DECEMBER 1:

December 1, 1831:  Peter Pitchlynn and 400 other Chahta, board the steamer Brandywine in Memphis today.  The steamer will transport them up to the Arkansas Post on the White River.

1869 Pembina Manitoba - William McDougall enters Manitoba and formally takes possession of the North West Territory for Canada; commissions John Stoughton Dennis to raise a police force. He had not yet been told that John A. Macdonald was refusing to pay the HBC until peaceful possession could be guaranteed. Meanwhile, at Fort Garry, the Metis National Committee draws up list of rights as condition for joining Canada; Metis to elect own legislature, English & French official languages.

Buffalo Child Long Lance 1890-1932 writer, actor, impostor, was born Sylvester Long on this day at Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in 1890; died at Arcadia, California, March 20, 1932. Long Lance was of mixed Indian, white and possibly black ancestry; passing himself off as a Cherokee, Sylvester Long Lance, he was able to enter the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania; fought in the Canadian Army in World War I; settled in Calgary and wrote for several newspapers; 1922 adopted by the Blood as Buffalo Child; 1928 published fictitious autobiography, Long Lance, about growing up as a Blackfoot on the plains; 1930 starred in film The Silent Enemy, a feature film about northern Canadian Indians before European contact; 1932 committed suicide when rumours of his true origins began circulating.

1980 NWT - Founding of new northern TV network, broadcasting in Inuktitut to the eastern Arctic.

1535 Quebec Quebec - Jacques Cartier's men begin to experience the effects of scurvy, due to lack of vitamin C in their diet; the Iroquois will show them how to make cedar tea ('tisane d'anneda') as a cure. 
 

BACKGROUND:
 

From http://freepages.cultures.rootsweb.com/~choctaw/peter.htm
 
 

The main removals from Mississippi took place during 1831, 1832, and 1833. The sufferings of the emigrants were almost beyond belief. It was a difficult journey at best --- 350 miles through a wild unsettled country of vast swamps, dense forest, impenetrable canebrakes, and swollen rivers. Added to this was a great deal of blundering and inefficiency on the part of the War Department. Additional suffering and loss of life was caused by one of the worst blizzards in the history of that region, which broke upon the emigrants who were removed during the Winter of 1831-32; and the cholera epidemic, which swept down the Mississippi and caught those who were crossing the following summer. The population of the tribe was permanently decreased by the losses sustained during this terrible experience.

There is more restraint, but no less bitterness in this letter from Peter Pitchlynn to a Federal Official:

"I beg, sir, that for a whole nation to give up their whole country, and remove to a distant, wild, and uncultivated land, more for the benefit of the Government than the Choctaws, is a consideration which, I hope, the Government will always cherish with the liveliest sensibility. The privations of a whole nation before setting out, their turmoil and losses on the road, and settling their homes in a wild world, are all calculated to embitter the human heart."

Excerpt from "The Rise and Fall of the Choctaw Republic" by Angie Debo
 

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>From http://www.npg.si.edu/col/native/pitch.htm
 

Hat-choo-tuck-nee (1806-1881) Choctaw chief
 

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In the early 1830's (when) George Catlin painted Hat-choo-tuck-nee ("The Snapping Turtle"), familiarly called Peter Pitchlynn by whites, the future Choctaw chief had already become a figure of influence. Having eradicated polygamy in his tribe and stopped the liquor traffic, Pitchlynn had been rewarded in the 1820s with election to the Choctaw National Council. In that capacity, helped select new lands for his people when they were moved west of the Mississippi.

Of mixed white and Indian ancestry, Pitchlynn was well educated in both traditions and served as an effective liaison with the federal government. Impressive in his bearing--"as stately and complete a gentleman of nature's making as ever I beheld," wrote Charles Dickens--he became principal chief in 1860 and served as representative of his tribe in Washington after the Civil War. A gifted orator, Pitchlynn addressed the President and several congressional committees in defense of Choctaw claims. He died in Washington, D.C., in 1881 and was buried in the Congressional Cemetery, where the Choctaw nation placed a monument in recognition of his service and allegiance to his people.