Invoking Authority in the Chickasaw Nation, 1783–1795

"To Treat with All Nations": Invoking Authority in the Chickasaw Nation, 1783–1795 Jason Herbert Ohio Valley History, Volume 18, Number 1, Spring 2018, pp. 27-44 (Article) Published by The Filson Historical Society and Cincinnati Museum Center For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/689417 [ Access provided at 26 Sep 2021 02:59 GMT with no institutional affiliation ] “To Treat with All Nations” Invoking Authority in the Chickasaw Nation, 1783–1795 Jason Herbert gulayacabé was furious in the fall of 1796. Like many Chickasaws, he was stunned to learn of the recent treaty between the United States and Spain, which now jeopardized his nation’s sovereignty. The deal, Uwhich gave the Americans navigation rights to the Mississippi River and drew a new border along the 31st parallel, was the culmination of constant jockey- ing between the empires over land and trade routes in the Southeast since the American Revolution. However, the Treaty of San Lorenzo (also called Pinckney’s Treaty) was little different from other imperial pacts in that American Indians were not invited to the table. Nevertheless, the pact meant relations in Indian country were to be amended. At a meeting at San Fernando de las Barrancas (present-day Memphis), Ugulayacabé railed against his Spanish friends. “We see that our Father not only abandons us like small animals to the claws of tigers and the jaws of wolves.” The United States’ proclamations of friendship, he continued, were like “the rattlesnake that caresses the squirrel in order to devour it.”1 Of course, not everyone shared Ugulayacabé’s frustrations. Piomingo, his main rival and the Americans’ staunchest ally, was thrilled. The Spanish decision to vacate Chickasaw territory also meant that Ugulayacabé’s support would dimin- ish, leaving Piomingo alone to determine Chickasaw foreign policy. It was a time of mixed feelings in the Chickasaw Nation, though its foreign policy was now in a fixed position to treat with a singular Euro-American power—the United States.2 The Chickasaws, like many other indigenous nations over the course of the eighteenth century, were much divided over which alliances were needed to ensure their continued survival. As a result, the leaders of the two factions, Piomingo and Ugulayacabé, often presented themselves as the heads of the nation while negotiating with their favored allies. Diplomats from both the United States and Spain understood that these were fictive representations but continued to treat with the Chickasaws as though the assertions were true—in hopes of strengthening their supporting factions, legitimizing their Native alliances, and obtaining favorable deals for land and market goods. To demonstrate the differing positions of Chickasaw leaders and how they made claims to political authority in the 1780s and 1790s, this article charts the evolution of those alliances via analyses of several key events in Chickasaw country: the Virginia-Chickasaw Treaty of 1783, the Mobile Treaty of 1784, the Hopewell SPRING 2018 27 “TO TREAT WITH ALL NATIONS” Treaty of 1786, Chickasaw wars against the Creeks and northern Indians, and finally, the 1795 Treaty of San Lorenzo. Analysis of these events dem- onstrates that Chickasaw claims to power throughout the Ohio and Tennessee River valleys were often linked to their long- distance connections to American and Spanish leadership. Further, I argue that in making legitimate, yet often oppos- ing assertions of political authority, men like Piomingo and Ugulayacabé actually worked to guarantee national sovereignty and thereby serve as an example of how Native peoples resisted rival nations—Euro- American and indigenous alike—in the late eighteenth century. The American Revolution (which was “Characteristick Chicasan head”, illustration from Bernard Romans’s A Concise Natural history of to Chickasaws a civil war between British East and West Florida (1775). colonies and their sovereign) brought new LIBRARY OF CONGRESS challenges to Chickasaws, and their leaders wrestled with how to combat them. By that time, three men had emerged as speakers for the Nation: Mingo Houma, the “king” of the Chickasaws, often spoke as the head of the tribe. Paya Mataha was head war chief, a man whose oratorical abilities superseded that of Mingo Houma and who, due to his status, largely dictated wartime diplomacy. A third man, James Colbert, was Scottish by birth but raised among the Chickasaws from childhood. He spoke their language fluently and produced over a half-dozen offspring with his three Chickasaw wives. Because he was a trader, his ability to redistribute gifts within the nation meant that while he lacked official rank, his voice carried much influence. The British had assumed the Chickasaws, who had long remained the steadiest of British allies, would naturally come to their aid, along with the Cherokees, to check American and Spanish