Sam Paul, Part Four

The only other surviving record of Sam Paul's career as a Chickasaw policeman concerns his investigation of a group of outlaws known as the Sturdivant - Cox gang during the year 1882. These outlaws had made threats against Ben Burney, a former Chickasaw Governor, and Sam Paul was instructed to form a posse to track down the gang. The posse first went to the home of two brothers, John and William Harkins, who were known to be friends of Sturdivant.  

Early on the morning of April 22, 1882, Sam's posse surrounded the Hawkins' house. At sunrise they called out to John Harkins who took his rifle and went outside. After seeing that he and his brother were outnumbered, John invited the posse in. Sam asked the brothers  to accompany them over to Birnie's place, a nearby farm, to see if they could identify a prisoner held there. The brothers were then disarmed, and forced to go with the posse, which soon split up into two groups, each taking one of the brothers. 

The group which took John Harkins was led by Sam Paul, while William went with the other group, led by Galloway Frazier, Sam's old friend, and the sheriff of Pickens County. The plan was to scare the boys into revealing the outlaws' hiding place. Frazier's group threw a rope over the limb of a tree, and threatened to hang William if he didn't cooperate. Sam and the other posse members took John and rode down next to a small creek. There they got him down off his horse and forced him to remove his belt and his knife. Then, according to Sam, John grabbed a gun from Jim Ross, one of the posse members, and attempted to shoot him. Sam was faster though, and he shot and killed John Harkins. 

After the shooting, John's brother William was taken to Tishomingo, the Chickasaw Capital, where he was turned over to the federal marshal, James Mershon, on a charge of whiskey peddling. William told Mershon about his brother being shot, and Mershon, remembering Sam's killing of Ferral and Smith, decided that Indian policemen were taking too many liberties in dealing with white suspects. Judge Parker evidently agreed, and so, in July of 1882, warrants were issued for the arrest of Sam Paul and for the other posse members involved in the shootings of Smith and Harkins.  

Mershon arrested Sam Paul in Miller and Greens while he was buying a pair of gloves. Then he was put in chains, along with his half brother Tecumseh McClure, his nephew Fred Waite, and a half dozen other men, and marched the 200 miles to Ft. Smith, where they were thrown into Parker's rat infested jail. Within a couple of weeks the trial began for the murder of the horse thief, Smith. Tecumseh and the tracker, Frank Welch, were released before the trial began, because witnesses testified that they were two miles away at the time of the shooting. In the trial of Sam and Fred, the jury found them innocent of Smith's murder, since they were acting as police officers, and they were fired on first. 

Fred Waite was then released, but Sam Paul and Jim Ross were held without bond until the second trial was scheduled, in January, 1883. During the next six months Sam became weak and malnourished in the filthy Ft. Smith jail. My great grandmother Sarah, took the children, Bill and Buck, to see their father. My grandfather Bill, who was six at the time, remembered his mother holding him up to the bars.   

The second trial ended in a hung jury, so a third trial was scheduled, this time for April, so Sam Paul was forced to remain in the Ft. Smith jail for another four months. I don't know how he survived. When the trial resumed, the other defendant, Jim Ross, managed to turn the jury in his favor, and against Sam. Sam was found guilty of manslaughter, and was sentenced to ten years in the federal prison at Detroit, therefore escaping the gallows, which claimed many of his cell mates. 

Still, facing another ten years in prison must have seemed like the end of the world to Sam, especially after languishing in the Judge Parker's jail for almost a year, but he had a surprise coming. The Chickasaw Nation fought for his freedom. On September 13, 1883, the Chickasaw legislature passed a resolution to apply for a presidential pardon for Sam Paul, and on March 7, 1884, almost a year after his conviction, the pardon was granted.

I'll quote a portion of it:

          And whereas, the Chickasaw Council, and a large number of the officers and citizens of Indian Territory have petitioned for the defendant's pardon, representing that he committed the offence while endeavoring, as an officer of the United States and of the Territory, to enforce the law, and was excusable; 

          And whereas, the Secretary of the Interior, and the Commissioner of Indian Affairs are of opinion that the conviction in this case tends to impair the efficiency of the Indian Police, and that a pardon would be in the interest of law and order, and earnestly recommend it; and the defendant being also recommended to clemency by Senators Garland, Vest, Cockrell, Walker, Jackson, Harris and Maxey, and by the jury:  

          Now, therefore, be it known, that I Chester A. Arthur, President of the United States of America, in consideration of the promises and divers other good and sufficient reasons me thereunto moving, do hereby grant to the said Sam Paul, a full and unconditional pardon.

