The Nation Behind the Village

Locals describe the Chickasaw history

CELINA- The story of the Chickasaw people began with twin brothers Chiksa' and Chahta, and many, many prayers to their prophets, locals Larry Eink and Nick Thobe told a group of about 30 Mercer County residents on Sunday in a history presentation on the Chickasaw Nation at the Richardson Bretz Building in Celina.

The spiritual guidance ultimately led the Native Americans to settle just east of the Mississippi River, then split them into the two nations of Choctaw and Chickasaw.

The Choctaw homelands are in the present day Southeast, making up much of Mississippi, eastern Louisiana and western Alabama.

Whereas the Chickasaw people settled north of them, in present day northern Mississippi, northwest Alabama and western Tennessee.

The Chickasaw's connection to Mercer County was born out of their significant alliance with the then newly formed United States of America.

However, their relationship with European settlers wasn't initially friendly, Thobe said.

"They first encountered Europeans back when (Spanish explorer and conquistador) Hernando DeSoto showed up on the scene in around 1540," he said. "They did not hit it off with the Spanish. In fact, they told them, 'You guys gotta go.' They had confrontation with them, and they drove the Spanish out."

The Chickasaw people, a small tribe of about 6,000 people, then continued living their lives in their newly found homelands, Thobe continued. Later, they encountered the French and decided to negotiate rather than fight.

"Now the Chickasaws were known as negotiators. They wanted to negotiate and do what was best for their people as opposed to fighting for everything," Thobe said. "Again, they were not a large nation. So they negotiated with the French and had peace with the French, but they did not have peace with the northern tribes. The tribes up north, they always had a confrontation with them."

After the French, along came British explorers. The Chickasaw people once again, for their own preservation, negotiated with the British and eventually fought alongside them against the French and the northern Native American tribes of Shawnee, Miami, Delaware, Ottawa, Wyandot and Ojibwe, which Thobe referred to as the "Northwest Alliance" during his presentation.

While friendly with the British, the Chickasaw people became close with a British officer named George Washington. This alliance would prove useful when he later became the first President of the United States and the Chickasaw tribe was welcomed into the new country.

"There are some scholars that credit the Chickasaws with Americans speaking English, because they sided with the British," Thobe said. "The British beat the French, and then eventually the Americans were largely British, and they spoke English."

The Chickasaw people considered the Revolutionary War to be a civil war between British people, Thobe said.

"They didn't consider that their war. So they basically stepped away during the American Revolution," Thobe said. "That's not to say every Chickasaw did, there were some factions of Chickasaws that continued to fight with the British, but the main tribe and everything, their head leader, Piominko, he said, 'We're not participating. Let them fight it out. It's their civil war.' The Choctaw, though, did fight with the British during the American Revolution."

Due to the tribe's small size, they all felt that it was important to negotiate for the survival of their people, Thobe said.

"James Colbert, who was of Scottish descent and was born in North Carolina, was captured as a small boy by the Chickasaws, and lived with the Chickasaws then and was raised there," Thobe said. "He married three different Chickasaw women. He had three different Chickasaw wives and had many children. The sons that he had were William, Joseph, Samuel, Levi, George and James. And they were all very active in the tribe as negotiators."

George Colbert was "instrumental" in many of the tribe's negotiations, Thobe added.

"They formed this alliance with the United States of America, this new country. The war ends in 1783 and the United States doesn't have a dime to their name," Thobe said. "So they say, 'Hey, we've got land because of the Treaty of Paris.' The British signed off all of this land in the Ohio territory, the Northwest territory. They signed that over to (the United States), so we got that land."

In an effort to make money, the United States began to sell that land in the Ohio territory to white settlers. This naturally caused confrontations with the northern Native American tribes in that area.

"They would run into some settlers, and there was a result that wasn't positive. This started to happen," Thobe said.

Meanwhile, the United States had recognized the Chickasaw Nation's inherent sovereignty with the Treaty of Hopewell in 1786.

"Then in 1790, because of all the activity happening in the Ohio country, President Washington says, 'We need to do something, and we're going to send out the Federal Army,' Thobe said. "The Brigadier General Josiah Harmar was tasked with going to the principal Miami town of Kekionga, where Fort Wayne, Indiana is today, to go up there and settle things. He went there and his result was the same as most of the settlers that went out there. The Miami kicked their butt, so to speak."

The U.S. Army then retreated back to Fort Washington in Cincinnati defeated. The news traveled to President Washington, and in early 1791, the U.S. Secretary of War Henry Knox pulled their longtime ally, the Chickasaws, in to help out.

This decision brought the Chickasaw people up into the Ohio area in the 1790s.

"General Arthur St. Clair was commissioned to now address the natives in the land, and he has 19 Chickasaw warriors with him," Thobe said. "The Northwest Alliance, some of the main chiefs were Little Turtle of the Miamis, Blue Jacket of the Shawnee and Buckongahelas of the Delaware. They were put together to resist it."

