Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T17:01:16.023Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Choctaw Nation: Changing the Appearance of American Higher Education, 1830-1907

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Steven Crum
Steven Crum*
Affiliation:
Department of Native American Studies at the University of California, Davis
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In September 1830 the U.S. government negotiated the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek with some leaders of the Choctaw Nation. The treaty reinforced the congressional Indian Removal Act of 1830, which paved the way for the large-scale physical removal of tens of thousands of tribal people of the southeast, including many of the Choctaw. It provided for the “removal” of the Choctaw from their traditional homeland in Mississippi to Indian Territory. Over a two-year period, from 1831 to 1833, roughly thirteen thousand to fifteen thousand Choctaw, or about half of the tribe, moved to the region we now call southeastern Oklahoma

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , February 2007 , pp. 49 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © 2007 History of Education Society 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Akers, Donna L., “Removing the Heart of the Choctaw People: Indian Removal from a Native Perspective,” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 23 (1999): 63–76; Satz, Ronald N., American Indian Policy in the Jacksonian Era (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1975), 82–83. For an excellent bibliography on Choctaw history, see Clara Sue Kidwell and Charles Roberts, The Choctaws: A Critical Bibliography (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980). The author thanks Dr. Jane Haladay at the University of California, Davis for reviewing this article. I also give thanks to Choctaw historians Dr. Charles Roberts at California State University, Sacramento, and Dr. Donna Akers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln for also reviewing this article. I assume responsibility for any errors within this work.Google Scholar

2 “A Treaty of Perpetual Friendship, Cession and Limits,” Treaties between the United States and the Indian Tribes: The Public Statutes at Large of the U.S. of America 7 (Boston: Little, Charles C. and James Brown, 1848), 333–341.Google Scholar

3 Ibid.Google Scholar

4 Noley, Grayson B., “The History of Education in the Choctaw Nation from Precolonial Times to 1830,” PhD diss., Pennsylvania State University, 1979, 172.Google Scholar

5 Kidwell, Clara Sue, “Choctaws and Missionaries in Mississippi before 1830,” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 11, (1987): 69.Google Scholar

6 Noley, , “The History of Education in the Choctaw Nation,” 170. For general sources on the history of Native American education, see the following: Adams, David Wallace, Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1815–1928 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995); Reyhner, Jon and Eder, Jeanne, American Indian Education: A History (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 2004); Szasz, Margaret Connell, Education and the American Indian: The Road to Self-Determination since 1928 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1977); and Schutt, Amy C., “‘What will become of our young people?’ Goals for Indian Children in Moravian Missions,” History of Education Quarterly 38, (Fall 1998): 268–286.Google Scholar

7 Prucha, Francis Paul, The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians, Abridged (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), 56; Kidwell, Clara Sue, Choctaw and Missionaries in Mississippi, 1818–1918 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995), 101.Google Scholar

8 McKee, Jesse O. and Jon Schlenker, A., The Choctaws: Cultural Evolution of a Native American Tribe (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1980), 71; Pitchlynn, Peter letter, 5 October 1826, Letters Received (LR), Microfilm (M) 234, Roll 773, Frame (F) 409, Record Group (RG) 75, National Archives (NA); Baird, W. David, Peter Pitchlynn: Chief of the Choctaws (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1972), 30; McKenny, Thomas to David Folsom, 20 October 1829, Letters Sent (LS), (M 21,R 6, F 64), RG 75; Foreman, Carolyn Thomas, “The Choctaw Academy,” The Chronicles of Oklahoma 9 (1931): 382–411.Google Scholar

9 Foreman, Grant, The Five Civilized Tribes (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1934).Google Scholar

10 Noley, , “The History of Education in the Choctaw Nation,” 172.Google Scholar

11 “About Some of Our First Schools in Choctaw Nation,” The Chronicles of Oklahoma 6, (1928): 386, 392. I thank Choctaw tribal language teacher Richard Adams for providing the quote concerning group behavior.Google Scholar

12 “About some of our first schools,” 386, 392; Baird, W. David, The Choctaw People (Phoenix: Published by the Indian Tribal Service, 1973), 44; Baird, “Spencer Academy: The Choctaw ‘Harvard,’ 1842–1900” (MA Thesis, University of Oklahoma, 1965), 1; Choctaw Leaders to Samuel Rutherford, 14 January 1848, LR (M 234, R171, F 616–17), RG 75, NA.Google Scholar