Sam Paul's pardon was an important milestone in the Chickasaws' fight for sovereignty. Sam had lost two years of his life and had suffered unimaginable hardships, but he hadn't lost his spirit. When he returned home a free man, he came determined to lead his tribe through the difficult times ahead.

Sam Paul, Part Three

Well, I guess I'd better get back to my story. If you want to refresh your memory, you can refer back to my posts of July 10 and 17, Sam Paul, Parts One and Two.  

Back in 1877, when Sam Paul was tried in Judge Parker's court for selling liquor and for killing the prisoner John Ferral, he was the head of the Paul family. His mother Ela Teecha had died, and his father Smith Paul had married a younger woman and was building a house in town. Sam ran the ranch. He had married my great grandmother, Sarah Lambert, in 1874, and they had two children together: Smith Whealton Paul, then three years old, and William Hyram Paul, my grandfather, a year old baby. Sam's oldest son Joe, now eight, also lived with them.  

Sam may have been ruthless, but he was also fearless, a quality which was valued in a time when the threat of marauding plains Indians had been replaced by that of horse thieves and bank robbers. Sam was an officer in the Chickasaw Light Horse Police, and constable of Pickens County. He had become a prominent member of the community.  

The kind of man the Chickasaws wanted to defend their citizens against outlaws is illustrated by the charge given to their officers: "with or without warrant, arrest all outlaws, thieves, and murderers in your section, and if they resist, you will shoot them on the spot. And you will aide and assist all U.S. Marshals in the enforcement of the laws and make yourself a terror to evildoers. If afraid, turn in your resignation and I'll appoint better men in your place." In other words, the Chickasaw Light Horse Policeman was expected to serve as judge, jury, and if he deemed necessary, executioner in order to provide law and order.   

The Indian police were effective too. When my grandmother came to Indian Territory with her mother and father in 1888 she said, "We had some trouble crossing Arkansas, but after we crossed into Indian Territory we never were bothered by anyone. My father would buy feed from the Indians, and they were the most accommodating people I ever met." The Five Civilized Tribes welcomed white settlers, and they kept the peace.

Technically the Indian police could not arrest a white man, and their courts had no jurisdiction over them. The white settlers were no problem. Many of them had been living peacefully with the Indians for generations, but gradually, white outlaws sought refuge in Indian Territory, and soon they became the scourge of the territory, robbing and stealing, and killing anyone who got in their way. The 200 or so federal marshals assigned to Indian Territory were incapable of dealing with the situation. The challenge of arresting suspects, getting witnesses to travel 200 miles of more to Fort Smith for the trials, the sheer volume of cases, was overwhelming, so for the most part the Indian Police were on their own.  

During the four years Sam Paul served as an Indian Policeman, we don't know about the dozens of cases he must have dealt with, the dangers he faced, the decisions he had to make. The only two stories about his service that have been handed down to us are the two cases that led to him being tried for murder.  

The first of these episodes occurred in 1881. A cowboy named Frank Welch came into town to report a stolen horse, and was referred to Sam Paul. Welch reported that his boss, a rancher in the southern part of the territory named John Covey, had sent him to track down two men who had stolen one of their horses. The trail had led Welch to two men who joined up with a wagon train near Pauls Valley. The remarkable story of this tracker's skill is recorded in the record of Sam Paul's trial. (see The Trackers, Part 2, posted Jan 21, 2011.) Welch was able to identify the two individuals involved: one was a man named Smith, and the other was Sam Ross, son of the leader of the wagon train, "Old Man" John Ross.  

Sam Paul quickly organized a posse, and with Welch's help identified the man Smith as he came into Miller and Green's, a general merchandise store. Sam decided to wait until morning to make the arrests because the wagon train was getting ready to make camp down by Rush Creek. When the posse reassembled the next morning, he split them up in order to cover all the exits from the valley.  

As Sam and his nephew Fred Waite rode down toward the camp, they met two men on horseback, one of which they recognized as Smith. He was riding the stolen horse. When Sam called out for the men to halt, they pulled out their rifles and started firing. Sam and Fred returned the fire, killing Smith. The other man got away.  

