Rebuilding and Surviving After the Trail of Tears
By Amadeus Finlay
Choctaw Nation Contributing Writer
Note from the author: due to the nature of The Trail of Tears and subsequent social reconstruction in Indian Territory existing as two sequential incidents in social memory, this piece largely concerns the experiences of the first generation of Choctaw in Oklahoma.
Choctaw Nation - In the late fall of 1831, as the chill of winter began to creep across the southern Mississippi Valley, the first of the 15,000 Choctaw who would walk the Trail of Tears were torn from their homelands and plunged into a bleak unknown. Two thousand five hundred of them didn’t make it. Other groups left at different times after the first wave, making the several-month journey and experiencing varied hardships along the way.
For the 12,500 individuals who survived, ahead lay a bleak future in a dry land of dust and predominantly flat prairie, a world entirely contradictory to that which they left behind. Their ancestors, the bones that tied them to the place of their birth, were now a distant memory, and the spirituality so intertwined to their homeland seemingly lost.
It was a set of circumstances so wretched, so utterly distressing, that this writer would not even attempt to describe them. Yet, this was to be their future, and in this future there were only two choices – either submit to the overwhelming pressures of distress and lose whatever was left of the Choctaw, or rally as a community to rebuild a new home in a strange land. In one of the most inspiring stories of post-Columbian America, the Choctaw did not submit to Jacksonian subjugation, but recovered from the trauma of removal and established a society that was destined to flourish.
Things did not get off to an easy start. In June 1832, the Arkansas River flooded its banks and washed away a number of significant farms owned by Choctaw families. Already highly vulnerable from their forced exodus and lacking any form of backup, the Choctaw people faced famine. It was an unstable and uncertain period, made all the worse by a succession of epidemics that tore through the communities.
In time, however, the Choctaw recovered, and within two years had built a stable economy and constructed a comprehensive and sophisticated legal code upon which they based their commerce. In fact, so successful was the Choctaw economy that historian Angie Debo reports of small towns such as Skullyville flourishing with hotels, blacksmiths and stores that quickly became popular stopping points for travelers on their way to California and Texas.
Arguably, one of the most impressive pieces to the reconstruction puzzle was the Choctaw Constitution of 1834. Not only was it one of the most groundbreaking legal documents of its time, but it possessed such versatility that in 1837 it was successfully modified to accommodate the Chickasaw Nation after they too had been removed from their homelands. Eager to extend their democratic system to their new neighbors, the Choctaw legislature went so far as to surrender one-quarter of their votes to Chickasaw representatives.
There was more than just capital gain and legislative advances to the Choctaw success story. No sooner had the people arrived in Indian Territory, than they built churches throughout the newly formed communities and established an independent public school system for their children. By the mid-1830s, five schools were operating in the new lands, with 101 students enrolled across the board. In 1844, Spencer Academy was opened, with Armstrong Academy opening two years later.
Over the next decade, affairs remained fairly stable, and in 1848, the first editions of Choctaw Telegraph were printed in Doaksville, with the Choctaw Intelligencer going into circulation two years later. Around this time, reports begin to surface of large cotton plantations along the Red River, while along the Arkansas and Canadian rivers, prosperous farms with orchards and cornfields, cattle, hogs and fowl were producing in abundance. Such was the relative prosperity of Choctaw land that corn, pecans and cotton were exported in exchange for manufactured goods.
The legacy of that first generation of Oklahoma Choctaw still resonates today, with many of the older members of society having known someone with a direct connection to those who began life west of the Mississippi. Tribal storyteller and elder, Stella Long, is one such individual. Looking back from almost a century of experiences, Stella remembers meeting James Dyer Jr. the son of Reverend James Dyer. Born in or ¬near Eagletown in 1838, Dyer was a first generation Oklahoma Choctaw whose parents had come west on the Trail of Tears.
Looking back from the 21st Century, it is patently apparent that these first Choctaws were blessed with a remarkable sense of courage and determination. Not only did they create a completely new existence out of an unfathomable unknown, but in doing so provided the foundation on which today’s Nation is built; a Nation that believes as much in faith and education as those brave few who made it west.
Let us celebrate that achievement.
History is closer than you think.