Chickasaw Nation

“ Plaintiff never took any oath of allegiance to the Chickasaw Nation; never in terms relinquished his full rights as a citizen of the United States. Doubtless, by intermarriage with one who was at the time by legislative act a Chickasaw citizen, he acquired the rights and privileges of a member of that tribe or nation, but, when that which was the foundation upon which such acquisition rested was taken away by act of the nation, then all those rights and privileges ceased. The tie which bound him to the nation was his wife's citizenship. That tie the nation destroyed. ”

“ In the war that followed, the Choctaws sided with the French, the Chickasaws and Yazoos with the Natchez. Finally the French, under St. Dénis, won a complete victory, the women and children taken at Fort Rosalie were recaptured and brought to New Orleans, and the Natchez tribe was completely broken up. The prisoners were sent to die in the cruel slavery of the San Domingo sugar plantations, while a few who escaped the French were adopted into the Chickasaw nation. ”

“ It also avers that the allotment of lands in severalty of the Chickasaw Nation was delegated exclusively to the Secretary of the Interior. That, by the acts of Congress, exclusive jurisdiction in matters involving the making of rolls of citizenship of the Five Civilized Tribes was conferred upon the Secretary of the Interior, and the determination of such matters was within his exclusive judgment and discretion. ”

“ They cannot declare themselves until they are placed in a defensible position. The Administration of the North is concentrating his forces at Fort Washita, about twenty-four miles from the Texas line, and within the limits of the Chickasaw Nation. ”

“ But the more enlightened are married by preachers, or authorized civil officers.
With the united nation of Choctaws and Chickasaws, the executive power is vested in four chiefs, called in Choctaw mingoes, who are selected one from each of the districts into which the country is divided, {267} and of which the Chickasaw tribe constitutes one. [199] These chiefs are vested with the usual veto and pardoning powers, and are elected [p311] for four years. Most of their other constitutional provisions resemble those of the Cherokees. ”

“ Blunt thinks superior to Kansas tribes, 294; intent upon recovery of Fort Gibson, 311; troops pass resolution of reënlistment for war, 328-329
Chicago Tribune: 75, footnote
Chickasaw Battalion: 152, 155; Tonkawas to furnish guides for, 184, footnote
Chickasaw Home Guards: 184, footnote
Chickasaw Legislature: 306, footnote, 329, footnote
Chickasaw Nation: Pike arrested at Tishomingo, 200; funds drawn upon for support of John Ross and others, 215, footnote; Phillips communicates with governor, 323, footnote
Chickasaws: discord within ranks, 29; attitude towards secession, 63, footnote ”

“ We take a different view.
The Treaty of 1866, in Article III of which the Chickasaws unconditionally consented to allotments from the common lands to Choctaw freedmen who might be adopted in conformity with the treaty requirements, is not determinative because it was superseded, before any allotments were made, by the confirmed Atoka agreement which required the deduction of all freedmen's allotments, both Choctaw and Chickasaw, from those of the members of their respective tribes. ”

“ The delegation assented to this proposition, and agreed to take the sum of $600,000 for the lease of the territory within the two degrees mentioned, and the relinquishment of their claims to the country west of the 100th degree. The Chickasaw delegation also assented and agreed to the terms of the lease, and the question was settled, as I supposed; but both delegations now contend that the United States shall be restricted, in the number of bands of Indians to be located in the country leased, to such as are now residing in it. ”

“ We get no aid from the emancipation proclamation or the 13th Amendment. Prominent, of course, in the inquiry is the act of adoption passed by the Chickasaw legislature in 1873. It responded, in the main, to the treaty of 1866, and if it had force in 1894, when it was approved by Congress, the adoption of the freedmen was made complete. Appellants so contend. They say the act of adoption 'was complete in itself and a full exercise of the power possessed by that (Chickasaw) legislature.' And, further, if the act were subject to repeal, it was not repealed. ”