Sam Paul sent word to the rest of the posse to apprehend the other horse thief, Sam Ross, as well as the man riding with Smith. Then as he was riding down toward the wagon train he met Welch and his half brother, Tecumseh McClure. They had just finished having breakfast. It seems that Welch, on hearing the shots fired during Sam and Fred's gun battle, rode into the camp and confronted Old Man Ross. He warned Ross that if he didn't pay for or return the stolen horse, his son was going to hang. Ross paid for the horse. Welch told Sam that he was dropping the charges, and that was the end of that, at least for the time being.    

To be continued.

Changes in Indian Territory Brought About by the Mexican War and the Gold Rush.

          The following is just a little bit of historical information about the changes that went on after my great great grandparents were married in 1844. It was a time of change, and the Chickasaws were right in the middle of it. I don't have too much specific information about Smith and Ellen's lives during that time. I do know that they moved twice. In 1846 they moved nearer to Fort Washita for protection, and in 1851 they moved next to the newly constructed Fort Arbuckle which was located in the middle of the Chickasaw district and in the middle of the fertile Washita River valley. In spite of the protection offered by the forts, Smith and Ellen still faced repeated raids by plains Indian tribes, and in spite of that harassment they managed to have three children, my great grandfather Sam Paul, born in 1845, my great aunt Mississippia, and my great uncle Jessie.

          In 1846 the United States admitted Texas to the Union, and sent out an army under Zachary Taylor to guard the southern border. Taylor's troops went to the Rio Grande River, and were attacked by the Mexican army, who believed that the border should be further north, at the Nueces. Thus began the Mexican American War. As General Taylor fought his way down through Mexico, the U.S. Navy blockaded the coast, and General Winfield Scott landed at Veracruz. In 1847, Scott's troops occupied Mexico City, and in 1848 President Polk forced the Mexican government to cede all of their territory north of the Rio Grande River to the United States. The U. S. paid only $18 million. The area included, in addition to Texas, the present states of California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming. It was a better deal then the Louisiana Purchase.

          The Mexican American War was a turning point for the plains Indians. During the previous decade the Texans had been systematically driving Indians out of their republic, and Mexican agents had been backing Indian raids on Texas settlements. The Mexicans had also spread the rumor that the Americans were planning to build a big town on the Canadian River, and to kill all the buffalo, a story that would prove to be close to the truth. Now the hated Texans were a part of the United States, and there was no longer any barrier to the westward expansion of American settlers. American agents were now trying to negotiate with the plains tribes for the safety of travelers on the Santa Fe Trail.

          Two of the fiercest tribes on the plains were the Comanche and the Osage. They had joined in a peaceful alliance together after signing a treaty brokered by the United States in 1835. The treaty was supposed to guarantee safety for the immigrant tribes, but the Comanche and Osage took advantage of their alliance to steal horses from Texas. The Comanche would steal the horses, and the Osage would exchange guns and other supplies for them. Both tribes attacked travelers on the Santa Fe Trail. Without Mexican support, their system was breaking down, and they were also losing the buffalo, which they still relied on for food, clothing, and shelter. The Osage and Comanche both turned to the Five Civilized Tribes for advice.

          In 1849, Oh-he-wek-kee nephew of chief Tab-a-que-na of the Comanche, who had signed the treaty of 1835, sought out John Jumper, chief of the Seminoles, and also Wild Cat, their speaker. Jumper and Wild Cat were sympathetic with the Comanche's plight, having suffered at the hands of the Americans in Florida, but they knew that it was futile to fight. Wild Cat advised the chief to make peace, to settle down, and to raise corn and cattle. Oh-he-wek-kee also visited the Creek chiefs who gave him the same advice.

          In 1848, after the death of Black Dog, the great Osage Chief, the tribe split into two groups, one led by a young warrior called "The Wolf," and the other led by Black Dog's son, "Young Black Dog." The Wolf came to see John Ross, Chief of the Cherokee, to ask for advice. Ross informed him of the Americans' victory over the Mexicans, and he counseled him to settle down and make peace with the whites. Wolf's group followed Ross' advice, settled among the Cherokee, and took up farming. Young Black Dog's group continued to live as buffalo hunters.

          During the early 1800's many of the plains tribes had become fragmented into independent bands, so in spite of treaties, conferences and decisions on the part of some leaders, there were still plenty of raids on Chickasaw settlements. That is why my great great grandparents had to live near a fort.

