Meta Chestnutt "Spreading the Lord's Table"

On November 23, 1930, the Sunday before Thanksgiving, Meta Chestnutt Sager, then sixty-seven years old, presented a collection of relics to the Christian Church in Chickasha, Oklahoma. These included a tablecloth made of fine Scottish linen, at that time "more than a hundred years old," and a set of Communion ware that she described as "perhaps the oldest set used by the Disciples of Christ in Oklahoma between the Canadian and Red River."[1] 

She had brought the Communion ware with her when she moved from North Carolina to Indian Territory in 1889 to serve as a teacher. Not long after her arrival, Miss Chestnutt discovered that she and Annie Erwin, the matriarch of her host family and a Chickasaw Indian, were the only active Disciples of Christ for many miles around. In her typical, modest style, she describes how in those early years, she established and presided at Christian worship:

We taught the Bible and the Bible alone, and, almost from the beginning observed the Lord's Supper. There were no other Disciples of Christ there but Mrs. Erwin and myself, but we knew that when the Lord had said, "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them," it meant us, too, tho [sic] away out here in Indian Territory.[2]

She was keeping the faith in her inherited, distinctively Stone-Campbell way. In their quest to rehabilitate what Alexander Campbell referred to as "the divinely authorized order of Christian worship in Christian assemblies,"[3] early leaders of the American Restoration Movement identified weekly communion as a central practice. For example, when Thomas and Alexander Campbell and like-minded believers established the Brush Run church in Washington County, Pennsylvania, in May 1811, "their first act of worship was the observance of the Lord's Supper, which they resolved to celebrate weekly thereafter." [4] And, in the emerging religious tradition that the Campbells and others led, this practice became, and still is, a standard.

So, it was no accident that every week, for years on end, Chestnutt lovingly prepared and presided over the Lord's Supper in the schoolhouse where she taught through the week. Reticent to describe what she did in those terms, Chestnutt typically called it "spreading the Lord's Table," an expression she borrowed from Communion hymns that were well-known at the time.[5]

Notes

[1] Meta Chestnutt Sager, "'Harvest Home Sunday,' Nov. 23, 1930," Meta Chestnutt Sager Collection, box 5, folder 17.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Alexander Campbell, "Order of Worship," Christian Baptist, Vol. II, July 4, 1825, p. 164. Along this line, another of Campbell's phrases was "the ancient order of worship in the Christian church." See Ibid.

[4] Paul M. Blowers and Byron C. Lambert, "The Lord's Supper," in Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement, 489.

[5] For example, Philip Doddridge (1702-1751), an important English nonconformist minister, writer, and educator, composed a hymn titled "The King of heaven His table spreads." The first stanza reads: "The king of heaven his table spreads, And dainties crown the board; Nor paradise with all its joys, Could such delight afford." The final stanza calls believers to participate: "All things are ready, come away, Nor weak excuses frame; Crowd to your places at the feast, And bless the founder's name." The song appears in The Christian Hymn-Book, 3rd ed. (Cincinnati: Looker and Wallace, 1815), 167-68, hymn number 187. This hymnal was edited by, among others, John Thompson, one of the signers of the Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery, a founding document of the Stone-Campbell Movement.

Belle Starr, the Bandit Queen, 1848-1889

Belle Starr, Fort Smith, Arkansas, 1886

One well-known story from post-war I. T. featured Belle Starr, the infamous "bandit queen." Starr grew up in a family of ruffians. Two of her outlaw brothers were killed by lawmen. Her first husband, James C. Reed, had once been a member of Quantrill's Raiders. He was killed in 1874 while resisting arrest. After a relationship with Cole Younger, a member of the Younger Gang and sometime associate of Frank and Jesse James, Belle Reed married Sam Starr. Their family lived in a cabin along the Canadian River at a site known as Younger's Bend, near present Eufaula, Oklahoma. Younger's Bend served as a hideout for the couple's notorious friends, including the James Gang. In 1886, Sam Starr was killed after an argument. And in February 1889, just seven months before Meta Chestnutt arrived in I.T., Belle Starr was gunned down by an unknown assailant.[1]

Note

[1] Adriana G. Schroeder, "Starr, Myra Maybelle Shirley (1848-1889)," in Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, 2:1442; Paul I. Wellman, A Dynasty of Western Outlaws (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1961), 10. See also Bill O'Neal, "Younger Gang," in Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, 2:1664-65.

Outlaws and Lawmen in Indian Territory after 1866

The story of lawlessness in America stems in part from the delayed arrival of law and order. The history of Indian Territory and early Oklahoma certainly fits this pattern. Following the war, neither the federal government with its few active army posts, nor the Indian nations with their undermanned units of law enforcement, could do much to effectively police Indian Territory. Government at the local level hardly existed. Organized criminals held free rein in many parts of I.T., which came to be known as Robbers Roost.

The United States provided some relief beginning 1871, when it brought the territory under the federal jurisdiction of the Western District of Arkansas. In 1875, President Grant appointed Isaac C. Parker to the bench at Fort Smith. Over the next two decades, Parker, the so-called "hanging judge," heard nearly 9,000 cases and issued the death sentence to approximately 160 convicts, only about seventy of whom were executed.[1] The legend of the supposedly hard-nosed Judge Parker is well known. Yet the larger story involves the deadly business of bringing order to the territory. That the U.S. Marshals Museum is in Fort Smith, the place from which hundreds of lawmen were sent out, is no accident. In the years that followed 1875, approximately sixty-five deputy U.S. marshals lost their lives in Indian Territory.[2]

Notes

[1] W. David Baird and Danney Goble, Oklahoma: A History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008), 126-27. See also John R. Lovett, "Lawmen and Outlaws in Indian Territory, 1866-1907," in Historical Atlas of Oklahoma, 4th ed., ed. by Charles Robert Goins and Danney Goble (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006), 134-35.

[2] Glenn Shirley, Law West of Fort Smith: A History of Frontier Justice in the Indian Territory, 1834-1896 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1968), ix; H. D. "Dee" Cordry, Jr., "Deadly Business: The Early Years of the Crime Bureau," Chronicles of Oklahoma 63, no. 3 (Fall 1985): 250. See also Frank R. Prassel, "marshal, federal," in New Encyclopedia of the American West, ed. Howard R. Lamar (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 678-79.

