Last Sunday at the Mississippi-Alabama Bicentennial program at Mississippi University for Women, Phillip Morgan, a Chickasaw writer/historian, spoke about how the Chickasaws and Choctaws here at the time of statehood were a cultured, civilized people. They were not as Native Americans are often portrayed by Hollywood or on T.V. They wore European style clothes, ate off of fine English dinnerware and many were educated.
My own research on Choctaws, who between 1810 and 1832 lived on the prairies between present day Columbus and Starkville, has provided a picture of a lifestyle not much different than that of the early Anglo-American settlers at that time. On my old family place near Artesia, I found the location and records of two Choctaw families who lived there by 1813 until the early 1830s. Their house sites were in present-day cultivated fields allowing for a surface collection of artifacts from those families.
What I discovered was not what I had expected. These two families lived in dwelling houses probably of log construction, farmed at least six acres, used English dishes of a middle class price range, and lived a life style comparable to that of the Anglo-American farmers across the Tombigbee around Columbus. Cushman in his 1899 “History of the Choctaw, Chickasaw and Natchez Indians” spoke of most Choctaws living in two-room log houses like those of early white settlers, but that Choctaw captains or chiefs lived in frame houses. Moshulitubbee, a chief who lived in present day Noxubee County, had a two-story frame house with a porch across the front.
The educational and cultural achievements of the Choctaws in the Columbus area are exemplified by Peter Pitchlynn. His father was John, the long servicing U.S. Choctaw interpreter, and his mother was Choctaw. Peter was born on the Noxubee River in 1806. The family moved to Plymouth Bluff in 1810 and Peter grew up there. In the 1820s, he had a house southwest of present day Artesia but moved to the Indian Territory (Oklahoma) with Indian Removal after the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek in 1830. He became the Choctaw delegate (nonvoting) to the U.S. Congress and served as Chief of the Choctaw Nation in Oklahoma.
In 1840 Pitchlynn, who was married, was said to have bested Henry Clay, a bachelor, in a friendly public debate on marriage. Two years later, he met Charles Dickens on a steamboat traveling the Ohio River. Dickens called him “a gentleman of Nature’s making” and wrote of the meeting in his book “American Notes”: “There chanced to be on board this boat, in addition to the usual dreary crowd of passengers, one Pitchlynn, a chief of the Choctaw tribe of Indians, who sent in his card to me, and with whom I had the pleasure of a long conversation.
He spoke English perfectly well, though he had not begun to learn the language, he told me, until he was a young man grown. He had read many books; and Scott’s poetry appeared to have left a strong impression on his mind: especially the opening of ‘The Lady of the Lake,’ and the great battle scene in ‘Marmion.’ … He was dressed in our ordinary everyday costume, which hung about his fine figure loosely, and with indifferent grace. He told me that he had been away from his home, west of the Mississippi, seventeen months: and was now returning. He had been chiefly at Washington on some negotiations pending between his Tribe and the Government. … He had no love for Washington; tired of towns and cities very soon; and longed for the Forest and the Prairie. I asked him what he thought of Congress. He answered, with a smile, that it wanted dignity, in an Indian’s eyes. … [We spoke] of Mr. Catlin’s gallery, which he praised highly: observing that his own portrait was among the collection, and that all the likenesses were ‘elegant.'”
Rufus Ward is a local historian. Email your questions about local history to him at [email protected].
Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected].
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