The government was anxious to get started with the Removal. They thought that the removal of the Choctaws would put pressure on their sister tribe, the Chickasaws, into signing a removal treaty as well. In the fall of 1831 when Secretary of War John Eaton tried to get the Choctaws to agree to sell part of the new territory to the Chickasaws, the Choctaw council refused, telling the secretary to wait for them to get their feet on the new land before asking them to sell it.
There were other pressures as well. 1930 had been a bad year for crops, and in 1831 many of the Choctaws didn't plant crops anyway. Not only were they despondent about losing their homeland, white settlers were crowding them out. Whiskey peddlers took advantage of the Choctaws' demoralized state and some spent their meager annuity on alcohol instead of food. Many were reduced to eating roots.
The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek had guaranteed each Choctaw the option of becoming a US citizen, and being granted a section of land in Mississippi. These promises were disregarded by the settlers who swarmed into the Choctaw domain, and by the government as well. When those who wanted to stay applied for their land titles, federal agents refused to register them.
For those Choctaws choosing to migrate, the treaty promised payment for their property, transportation west, and food for a year after their arrival in the new land. Not only did the Indians get no payment for their property, they were presented with fraudulent legal claims which prevented the departure of many until mid winter.
As if being prayed upon by greedy whites wasn't enough, one of the Choctaws' own chiefs, Greenwood Leflore, set himself up as a real estate agent, and for a fee, he sold the full bloods' property at bargain prices and sent them west. Leflore assigned some of his captains to lead these people, some of the poorest in the nation, but provided them with little money. Their instructions were to charge their expenses to the credit of the tribe. In a letter to Secretary Eaton Leflore predicted that the emigrants would "reach the place of their future residence in a very destitute condition."
The destination of the emigrating Choctaws was 350 - 400 miles away at Ft. Towson, where the Red and Kiamichi Rivers meet. The old fort had been abandoned in 1829 and was in ruins. In the spring of 1831 a lieutenant was sent there to make arrangements for provisions. He found 88 of Leflore's first party there, huddled in the ruins of the fort, starving. Immigrants continued to trickle into the Ft Towson area, and by October, 427 had arrived, out of the 1000 or so that had left the previous fall.
In the fall of 1831 the Removal really began in earnest. The army planned to move 1/3 of the 20,000 Choctaws that year. After the miserable experience of Leflore's emigrants the year before, the Army had made some plans. The Choctaws were responsible for their own transportation for the first fifty miles or so to the Mississippi River. Then they were to be divided into groups of 500 or so under a "conductor," and subdivided into smaller groups of 50. Three routes were planned, and supply points were set up along the way. This was the plan.
As it worked out, the conductors for the expedition were given no money, and were expected to obtain supplies on credit. The supply depots hadn't received any money either. The agent for the Removal, F W Armstrong, had been given $50,000 in September, but he didn't arrive with the money at Ft Smith until mid January. He said he was afraid of thieves, and besides he didn't like traveling in the winter. At Little Rock, Captain Brown, in charge of procuring supplies there, wrote to his superior officer at Ft Smith:
Four of my agents are now in charge of emigrants, … and all are begging for funds…fifty days and over have passed since you informed me that funds had left…I have no money…three days ago I parted with the last five dollars of my own money.
The winter of 1831 was the worst in memory. Even the Mississippi River was closed down much of the time due to large chunks of ice floating down its channel. The Indians carried only the clothes on their backs. Many had no shoes, and they were issued one blanket per family.
I've chosen one group of emigrants to illustrate the problems the Choctaws encountered, not because they had the worst experience - that distinction belongs to the groups that entered the swamp and never emerged - but because I have more information about them.
The group consisted of 250 Choctaws from Leflore's district. They were among about 1000 Choctaws who decided to travel on their own in exchange for a "commutation certificate" worth $10 apiece. Their leader was Silas Fisher, a mixed blood Choctaw, and their government assigned agent or "conductor" was W S Colquhoun, who had applied for a job in the Removal because his mill dam had been washed away and he was in financial straits. The group got a late start. It was December when they arrived in Vicksburg, on the Mississippi River, having traveled the last 24 hours through snow and sleet. Most had no shoes.
Alexis de Toqueville, the French statesman and writer, visited one of the Choctaw camps as the Indians prepared to cross the Mississippi River to begin their journey. He wrote:
It was then in the depths of winter, and that year the cold was exceptionally severe; the snow was hard on the ground, and huge masses of ice drifted on the river. The Indians brought their families with them: there were among them the wounded, the sick, newborn babies, and old men on the point of death. They had neither tents nor wagons, but only some provisions and weapons. I saw them embark to cross the great river, and the sight will never fade from my memory. Neither sob not complaint rose from that silent assembly. Their afflictions were of long standing, and they felt them to be irremediable.
The Choctaws in Fisher's group were finally loaded on the steamboat Walter Scott, which carried them down the Mississippi to the Red River, and then up the Quachita. The boat could get no further than Monroe, Louisiana, because of the ice. At Monroe, Lt. Colquhoun was able to rent a farmhouse to give shelter to a few. There he picked up 44 more Indians whose conductor had gone back into the swamp to rescue some of his party left behind.