"For Five Years I Even Buried the Dead": Meta Chestnutt's Ministry, 1889-94 (1)

In a brief retrospective piece she wrote near the end of her life, Meta Chestnutt Sager spoke about her thirty years of work as an educational missionary in Indian Territory and Oklahoma: "Christian work was always paralleled by the intellectual and social training, for five years I even buried the dead."[1] The "five years" ranged from 1889, when she first arrived at Silver City, Chickasaw Nation, until 1894. By then, several more preachers affiliated with the Stone-Campbell Movement had come to the area and sometimes visited the congregation at Minco, the town along the railroad that replaced Silver City in 1890. Around the same time she penned those words, she also wrote her own funeral service. The document details the order of her funeral, Scripture selections, prayer leaders, the songs to be sung and who should sing them. It also includes five pages of her life story, a eulogy of sorts. It even provides specific directions for the committal service: "The three ministers standing at the head of the open grave, Brother Smith give the words, The others join him in the 'Amen'."[2] (Even in death, the old school teacher and college president would direct everyone and everything). In the eulogy section of the service, she wrote, "In that early day, beginning September 8, 1889, I taught school, I taught the Bible, I buried the dead, I set the Lord's table. There was no man to do it then."[3] There is no record of her officiating at a wedding or baptizing a new believer.

Notes

[1] The two-page document written in her hand is titled "Meta Chestnutt Sager," box 3, folder 12, Meta Chestnutt Sager Collection.

[2] "Funeral Arrangements Written by Mrs. Meta Chestnutt Sager before Her Death," box 3, folder 13, Meta Chestnutt Sager Collection.

[3] Ibid.

My Dissertation

The following paragraph might show up in my dissertation. It's my partial attempt to define and explain the project:

While it does present a biographical narrative, it is not a biography per se. It is, instead, what might be called a series of case studies based on one life, all related to a wide range of topics and sub-fields of history. These include American religion, especially the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement; Native Americans, narrowed to the Five Tribes of Oklahoma, especially the Choctaws and Chickasaws; biblical studies and Christian theology; the history of Indian Territory, Oklahoma Territory, and the State of Oklahoma, especially Grady County and the towns of Silver City, Minco, and Chickasha; women's and gender history; education and educational theory in the United States; North Carolina's Coastal Plain, where Meta Chestnutt was born and raised, and the city of Nashville, Tennessee, where she attended the Peabody Normal College and the University of Nashville, and where she worked among the Churches of Christ and Christian Churches during the late 1880s.

John D. Benedict (1854-1946)

John Downing Benedict was born in Clermont, Indiana, in 1854. His family moved to Vermillion County, Illinois, in 1869, and it was there that he graduated from high school. He went on to complete a degree at the University of Illinois. In 1881, the year he turned twenty-seven, Benedict became superintendent of schools in Vermillion County. During his eight years at that post, he developed a uniform educational program for the state's rural schools. The curriculum was so popular it was later adopted by the State of Kansas and by Oklahoma and Indian Territories as well. Benedict's record of success in the field of education was no doubt what led to his being appointed the first U.S. superintendent of schools in Indian Territory in 1899.[1] 

The new position had a remarkable background. Prior to the passage of the Curtis Act of 1898, the Five Tribes of Oklahoma had complete jurisdiction over their respective school systems. But Section 19 of the Curtis Act stated that

no payment of any moneys on any account whatever shall here after be made by the United States to any of the tribal governments or to any officer thereof for disbursement, but payments of all sums to members of said tribes shall be made under direction of the Secretary of the Interior by an officer appointed by him.[2]

Apparently, the U.S. government intended and took the phrase "under direction of" to mean that the Secretary of the Interior would have to approve of the activities for which the tribes received money. And that meant, among other things, federal oversight of schools in Indian Territory.[3] And so it was that Benedict arrived in Muskogee, Indian Territory, on February 27, 1899, to begin his challenging work.[4]

Notes

[1] Carolyn G. Hanneman, “Benedict, John Downing,” Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, accessed March 25, 2021, https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=BE016. See also Grant Forman, "John D. Benedict, Pioneer Educator in Oklahoma," Oklahoma Teacher 27 (May 1946), 17-18.

[2] An Act For the protection of the people of Indian Territory, and for other purposes, Chap. 517, 55th Cong, 2d. sess. (June 28, 1898).

[3] This interpretation stems from Benedict's own view. See John D. Benedict, "Excerpt from Manuscript of 'My Educational Experience'," Indian-Pioneer Papers, Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma, accessed March 25, 2021, https://digital.libraries.ou.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/indianpp/id/3907/rec/1

[4] Ibid.

Meta Chestnutt as a Bible Teacher: The Tabernacle

Housed in the Oklahoma History Center, not far from the state capitol in Oklahoma City, is a visual aid that Meta Chestnutt likely used in her Bible lessons at the Church of Christ in Minco, Chickasaw Nation, Indian Territory. A heavy oilcloth, approximately five feet high and three feet wide, presents an overhead schematic of the biblical Tabernacle. It clearly labels the Court, the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies. It also presents the locations of, and labels, the Brazen Altar, Brazen Laver, Table of Shewbread, Candlestick, Altar of Incense, and the Ark of the Covenant.[1]

Photo by Frank Bellizzi

The Tabernacle was a portable sanctuary constructed by the ancient Israelites during the time of Moses. The "Tent of Meeting," as it is sometimes called in Scripture, was the unique dwelling of the Almighty, the place where the descendants of Abraham met with their God. It served as a place of worship and a site of divine revelation during the period of the wilderness wanderings. Once the Israelites crossed the Jordan River and entered Canaan, their promised land, the Tabernacle was stationed successively at Shiloh (Joshua 18:1) and Gibeon (1 Chronicles 16:39). Later, King David brought it to Jerusalem (2 Samuel 6:1-12). Solomon’s Temple, constructed in Jerusalem around 950 B.C., replaced the Tabernacle. Yet, it survived. Eventually, Solomon brought it to the Temple (1 Kings 8:4).[2]

From earliest Christian times, the followers of Jesus considered the Hebrew Bible to be their Bible. In this as in all other matters, they took their cue from Jesus himself, who regarded the Hebrew Bible as authoritative Scripture. Along this line, a survey of the words attributed to Jesus in the New Testament reveals a remarkable consistency. To borrow the words of biblical scholar John Bright, "Jesus knew no Scripture save the Old Testament, no God save its God; it was this God whom he addressed as 'Father.'" Jesus "regarded the Scriptures as the key to the understanding of his person; again and again he is represented as saying that it is the Scriptures that witness to him and are fulfilled in him."[3] In the same way, the New Testament the writers never question the authority of the Hebrew Bible. Instead, they always assume and occasionally assert its unique standing, as in the words of 2 Timothy 3:16-17: "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works" (King James Version). The earliest Christians made theological meaning and bolstered their moral exhortations by highlighting and drawing connections to people, events, objects, and stories from the Jewish Scriptures, which they came to call the Old Testament.[4]  

Notes

[1] The oilcloth is located in box 2 of the Meta Chestnutt Sager Collection, Research Division, Oklahoma Historical Society, Oklahoma City.

