The American Indians / Their History, Condition and Prospects, from Original Notes and Manuscripts

by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

The council of thirty appoint their own speaker and clerk, and keep a journal. They meet in a large and commodious council-house, fitted up with seats for members and spectators, and committee rooms. Their sessions are, usually, about ten days in duration. They are paid two dollars per diem for their services, out of public funds.

In addition to this evidence of capacity for self-government, there are judicial districts established, the right of trial by jury is secured, and there is an appeal to the highest tribunal. All the males, of a special age, are subject to do military duty: for this purpose the territory is subdivided into thirty two captaincies, the whole being placed under the orders of a general. The council has passed many good and wholesome laws; among them, one against intemperance and the sale of ardent spirits. The collection of debts is at present not compulsory, being regulated by questions of credit, punctuality, and honor, which are to be adjusted between the buyer and seller. The country is too sparsely settled, and the popular odium against incarceration too strong, to permit a resort to it. Thus, it will be seen, this tribe exhibit in their frame of government the elements of a representative republic, not a pure democracy, with perhaps sufficient conservative power to guard against sudden popular effervescence.

The Choctaws have twelve public schools, established by treaty stipulations with the United States. There are several missionaries amongst them, of the Presbyterian and Methodist denominations, whose labors are reported by the public agents to be beneficial, and calculated to advance their condition. There are four public blacksmith shops, two of which are exclusively worked by the natives. The strikers, or assistants, at all the shops, are natives. Shops have also been erected, in various parts of the nation, which are occupied only in the spring and summer, in planting and crop time. The mechanics in these are natives, who are paid, not by the individuals requiring aid, but out of public funds. The nation has an academy located in Scott county, Kentucky, at which 125 students were taught in 1839 and 1840. This institution is now in the process of being established in their own territory. This tribe we learn by the Secretary of War's report, appropriated $18,000 of their annuities, in 1843, to educational purposes.

2. Chickasaws. This tribe is of the same lineage as the Choctaws; and, by a compact with the latter, they occupy the same territory, and live intermixed with them. It constitutes a part of this compact, that the Chickasaws are to concentrate their population, and form a fourth election district, which shall be entitled to elect ten representatives, and three senatorial chiefs, to the national Council. The aggregate amount of the vested funds of this tribe, in 1840, was $515,230 44; of which $146,000 is devoted to orphans. The annual interest paid by the government is $27,063 83. They participate equally in the advantages of the Choctaw academy, and have had many of their youth educated at that institution.

3. Next, in geographical position, to the united Choctaws and Chickasaws, are the Muskogees, who are more generally known under the name of Creeks. They occupy a territory one hundred and fifty miles in length, by ninety in breadth. They are bounded on the south by the Canadian fork of the Arkansas, and by the district of the Seminoles, which lies between the main branch of this stream and its north fork. Their territory reaches to a point opposite the junction of the Neosho, and is protracted thence north to the Cherokee boundary. It is a rich tract, well adapted to the growth of corn, vegetables, and esculents, and the raising of stock. It is not as abundantly watered by running streams as some of the tracts, or rather, it is a characteristic of its smaller streams that they run dry, or stand in pools, during the latter part of summer. In place of these, it has some good springs. The main and the north fork of the Canadian are exemptions from the effects of summer drouth. In point of salubrity, the country is not inferior to other portions of the Indian territory.

The government of the Creeks is still essentially the same which they exercised on the banks of the Chattahoochee and the plains of Georgia. They exist in chieftainships, each head of which has his own local jurisdiction, civil and criminal. Each ruling chief has his village and his adherents; and the condition of things partakes of what we shall be understood by designating feudal traits. They have no written constitution; their laws are, however, now reduced in part to writing. General councils, or conventions, not exact in the period of their occurrence, consider and decide all general questions. At these, the chieftainships are all entitled to representation. Local questions, of right and police, come before the local chiefs, and are settled according to usage. They adhere to the original mode of working common or town fields, at which it is the duty of all to assist, both in the original clearing and in the annual labor of planting and reaping. There are also individuals, possessing slaves, who manage pretty extensive plantations. More corn is raised by this tribe than by any other now located West. Over and above their own wants, they have for several years had a large amount for sale and exportation. Less attention has been paid to the raising of stock, for which, indeed, the country has been deemed less propitious; but this branch of industry has of late years attracted more attention.