13 American Board of Commissioner for Foreign Missions, Annual Report of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 1846 (Boston, The Board, 1847), 200.Google Scholar

14 Pitchlynn to William Medill, 29 March 1848 (M 234, R 171, F 581–84), RG 75; Pitchlynn to Thompson, 13 December 1848, Hargett, Jay L. Collection, Gilcreast Institute, Tulsa, Oklahoma; Medill to Delaware College President, 17 April 1848, LS (M 21, R 40, F 220), RG 75, NA; Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs (CIA), 30 November 1848, 407, in The New American State Papers, Indian Affairs 2 (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources Inc., 1972), 231.Google Scholar

15 Wilson, James to Medill, William, 19 March 1849, LR (M 234, R 784, F 1407); Munroe, John A., The University of Delaware: A History (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1986), 92; William Graham to Orlando Brown, 20 July 1849, LR (M 234, R 784, F 939), RG 75, NA; James Wilson to Orlando Brown, 15 March 1850, LR (M 234, R 784, F 939), RG 75, NA; Baird, Peter Pitchlynn, 87; Leonidas Garland letter, 30 January 1850, LR (M 234, R 785, F 168–171), RG 75, NA.Google Scholar

16 Munroe, , The University of Delaware, 92; Report of the Five Choctaw Youth and Two Chickasaw at Delaware College, 1849, LR (M 234, R 784, F 1454). RG 75, NA.Google Scholar

17 Wilson, James to Brown, Orlando, 21 February 1850, LR (M 234, R 785, F 701–4), RG 75, NA; Munroe, The University of Delaware, 93; Alex Holland to Orlando Brown, 27 April 1850, LR (M 234, R 785, F 205), RG 75, NA.Google Scholar

18 Holland to Brown, 16 July 1850, LR (M 234, R 785, F 216), RG 75, NA; Willard, L.H. to Longberg, A.L., 26 October 1850, LR (M 234, R 785, F 753), RG 75, NA; North to Luke Lea, 31 December 1850, LR (M 234, R 785, F 1302-8), RG 75, NA; L.H. Willard to Lea, 16 October 1852, LR (M 234, R 785, F 503), RG 75, NA; Holmes Colbert Letter, 8 January 1851, LR (M 234, R 785, F 850–852), RG 75, NA.Google Scholar

19 Biographical information about Allen Wright, Union Theological Archives, New York; Meserve, John Bartlett, “Chief Allen Wright,” The Chronicles of Oklahoma 19, (December 1941): 314–321; Allen Wright, Principal Chief of the Choctaw Nation, 1866–1870, Muriel H. Wright Collection, Box 4, Oklahoma Historical Society (OHS).Google Scholar

20 Allen Wright to Manypenny, G.W., 19 May 1855, LR (M 234, R 788, F 647–48), RG 75 NA.Google Scholar

21 Akers, Living in the Land of Death: The Choctaw Nation, 1830–1860 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2004), 43.Google Scholar

22 Fultz, Michael, “African-American Teachers in the South, 1890–1940: Growth, Feminization, and Salary Discrimination,” Teachers College Record 96, (1995): 552.Google Scholar

23 Sugrue, Michael, “'We desired our future rulers to be educated men': South Carolina College, the Defense of Slavery, and the Development of Secessionist Politics,” in The American College in the Nineteenth Century ed. Roger Geiger (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2000), 114.Google Scholar

24 Bledstein, Burton J., The Culture of Professionalism: The Middle Class and the Development of Higher Education in America (New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 1976), 105.Google Scholar

25 Going Home, Improving Communities,” Indian Country Today, 12 December 2001, A4.Google Scholar

26 Abel, Annie Heloise, The American Indian and the End of the Confederacy, 1863–1866 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993), 303.Google Scholar

27 General Catalogue of Centre College of Kentucky, 1890 (Danville: The Kentucky Advocate Printing Company, 1890), 174–75; Choctaw leaders to Orlando Brown, 29 January 1850, LR (M234, R 785, F 267–69), RG 75, NA; Wilson, William to Lea, Luke, 10 September 1850, LR (M234, R 785, F 124–25), RG 75, NA.Google Scholar