[2]  "Tabernacle" in Leland Ryken, James C. Wilhoit, and Tremper Longman III, eds., Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1998), 837-40 provides an excellent, non-technical discussion. See also Roland Kenneth Harrison, "Tabernacle," in The Zondervan Pictorial Bible Dictionary, ed. Merrill C. Tenney (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1967), 821-24. Richard Elliott Friedman, "Tabernacle," in Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 6:292-300, is an outstanding piece of technical scholarship. Along the way, Friedman argues that evidence amassed since the beginning of the twentieth century, such as the large number of tent shrines in the Ancient Near East, undermines the older scholarly view that the biblical Tabernacle was only a pious fiction.

[3] John Bright, The Authority of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1967), 77.

[4] C. K. Barrett, "The Interpretation of the Old Testament in the New," in Cambridge History of the Bible, ed. P. R. Ackroyd and C. F. Evans (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 1:377-411, provides an insightful discussion of the interpretive assumptions and methods exhibited by New Testament writers as they alluded to, quoted, etc., the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. George W. E. Nickelsburg and Michael E. Stone, Faith and Piety in Early Judaism: Texts and Documents (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1991), reveals how New Testament authors developed Old Testament themes like worship, piety, divine wisdom, judgment, and deliverance.

Meta Chestnutt Appeals to the Disciples for Support, 1895

In late November 1894, Meta Chestnutt used the local paper to announce that the college would host a Thanksgiving Day social for the community. She asked friends of the college to bring a book to add to the school library. It would be a wonderful time of "music and social conversation."[1] By then, C.O. Robertson, who had apparently been Silas Kennedy's choice for president of the new college, was preparing to leave Minco for good. Also by then, it was clear that donations to the school would not be coming from Kennedy's network of churches and Christian friends. And that, of course, left open the issue of finances. How could the new college pay off its debt? In response to that question, Chestnutt decided on a path that Kennedy had avoided: a direct appeal to Disciples at large to support the college. In a long report she sent to the American Home Missionary, Chestnutt told readers about the origins, progress, and potential of El Meta Christian College. "This mission was established at Silver City, seven miles from its present location, September 8, 1889." Since then, the town had moved to meet the railroad. In the new town that residents established and named Minco on July 4, 1890, the school had flourished. The first term of the current school year had seen 94 students. For the second term, there were 97. The new building was "four stories, including the basement," and the five rooms on the first floor were nearly complete. With the growth of the school, more instructors would come on to the faculty.[2] But, Chestnutt added, the mission always involved more than education. When she had first arrived at Silver City in 1889, she not only began her school. She also "went to work in earnest, teaching the Bible every Lord's day." Five years later, the church that she planted still did not have a "regular preacher." Yet the congregation had never failed to meet "each Lord's day to study and teach the Word, break bread and contribute of our means to the Lord." About once every three months, the church at Minco got to hear a sermon from a visiting preacher like R. W. Officer, T. B. Larimore, Volney Johnson, and D. T. Broadus. With their help, the congregation had grown "from two to some fifty or sixty." Given such promise and the strong record of growth, "all Christians," said Chestnutt, should "consider favorably the efforts being made here in Minco, and help us raise the $1,000 needed to meet the present demand of patronage." Contributors would be helping "this little band of Disciples to fix firmly the standard of King Immanuel" in Indian Territory.[3]

Notes

[1] Minco Minstrel, November 23, 1894, 4. By this point, Joe Rogers, and not C.O. Robertson, was listed as the manager and publisher of the Minco Minstrel.

[2] Meta Chestnutt, "Minco, Ind. Ter.," American Home Missionary 1, No. 4 (April 1895), 61-62.

[3] Ibid., 61.

S. E. Kennedy's Designs on Meta Chestnutt's Christian School at Minco, Chickasaw Nation, Indian Territory, 1894

In some previous posts here at Frankly Speaking, I've discussed the two main characters in the story that follows here: Meta Chestnutt and Silas Kennedy. To read more of their stories, use the search window at the top left of this blog. Especially during these days of COVID-19, may you be healthy and happy. --Frank Bellizzi

Apparently, sometime during the year 1894, Disciples minister Silas Kennedy developed a plan to gain control of Meta Chestnutt's school, to seize what she had built up over the previous five years. In a report on the Indian Territory dated March 10, 1894, Kennedy commended Chestnutt as "the tall sycamore of North Carolina and the giant teacher and true missionary of the West."[1] At the time, Kennedy and his family were new arrivals, having come to Indian Territory from New Mexico just three months prior.[2] And Meta Chestnutt made a favorable impression. She was a well-educated, articulate, and attractive daughter of the South, thirty years old and at least six feet tall. Even in dusty Indian Territory, though never showy, she always managed to dress immaculately. Yet this would be the last time Kennedy would say anything in print about Chestnutt, the founder of the school he later sought to promote and lead.

One can only imagine what Kennedy's motives and justifications might have been. Perhaps he simply reasoned that this was his moment, that taking Meta Chestnutt's school to the next level was a task for which he was specially qualified. Kennedy was born in 1849, in Wetumpka, Alabama, the third son of a blacksmith.[3] At age twelve, he was drafted into the Confederate Army. He soon saw action, and just a few weeks beyond his thirteenth birthday was wounded at the Battle of Shiloh in southwest Tennessee, April 6-7, 1862.[4]

In 1866, the year he turned seventeen, he moved to Fannin County, Texas, where he met Charlcy Dockary, who was also from Alabama. The two were married in Texas in 1868 and soon started a family. According to the federal census of 1880, the couple had three sons, all born in Texas, and Silas worked as an "itinerant minister."[5] But in 1885, for financial reasons and for the sake of his family, he "quit the regular work of the ministry and went to merchandising." Two years later, in 1887, he moved his family to New Mexico where he "engaged extensively in the mercantile business." In 1893, looking back on his previous eight years, Kennedy said that he regretted how going into business meant that he had to "harden" himself and "partake of the ways of the world." His never-ending desire to preach, and what he perceived as his loss of sympathy for others, brought him to a life-changing decision:

