were frightened into going west. In March. 1831. the United States supreme court decided that the action of the Geor- gia courts in sentencing four missionaries among the Creeks to four years in the penitentiary at hard labor was contrary to the laws and treaties of the United States and therefore null and void. In the following month the treaty was ratified by which the Creeks agreed to move west of the Mississippi.

Governor Scott, in 1833, vetoed a bill for the division of Yazoo county, asserting the principle of the national constitution that treaties are the supreme law of the land. It was expressly stipu- lated in the treaty of 1830 that the Choctaws might in part remain until the fall of 1833, and that the lands within the Choctaw dis- trict should not be sold until then, with the obvious intention of preventing settlements until that date. But the legislature passed the bill almost unanimously over the veto.

The treaty of 1830 with the Choctaws was made at the council ground between the two prongs of Dancing Rabbit creek (Chukfi ahihla bok, literally, Rabbit-there-dances creek) in what is now the bounds of Noxubee county. The spot was about a hundred yards west of the well-known spring that bears the same name as the creek. The Chickasaw trail to the southern Choctaw towns (Six towns) ran by this spring. and Tecumseh traveled that way in 1811. This was the first Indian treaty at which the United States commissioners arrived in carriages. Maj. John H. Eaton and Gen. John Coffee, of Tennessee, close friends of President Andrew Jackson, were the commissioners, and they were in- structed by the president to fail not to make a treaty. Gen. George S. Gaines was the commissary, and collected provisions for three thousand persons for one week. On their arrival the commis- sioners found a large number of Choctaws assembled, and the Indians continued to come and go throughout the negotiations. the estimate being that from first to last there were six thousand in camp, bringing with them many supplies, as the Indians were very sensitive about their independence. The people of the three mingoes, Leflore, Moshuli-topee and Nittakechi, were given sep-

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arate camps. Leflore was attired in citizen clothes, which made some of the more ignorant Indians imagine he was in collusion with the whites; Moshuli-topee wore a new blue uniform presented by General Jackson; Nittakechi was glorious in hunting shirt and leggins, a bright colored shawl, silver bands and gorgets. The Christian party, under David Folsom, spent the evenings in sing- ing and prayer; more sought the gambling tables and drinking places opened by the white rabble that followed the commissioners. "By a strange paradox in the nature of the Choctaws, than whom no more chaste race ever existed, there was no licentiousness what- ever at Dancing Rabbit." The commissioners went to great trouble to drive away the missionaries and allowed the faro tables to remain unmolested. The talk began September 18, Eaton do- ing most of that work, and John Pitchlynn serving as interpreter. It is unnecessary to detail what was said. It was a repetition of what had been said in previous treaties, reinforced by the threat that if the Choctaws did not now make an arrangement with the United States they would be left to the laws of Mississippi, or to escape therefrom at their own expense.

At their first consideration of the proposition, Little Leader proposed to make war to hold their lands; other chiefs recited the stories of the wars they had fought for the United States and the injustice of the present demand, and only one councilman, Killi- hota, who was in fact an agent of the government, voted for re- moval. Eaton's intemperate reply to this decision caused many of the Indians to leave the camp and go home. There was a small party, however, disposed to make the best of necessity, the leader of these being Greenwood Leflore, who took part in framing an- other proposition, which after some stormy discussions, was made ready to sign September 27th. When it was presented, the In- dians refused to sign, and Eaton made the greatest effort of his life, in an eloquent portrayal of the situation of the Choctaws. He was successful, thus, in causing the chiefs and headmen to affix their names, in a panic, after which there was tremendous excite- ment, and threats of personal violence upon the commissioners. Colonel Gaines was called upon as a pacificator, and he agreed to act as exploring agent in the west for the Choctaws, and join with Reynolds the Chickasaw agent, in persuading that nation to go west and live with the Choctaws. The commissioners beat a hasty retreat and Gaines was able to reduce the excited red men to a condition of quiet despair at last. It was Lincecum's testimony that "no treaty could have been made but for the solemn assur- ances of the commissioners that all might stay and keep their homes who did not wish to go, and the Indians distinctly under- stood that this was put down as part of the treaty."

The treaty was finally signed September 27, 1830, and among other provisions recited that, "the United States under a grant specially to be made by the President of the U. S. shall cause to be conveyed to the Choctaw Nation a tract of country west of the Mississippi river, in fee simple to them and their descendants, to

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inure to them while they shall exist as a nation and live on it, beginning near Fort Smith where the Arkansas boundary crosses the Arkansas river, running thence to the source of the Canadian Fork, if in the limits of the United States, or to those limits; thence due south to Red river, and down Red river to the west boundary of the Territory of Arkansas; thence north along that line to the beginning the Choctaw nation of Indians con- sent and hereby cede to the United States, the entire country they own and possess, east of the Mississippi river; and they agree to move beyond the Mississippi river, early as practicable, and will so arrange their removal, that as many as possible of their people not exceeding one-half of the whole number, shall depart during the falls of 1831 and 1832; the residue to follow during the suc- ceeding fall of 1833. Then ensued certain stipulations providing that self-government should be secured to the Choctaws within their western limits, subject only to the constitution, laws and treaties of the U. S .; that the United States yield the same protec- tion to the Choctaws that it gives to the citizens of the U. S. ; that offenders within the nation be delivered up to the U. S. authori- ties for punishment when the rights of a U. S. citizen is involved; that offences against the Choctaws by U. S. citizens be referred to the president for equitabe adjustment ; that only duly authorized traders shall be permitted within the nation; that all navigable streams shall be free to the Choctaws; that postoffices, military post roads, and posts, as deemed necessary, may be established within the nation by the U. S .; that all intruders shall be removed from the nation; that the right of private property shall be always respected, and only taken for public purposes on the payment of due compensation to the owner, and that a qualified agent be ap- pointed for the Choctaws every four years, who shall fix his residence convenient to the great body of the people, respect to be paid the wishes of the Choctaw nation in the selection of said agent immediately after the ratification of the treaty. Article XLV declared: "Each Choctaw head of a family being desirous to remain and become a citizen of the United States, shall be per- mitted to do so, by signifying his intention to the Agent within six months from the ratification of this treaty, and he or she shall thereupon be entitled to a reservation of one section of six hundred and forty acres of land, to be bounded by sectional lines of sur- vey; in like manner shall be entitled to one-half that quantity for each unmarried child which is living with him over 10 years of age, to adjoin the location of the parent. If they reside upon said lands intending to become citizens of the States for five years after the ratification of this treaty, in that case a grant in fee simple shall issue ; said reservation shall include the present improvement of the head of the family, or a portion of it. Persons who claim un- der this article shall not lose the privilege of a Choctaw citizen, but if they ever remove are not to be entitled to any portion of the Choctaw annuity." The succeeding article made special reservations of four sections of land to each of the principal chiefs;

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Encyclopedia of Mississippi History Comprising Sketches of Counties, Towns, Events, Institutions and Persons, Vol. II, Part 96

Author: Dunbar Rowland Publication date: 1907 Publisher: Madison, Wis. : S.A. Brant Number of Pages: 1020

Author: Dunbar Rowland
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: Madison, Wis. : S.A. Brant
Number of Pages: 1020