[Why our area has its unique political and religious attitudes.]

Among the very first Old Settler Cherokees, who migrated from near Chickamauga, Tennessee, was a distinguished clan who influenced the nation to this day. Talontuskee (Disrupter) was the leader of the tribe after 1817 while they lived near Illinois Bayou and Petit Jean Creek along the Arkansas River in Missouri Territory of the Louisiana Purchase.

The Delaware and Shawnee became neighbors in the Madrid area and remained allies against the Osage. The Quapaw were neighbors downriver on the south side of the Arkansas.

After the raid on Claremore Mound in 1817, Tahlontuskee settled into a lifestyle more subservient to Federal intervention. Beside the Osage war, three significant issues were going-on which changed the course of the Western, Old Settlers, Cherokee.

The Treaty of 1817 with the Eastern Cherokee, ceded two huge tracts to the U.S., one in northern Tennessee and the other in east Georgia in exchange for a small area in northwest Arkansas. The U.S had promised Georgia that all Indians would be removed, even though many of the Cherokee had adopted the European culture and were very successful planters.

Remember these conditions, because the Treaty of 1819 required further cessions to the U.S. as compensation for the Cherokees who had moved to Arkansas. About 3500 Cherokee were west of the Mississippi at this time.

See if I get this straight? The U.S. demanded land in Tennessee/Georgia to get the Cherokee to move west. Then two years later, the government demanded more land because the First Americans had gone west. Can a document be a Treaty, when forced by one side on another who has no power in the negotiations? Humm, it seems government has not changed at all.

Christmas Day, 1817, saw Major William Bradford arrive at Belle Pointe, the confluence of the Poteau with the Arkansas River. With 100 troops, he established the most western military post at Fort Smith. The purpose was to mitigate the ongoing conflicts between the Osage, who recently moved in to be fur-trappers, and the Cherokee who were being moved in by coercion. The Caddo, who were the traditional inhabitants, received no consideration.

Although the Osage and Cherokee made another truce in 1818 at St. Louis, the intertribal raids continued. With another truce in 1819 at Ft. Smith, Major Bradford coerced the Cherokee to return at least some Osage prisoners.

Due to the continuing pressure for lands cession, separation of people, and diverse leadership needs, Tahlontuskee and the Western Cherokee requested the U.S. to recognize them as a separate tribe from the East. Since it was a rational request, it seems the government rejected it. The federal government did agree to a separate census for annuity payments, which were then not paid to the Old Settlers because the federal government had not settled on the territorial boundaries. What? That is correct. The government could not decide on boundaries, so the government did not pay the Indians. Any excuse would do.

Consider how the people of 1818 travelled, communicated and knew what was happening across the continent. Diverse tribes travelled from Three Forks, Indian Territory and Petit Jean Creek, Arkansas to St. Louis, Missouri to negotiate. The people in northwest Arkansas knew of schools back in their ancestral homes of the Southeast.

Now consider the positive circumstances. Chief Tahlontuskee was aware the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) had established a mission community to educate the Cherokee children and adults at Chickamauga in the southeast Tennessee, northwest Georgia, northern Alabama triangle. So, in 1818, the great Chief requested they establish a mission for the Western Cherokee, which eventually became Dwight Mission.

Chief Tahlontuskee died in 1819, before his dream could develop. In his very short tenure as chief, he was involved in numerous, long-term events for the Cherokee, the Osage enemy, and the U.S. He appears to have been one of the talented and successful sons of the amazing mother Wurteh Watts.

The same year, in 1819, the region along the sandy Arkansas river separated from Missouri Territory as Arkansas Territory, encompassing the present states of Arkansas and Oklahoma except the panhandle.

One man made a difference. This is just a brief overview of the legacy. The ABCFM honored Chief Tahlontuskee with the establishment of Dwight Mission. Just a few months after his demise, a mission team started from New York on 20 April 1820.

By July, two of the young women teachers had succumbed. After a miserable pilgrimage up the Arkansas River, on 26 August 1820, Reverend Cephas Washburn established Dwight Mission for the Cherokee on Illinois Bayou in Arkansas. The Reverend Epaphras Chapman and his men continued up the river, taking the Grand (Neosho) River fork, to establish the first English settlement in Indian Territory, Union Mission for the Osage in now Mayes County on 15 November 1820. The mission educated and brought together Cherokee, Muscogee, and other nations, as well. Warring tribes were going to church and school together.

Think about that. It was this community of missions and mission leaders which did more to settle animosity and bring a consensus between tribes than any other singular event. The traditionalist, erudite, mercantile society of New England invested to send missionary educators far west of the Mississippi to the Cherokee in Arkansas and Osage in Indian Territory.

Excerpts from our book:

Where Indians, Outlaws & Oilmen Were Real, ISBN: 9781658834643.