On the fifth day of last December I cut loose from all my business relations with the full determination and with a vow to Almighty God to devote the reminder of my life to building up the cause of Christ. I have selected the Chickasaw Indian Nation, which is now rapidly settling up with white people from every state in the Union. I got here, at Chickasha, on December 8, 1893.[6]

Having lived the previous twenty-five years in Texas and New Mexico, Kennedy had come to Indian Territory looking for a new start. He found it. In the spring of 1894, when he reported to J. H. Garrison, editor of the Christian-Evangelist, Kennedy sounded like a promotional agent for the future State of Oklahoma. The potential of the place was nearly boundless. Indian Territory was, he wrote,

situated almost in the very geographical center of the United States, embracing the five civilized tribes of Indians, with the Kiowa, Comanche, Osage, Kickapoo, Cheyenne and other small tribes as well as that of Oklahoma, a scope of country larger than three of the average States of the Union, with soil, water, climate, timber, grass and many other advantages equal if not superior to any spot on earth, . . . [7]

Kennedy had found more than that in Indian Territory. He had also found at Minco, just eighteen miles north of his new home in Chickasha, a growing school, a five year old Christian academy poised to become a college. It was true that in Meta Chestnutt the school had an adequate leader. But the designs Kennedy had for the school--which were really no different than what Miss Chestnutt had in mind--would require his leadership. He was different. As tall as Meta Chestnutt was, Kennedy, who stood about six feet, five inches, was even taller.[8] And, he was fourteen years older. But most importantly by far, he was a man, a preacher, and not merely "a Bible teacher," the phrase Chestnutt was most likely to use when referring to her role in the Sunny South Christian Church at Minco. By contrast, Kennedy explicitly led congregations, baptized new believers, and published articles in brotherhood journals. And he dreamed of making more of Meta Chestnutt's school at Minco. Why have a local Christian school, when you could have a regional Christian college? So it was that by the early fall of 1894, Kennedy sent word to the Christian-Evangelist:

We are now building a college at Minco . . . I have raised up to date $6,400 in the Territory alone, nearly all of which is a clear gain of wealth to our church, as five-sixths of it has been raised from parties who are not members of the church. Of the above mentioned $6,400, $3,600 has been raised at Minco to build the college. . . . I promised the people of Minco that . . . I would undertake the building of a ten thousand dollar college. I further told them that I would have rooms open and ready to accommodate one hundred children by Oct. 1, 1894, and that by Jan. 1, 1895, I would try to have it ready to accomodate [sic] three hundred pupils. I began this work July 1, and on Oct 1, we will open this school.[9]

Kennedy's report nowhere mentions Meta Chestnutt, or that five years earlier, in 1889, she had arrived in I.T. and started the school that had been thriving ever since. Judging from what Kennedy published in the second half of 1894, one would never guess that Minco already had a Christian academy still led by its founding teacher. The stage was set for a struggle.

Notes

[1] S. E. Kennedy, "Letter from the Indian Territory," Gospel Advocate (April 26, 1894), 253.

[2] Ibid.

[3] "Gone to His Reward. Rev. S. E. Kennedy," Davis  (Oklahoma) News (April 25, 1918); 1850 U.S. Census, Coosa County, Alabama, population schedule, 1st Ward City of Wetumpka, p. 4 (stamped), dwelling 59, family 59, Aotho and Jane Kennedy, digital image, Ancestry.com, accessed March 21, 2020, http://ancestry.com.

[4] Jay S. Hoar, Callow, Brave and True: A Gospel of Civil War Youth (Gettysburg, PA: Thomas Publications, 1999), 230. On June 2, 2018, the writer visited Silas E. Kennedy's grave in the Greenhill Cemetery, in Davis, Oklahoma, and found the C.S.A. Cross of Honor attached to the gravestone.

[5] 1880 U.S. Census, Bell County, Texas, population schedule, Enumeration District No. 7, p. 8, dwelling 58, family 58, Silas and Charlsy [sic] Kenedy [sic], digital image, Ancestry.com, accessed March 22, 2020, http://ancestry.com.

[6] Kennedy, "Letter from the Indian Territory."

[7] S. E. Kennedy, "The Indian Territory," Christian-Evangelist (June 14, 1894), 381.

[8] Note how Kennedy is taller than every other person, including Meta Chestnutt, in Photo 23196.2, Photograph Box 1, Meta Chestnutt Sager Collection, Special Collections, Oklahoma History Center, Oklahoma City, Okla. To see the photo online, click on the link that follows here. Then, click on Archives Catalog. In the search window, type "Meta Chestnutt Rev. Kennedy."  http://okhistory.cuadra.com/star/public.html

[9] S. E. Kennedy, "A College in the Indian Territory," Christian-Evangelist (October 4, 1894), 636.

R. W. Officer Reports on Stone-Campbell Churches in I.T., 1890

During the second half of 1890, only a year after Meta Chestnutt first arrived in Silver City, R. W. Officer reported on the state of Stone-Campbell churches in Indian Territory. There were, he said, about 2,200 disciples in 54 congregations (an average of approximately 41 members per church). Fourteen of those congregations met in homes. Thirty of the churches met in community school houses. Only ten worshiped in a building owned by the congregation. There were a total of nineteen preachers in I.T. Virtually all of them, "by the work of their own hands," supported themselves and their families.[1]

Officer seems to have had mixed feelings about an entire region made up of congregations whose preachers were bi-vocational. On the positive side, those preachers followed in the footsteps of Paul, the apostolic missionary who worked to support himself. Officer noted that to the church at ancient Thessalonica the Apostle wrote, "Ye ought to follow, [imitate] us: for we behaved not ourselves disorderly among you; neither did we eat any man's bread for nought; but wrought with labour and travail night and day, that we might not be chargeable to any of you; . . . "[2]

Still, Officer knew from experience that strong financial support for missionaries and their ministries led to success:

The different religious communities (denominations) sent missionaries to this country with the Indians when they came years ago, sustained them by their missionary societies through their boards, sent men to assist them when the interest demanded, sent teachers, and helped to sustain them. They sent money to aid in building institutions of learning, and had the assistance of the Church extension funds to aid in building church houses.[3]

