Choctaw Literary Nationalism in the Nineteenth Century A
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UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE WHO SHALL GAINSAY OUR DECISION? CHOCTAW LITERARY NATIONALISM IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY By PHILLIP CARROLL MORGAN Norman, Oklahoma 2009 WHO SHALL GAINSAY OUR DECISION? CHOCTAW LITERARY NATIONALISM IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY A DISSERTATION APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH BY __________________________ Dr. Geary Hobson, Chair __________________________ Dr. Craig S. Womack __________________________ Dr. Catherine Hobbs __________________________ Dr. William Henry McDonald __________________________ Dr. Marcia Haag © Copyright by PHILLIP CARROLL MORGAN 2009 All Rights Reserved. THIS STUDY IS DEDICATED TO THE CHOCTAW PEOPLE like a full moon over a thunderhead in the east in a buoyant blue late afternoon sky i see your imagination as a people you rise early you are visible even the light of the sun cannot burn you off through a dark night you are there on the other side of earth the glare of transplanted cities cannot hide your agriculture your stories your flare for oratory you speak you listen you persevere ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I owe a great debt to Geary Hobson, my ‘elder brother,’ for his patient wisdom and unerring dedication to his students and to the causes of Native American people, especially to our arts and literature. I thank the other members of my doctoral advisory committee—Craig S. Womack, Catherine Hobbs, Henry McDonald, Marcia Haag, and earlier, Robert Warrior—for their dedication to quality scholarship. To all my other professors in the OU English Department, I thank you for teaching me to ferret out knowledge, think critically, and embrace the truth. I thank my children, mother, father, and brothers for standing by me all these years and for helping me shoulder the load when I wanted to give up. But most of all, I thank Katie, who graciously and unflinchingly accepted the austerity of the scholar’s life in middle age—always the beacon, always the lighthouse—in the roughest seas and through the darkest nights. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction Recovering the Choctaw Nineteenth Century 1 Chapter One James L. McDonald’s Spectre Essay: Choctaw Literary Criticism in 1830 12 Chapter Two Peter Perkins Pitchlynn: His Journal of 1828 59 Chapter Three Unity is Everything: Pre-Removal Choctaw Correspondence 136 Conclusion Methodology and Other Works in the Field 199 Works Cited 217 Appendix One The Spectre Essay: Transcription of James L. McDonald’s Handwritten Manuscript, December 13 and 17, 1830 227 v LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Peter Pitchlynn, as a Young Man 61 Land Cessions and Acquisitions 69 Peter Pitchlynn, as He Looked When Chief of the Choctaws 75 “Ten-squat-a-way,” as painted by George Catlin in 1830 77 vi ABSTRACT This study examines the writing of a group of young Choctaw intellectuals, the first generation of that society of American Indians to embrace literacy as a fully viable tool of discourse. Working in the pre-removal period, 1824-1831, as the Choctaws made preparations for their great emigration from the state of Mississippi to their new sovereign soil west of the Mississippi River, their writing evinces a nationalistic fervor. In conversation with each other, the tribal intellectuals conceptualize their transition from a pre-modern ethno-historical group to a fully-fledged constitutional republic. Primary focal texts for the study include James L. McDonald’s Spectre Essay of 1830 and Peter Perkins Pitchlynn’s journal of 1828. McDonald’s essay presents a translation of an old Choctaw legend into English and a comparative analysis of Choctaw language arts with English language art forms. Pitchlynn’s journal chronicles the findings of a multi-tribal delegation, dispatched to explore the southeastern section of Indian Territory, present-day Oklahoma, when the region was largely uninhabited and unimproved wilderness. Pitchlynn reports his encounters with such famous nineteenth century Native luminaries as Tenskwatawa, the Shawnee Prophet, and Pahuska, great chief of the Osages. Secondary texts include correspondence between McDonald, Pitchlynn and their peers in the period right after the removal Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek was signed, but before the emigration actually took place. vii Introduction: Recovering the Choctaw Nineteenth Century In terms of weighing the aggressive forces of change at work on the North American continent during the nineteenth century, no other factors equal in magnitude the emergence of the United States of America. One could say with credibility, however, that the United States’ experience was an outgrowth of the sprawling rise of nations and nationalism in Europe. Indigenous American tribes, bands, and confederacies, were not separated from, but integral to, the rise of nations. European powers treated with Indian tribes as sovereigns, as even a cursory examination of treaty language will show. This important recognition of tribal polities by the relatively new and still vulnerable nations of Europe, showed respect for the powers and traditions of the societies indigenous to this land, as well as deference to the tribes’ sovereign titles to the coveted soils they each inhabited. European national governments (and later the United States) vigorously pursued the political necessity, however, to be recognized themselves as sovereign entities in these government-to-government negotiations. Diplomatic and military alliances were sought out and made by all parties, Native and European. Often, the primary motive for these alliances was to edge out competitors, Native and European, for the valuable land, resources, and trade on this continent. 