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