What might the Stone-Campbell churches in I.T. have been if they had received the same kind of support? What was more, Officer said, when he first came to I.T. ten years earlier, he could not build on the work done by others who had come before him. J. J. Trott had worked among the Cherokees some twenty years before. But after his death, the mission outpost Trott had established "went down," so much so that his own children "took membership with the denominations in their communities."[4]

In the mid-1880s, the Disciples' American Christian Missionary Society had sent Isaac Mode to evangelize the Creek Indians living in and around Wetumpka, I.T. Various hardships, especially Mode's difficulties with the Creek language, "were of such a nature that he did but little, and from some cause resigned."[5]

Besides those failures, Officer had always known a variety of "religious neighbors" in I.T. who collaborated in "a kind of a union of action to spoil our efforts." Sabotage by outsiders was compounded by "men claiming to be Christian preachers who seemed not to care for the cause." The progress that Officer and his colleagues witnessed had not come easily. He and other Stone-Campbell missionaries had overcome difficulties that were, said the Civil War veteran, "hard to imagine."[6]

Notes

[1] R. W. Officer, "Indian Territory," Octographic Review 33 (December 18, 1890), 6. The date of Officer's report is uncertain. The article appears after an editorial preface: "The following document had the misfortune of being delayed in Bro. Officer's hands before it was sent to us, and of being delayed in our hands after reading this office. Publisher."

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid. For a brief account of Mode's failed mission, see Stephen J. England, Oklahoma Christians (St. Louis: Bethany Press, 1975), 42.

[6] R. W. Officer, "Indian Territory," 6.

R. W. Officer's Letters to Meta Chestnutt 1890

Sometime in June of 1890, the evangelist R. W. Officer sent a handwritten letter addressed to "Miss Meta Chestnutt, Silver City, I.T."

Dear Sister:

Yours to Bro T. B. L. was sent to me by him. Enclosed I send you his. Please, let me know where Silver City is, on or near what R. R. I will try to get to you as soon as I can after I learn where you are. I was near Silver City, New Mex. during the massacre a few years ago, but I am almost sure that is not the place. I am 60 miles N. of Denison, Tex on the M. K. and T. R. R. I hope I hear from you at once.

Your Bro
R. W. Officer
Atoka, I. T.
June, 90

P.S. Since I came to look I can't find Bro L's letter, but will say he requested me to fill his promise to you. R.W.O.

What seems clear enough is that Meta Chestnutt had sent a letter to her mentor and favorite preacher, T. B. Larimore, who lived in northern Alabama. Could Larimore, the popular traveling evangelist, come to Silver City, I.T., to preach to the community there?

In response to her request, Larimore, writing from Alabama, had contacted Officer, already in Indian Territory, to pay a preacher's visit to Miss Chestnutt and her fledgling church. Neither Larimore's letter to Officer, nor Chestnutt's reply to Officer survive. But when she wrote back to Officer, Miss Chestnutt no doubt told him that, already, she and many others at Silver City had moved seven miles west of there to a new settlement the founders called "Minco," a Chickasaw and Choctaw word meaning "chief."

Officer wrote her a second time in letter dated July 3, 1890, the day just before the official founding of Minco, I.T.:

Dear Sister: Yours of June 30th in hand. In reply I will say I start on next Saturday for your place. I think I will be there by Monday or Tuesday anyway. And will remain as long as I can. I will come in a buggy and the roads are not good, I will be bound to guess my way more or less, but I will get there as soon as I can.

Your Bro. R. W. Officer
Atoka, I. T.

Perhaps Miss Chestnutt complained in her letter to Officer about the lack of news in her remote locale. On the back of the foregoing note, he added a postscript: I will send you our town paper. R. W. O.

The correspondence reveals how religious leaders used the postal service and their personal networks in order to advance far-flung ministries in places like Indian Territory.

Source

The letters quoted here are located in box 3, folder 33, Meta Chestnutt Sager Collection, Oklahoma History Center, Oklahoma City, Okla.

James J. Trott: Missionary to the Cherokees, 5

In spite of minimal help from congregations or from the Disciples' American Christian Missionary Society, by the end of 1859, James Trott had resumed his dream of working among the Cherokees, this time in Indian Territory. By then, Trott and his second wife had five sons and three daughters.[1] Not long before the outbreak of the Civil War, he was able to report:

We have already about 75 disciples in the Cherokee Nation, which we humbly hope and pray may be the first fruits of a glorious harvest. Some of these are the result of our humble efforts in the old nation more than twenty years ago. Some are the fruits of the able efforts of Bro. Graham, and the pious labors of Bro. Robertson; and some 50 were converted by the zealous efforts of brethren Goodnight and Phillips. We had the pleasure last fall of immersing three descendants of the red man, while on a visit to Grand Prairie, where we have a good prospect of establishing a High School. Having volunteered our humble efforts in this missionary field, free of charges to church or state, and having a large family to care for, we have not been able to devote as much time to preaching the word as we desired, and the cause demands.[2]

Trott's report indicates that he was enjoying at least some success in his mission. It also tells us that he worked among a network of fellow preachers. At least some of those men resided in northwest Arkansas and made trips across the border into Indian Territory in order to preach to Cherokees. 

But in 1862, troops entered the Cherokee Nation confiscating goods as they went. They helped themselves to provisions that belonged to Trott, and one of his sons, Timothy, was killed. At this, the family fled to Arkansas, and then to Missouri. Eventually, they found refuge in Kansas, but not before one of Trott's daughters, Elizabeth, died from exposure on Christmas Day 1862. 

One might guess that after the war, Trott would have stayed in Kansas, where the Disciples had made him the state evangelist, or gone back to Tennessee, where he had many friends and family. But in June of 1866, he returned to the Indian Territory to once again work among the Cherokees. Nevertheless, by that time deprivation and depression had taken their toll.

In 1868, James Trott set out for Tennessee, and died on December 19, 1868, not long after he arrived. He lies buried in Carmack Cemetery in Sumner County.[3]

Notes

[1] J. Edward Moseley, Disciples of Christ in Georgia (St. Louis: Bethany Press, 1954), 130.

[2] Report of the Proceedings of the Anniversary Meeting of the American Christian Missionary Society Held in Cincinnati, October 23, 24, 25, 1860 (Cincinnati: H. S. Bosworth, 1860), p. 16.

[3] Moseley, Disciples of Christ in Georgia, 130-31; Tolbert Fanning, "James J. Trott: Messenger of the Church of Christ at Franklin College, Tenn., to the Cherokee Nation," Gospel Advocate (March 25, 1869).