28 General Catalogue of the Centre College, 1890,174–75; Young, John C. to Sir, 9 April 1885, LR (M 234, R 788, F 697–99), RG 75, NA; Littlefield, Daniel F., Jr., and James Parins, W., A Bibliography of Native American Writers, 1772–1924: A Supplement (Metuchen, New Jersey: The Scarecrow Press, 1985), 224.Google Scholar

29 Morrison, James D., Schools for the Choctaws (Durant, Oklahoma: Choctaw Bilingual Education Program, 1978), 244, 277; George B. Manhart, DePauw through the Years 1 (Greencastle: DePauw University Press, 1962), 150; Kenan Pitchlynn to CIA, 15 December 1851, LR (M 234, R 785, F 614), RG 75, NA Kathleen Garrett, “Dartmouth Alumni in the Indian Territory,” The chronicles of Oklahoma 32, (Summer 1954): 130,137.Google Scholar

30 Rivers, R.H. to CIA, 23 July 1858, LR (M 234, R 791, F 432), RG 75, NA; Lewis, Anna, “Jane McCurtain,” The chronicles of Oklahoma 11, (1933): 1026–1031.Google Scholar

31 Fischer, LeRoy H., The Civil War Era in Indian Territory (Los Angeles: Lorrin L. Morrison, 1975), 58,137.Google Scholar

32 TBond, J. to Taylor, N.G., 7 March 1868, LR (M 234, R 796, F 553), RG 75, NA.Google Scholar

33 Wright, Allen to Acting CIA, 22 February 1873, LR (M 234, R 466, F 878), RG 75, NA.Google Scholar

34 RR Pitchlynn to Parker, E.S., 2 February 1870, LR (M 234, R 797, F 1200), RG 75, NA; Pitchlynn to Parker, 9 August 1870, LR (M 234, R 797, F 1241), RG 75, NA; Acting CIA to Pitchlynn, 29 August 1870, LS (M 21, R 98, F 17), RG 75, NA.Google Scholar

35 Forbis LeFlore to Senate and House of Representatives, 13 March 1872, CTN 87-1, OHS.Google Scholar

36 Folsom, G.W. to Parker, 24 February 1872, LR (M 234, R 799, F 128), RG 75, NA.Google Scholar

37 Khalil Mahmud (librarian) to author, 16 October 1991, Letter in possession of author.Google Scholar

38 Allen Wright to Acting CIA, 22 February 1873, LR (M 234, R 466, F 878–880), RG 75, NA.Google Scholar

39 Clum, H.L. to Wright, 25 February 1873, LS (M 21, R 109, pp. 362–363); H.L. Clum to Jackson, J.B., 23 April 1973, LS (M21, R111, p. 32), RG 75, NA; Smith, E.P. to Yonce, W.B., 6 September 1873, LS (M 21, R 113, p. 214), RG 75, NA.Google Scholar

40 P.P. Pitchlynn to Smith, E.P., 21 April 1874, LR (M 234, R181, F480–481), RG 75, NA.Google Scholar

41 To the Honorable Senate and House, 9 October 1877, Box IX, F 1, Choctaw Nation Papers (CNP), Western History Collections (WHC), University of Oklahoma (OU); Jackson, J.B. to General Council, 11 November 1881, CNP, Box Xiii, F 40, WHC, OU.Google Scholar

42 “Let us Progress,” Vinita Vindicator, March 27,1875, 2.Google Scholar

43 “Our Indian Students,” Roanoke Collegian, December 1876, 29.Google Scholar

44 Eisenberg, William Edward, The First Hundred Years, Roanoke College, 1842–1942 (Salem, Virginia: Trustees of Roanoke College, 1942), 206.Google Scholar

45 Eisenberg, The First Hundred Years, 207.Google Scholar

46 “Dr. E.N. Wright to Olney announces for Congress,” The Coalgate Courier, 29 May 1924, 1; “Organ honors memory of Indian Evangelist,” Tire Daily Oklahoman, 1 May 1927.Google Scholar

47 Choctaw Nation List of Chiefs, Revised, 26 June 1998, Choctaw Nation, Durant, OK.Google Scholar

48 “Peter James Hudson,” The Chronicles of Oklahoma 18 (1939): 4; “Gabe E. Parker, Father and Son Funerals Pend,” Daily Oklahoman, 10 May 1953, 16A.Google Scholar

49 Telephone conversation with Jacob Bohanon, 24 February 2003, regarding translated phrases in the Choctaw language.Google Scholar

50 Cremin, Lawrence A., American Education: The Metropolitan Experience, 1876–1980 (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1988), 592.Google Scholar

