NOVEMBER 26:

1869 Ottawa Ontario - John Alexander Macdonald 1815-1891 refuses to take over Rupert's Land December 1 as agreed, due to the Metis occupation of Fort Garry and the Red River Insurrection. He orders Sir John Rose, Canadian representative in London, not to pay the £300,000 owing until the HBC can guarantee peaceful possession. 

November 26, 1864:  Today, trader John Smith will get permission to visit Black Kettle's people on Sand Creek to trade for buffalo hides. Major Scott Anthony will let Smith go, along with an Army Private, in hopes that this might lull Black Kettle into a false sense of security while Chivington prepares for battle. When Chivington attacks on the 29th, Smith, called "Gray Blanket" by the Arapaho, and Private David Louderback will be in the village, and barely avoid being killed in the fighting.

November 26, 1867:  Fearing another Sand Creek massacre, Black Kettle has traveled 100 miles to Fort Cobb, in central Indian Territory (Oklahoma), to ask General William Hazen if he could move his tribe to the fort so they would be safe. Hazen will deny this request, telling Black Kettle that if his people did not break the treaties, or the law, they would have not problems from the soldiers. Today, Black Kettle returns to his village. He will warn his people to watch for angry soldiers.

November 26, 1868:  General George Custer's scout come across the trail of a war party, identified as from Black Kettle's Cheyenne, and other Arapaho. The war party, according to Army reports, had killed mail carriers between Forts Dodge and Larned, in southwestern Kansas, an old hunter near Dodge, and two couriers from General Sheridan. Custer corraled his wagons, and his main force followed the fresh trail through the snow until dark.

November 26, 1831: David Folsom, and 593 of his Choctaw (sic) followers, arrive by boat at the Arkansas Post, today. The post now has 2500 Choctaws, with 1000 horses. Many of the clans are at odds with each other, causing tense times.
 

BACKGROUND:
 

From:  http://home.flash.net/~miamibig/folsom/choctaw/David3.htm
 
 

David Folsom was one of the early leaders of the Choctaw tribe and was instrumental in negotiating the treaty that gave them a new homeland in Oklahoma.

He was born Jan. 25, 1791 in Bok Tuklo, Choctaw Nation (MS), a descendant of Nathaniel Folsom, a white trader who had pioneered the West from Rowan County, N.C., by way of Georgia. Nathaniel likely was a descendant of the pre-revolutionary Folsom family who immigrated to Massachusetts from England. Nathaniel married two Choctaw (sic) Indian sisters who claimed heritage from a long line of chiefs.

Nathaniel, highly regarded among the people who adopted him , multiplied prolifically, siring 24 descendants. The Choctaws labeled him "Father of all Folsoms."

When David was about 7, he lived with his sister, Molly, and her husband, Samuel Mitchell, a U.S. Indian agent. He stayed three years, learned to speak very good English and showed remarkable musical talent.

After returning home, he worked on his father's homestead at Pigeon Roost, MS, making his own money raising crops. Nathaniel hired a tutor to help the precocious David for a short time, but finally David left at 16 to go to school in Tennessee. He could only afford to stay six months, then returned to help Nathaniel at his tavern and trading post.

David, himself a half-blood, married Rhoda Nail, daughter of Henry Nail, a Revolutionary War standout, and his Choctaw wife. David was the first Indian married under the white man's, not tribal law.

David served three years in the Indian Wars, commissioned by General Andrew Jackson and fighting with him and beside the great Choctaw chief Pushmataha in the Battle of Pensacola. David left with the rank of colonel, a title that honored him the rest of his life.

A Christian and great advocate of education, David induced Presbyterian missionaries to settle in the rural Mississippi area and build several Christian schools, one near his own home. He often put up missionaries in his own house and taught them the Choctaw language. David's children no doubt benefited from their educated guests.

Students at the Mayhew mission wrote to Folsom after he had visited: "We rejoice to think that we have a chief who is a friend to his people, and wishes their good, and favors the schools in the nation. Had it not been for you and the friends of the mission, we think we should have been wandering about in the wilderness."

David, along with the other mixed bloods, were greatly influenced by protestant missionaries, such as Cyrus Kingsbury. They intermarried and were converted to their religion while maintaining the better qualities of Indian culture, their honesty, independence and other tribal ways.

At Folsom's new home near Yoknokchaya on Robinson Road, tribe members raised cotton, made cloth and operated blacksmith shops, but still enjoyed their visiting, singing, feasting and playing their traditional stickball games. Strife had begun within the tribe. The full bloods wished to retain their native ways. The mixed-blood leaders, such as the Folsoms, Louis LeFlore and John Pitchlynn, favored a more educated and civilized life for the tribe, while retaining their beloved homeland in Mississippi.

The issue of slavery also split the tribe further -- well-off "aristocratic" landowners, such as John Pitchlynn, who owned 200 acres and 50 slaves, were swayed by desire to keep their plantations. Chief Mushulatubee owned 10 slaves for his 30 acres. Most of the members of the nation, however, lived off the land communally, an issue that would erupt again when the idea of dividing the future Oklahoma land into individual allotments came up.

Land-hungry white pioneers, however, were lobbying President Jackson, to move the Choctaws out of Mississippi westward. Similar removals were being sought against other tribes including the Creeks of Alabama, Cherokees of Tennessee and Kentucky, and Seminoles of Florida.

