Sunday, February 12, 2012

Chickasaw Education, the Golden Age, 1867 - 1898


For information about Chickasaw education during earlier periods see posts of Jan. 16, and Jan. 29, 2012.


        

                                        Mississippia Paul Hull

During the Civil War Chickasaw society was disrupted, and the Nation's schools were closed. The Chickasaw Nation officially supported the Confederacy, but many wanted no part of the white man's war. Soon after the war started, the Confederate army took over Indian Territory and occupied Fort Arbuckle. My great great grandfather Smith Paul had the foresight to move away from the fort before the war started. He moved west, into the vicinity of what is now Paul's Valley. As my great aunt Sippia put it:

Just before the war broke out he had made a trip to the locality and realized that it was a wonderful place for farming. Very soon he had a home built for us, it was of hewed logs. The house was built of single rooms but close together …. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, the friendly plains Indians came around the locality where my father had his farm. They were the Comanches, Caddos, Apaches, Cheyenne, Osages, and I think some Delawares. One mixed band located at Cherokee Town, another on my father's farm, a band of Osage across the river, and a band of Caddo Indian under old lady White Bead, five miles up the river. And the government realized that they must do something with and for these Indians, so they appointed my father as an agent, to issue them rations. This was one reason that my father did not have to go to war.  

So Smith Paul was appointed by the Confederacy, as Indian agent supplying rations to the plains Indians living the vacinity of his farm.

My great great grandmother Ela Teecha's older children, Tecumseh McClure and Catherine Waite, along with Ellen's brother Ja-Pawnee, went to Kansas with their families during the Civil War. They stayed with the Sauk and Fox tribe which remained unaffiliated with either North or South.

Aunt Sippia described her life during the war between the states:

During the Civil War we had to spin and weave all of our cloth, to make our clothes, and knit our hose. I was anxious to do what everyone else did and they let me, although I was only about nine years old, I wove enough cloth to make me a dress, even though it looked rather knottie, they made me a dress out of it. The cotton from which we spun the thread had to be picked from the seeds with our fingers, we usually did this work at night. The pecans grew in this locality in great abundance as they do today, and we ate nuts and picked the cotton off the seeds and my mother would tell us Indian legends. We learned by putting the cotton down by the fire and getting it warm, it was much easier to get the seeds out. It was during those early days that a man came through the country with what he called a miniature gin, similar to a cloths ringer of today, and this helped us to get the seeds out faster. Of course people came in to see how it worked and everyone wanted to try and turn the handle and my brother, boy like turned it and broke the handle off. My mother used to make straw hats for the boys out of wheat straw and in the winter they would catch coons and she would make them caps out of the skins. My father would make us shoes out of cow hide, he could do a little of everything, but this was only in war times. How I disliked them, and how glad I was when we could buy shoes ready made.

This is the kind of practical education Aunt Sippia got during the war. I wish she we could hear some of the stories her mother told her.

After the Civil War, the Chickasaw government was reorganized, and under the leadership of Governor Cyrus Harris a new constitution was written outlawing slavery. In 1867, with $65,700 released by the federal government from the Chickasaw trust fund, the Chickasaw Nation established 11 neighborhood schools. In 1876 that number was increased to 23, and also four academies, Bloomfield for girls, Wapanucka coed, Chickasaw Male Academy, and the Lebanon Orphan school were opened. These schools were operated by Chickasaw citizens, and most of the teachers were Chickasaw. The Chickasaw government provided $3 per student per month for the neighborhood schools, $200 per student annually for students at the academies, and $350 per student per year for 60 to 100 students selected to pursue higher education in the states.

This period of Chickasaw independence has been referred to as the "Golden Age" of Chickasaw education. At this time the Chickasaw educational system surpassed that of all the other tribes, and that of the whites in neighboring states. By 1880 60% of Chickasaws could read and write. Bloomfield Academy was known as the Bryn Mawr of the West.

There were also missionary schools at this time. The Pierce Institute in White Bead, and Hargrove College in Ardmore were operated by the Methodists, and St. Elizabeth's Academy for girls was opened by the Catholic Church near Purcell.

Footnote: The Chickasaws, Arrell Gibson. P 280. 