J. J. Trott: Missionary to the Cherokees, 4

On March 6, 1856, J. J. Trott sent a letter from his home in Franklin College, Tennessee, to the Gospel Advocate magazine in Nashville. He explained that he had just returned home from a three thousand mile trip through Arkansas, Missouri, and the Cherokee Nation, Indian Territory, in what is now northeastern Oklahoma. Wisely, he had avoided the deadly chaos over slavery in what came to be known as Bleeding Kansas.

The trip, which took up the previous November through February had Trott traveling in frigid conditions "by steamboat, railroads, stage, horseback, and sometimes on foot." He was disappointed that although he had been authorized by the American Christian Missionary Society to solicit funding for his proposed Indian mission, he had managed to collect only $166.

The churches had contributed their thousands to Bethany College and Christian University, and their hundreds for Revision, and therefore came to the sage conclusion, that a few dimes or dollars was all that they could and ought to do for the conversion of the children of Shem![1]

(If you happen to serve as a missionary, or you work with a large, multi-staff church, it might be some consolation to know that your never-ending competition for resources is not a new one).

In spite of the cold weather, Trott enjoyed his time in Indian Territory. While in the Cherokee Nation, he "preached at several important points" and visited with many old acquaintances and friends he had first met in Georgia over twenty years before, prior to the removal of the Cherokee people to the West.

A man of his day, Trott noted with satisfaction that the Cherokees had advanced in all of the ways regarded by Euro-Americans as marks of civilization: large-scale agriculture, animal husbandry, frame and brick home construction, and high rates of literacy resulting from a modern school system. "Thus," he wrote, "we see that the Cherokees have all the means of improvement. All they need in a religious point of view is more missionaries to them in applying the means." He observed that the Moravians, Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists already had "missionaries, mission schools, and churches among the Cherokees." Would the Christian churches in the United States continue to do less?[2]

Notes

[1] J. J. Trott, "The Indian Mission," Gospel Advocate (April 1856), 110. Christian University was the original name of the school that came to be known in 1917 as Culver-Stockton College. See George R. Lee, "Culver-Stockton College," Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement, 258.

[2] Trott, "The Indian Mission," 111.

The "Five Civilized Tribes"

The expression Five Civilized Tribes emerged during the mid-nineteenth century. It referred to the Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw, and Seminole nations. All of these tribes resided in the southeastern United States prior to the Indian Removal Act of 1830. During the years that followed, the United States government forced approximately 60,000 Indians to migrate to Indian Territory, which in 1907 became part of the State of Oklahoma.[1]

The real distinctions between the so-called "civilized tribes" versus "wild Indians" were never so stark as those terms suggest. However, Americans came to speak of the Five Civilized Tribes because those tribes, more than all others, seemed to embrace many of the cultural patterns of Euro-Americans. As historian Andrew K. Frank explains, this included the adoption of agriculture, as opposed to subsistence gardening, the adoption of various expressions of Christianity, "written constitutions, centralized governments, intermarriage with white Americans, market participation, literacy, animal husbandry, patrilineal descent, and even slaveholding."[2]

After their removal to Indian Territory, these tribes became five small republics with shared borders, and with governments modeled on that of the United States. By contrast, "wild Indians" like Apaches, Kiowas, and Comanches maintained traditional ways. In short, they were Indians of the Plains, nomadic buffalo hunters who lived in tee-pees. So, Euro-Americans had reasons for singling out what they called the Five Civilized Tribes. Still, at least some of that distinction was arbitrary, not to mention that the word civilized has always been prejudicial.[3] As scholar Michael D. Green states:

The problem with using such ethnocentric terminology is that it perpetuates the idea that there is only one civilization--that of Anglo-America--that those societies that do not embrace Anglo-American culture are therefore not civilized."[4]

However, even when judging cultures by Western standards, no one who has considered the structures at Mesa Verde, Colorado, or Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, would conclude that the former residents of these places were uncivilized. Not to mention that Indians of the Southwest built the Taos Pueblo sometime before Christopher Columbus was born. It stands today as the oldest continuously-inhabited structure in North America.

Recognizing this, at least some writers have abandoned the old expression, and began instead to refer to the Five Tribes, or the Five Tribes of Oklahoma. It appears that this change in terminology began to take place during the 1980s. For example, in an outstanding book titled The Southeastern Indians published in 1976, anthropologist Charles Hudson wrote about the Five Civilized Tribes.[5] Four years later, in 1980, one of Hudson's former students, Theda Perdue, published her book Nations Remembered: An Oral History of the Five Civilized Tribes, 1865-1907.[6]

By contrast, in 1990, Oklahoma historian W. David Baird authored an important, responsive article he titled, ""Are the Five Tribes of Oklahoma 'Real' Indians?"[7] And, in 1993, Perdue renamed her 1980 book. She deleted Five Civilized Tribes and added the names of each of the tribes. Thus, the new subtitle reads, An Oral History of the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles in Oklahoma, 1865-1907.

More recently, Baird and co-author Danney Goble have defended the old expression. They explain that although the expression is thought "to demean other Indian peoples in Oklahoma," it can be justified as "a historical term rather than a judgmental one."[8]
Notes

[1] The figure 60,000 is given by Grant Foreman, The Five Civilized Tribes (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1934), 7.

[2] Andrew K. Frank, "Five Civilized Tribes," Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture (Oklahoma City: Oklahoma Historical Society, 2009) 1:501. http://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=FI011

[3] Theda Perdue, Nations Remembered: An Oral History of the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles in Oklahoma, 1865-1907 (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993), ix-x.

[4] Michael D. Green, "The Five Tribes of the Southeastern United States," in Historical Atlas of Oklahoma, 4th ed., ed. Charles Robert Goins and Danney Goble (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006), 52.

[5] Charles Hudson, The Southeastern Indians (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1976), 469-77.

[6] Theda Perdue, Nations Remembered: An Oral History of the Five Civilized Tribes, 1865-1907 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980).

[7] For example, W. David Baird, "Are the Five Tribes of Oklahoma 'Real' Indians?" Western Historical Quarterly 21 (February 1990): 4-18. Yet, note the title in the similar piece: W. David Baird, "Are There 'Real' Indians in Oklahoma: Historical Perceptions of The Five Civilized Tribes" Chronicles of Oklahoma 68, No 1 (Spring, 1990): 4-23.

[8] W. David Baird and Danney Goble, Oklahoma: A History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008), 74.