Folsom became a very powerful person and respected as a Christian man and an eloquent, passionate speaker for his causes. He was beginning to see the ultimate reality of the cessation of the Mississippi homeland and tempered his position in order to gain favorable terms in the inevitable treaty . He sought rights for the poor, as well as the rich and remained committed to the idea of progress for the tribe.

The Choctaw nation was approaching a state of civil war, with removal, slavery, education and religion splintering the tribe at a time when it needed to be united to withstand the white man's insurgence. The State of Mississippi sought to impose its own law on tribe members living within the state boundaries.

As tensions mounted, Folsom again stepped up and showed his leadership. In a show-down between the Indian factions, hundreds of warriors armed with guns, bows and arrows faced off. However, Folsom offered his hand to his opponent, Nitakechi, who accepted it. The two opposing sides built a fire, held council, and a civil war was averted.

He showed similar diplomacy when dealing with the government. Negotiations, led in part by Folsom for the Indians and President Jackson for the United States, finally settled the issue of ceding land in Mississippi and removal of the tribe to Oklahoma.

On Sept. 27, 1825, David was among the Choctaw chiefs and delegates who signed or "made their marks" on the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek. It was the beginning of what has come to be known as the Trail of Tears that Indians followed on their harsh journey into the western wilderness. In 1826, David Folsom was elected chief of the northern district. He had charge of the first of three groups moving to Oklahoma. In the fall of 1831, the group was ravaged by "white man's" diseases, hunger, blizzards and floods before arriving in what would become southeastern Oklahoma, their numbers greatly reduced.

Other tribal members also survived the ordeal, including Nathaniel, who settled at Mountain Fork, later called Eagle Town, Red River County, I.T. Nathaniel died there Oct. 9, 1833. Rhoda Folsom died in 1837. David then married Jane (Jincy) Ball in 1841.

David, who had resigned his tribal post, continued to be a respected Choctaw in his new homeland and had a large influential family. Many Folsom descendants went on to achieve prominence because of public service in the tribe, law and in the ministry.

None of these were more beloved or accomplished, however, than David, who died at the age of 56 and was buried at Fort Towson cemetery. His tomb inscription reads , "He being dead yet speaketh."

Submitted by Rusty Lang

Sources: 1. Chronicles of Oklahoma, vol.4, 1926. 2. "Choctaws and Missionaries in Mississippi, 1818-1918" by Clara Sue Kidwell, 1995, University of Oklahoma Press. 3. New England Historical and Genealogical Register, April 1888. 4. "The Rise and Fall of the Choctaw Republic," by Angie Debo, 1934, University of Oklahoma Press.

*****

>From http://mshistory.k12.ms.us/features/feature14/choctaw_removal.html
 

Until the late 1700s, Choctaws and their chiefs acquired European manufactured items, such as essential guns and wool cloth, by trading deerskins and other items to fur traders. By the early 1800s, however, deer were becoming scarce within present-day Mississippi, requiring the Choctaws to hunt west of the Mississippi River.

Because of the scarcity of deer and the mounting Choctaw trade debts incurred by the Choctaws as a whole, chiefs such as Mushulatubbee sought new ways to maintain access to Euro-American goods, to generate income, and to augment their high status. Chiefs and other Choctaws who gained access to large quantities of manufactured goods could redistribute them to family and followers, thus securing power through reciprocal obligations. Moreover, early nineteenth-century chiefs recognized that American society paid the greatest respect to persons who controlled the most wealth. They knew that they must have material wealth to be taken seriously by the United States. Thus, Choctaws, like Mushulatubbee and his family, entered the emerging market economy of early nineteenth-century America by raising and selling livestock and horses, owning African-American slaves, cultivating cotton, and marketing food products, baskets, and other sundry items. Beginning in 1819, Mushulatubbee and other chiefs welcomed Christian missionaries into the Choctaw nation. From the missionaries, Choctaw chiefs and their families learned the English language, basic math, Christian teachings, new farming techniques, and other business-related skills.

Power Struggles

Although nearly every chief and elite Choctaw family pursued this basic outline of economic reform in the early nineteenth century, it did not mean they agreed with one another on other important issues. Factionalism ran rampant among Choctaw leaders as some of them sought to enhance their own position and power at the expense of more traditionally minded chiefs like Mushulatubbee.

Even though Mushulatubbee realized the deerskin trade was nearing its end, he remained devoted to a traditional political arrangement. Tradition required that leadership positions be inherited through the female line, that each of the three divisions retain autonomy, and that chiefs distributed goods and favors to their family and friends. His opponents, such as David Folsom and his family, claimed the right to lead even though they had never demonstrated their mastery of spiritual powers through war exploits or other traditional means.

Folsom was a son of deerskin trader Nathaniel Folsom and his Choctaw wife, and a distant cousin of Mushulatubbee. His wife, Rhoda Nail, was also the offspring of a European trader and Choctaw mother. Mushulatubbee's opponents' claim to power rested wholly within the material realm. These aspiring rulers sought a constitutional government that established a council of chiefs over the entire nation, supported private property ownership, initiated a new police force, and promoted inheritance through the male line.