          In 1848, not did the U. S. acquire Texas and the Mexican territory west to the Pacific, gold was also discovered in California. Soon thousands of settlers were heading south to Texas and west to California. Also trade through Santa Fe had grown to $2 million per year by 1854. All three trails went through Indian Territory, so the Chickasaws became innkeepers again, just like they had been in Mississippi along the Natchez Trace. Suddenly there was a market for their services and for their produce.

          The Gold Rush was good for the Chickasaws in another way too. It provided the political pressure for the building of another fort further west to protect the travelers. Fort Arbuckle was built in 1851 further up the Washita River, right in the middle of the Chickasaw domain. Smith and Ellen moved there right away, and they were followed by other Chickasaw families. In 1844 only 25% of the Chickasaws lived in their own district. In 1853 the figure was 90%.

1820, A Time of Change for the Chickasaws

The last post was about my mother's maternal grandfather, J. T. Rosser, who fought in the Civil War. What I'd like to do now is to go back about 40 years and pick up again the story of Smith Paul, Jim's paternal great grandfather, to give you a picture of the world he stepped into when he joined the Chickasaws in 1820.

At that time the Chickasaws were still living in their homeland in northern Mississippi, although it was considerably smaller due to treaties that ceded large tracts of land to the states of Tennessee, Kentucky and Alabama. 

The Chickasaws had changed a lot during the almost one hundred years since the French Chickasaw Wars. The mixed blood portion of the tribe lived much like their white neighbors. Many were quite wealthy, owning large plantations. Although most of the Chickasaws weren't wealthy, their world had also changed. They now depended on manufactured goods and the money needed to buy them. The fur trade was much less lucrative, and those who still depended on hunting had to travel as far as the Arkansas and Red River valleys to find game. Most Chickasaws now relied on farming to earn their living, the same as the white settlers, and many sold supplies and services to travelers on the Natchez Trace, the main road between white settlements and the ports of Mobile and New Orleans. 

This change from a hunting to a farming economy caused significant changes to the Chickasaws' way of life. The village was less important as the center of the community. Pleasant Porter, Chief of the Creek tribe at the time of the Removal lamented the changes that had taken place:

  

AIn those days they always raised enough to eat, and that was all we wanted. We had little farms, and we raised patches of corn and potatoes, and poultry and pigs, horses and cattle, and a little of everything, and the country was prosperous. In fact in my early life I don=t know that I ever knew of an Indian family that were paupers. There is plenty of them now: there was none then. They were all prosperous and happy and contented in their way, and what more could they want? I say I don=t know of an Indian family in my early life that were paupers. In those days the ones that would be paupers if they lived now stayed with their kin folks and they made them work. Now, back of that the custom of the Creeks was that everybody had to work or live on the town, and the town had taskmasters who took care of him and saw that he worked. There was not a skulker or one who shirked amongst us then; quite different from what it is now. We had a kind of an Arcadian government then. If anyone was sick or unable to work, the neighbors came in and planted his crop, and they took care of it - saw that the fences were all rightBand the women took care of the garden, and wood was got for him, and so on. In fact, everything was done under the care of the peopleBthey did everything and looked after the welfare of everything. The Creek had that much knowledge, that they cared for each other in that way; and while they used to live in towns in Alabama, out here in this peaceful country they had scattered out just like white men, and each one had gone to his farm,...@

Chickasaw society had always been based on family groups or clans. Our clan was the Im-mo-suck-cha, or fish clan. According to historian John Swanton the Im-mo-suck-cha clan were wealthy, and their men were held in high esteem as warriors. Chickasaw society was matriarchal so the clan was determined by the mother. Villages consisted predominantly of one clan. It was forbidden to marry within the same clan, and when a man married, he moved to his wife's village. The responsibility for teaching children rested on maternal aunts for girls, and uncles for boys. Roles for men and women were clearly defined. The men hunted and fought, while the women managed the crops and the household.

Moving away from towns changed all of this. The community was broken up, and with it the support it provided. The men, with no wars to fight and no game to hunt, were left idle. Slowly the men learned to take over the farm work, but it was a difficult change for them, because tilling the fields was traditionally women's work. Many turned to alcohol, which was easy to get from white merchants, even though  it was outlawed by the tribal council.