“ The reports of many guns and the war-cries of Indians were soon recognized, and they grew louder and came nearer. The people were saying to each other, ‘The war-party is returning from the Chickasaw lands.’ It was not long before there came into the room many white men and as many as twenty Chickasaws, daubed with paint and covered with mud. They had been in pursuit of some of Little Warrior’s braves, who had hidden in the swamps after the murder of the white families along their trail. ”

“ He had courted the good will of the chief of Chickasaws, and had been requited by a return of civility, but the Spaniard really had a contempt for Indian character, and contempt always clouds justice, and when exercised, leads often to serious error.
Now that he was about to quit his encampment, DeSoto made a peremptory order on the Chickasaw chief for 200 of his ablest men to become his burden bearers. The Chickasaws were the proudest and most arrogant of the Indian tribes, and rather than be humbled, they preferred death. As allies, they were valuable, as foes, formidable. ”

“ The fact itself is utterly false, and we defy the world to produce a single proof of it. The declaration of war by the Chickasaws, as we are informed was a very sudden thing, produced by the murder of some of their people by a party of Creeks, and produced so instantaneously as to give no body time to interfere, either to promote or prevent a rupture. We had, on the contrary, most particularly exhorted that nation to preserve peace, because in truth we have a most particular friendship for them. ”

“ At the treaty, Tassel, on behalf of the Cherokees, said-'We will mark a line for the white people; we will begin at the ridge between the Tennessee and Cumberland, on the Ohio, and run along the same, till we get round the white people as you think proper. We will mark a line from the mouth of Duck river to the said line, and leave the remainder of the lands to the south and west of the lines to the Chickasaws.' And according to this the Chickasaw limits to the east were recognized by the parties to the Cherokee treaty, in the absence of the Chickasaws. ”

“ Resolved, That we have full faith and confidence in the justice of the cause in which we are embarked, and that we appeal to the Chickasaw people to be prepared to meet the conflict which will surely, and perhaps speedily, take place, and hereby call upon every man capable of bearing arms to be ready to defend his home and family, his country and his property, and to render prompt obedience to all orders from the officers set over them. ”

“ He did not for one moment doubt Anthony's honesty; nobody ever did. It was plain that the news was true.
"By Chickasaws on land and English on sea French and Spaniards are to be cracked like bugs between two boards. What is your advice, du Gay?"
The answer was prompt: "Release my Chickasaw and your buccaneer to tell their different peoples the plot is discovered. It will not be carried out this time. It is much easier to discourage than it is to defeat the English. Send [132] de Graaf to warn the fort at Mobile and let the Indian and the buccaneer see him get away so they may report that too." ”

“ In 1860 there were a few Louisiana Caddoes in the northwestern part of the Chickasaw country, most likely the same that, in 1866, were reported to have been driven out of Texas in 1839 by bushwhackers and then out of the Washita country at the opening of the Civil War. They continued throughout the war loyal to the United States. In 1853 the Choctaw General Council passed an act admitting to the rights of citizenship several Catawba Indians; and from that circumstance, the Office of Indian Affairs surmised that the Choctaws would be willing to incorporate Catawbas yet in the Carolinas. ”

“ The Chickasaws were a large and powerful tribe living in the fertile region of the upper Tombigbee; the French knew that they had incited the Natchez against them, and now Bienville resolved to attack them. In 1736 he sailed from New Orleans to Mobile with a strong force of French troops and twelve hundred Choctaw warriors. From Mobile he ascended the Tombigbee River in boats for five hundred miles, to the southeastern border of the present county of Pontotoc. The Chickasaw fort was a powerful stronghold about twenty-five miles from that point. ”

“ Many years later, in the adjustment of a territorial dispute between the Cherokees and Chickasaws, each nation claimed the sole honor of driving out the Shawnees, and hence, by right of conquest, the title to the territory formerly inhabited by the latter. The Chickasaws evidently had the best of the controversy, though some concessions were made to the Cherokees in the matter when the United States came to negotiate for the purchase of the controverted territory. ”