Here is an excerpt from a letter written to the Secretary of War by Joseph Kerr whose house was next to the road over which the Indians traveled:
(There) are two large deep streams that must be crossed in a boat or on a raft, and one other nearly impassable in any way. This they had to perform or perish, there being no provision made for them on the way. This too was to be done in the worst time of weather I have ever seen in any country - a heavy sleet having broken and bowed down all the small and much of the larger timber. And this was to be performed under the pressure of hunger, by old women and young children, without any covering for their feet, legs or body except a cotton underdress generally. In passing, before they reached the place of getting rations here, I gave a party leave to enter a small field in which pumpkins were. They would not enter without leave, though starving. These they ate raw with the greatest avidity.
After a brief rest, Fisher's party was issued provisions for an eighty mile journey, fifty of which was through the swamp. On leaving Monroe, the group became lost, and actually headed deeper into the swamp. Fortunately, another group of Choctaws who had made it to Ecor 'a Fabre further up the river, refused to go on unless their conductor, S. T. Cross, went back to search for Fisher's group. When he found them they had been without food for 6 days and several had died.
The Fisher party reached Washington, Arkansas, in mid January. I have no specific record of them past this point, but they faced another 100 mile trek at that point. The road was poor; there were rivers to ford, and the food supply was uncertain. According to accounts of other groups the road was lined with graves.
The next year several thousand more Choctaws crossed over to Indian Territory. The chiefs tried to get their parties started sooner to avoid the winter which had caused so much suffering and death the year before. The army planned different routes to avoid as much as possible the swamps along the Mississippi delta, and the army built a road between Ft Gibson and Ft Towson in order to facilitate the transfer of supplies. Another problem faced the emigrants the second year however, cholera.
The two major cities along the Mississippi where the Choctaws were to assemble, Memphis and Vicksburg, were having a cholera epidemic in the summer of 1832. When the Choctaw emigrants found out, many deserted their parties and returned home. Others took their chances in the swamps where so many had died the year before. Some of those who boarded the steamboats contracted cholera, and the crowded conditions on board caused the disease to spread. When the boats stopped for supplies, the merchants refused to do business with them. When the teamsters hired to drive the wagons found out their charges were infected with cholera, many quit. In one party there were 13 wagons full of the sick.
The Choctaw agent Armstrong, who the year before had neglected to provide the army commissary officers with the money needed to buy supplies, was convinced that the Indians removed the previous year had been "spoiled," and he went along with one of the parties to supervise. When Armstrong neglected to issue each family their blanket, and refused to let the Indians disembark when the boats stopped, Colquhouon, conductor of the unfortunate Fisher group the previous year, complained. An argument ensued and Colquhoun pulled out his pistol and tried to kill Armstrong. Colquhoun was dismissed.
The fortitude of the Indians impressed even Armstrong however. He wrote:
"No man but one who was present can form any idea of the difficulties that we have encountered due to the cholera… Luckily they are a people that will walk to the last, or I don't know how we would get on."
Unfortunately for the Indians, Armstrong was not one to slow down for stragglers. Those who could not keep up were abandoned by the side of the road. Occasionally the Indians balked. When one of their beloved chiefs, Etotahoma, was unable to keep up with the group, the Choctaw group leaders refused to go further until the old chief caught up. After this occurred twice, the officer in charge had the old man's cart repaired and hired a team to pull it.
In Indian Territory the Choctaws continued to die of afflictions acquired on their journey. During the year of government support allowed by the treaty, few had the means or the will to plant enough crops to support themselves. In June of 1833 the Arkansas River flooded and destroyed the crops of the Choctaws living there, along with their corn cribs, and many of their homes. In the fall of 1833, when the deadline for emigration was past, the government discharged all their conductors, shut down their supply depots, and recalled the officers assigned to assist in the Removal. The Choctaws were starving in their new country, and dying. An observer commented that there were no longer any old people among them. In February of 1833, the agent Armstrong asked General Arbuckle at Ft. Gibson for corn for the Indians settled near the fort many of whom had gone 4 or 5 days without anything to eat.
After the three years allotted for the Removal, the army had removed 6000 Choctaws, and about 3500 more had moved on their own for the commutation fee of $10 each. 7000 remained in Mississippi, still being swindled out of their property in the courts, and being unable to claim the allotments promised them in the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek. Government agents and Choctaw volunteers went to Mississippi to convince those remaining there to come west, and every year another wave of immigrants came to Indian Territory. Finally there were only about 600 left in Mississippi.
In spite of their poverty and the prejudice they had to bear, these "Mississippi Choctaws," as they came to be known, remained firm in their decision to remain in their native land. Here is the reply of Chief Cobb, leader of a group of Choctaws in Mississippi to an army officer who visited them in 1844 to ask them to emigrate:
Brother: When you were young we were strong; we fought by your side; but our arms are now broken. You have grown large. My people have become small.
Brother: My voice is weak; you can scarcely hear me; it is not the shout of a warrior but the wail of an infant. I have lost it in mourning over the misfortunes of my people. These are their graves, and in those aged pines you hear the ghosts of the departed - their ashes are here, and we have been left to protect them. Our warriors are nearly all gone to the far country west; but here are our dead. Shall we go too, and give their bones to the wolves?