The traditional Chickasaw government was family or clan based. Villages were led by chiefs who inherited their positions. Sometimes there were also war chiefs who obtained their status by their bravery in battle. Clans varied in their character, some being considered warlike and others peaceful, and there was a rich tradition of legends associated with each clan. The Chickasaws had a central government or "Council" of chiefs, which was called into session periodically by the principal chief, called Minko or King. The last Chickasaw King, Ish-te-ho-to-pa, and the last War Chief, Tishomingo, both lived to come west to Indian territory in 1837 with the tribe

The Chickasaw system of government evolved with changing times. The Chickasaws had a written code of laws by 1929 and a police force. The laws were simple forbidding stealing, murder and drunkenness. There were no jails and no need for them. Even after the Chickasaws moved west to Indian territory those found guilty of a crime were honor bound to report for their punishment even for the death penalty. My grandmother used to be able to point out the location of the "whipping tree," where whippings were given for stealing or drunkenness. According to tradition, if the guilty party failed to report for punishment, a member of his family would suffer the punishment in his stead.

Smith Paul must have grown to love and respect his noble hosts as he watched them confront the challenges they faced.

To be continued...

The French Chickasaw War of 1720

When I graduated from high school we took a family vacation through the southern states, and in Mississippi my mother stopped and showed me the site of the early Chickasaw town of Akia where an important battle had been fought. Years later in 1971, a history professor at the University of Oklahoma, Arrell Gibson, wrote a book about the Chickasaws, and I got a copy. From it I learned that the battle of Akia was the decisive battle in the French Chickasaw War, along with a lot of other fascinating things about our tribe and about our family. That was when I started to share my mother's passion for Chickasaw history. 

The French Chickasaw War is another example which supports the Chickasaw  motto, "Unconquered and Unconquerable." If you know anything about Indian history, this is a surprising claim for any Indian tribe. The story of Native Americans was typically that of one defeat after another, by arrogant, ruthless Europeans. The Indians, naively trusting the promises of foreign representatives, outgunned by superior weapons, and eventually outnumbered by settlers, were not just defeated. They were exiled to remote unwanted areas of the country, where many still live in poverty, clinging to their proud traditions and self respect. 

The history of the Chickasaws is different. The Chickasaws managed to adapt to changing times and often as not came out ahead in their encounters with white culture, both in times of war and in times of peace.

I've already described how Hernando de Soto learned to respect the Chickasaws in 1541, the hard way. It was almost 150 years before the Chickasaws were confronted by the white man again. By 1700 there were English settlements all along the Eastern seaboard, and French settlements to the north in Illinois and Quebec, and to the south in Mobile. The Indian tribes in the Mississippi valley were almost all allied with the French, but not the Chickasaws.

The Chickasaws were different for several reasons. Firstly they had traded with both the French and the British, and had decided that the British goods were better and cheaper. Also they were further inland than most of the tribes so their domain was not yet threatened by settlers. The Chickasaws were acquainted with British traders though, and several traders had even married into the tribe, bringing with them not only an understanding of the English language, but also some savvy in negotiating with Europeans. It was one of these intermarried traders, James Adair, who wrote the most authoritative description of Chickasaw culture during the late 1700's.

The Chickasaws took advantage of their relationship with the British traders, and by 1700 they were well equipped with metal knives, hatchets and rifles. Not only that, they understood the value of the horse. The Chickasaws now raised their own horses and had become expert horsemen. Chickasaw women had replaced their clay pots with metal ones; they used metal hoes for tilling their gardens, and they often dressed in woven fabric instead of animal skins.

The French governor of the Louisianna Province at the time, Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville, wanted to establish control of the Mississippi River for transporting goods from northern French settlements. Surveying the situation, Iberville came to the conclusion that the only obstacle in his way were the Chickasaws. From their vantage point at the Chickasaw Bluffs near Memphis, Tennessee, the Chickasaws could control traffic down the Mississippi River, and they seemed to have formed an alliance with the British.

In 1702 Iberville invited a Chickasaw delegation to his headquarters in Mobile, where he promised to protect them from attacks by their sister tribe the Choctaws if they would sever their ties with the British. On the other hand Iberville threatened to support the Choctaws and to turn the other tribes in the region against them if they refused. The Chickasaws thanked the French for their protection and returned to their homes.