might in the region. But Cherokees attacked frontier settle- ments early in the war and in return suffered brutal counterattacks by rebel partisans. The Chickasaws were far more ambivalent about assisting their old allies. Paya Mataha’s pledge at Mobile in 1777 to continue their allegiance reassured the British; that only forty warriors accompanied him did not. Kathleen DuVal notes that his strategy to ensure Chickasaw independence was to assure the British of their support and then promptly do nothing at all. In spring of 1778, these plans were finally exposed, when Chickasaw warriors attempted a half-hearted blockade of the Mississippi River, which the Americans easily ran through. But in staying out of the fighting, Chickasaws also denied the plans of the Northern Indian Confederacy, which by then was the primary 28 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY JASON HERBERT advocate of a pan-Indian alliance against the Americans. This did not mean the confederacy would acquiesce to the Americans, either. In 1779, Mingo Houma, Paya Mataha, and Mataha’s brother Tuskau Pautaupau responded to Virginian demands for alliance or destruction by telling them, “Take care that we don’t serve you as we have served the French before with all their Indians, send you back without your heads.” Despite a short-lived defense of Pensacola against the Spanish in 1781, the Chickasaws never played a large military role in the war, thanks in large part to the maneuvering of Paya Mataha.3 The close of the American Revolution meant the Chickasaw Nation again needed to address the changes in Euro-American power in North America. In July 1783, Chickasaw leadership gathered to meet at Tcukillissa. The men— Mingo Houma, Paya Mataha, Tuskau Pautaupau, Piomingo of Tchoukafala, and Piomingo of Christhautra—emerged from the meeting with a message to the newly formed United States of America. The letter followed traditional norms of Chickasaw diplomacy. The Chickasaw mingos opened by addressing the presi- dent of Congress as “Friend & Brother” and claiming this was the first time the Chickasaws had spoken with the new nation. This was patently untrue—the Americans had sent messages to them throughout the Revolutionary War—but by asserting this, the men provided an opening for new relations between the nations. The Chickasaws were clearly sad to note that their “great father the King of England” had called home his troops, diplomats, and merchants. In their place remained “our Brothers the Americans,” whom they wished would “take us by the hand, and Smoke with us at the great Fire, which we hope will never be extin- guished.” Notice here how the Chickasaws deliberately delineated the difference in kinship, which points to how they envisioned their new relationship. Whereas King George III had been a “great father,” that is, one who showers his children with affection via gifts and goods, the young republic was instead “our Brothers,” a status denoting equality between the peoples. The positions of signatures on the letter is important. Mingo Houma had called the meeting and was the first on the document. Paya Mataha, his people’s head war chief, followed next, before the other three men’s endorsement. This was a sign to the Americans of a united Chickasaw nation, led by Mingo Houma, with the support of Paya Mataha, Tuskau Pautaupau, and the two men titled Piomingo.4 The Chickasaws claimed to receive talks from many places—the new states of Georgia and Virginia, the Spanish Empire, and the Illinois Confederacy had all made overtures for trade—and asked for an American clarification on its position. Chief among their concerns were white settlers along the Cumberland River who had been surveying their lands and hunting grounds and might “forcibly take part of it from us.” They asked the head chief of the Grand Council to stop the encroachment so that peace might reign between them and reiterated their kinship ties as brothers with the Americans, “from whare and whome we are to be SPRING 2018 29 “TO TREAT WITH ALL NATIONS” supplyed with necessaries in the manner our great father supplied us.” They also repeated their desire to know with whom they should communicate, so that such a person might “rescue us from the darkness and confusion we are in.” They then turned to the elephant in the room—Spain. The men claimed they maintained a relationship with the Spanish only as an auxiliary trade source but preferred their American brothers’ support. Their young men had been advised to wait for their goods, they added, so that no blood, of white or red men, might be spilled.5 It is particularly important to see that in the immediate aftermath of the American Revolution, Chickasaw leadership—and the people it represented— was united in favor of a general peace in Indian country. Its endorsement of luminaries like Mingo Houma, Paya Mataha, Tuskau Pautaupau, and a rising war chief named Piomingo illustrates this point.

Load more