In addition to the Chickasaw government schools and the mission schools, some Chickasaw communities hired their own teachers. Aunt Sippia told about her father hiring a teacher for her and her brothers after the war:

For quite a while after the war, we were the only settlers in this section of the country. My father hired us a private teacher. It was not easy to get teachers to come and live on this frontier, so our education was quite limited.

It was during this time that the federal government was forcing the plains tribes onto reservations. Ulysses S. Grant, the first President after the Civil War, was approached by representatives of the Quaker church asking him to let them establish missions on these reservations so they could convert the Indians. President Grant's response was:

If you can make Quakers out of these Indians it will take the fight out of them. Let us have peace.

Grant appointed many Quakers as Indian agents, and also missionaries from other denominations. The Quaker Laurie Tatum was appointed agent to the Comanches and Kiowas near Fort Sill, and my great aunt Sippia attended his school. Here is her description:

At the early age of sixteen I was married to Jim Arnold, a Texan, and one little girl was born to us, named Tamsie. After five years I was left a widow. Knowing they had a school for Indians at Fort Sill, I decided to go up there to school. I boarded with a Mexican woman who had been ransomed and married and raised a family. She was ransomed by a soldier by the name of Chandler who afterwards married her. I took my little girl along with me and Mrs. Chandler took care of her while I attended school. While I was there I met William Hull, an Englishman, who was employed to work for the government to work under the Indian agent Tatum. After he met me he decided to come down and live near my father. He was a professional blacksmith. This was on the main travel road of the freighters to Fort Sill and Fort Cobb. He accumulated quite a fortune at that business. Then we were married.

The practice by some of the plains tribes of taking hostages deserves some explanation. The Comanche, Wichita, Cheyenne and others would raid farms in what is now Texas - then Mexico - and take horses and hostages. They traded both among themselves, and often asked for ransoms for the hostages, usually children. Chickasaw hunters played a role in ransoming some of the hostages in those early days after the Removal. Some of the hostages were treated like slaves and some were accepted as members of the tribe. The mother of the famous Comanche Chief Quanah Parker had originally been a hostage. When given a chance to rejoin her white family, she chose to remain with the Comanche. See my post of 2/12/2011, Nadua, Cynthia Ann Parker

Back to Aunt Sippia's story:

The school I attended in Fort Sill was under the supervision of the Quakers. Of course I attended their church, it all seemed strange to me, for when they went in the church they usually sang a song first, then they sat and waited for the spirit to move them. Sometimes someone would pray or talk and then again there were times when no one would either talk or pray, they would sit quietly for a while and then leave.

While my father was not such a religious man he realized that we must have the uplifting influence of having the gospel preached. So he hired a preacher by the year by the name of E. Couch from Texas, to preach to us regularly every Sunday, he made his home with us. By that time there were more people living in this part of the country but miles and miles apart, but they would come to this service and my father and mother always arranged to have a splendid meal for the entire congregation, as that was one of the pleasant occasions that we looked forward to. Then later my father built a frame church himself, having the lumber freighted from Atoka. J.M. Hamill, Superintendent of Colbert School and pastor at Ft. Arbuckle also preached to us.

The Colbert School was one of the original Chickasaw Academies. It was a boys' school.

It is remarkable to me how these people, with their own culture and traditions, so recently uprooted from their homeland and having to rebuild their society on the frontier, had the desire and the foresight to see the value of education in preparing their children to compete in white society. Aunt Sippia sent her oldest daughter Tamsie to Liverpoole, England. to school. I don't know much about the education that Tecumseh McClure provided for his children, but his sister Catherine went to great lengths to educate hers. Fred Waite, her oldest son was sent to finishing school in Bentonville Ark.. He later attended Illinois Industrial University in Champaign, Illinois, and Mound City Commercial College in St Louis, Mo. Fred Waite later became Attorney General of the Chickasaw Nation. Fred's younger brother Amos was also educated in the East, and he returned home to start the first subscription school in Pauls Valley in about 1890. Subscription schools were private schools for which parents paid a fee for their children to attend. Catherine Waite also educated her daughters. After her husband's death in 1874 she moved with her younger daughters to Oberlin, Ohio, so that they could attend college there.

        

                   Thomas and Catherine Waite and Three of Their Daughters

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