Silas E. and Charlcy Kennedy Family Plot, Greenhill Cemetery, Davis, Oklahoma

On Highway 77 in Davis, Oklahoma

Back on June 2nd, Michele and I were traveling through Oklahoma on our way to Nashville, site of the annual Christian Scholars' Conference. Part of my plan was for us to make our way to the small town of Davis in south-central Oklahoma.

For many years Davis was home to Silas E. Kennedy, his wife, Charlcy, and their family. It appears that Silas was born and raised in Wetumpka, Alabama, not far from Montgomery. As a teenager, he served in the Confederate army. I'm interested in him because by the time he came to Indian Territory in the 1890s, Silas was a preacher among the Disciples of Christ. After coming to Indian Territory, he spent some time in Chickasha. Later, he and Charlcy moved to Davis, where they spent the rest of their lives.

Michele's got a snake phobia. She really doesn't like them. So she's not a fan of walking around in cemeteries either. Sure enough, she volunteered to stay in the rental car while I plodded around for nearly an hour through the Greenhill Cemetery. There were sign posts for the rows. But none of them had letters or numbers on them. Meanwhile, the antics of a large group of squirrels kept Michele entertained. I almost gave up, but finally happened upon the Kennedy family plot. Click on any of the photos for an enlarged view.

Below are two photos of the single headstone for Charlcy and Silas E. Kennedy. In the full shot, notice the name KENNEDY on the base. Also, the black metal piece near the ground is a C.S.A. marker. I have no information about when it was attached to the stone. According to Jay S. Hoar in his book Callow, Brave and True: A Gospel of Civil War Youth (Gettysburg, PA: Thomas Publications, 1999), p. 230, Silas E. Kennedy, from Alabama, was wounded at the Battle of Shiloh, southwestern Tennessee (April 6-7,1862). He was barely thirteen years old.

P.S. In his book Indian Territory (1901), D. C. Gideon provides a brief description of Davis and its early history. He notes that "citizens built a small school-house and Druggist W. F. Parker taught a subscription. Church services were held in this building each Sabbath by Rev. James A. Gibson, a Methodist Episcopal minister, and a Sunday-school was also organized. . . . Davis has four large church edifices,--Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, and Christian" (197).

In the photo above, you can see just below the names and dates a four-line inscription. It appears that the inscription was on the stone before Charlcy died, and that upon her death someone made a mess of it by making the words body and soul plural. Notice the clumsiness of the last two lines. It now reads as follows:

God in His wisdom has recalled

The boon his love had given

And though the bodys slumbers here

The souls is safe in Heaven

Below is a closer shot of the names and dates:

In addition to the gravestone for Silas E. and Charlcy Kennedy, the following markers and stones are in the family plot:

Origin of the Dawes Commission

The treaty status of the Five Civilized Tribes and a few other tribal groups exempted them from the requirements of the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887. But the majority of whites in Indian Territory, committed to what they called progress, saw the effect of allotment in other places and wanted the same for I.T. They soon began to insist that their federal government not allow treaties with Indians to slow the march of civilization.

In 1893, Congress responded to this demand by approving what came to be known as the Dawes Commission. On November 1 of that year, President Grover Cleveland appointed Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts, who by that time had retired from the Senate, to head the commission. The president also appointed Meredith H. Kidd of Indiana, and Archibald S. McKennon of Arkansas to assist Dawes.

From their headquarters in Muskogee, I.T., the commissioners tried in vain to convince Indian leaders to adopt the scheme of allotment. They promised the leaders that as they abolished their governments, tribal members would receive allotments of land. The Indians flatly rejected all such proposals and actively promoted resistance. For example, on March 28, 1894, the Choctaw Council issued the following statement, which points to then standing treaties:

We cannot bring ourselves to believe that such a great, grand, and Christian Nation as the United States would so stultify itself in the eyes of the civilized world by disregarding treaties heretofore solemnly entered into, with a weak and dependent people, regardless of justice and equity, simply because she is numerically able to do so. 

Washington, D.C. did not welcome the news of resistance. By 1896, a frustrated Congress chose to apply more pressure. As historian Kent Carter relates, the federal legislature began to pass "a series of acts that increased the commission's powers and changed its character from a diplomatic mission to a judicial tribunal that decided who was eligible for tribal membership and what land they received."

Note

Caroline Davis, "Education of the Chickasaws, 1856-1907," Chronicles of Oklahoma 15, no. 4 (1937): 435-6; Kent Carter, "Dawes Commission," Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, www.okhistory.org (accessed April 18, 2018).

Schools among the Chickasaws in Indian Territory: The Civil War and Its Aftermath (2)

Chickasaw leaders of the post-Civil War period emphasized the importance of schooling. For example, by 1870, all parents of Chickasaw students who attended school received a stipend that included the approximate cost of boarding as well as tuition. Perhaps officials found it hard to determine if a student lived far enough away from school to justify a separate, additional stipend for room and board. At any rate, the Chickasaw Nation provided every citizen household with school-aged children the same per-child stipend, whether a student lived at school or at home. The household of every student who attended school received money to help offset the cost of room and board as well as tuition.[1]

Again, although the Chickasaws had roughly one quarter the population of the Choctaws, the Chickasaws spent more than twice as much on education. In at least one year, 1891, the Chickasaw government spent all of the interest from its funds held by the federal government for education, which amounted to $95,000, roughly $2.5 million in 2018 values.[2]

Still, the tribe struggled with the task of getting their school system running again after the war. New facilities were built in a rush, and were often small and rickety. Most of the better schools were those that used established facilities, which were nonetheless damaged or dilapidated. As late as 1897, one teacher complained, "The reason that writing has been omitted is that there is no desk or thing that can be used for desks."[3]

Notes

[1] Caroline Davis, "Education of the Chickasaws, 1856-1907," Chronicles of Oklahoma 15, no. 4 (1937): 420.

[2] Wendy St. Jean, Remaining Chickasaw in Indian Territory, 1830s--1907 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2011), 99.

[3] As quoted in Davis, "Education of the Chickasaws," 420.