One of Iberville's tactics for securing control of the various Indian tribes was to send missionaries to live among them. The missionaries could then report back on the tribe's activities. So after the Mobile council, Iberville sent a missionary to the Chickasaws, a young man named St. Michel. When St. Michel didn't report back as planned, the Choctaws, trying to stir up trouble, told the French that the Chickasaws had killed him. The Chickasaws responded by returning St Michel safe and sound, thereby foiling the French plans to spy on them.   

The Chickasaws did continue to trade with the French, but at the same time they increased their trade with the British, because they preferred their goods. Besides that, trade with the French became more and more difficult. In order to reach Mobile, the Chickasaws had to cross the Choctaw domain risking attack by their enemies, or travel a long circuitous route. They tested the French promise to protect them from the Choctaws by asking for an escort for one of their trading parties, but the Choctaws attacked the party anyway and several Chickasaws were killed.

During the next 18 years tensions grew between the Chickasaws and the French. The French were frustrated that their threats had not disrupted the Chickasaws' relationship with the British, and the harrassment of Chickasaw traders by the Choctaws continued. The Chickasaws began to suspect that the attacks were inspired by the French. In 1720 the Chickasaws discovered a Frenchman they believed to be spying on them and put him to death. They then proceeded to shut down French traffic on the Mississippi River at the Chickasaw Bluffs, and to make raids on French settlements further south.

The French didn't feel they had enough troops to engage in an all out war with the Chickasaws, so they hired Choctaw mercenaries to do their fighting for them. The Choctaw attacks not only failed militarily, the Chickasaws started using diplomacy, telling the Choctaws they should trade with the British also. So in 1720, after four years of a failed war and isolation from their northern settlements, alarmed that they might soon lose the support of the Choctaws, the French suspended their war against the Chickasaws. Trade was resumed between the French and the Chickasaws, and the Mississippi River was reopened to French traffic.

The Louisianna Council of War decided that the Chickasaws had been "sufficiently punished" and the "honor of France" sustained, but Jean Baptiste Le Moyne d'Bienville, who had replaced Iberville as governor before the war, decided that the Chickasaws, because of their obstinacy, would remain a problem. Bienville started making plans to build up French forces for an attack on the Chickasaws that would wipe them off the map.   

To be continued.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

Smith Paul Joins the Chickasaws

There's some question about how old my great great grandfather Smith Paul was when he left home to join the Chickasaws. The story that Uncle Haskell told was that shortly after Smith's mother Tamsey died in about 1820, Smith left his home in Beard's Creek, N.C., and went to live with the Chickasaw Indians in Mississippi. The reason Haskell gave for his great grandfather's decision was that his father had remarried and he didn't like his stepmother. Smith would have been eleven years old at the time.

I assume that Haskell got this story from his uncle Buck who was Smith Paul's grandson and might have heard the story from Smith himself, but there's a problem with the story. Uncle Haskell found out through some North Carolina relatives that Rhesa Paul, Smith's father, didn't remarry until 1827, so if Smith left home because of his stepmother, he would have left seven years later, when he was 18. Of course Smith might have left when his mother died for other reasons. Perhaps he didn't want to be a burden on his father, or maybe the woman who caused him to leave wasn't the woman his father eventually married.

I'm not sure there's a way to resolve the issue, but I prefer to believe that Smith Paul was adopted by the Chickasaws at the age of eleven and raised with other Indian boys his age, learning to track game in the forest, to use a bow and arrow, and to play stick ball, the traditional Indian game that inspired the modern game of Lacrosse. I have always imagined him doing these things, and also sitting around the fire in the evenings with the other children, listening to Indian legends.

Whichever story you believe, Smith Paul did spend at least ten years with the Chickasaws in Mississippi before their removal to Indian Territory, and he would have become intimately acquainted with their culture and their traditions.

Smith Paul's journey from Beard's Creek, on the North Carolina Coast, to the Chickasaw homeland near Tupelo, Mississippi, was a long one, about 400 miles as the crow flies. To induce him to travel so far, Smith Paul must have met a party of Chickasaws along the way who allowed him to accompany them home. Uncle Haskell theorized that Smith Paul may have travelled along the "pigeon trial," an old Indian trail that followed the Pigeon River through Mississippi. The Pigeon River got its name from huge flocks of passenger pigeons that followed the river on their migration west in order to feast on nuts from the beech trees that lined the river's banks.

Passenger pigeons were once the most numerous species of bird in North America. One flock was reported to be as large as a mile wide and 300 miles long! My grandmother told of seeing flocks of passenger pigeons when she was a girl. She said they would darken the sky from horizon to horizon. As remarkable as it may seem, the passenger pigeon was hunted to extinction, the last bird dying in 1914.