What followed in late 1791 is what is known as The Battle of the Wabash, which took place in modern day Fort Recovery. To his detriment, St. Clair did not trust the Chickasaw Nation because they were Native Americans. He thought they were just the same as the other natives in the Northwest Alliance, so he sent the them north to Detroit for the battle.

"He was so confident, perhaps arrogant in himself, that he thought he didn't need them. So he sent them off. There were some Chickasaws that did remain with them, during the battle. The report is, there was one Chickasaw warrior that killed 11 of the (natives in the Northwest Alliance) and scalped them all before he met his death and was killed," Thobe said. "This was a major victory for the Indians. At the end of the battle, it was very chaotic. It's a massive slaughter. It's very chaotic. Every man, woman and child for themselves. And they retreated. They're going to head back to Fort Jefferson, and ultimately, to Fort Washington."

In response, President Washington appointed General Anthony Wayne to train and lead the U.S. soldiers in 1792.

"He drills them, trains them, gets them ready for fighting in the Ohio country against the northern tribes. He gets all the information that he can on how to fight them," Thobe said. "He also says, 'I do need help, and I need scouts. So we need the help of the Chickasaw Nation.'

At the time, Chickasaw Chief Piominko was trying to maintain his established relationship with the United States, so they did help Wayne's army, but in exchange, they asked the U.S. to help them with food, ammunition and guns.

"Wayne assigns Lieutenant William Clark to go and bring them supplies. He goes down the Ohio, down to Mississippi, gets to the Chickasaw Bluffs, where they supply the Chickasaw Nation (with the supplies they requested)," Thobe said. "The Chickasaw Nation is ecstatic, and this really cements their relationship now with the U.S. government."

As a result of that, Clark returns to Fort Washington with Chief James Underwood and eight other warriors from the Chickasaw Nation to support Wayne at his headquarters at Fort Greenville.

"The Chickasaws and the United States government were hand in hand. They worked hand in hand. So, then what happens? Well, the Battle of Fallen Timbers occurs up along the Maumee River in August," Thobe said. "There were actually Chickasaws and Choctaws again working with the Army, going along the Maumee. They had different skirmishes before the Battle of Fallen Timbers. The Choctaws said, 'We're done, we're heading back.' And they went back to their homeland in Mississippi and were discovered."

The Chickasaw people went on and fought in the Battle of Fallen Timbers and with their help, the United States won against the Northwest Alliance. This resulted in The Treaty of Greenville on Aug. 3, 1795.

"Now, there's no mention of the Chickasaws there because they're on the American side," Thobe said. "But what we're still trying to establish is: well, when did the Chickasaw set up a village where it is today?"

More than likely, Thobe continued, the Chickasaw Nation was working out of Fort Greenville at first. Then, he hypothesized they moved up to where the village is now to serve as scouts for the U.S. Army, as it was right between Fort Greenville and Fort St. Marys.

"It would seem to make sense that after the treaty, the army would want to forward an observation post, and that would be a good place to have it," he said. "So maybe the Chickasaws moved up there."

After Shawnee Chief Tecumseh's death in 1813 at the Battle of the Thames, the Northwest Alliance fell apart. In 1818, there was the Treaty of St. Marys, which was a collection of several treaties between the U.S. and Native American tribes that formerly made up the Northwest Alliance.

"There was a very, very large contingent of Indian nations there. Ten different tribes, 10,000 Indians in St. Marys. That was a very, very big event," Thobe said. "The Chickasaws were actually right down the road on what ended up being Greenville St. Marys Road. But they were right down the road there in Chickasaw."

Then, Mercer County was organized in 1824 with St. Marys as its county seat. From 1829 to 1833, the Delaware, Seneca and Shawnee tribes were removed by the government and sent west of the Mississippi. The Wyandots were removed in 1834.

Also, in the South, The Trail of Tears was occurring, in which five tribal nations- Seminole, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Muscogee and Choctaw- were forcibly moved west to Oklahoma.

"The Chickasaws were the only nation to be paid for their land," Thobe said. "Now, we believe some of the Chickasaws stayed in Ohio, because there's no record of them moving them out. The Chickasaw nation today has no knowledge of why they were in Ohio. So, we believe they stayed. We have some documents that show they were still living Chickasaw, Ohio in 1853."

More than likely, Thobe said, some present day Chickasaw natives have Chickasaw Nation heritage, because it's more than likely that the remaining people integrated into the area.

"We know the Chickasaw people in Ohio helped the formation of the new country. We've got tons of evidence to support that. But, where did they go? We think they stayed. Did they integrate with the population? We think so. I know one guy here, he tells me he knows some (local) people that have Chickasaw blood, but he won't tell me what families they are," Thobe said. "We would like to honor them and make them Grand Marshall of our parade, because, that's our heritage."