1 Trusting this appraisal of the evolving relationships between indigenous American sovereigns and European proto-national sovereigns, 1 one may easily imagine the race for nationhood shaping up in the minds of the early nineteenth century Choctaw idealists, 2 Peter Perkins Pitchlynn and James L. McDonald, whose writings form the foundation of this study. Both were young men 3 when they wrote the core texts examined in this study; both were already acknowledged by other Choctaws as intellectuals and as ascendant political leaders. Peter Pitchlynn, or Hachotakni (‘Snapping Turtle’), would continue to develop as a leader, serving as principal chief in the dangerous Reconstruction period, 1864-1866. Pitchlynn also served as one of the Choctaw delegates 4 to Congress, during the five-year period before the Civil War, 1856 through 1860 and into 1861, and for the remainder of his life after the Civil War, 1866 – 1 I refer to England, France, Spain as proto-national because in the early nineteenth century all three still had powerful lords, kings, queens, or emperors, although the distribution of political power was slowly, but contentiously, becoming more democratic. The United States should at this time be regarded as most fitting the definition of a democratic republic, but this nation was also young and fragile, as the Civil War would so painfully prove. 2 I use the descriptor, idealist, carefully. Pitchlynn and McDonald were idealists insofar as a lot of the work going on in their early writing is conceptual—conceptualizing a new nation and its institutions. This work required the imagination of an idealist, but did not permit too much conflict with practical considerations, because the stakes were so high. I am certainly not using “ idealist” in the sense of German (Kantian) idealism, a version of which Emerson brought home to America after meeting Coleridge, Wordsworth, Mill, and Carlyle on his tour of Europe in 1832 and 1833, although a comparison of nineteenth century Choctaw idealism and the American idealism of Emerson might be interesting and useful. 3 Peter Pitchlynn was 18 years old in 1824, the date of the earliest letter I examine, and by my best estimates, McDonald was between 20 and 22 years of age in 1824. 4 They were popularly called delegates, but since American Indian nations had no representation in Congress, in modern professional terms we would see them more as a combination of lawyers and lobbyists. They frequently presented memorials to Congress. They were highly visible in Washington City, hobnobbing and bargaining in social settings, and hired lawyers from time to time, to file suits against the federal government and its contractors, for recovery of undelivered, or mis-delivered, treaty obligations. Pitchlynn and his fellow delegates performed work that was essential to the survival of an old tribal society in the process of becoming a viable modern nation. 2 1881. 5 McDonald’s life and career were cut tragically short by his apparent suicide in the late summer of 1831. 6 The Dancing Rabbit Creek removal treaty was signed in September 1830. The treaty initiated a process of forced choice, resulting in roughly three-quarters of the Choctaw population emigrating to Indian Territory over the next decade, rather than staying in Mississippi and accepting United States citizenship. Actual large scale emigrations did not begin until the next winter after the Treaty, the winter of 1831-1832. The letters examined in this study, composed or received by McDonald and Pitchlynn, as well as Pitchlynn’s journal of a joint expedition with Chickasaws and Creeks to explore their new country in what is now Oklahoma, emanated in the dynamic period of 1824 through 1831. The manuscripts open an amazing window into the mental processes of these Choctaw intellectuals in the crucial pre-removal period. Their writings during this period show a high regard for traditional Choctaw beliefs and practices, alongside a prominent discourse focused upon designing a nation. At work in the decades of often ephemeral treaties and alliances leading up to the removal, was the comfort American Indians felt with concepts of territorial sovereignty, the sovereignty of a ruler, or the complexities of political hierarchy, but I suspect the semantic concept of “nation” at some point was new and somewhat foreign, inviting suspicion. Scholars have speculated that the term sovereignty originated with the French 5 W.