“ They continued eastward across the Mississippi until they arrived at Chickasaw Old Fields, where, the pole standing erect, they settled. Cushman (History of the Choctaw, etc., Indians, 62) gives the same tradition as being handed down by old men to missionaries in 1820, and that the Indians at the time named the “great water” Misha Sipokni (the Mississippi) . Buttrick gives a migration legend of the Chickasaws coming from the West across a great river; and the tradition fixes the crossing place at the bluffs, later known as the Chickasaw Bluffs, on one of which stands the city of Memphis. ”

“ Since he had used blacks to murder Indians in order to make bad blood between the races, the Indians retaliated by using blacks to murder white men. In August of that same fateful year, the Chickasaws, who had given asylum to the despoiled Natchez in order to curb the encroachments of the white men, stirred the black slaves to revolt. We have noted before the prevalence of the Banbara Negroes in the colony. It was they who planned the rebellion. Their plan was, after having butchered the whites, to establish a Banbara colony, keeping as slaves for themselves all blacks not of their nation. ”

“ The confederacy was gradually extending itself by taking in smaller peoples driven from their own country or suffering from more powerful neighbors, among them the Yuchi and a part of the Shawnee. Even the Chickasaw, though sometimes at war with them, had a sort of semi-official membership and it is probable that more of the tribes east and south would have been gathered into the league had it not been for the coming of the whites. ”

“ That the government of Virginia was so well apprized of the rights of the Chickasaws to a portion of country within the limit of that State, that about the year 1780, they instructed their agent, residing with the southern Indians, to avail himself of the first opportunity which should offer, to purchase the same from them, and that, therefore, any act of that Legislature allotting these lands to their officers and soldiers must probably have been passed on the supposition, that a purchase of the Indian right could be made, which purchase, however, has never been made. ”

“ John Wesley.)
“Not so numerous as the Choctaws, but more terrible on account of their intrepidity. The Chickasaws are tall, well made, and of an unparalleled courage.” (Bossu.)
“A brave, warlike people; tall, well-shaped and handsome featured.” (Rogers.)
“These brave Indians, our ancient allies and steady friends; irreconciliable enemies of the French.” (Sir Jeffrey Amherst.)
“There is no Indian nation on the continent near so handsome as the Chickasaws ”

“ In 1687, Father Anastasius Douay records respecting a party of La Salle’s force, “we went to the Sicachas, where we had not been,” previously. “This nation is very numerous; they count at least four thousand warriors; have an abundance of peltry.” But Tonty, in 1693, noted the tribe as having “2,000 warriors.” By 1720-21 that the Chickasaws were a thorn in the side of the French is demonstrated by Charlevoix and Diron D’Artaguette. For all their accounts, see Williams, Early Travels in the Tennessee Country, passim. ”

“ Meanwhile, after the year 1726, when Louisiana began to give some signs of hope as a colony, enterprising and dauntless English traders, with pack-horses laden with goods, had begun to penetrate the wilderness from Carolina and Georgia, driving a brisk traffic with the Chickasaws. Those Chickasaws, in opposition to the Choctaws, had come into alliance with the scattered fragments of the Natchez Indians, and harried the French. The French, under Bienville, with their Choctaw allies, made a rush upon the Chickasaws in 1736, but the Chickasaws secured a bloody victory. ”

“ We possess what is below the Yazoo, and can probably acquire a certain breadth from the Illinois and Wabash to the Ohio; but between the Ohio and Yazoo the country all belongs to the Chickasaws, the most friendly tribe within our limits, but the most decided against the alienation of lands. The portion of their country most important for us is exactly that which they do not inhabit. Their settlements are not on the Mississippi, but in the interior country. They have lately shown a desire to become agricultural, and this leads to the desire of buying implements and comforts. ”

“ CHICKASAWS, a tribe of North American Indians of Muskhogean stock, now settled in the western part of Oklahoma. Their former range was northern Mississippi and portions of Tennessee. According to their own tradition and the evidence of philology, they are closely connected with the Creeks and Choctaws; and they believe that they emigrated with these tribes from the west, crossed the Mississippi, and settled in the district that now forms the north-east part of the state of that name. ”