The Creeks had, for many years prior to their removal, been divided into upper and lower towns—a distinction which has been transferred to the West. Opothleyoholo is the chief of the Upper, and Roly McIntosh of the Lower Creeks. These two chieftainships embrace the lesser ones, and divide the nation into two parties. It was the Lower towns, headed by the father of the present chief (whose tragic death we have mentioned), that ceded the Georgian territory, and thus sided in the policy of that State. The condition in which this tribe existed, in portions of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, was, in other respects, peculiar. In emerging, as they were well in the process of doing, from the hunter to the agricultural state, the institution of slavery, by which they were surrounded, and in which they participated, gave a peculiar development to their industry. Chiefs, who were averse to work themselves, employed slaves, and thus the relation of planter and slave was established long before the question of their removal occurred. The effects of this were to exalt a portion of the nation above, and to depress others below, the average standing. The disparity which took place in laborious habits and in wealth, also impressed itself on education, dress, manners, and information generally. Although the idea of slavery was well known to the red race from the earliest times, and they all have a word for it, in their native vocabularies, and practised it on their prisoners, yet the result we are considering was accelerated by an admixture of European blood in their chieftains. Hence it is that this tribe, and one or two others in the south, have for years been able to put forth intelligent chiefs to transact their public business, who have astonished the circles at Washington. Yet, if they were followed to the huts of the common people, at home, there was a degree of ignorance and barbarity, even below the standard of our leading northern tribes. Two kinds of testimony, respecting the condition of the southern tribes, both very different, and both true, could therefore be given.

The Creeks came west, soured and disappointed, and but little disposed for the effort before them. They had suffered in various ways, and they had left the southern slopes and sunny valleys of the southern Alleganies with "a longing, lingering look." They had never manifested a general interest in schools, and none whatever in religion. The latter is still the prevalent feeling. It is believed there is not a missionary now tolerated among them. There is a more friendly feeling towards education. Neither had they made much advance in mechanic arts. The chiefs were too proud, the common people too indolent, to learn the use of the saw or the hammer. Some change, in this respect, is thought to have ensued. Mechanics are employed for their benefit and at their charges, by the government, which must introduce the elements of mechanical industry. They dress in a rather gaudy, but picturesque manner. They live in comfortable houses of squared or scored logs, fitted up with useful articles of furniture, and they employ beasts of burthen and of pleasure. It is the evidence of the government agents, that the signs of advancing thrift and industry are among them. Time alone, it is believed, is necessary, with a perseverance in present efforts, to carry them onwards to civilisation and prosperity.[48]

[48] This tribe has, the past year (1843), passed a law expelling all white men who play at cards, from the limits of the nation, whether they have Indian wives or not.

4. Seminoles. This tribe is of the language and lineage of the Creeks. They are appropriately placed on a tract within the general area of the latter, bounded on the south by the Canadian fork of the Arkansas, and by the lands of the Choctaws and Chickasaws. The tract has an extent of seventy miles from east to west, and is fully adequate to their wants. A blacksmith's shop is maintained for them; they are furnished with agricultural implements, and have been gratuitously subsisted, as other tribes, one year, at the public expense. It is thought to be unfavorable to their progress, that they have been allowed to migrate with their slaves, who are averse to labor and exert a paralysing influence on their industry. This tribe is far behind the other southern tribes in civilisation and manners. They occupied, while in Florida, a region truly tropical in its climate, and which yielded spontaneously no unimportant part of their subsistence, in the arrowroot and in sea fish. Their chief product thus far, in the west, has been corn. They live under the authority of local chiefs, who, as in all their past history, exercise influence in proportion to their talents and courage. Their withdrawal from scenes and situations which served as nurseries of idle, savage habits, and their association with the other leading tribes, who are now bent on supporting themselves exclusively by agriculture, have been favorable. They have been at peace since their arrival on the waters of the Arkansas; and it is anticipated that they will, by example and emulation, assimilate themselves in industry with the pre-existing tribes. It has already been demonstrated that they will sustain themselves in their new field of labor. But few of their numbers—from the last accounts not exceeding 100[49]—now remain in Florida.