Schools among the Chickasaws in Indian Territory: The Civil War and Its Aftermath (1)

At the outbreak of war in the spring of 1861, the federal government abandoned Indian Territory. The fate of Fort Washita just north of the Red River epitomizes this moment in Oklahoma history. On May 1, four U.S. Army companies posted at the fort fled north with hundreds of Texas Confederates in close pursuit. The remainder of the federal troops in Indian Territory joined them and the entire group made its way to Kansas. Not only did the Confederate Army commandeer Fort Washita, it was never again occupied by the United States.[1]

In addition, many upper-class Chickasaws owned slaves. Given the prejudices within the tribe, and with Arkansas and Texas as neighbors, it was only natural for the leaders of the Chickasaw Nation to renounce their allegiance to the Union and side with the Confederacy. This meant, of course, that the Chickasaws forfeited their status vis-a-vis the government of the United States. Meanwhile, the war halted the growth and destroyed the development of the previous three decades. From 1861 to 1865, schools and churches in the Chickasaw Nation were closed. Many homes were lost and destroyed.[2]

By the end of the war, Christian missionaries had long since left Indian Territory. During the years of conflict, schools and academies ceased operation and school buildings served the Confederate cause as barracks and hospitals.[3] What remained of those buildings now served as the physical foundation for the post-war educational system. The first priority was to rehabilitate those facilities. By 1867, federal appropriations of money to the Chickasaw Nation resumed. These funds provided for the new beginnings of the school system. G. D. James served as the first Chickasaw Superintendent of Public Instruction. In  1869, James reported to George T. Olmstead, U.S. Indian agent stationed at Boggy Depot, that eleven neighborhood schools were operating, with a total of eleven instructors and four assistants. Two thirds of these educators were white and were, in James's opinion, of low caliber. But he expected the quality of instruction would only increase over time.[4]

Notes

[1] W. B. Morrison, "Fort Washita," Chronicles of Oklahoma 5, no. 2 (June 1927): 257. See also Caroline Davis, "Education of the Chickasaws, 1856-1907," Chronicles of Oklahoma 15, no. 4 (1937): 416. According to a pamphlet titled "Fort Washita: Walking Tour Guide," which the author acquired, U.S. forces fled on April 16, contrary to the date of May 1, reported by Morrison.

[2] Davis, "Education of the Chickasaws," 416.

[3] Arrell M. Gibson, The Chickasaws (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971), 271.

[4] Davis, "Education of the Chickasaws," 418-19.

Schools among the Chickasaws in Indian Territory: Independence and Its Immediate Aftermath

1856 marked a major turning point in Chickasaw history. In that year a new treaty took effect and finally gave the tribe political separation from the Choctaws.

The 1837 Treaty of Doaksville had essentially made the Chickasaws a mere part of the Choctaw Nation. In the years that followed, the Chickasaws determined to distinguish themselves politically. Their argument for independence included four points.

First, against the protests of the Choctaw Nation, the Chickasaws insisted that the $530,000 paid to the Choctaws as part of the 1837 Treaty of Doaksville provided for a separate Chickasaw district. Second, a twenty-mile wide strip starting at the Canadian River in the north and running to the Red River in the south had served as a boundary between the Choctaws and Chickasaws from the time they arrived in Indian Territory. The existence of that boundary supported the first claim; if no real distinction existed between the two, then why was there ever a boundary? Third, the Chickasaws complained that they did not have adequate representation in the Choctaw government. Fourth, propagandists among the Chickasaws threatened that trouble would break out between them and the Choctaws if Chickasaw demands were not finally satisfied. The federal government responded with support for Chickasaw independence.[1]

Upon gaining their new independence, the Chickasaws set out to establish for themselves a solid educational system. Among other provisions, the tribal leadership set aside monies for additional schools and established the elected office of superintendent of public instruction.[2]

Notes

[1] Arrell M. Gibson, The Chickasaws (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971), 250-51.

[2] Ibid., 255; Caroline Davis, "Education of the Chickasaws, 1856-1907," Chronicles of Oklahoma 15, no. 4 (1937): 415.

The Incomparable Jesse Chisholm (c. 1805-1868)

On their way north to railheads in Kansas, trail bosses followed a path through Indian Territory that was blazed by one of the most important traders and negotiators the West has ever known. Jesse Chisholm was a mixed-blood Cherokee Indian born in Tennessee around 1805. When he was still a young man, his family, personal interests, and natural talents combined with American expansion to move him west.

His father was Ignatius Chisholm, an adventurer of Scottish heritage. His mother was Martha Rogers, the daughter of a Cherokee leader. The couple became part of the Cherokee westward movement after the tribe was pressured to give up their lands in Tennessee in exchange for new lands in Arkansas. By 1816, the family lived along the Spadra River in northwestern Arkansas.

Once the federal government began relocating Indian tribes to the territory west of Fort Smith, Arkansas, Jesse Chisholm established several trading posts in that region. At one time, his extended family operated a store at Three Forks, Indian Territory, called the Wigwam Neosho. The store once belonged to Sam Houston and his Cherokee wife, Diana, Jesse Chisholm's great aunt, whom Houston abandoned on his way to Texas in 1833. Because Chisholm could speak a dozen or more languages, including those of the Kiowas and Comanches, officials stationed at Fort Smith and Fort Gibson sometimes used him as an interpreter in their treaty negotiations.

He also served as a mediator for Sam Houston following the Council House Massacre at San Antonio in March 1840. As historian Vernon R. Maddux tells the story, thirty-five Comanche women, warriors, and chiefs came to San Antonio under a flag of truce. But the Indians "were surrounded by a troop of heavily armed Texas soldiers, who . . . killed all the warriors and some women." For the next seven years, in sporadic waves of terror, Comanche raiders took vengeance. At Houston's request, it was Jesse Chisholm who accepted "the dangerous mission of seeking out the remote Comanche bands and trying to persuade them to come in and sign a peace agreement." After seven years of tireless effort, on December 10, 1850, Chisholm signed and witnessed the treaty at San Saba Mission, which was also signed by representatives of the Peneteka Comanches.

During the Civil War, Chisholm operated a ranch and trading post near present-day Wichita, Kansas. It was after the war that he blazed his trail along the 98th meridian, from his post in Kansas all the way to the Red River. This was the path that would eventually become the cattle highway connecting ranches in Texas to the railroad in Kansas. Chisholm died in 1868 and thus never witnessed what became of his trail. He lies buried at the old site that was known as Left Hand Spring, named for a Southern Arapaho leader, in present-day Blaine County, Oklahoma, about six miles northeast of Geary.

Sources

Gibson, Arrell M. "Chisholm, Jesse (1805-68)." In The New Encyclopedia of the American West, ed. Howard R. Lamar (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 208-09. A brief entry.

Maddux, Vernon R. "Chisholm, Jesse (1805-4 Apr. 1868)." In American National Biography, ed. John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 4:820-22. A much longer article than the one by Gibson.