51 Goodman, Ellen. “College-Educated Women Beware.” San Diego Union Tribune 3, (September 2002): B6. For sources that highlight the male/female rations in higher education in the late nineteenth century, see Geiger, Roger, “The Era of Multipurpose Colleges in American Higher Education, 1850 to 1890,” History of Higher Education Annual 15, (1995): 67, 77; Nancy Woloch, Women and the American Experience (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), 543.Google Scholar

52 Faiman-Silva, Sandra, Choctaws at the Crossroads: The Political Economy of Class and Culture in the Oklahoma Timber Region (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), 8–10, 12.Google Scholar

53 Twenty-Third Annual Report of the Board of Indian Commissioners, 1891, 109.Google Scholar

54 Akers, , Living in the Land of Death, 139.Google Scholar

55 For an excellent study on Cherokee women viewed as agents of uplift in the nineteenth century, see Devon A. Mihesuah, Cultivating the Rosebuds: The Education of Women at the Cherokee Female Seminary, 1851–1909 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 3, 21, 39.Google Scholar

56 Allen Wright to Acting CIA, 22 February 1873, LR (M 234, R 466, F 878–880), RG 75, NA.Google Scholar

57 The cause of Higher Education among the Choctaws,” William Stigler Papers, Box 8, Folder 47, Carl Albert Center, OU.Google Scholar

58 “An Act making appropriations for Students in the States,” 15 April 1899, Foreman Transcripts, Supt for FCT, Vol. 2,184, OHS; “Students from Indian Territory, 1873–1907,” Special Collections, Drury College, Springfield, Missouri; Hudson, Peter J., “Choctaw Nation-Schools, Students in the States,” Indian Archives, OHS; Indian Pioneer History, Vol. 68,439, OHS.Google Scholar

59 Faiman-Silva, Choctaws at the Crossroads, 8, 10.Google Scholar

60 Lewis, Dr. Anna, “Jane McCurtain,” 1026, 1031Google Scholar

61 “Necrology,” The Chronicles of Oklahoma 8, 3 (September 1930): 242; Wright, Muriel H., “Contributions of the Indian People to Oklahoma,” The Chronicles of Oklahoma 14, 2 (1936 June): 160; Czarina C. Conlan to Society of University Indians of America, 20 August 1935, Arthur C. Parker Papers, University of Rochester Archives.Google Scholar

62 Faiman-Silva, Choctaws at the Crossroads, 4.Google Scholar

63 Baird, W. David, “Spencer Academy, Choctaw Nation, 1842–1900,” The Chronicles of Oklahoma 45, (Spring 1967): 38.Google Scholar

64 Abolishing the Office of Superintendent of the Schools and Repealing the Law in Relation thereto,” Choctaw Nation Papers, Box 39, Folder 32, WHC, OU.Google Scholar

65 C.J. Rhoads to Joshua Anderson, 23 January 1933, Central Classified Files, 25472-28-Five Tribes-803, Pt 1, RG 75, NA.Google Scholar

66 “Vivia Locke,” Oklahoma State University Outreach 52:5 (July 1981); “Professor is named ‘Indian of Year',” Oklahoma State Alumnus 12, no. 9 (December 1971): 22; “Muriel Wright,” Bishinik, August 1992, 10; “Irene Hudson Heard,” Bishinik, August 1998, 12.Google Scholar

67 Choctaw Nation List of Chiefs, Revised, 26 June 1998, Choctaw Nation, Durant, OK.Google Scholar

68 Kidwell, Choctaw and Missionaries in Mississippi, 1818–1918, 102; Joel Spring, The Cultural Transformation of a Native American Family and Its Tribe, 1763–1995: A Basket of Apples (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996), 3, 56; Morrison, Schools for the Choctaws, 286.Google Scholar

69 Final Rolls of Citizens and Freedman of the Five Civilized Tribes in Indian Territory, T 529, R 1, RG 75, NA.Google Scholar

70 Final Rolls; Fischer, The Civil War Era in Indian Territory, 69.Google Scholar

71 Debo, Angie, The Rise and Fall of the Choctaw Republic (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1934), 130–131.Google Scholar

72 Debo, The Rise and Fall, 162–174; Prucha, The Great Father, 258–59.Google Scholar

73 Debo, The Rise and Fall, 162–174, 250–259.Google Scholar