Whichever route Smith Paul took, he eventually arrived at the Chickasaw homeland, a huge area extending east from the Mississippi River across northern Mississippi and Alabama, and western Tennessee. The Chickasaws he found there were prosperous, civilized farmers, with a well organized local and national government, a written code of laws, a police force and a court system. Many of the Chickasaws were educated, either in missionary schools inside the nation or in white schools in the east. The Chickasaws were sociable and hospitable. Some dressed like their white neighbors, but many still wore their traditional costumes: the men with feathers and silver ornaments in their hair and ears, colorful calico shirts, deerskin leggings and moccasins, the women with colorful dresses and ornaments in their hair.

One of the reasons for the Chickasaws' prosperity and their adoption of some features of white civilization was the Natchez Trace. The Natchez Trace was the most heavily travelled road in the west, and it went right through the middle of the Chickasaw Nation. The Trace extended for over 400 miles between Natchez, Mississippi, on the Mississippi River, and Nashville, Tennessee, on the Cumberland River. In negotiations to grant the rights for passage across their territory, the Chickasaws had shrewdly included a provision that prohibited white men from operating businesses within their domain, so all lodging, supplies, transportation, ferries, entertainment, even postal services along the road were provided by the Indians. This gave the Chickasaws considerable income, but it also introduced a large white influence into the Chickasaw society, not necessarily for the good.

At any rate, Smith Paul came to love and respect his Chickasaw hosts, and he decided to stay with them. He eventually went to work for a Presbyterian missionary named McClure who had lived with the Chickasaws for years. McClure had married a Chickasaw woman, Ela Teecha, and they had two children together, Tecumseh and Catherine.

PS: For more background on Smith Paul see Posts: It all started with John Paul Jones, and Back to North Carolina.

Even More Loose Ends

My last few posts have been as disconnected as usual so I'll try to desribe to you the thoughts that were going through my mind that led to such chaos.

After telling how important our heritage was to my mother in "Our Indian Heritage" and "Aristocrats," I wanted to follow up with some details, so I put down most of what I know about my great - great - great - great - great grand uncle, John Paul Jones, the first in a long line of colorful characters in the Paul family.

Just after writing about John Paul Jones I got my copy of the Chickasaw Times which contained my mother's obituary, so I just printed it as the next post. That got me thinking about my mother's last days and how much suffering she went through. She had told me about saying a prayer for her older sister Kaliteyo when she died, the same childhood prayer that they had said together as children before going to sleep. It was also the only thing I could think of to say for Jim when she died.

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
And if I die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

It's hard to explain how I felt when my mother died. When I said that prayer for her I had spent the better part of two months sharing her fear, her apprehension, and finally her suffering. During that time, memories or our lives together had been going through my mind, so much to understand, so many questions left unanswered. When it was all over, that overwhelming confusion and tension that I had felt were gone, and in their place was just a gaping hole. I felt so helpless and afraid, like a child. At the time I said that prayer for Jim, it was just as much for me as for her. Finally I understood how she had felt when she had said the prayer for her sister Kaliteyo.

That was about as much writing about Jim's death as I could stand, so I returned to our family's story. The first story that came to mind was the one about Smith Paul running away from home as a small boy, and being taken in by the Chickasaw Indians. I love that story. We don't know many details, but there's so much food for the imagination: The boldness of an eleven year old boy in striking out on his own; the hardships of those relatively primitive times; the incredible distances they traveled on horseback or in a wagon, when 15 or 20 miles was a day's journey; the hospitality of the Chickasaws; the experience of growing up with people of an entirely different culture; how the bonds of friendship and loyalty grew that caused Smith Paul to stay with the Chickasaws and to share their fate.

After telling the beginning of the story of Smith Paul, I just had to write something else about the Chickasaws. I wish I had another life to spend learning more about native American history. While most of what we know is through the writing of white men, the story you can piece together of the native Americans in general, and of the Chickasaws in particular, is fascinating.

In my opinion the Chickasaws' encounter with Hernando De Soto is one of the most incredible stories in history. The Chickasaws, instead of being awed by the advanced technology of the Europeans, were able to see them for the selfish, arrogant bullies they were, and the Chickasaws were able to prevail by using their own native intelligence and ingenuity.