[Looking at why our area has its unique political and religious attitudes.]

Who was Cephas Washburn?

Had you ever heard of him before a sign at Dwight Mission? Yet, like Epaphras Chapman to Union Mission, he blazed the trail for schooling to the Old Settlers Cherokee.

Let’s back up to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) established in 1810. They had sent Cyrus Kingsbury to Brainerd Mission in Tennessee in 1817 and established in 1818 Elliott Mission near now Holcomb, Grenada County, Mississippi Territory.

The Cherokee chief of the Old Settlers was Tollunteeskee. While he visited Brainerd Mission, he requested Jeremiah Evarts, Treasurer of ABCFM, to send a mission station to his Cherokee people in Arkansas.

A 24-year-old Cephas and his brother-in-law Reverend Alfred Finney received the assignment. The young, well-educated farm boy from Vermont sailed from Boston to Savannah for a one-year assignment in Georgia.

The trip to Arkansas is unfathomable. Cephas became almost overwhelmed with his responsibility. Cephas, wife, one child, and sister Minerva Washburn with Albert Finney, wife and one child left on 19 Nov 1819. Driving two wagons, the northeasterners arrived at Elliott Mission, on 3 January 1820, after living under the sky, in winter weather, and crossing interminable rivers and streams.

The young men left their wives and children on the frontier, as Cephas and Alfred with an Indian trader left by horseback on 7 February 1820. They came to the Mississippi at Walnut Hills (Vicksburg) where Washburn preached. Because of flooding in the swamps, they had to turn back to Elliott.

On 16 May 1820, the two set out again for the Mississippi. Now with steamboats plying the mighty river, they took a steamboat across to the White River.

First, they tried a skiff to move downriver, but that was too difficult. Then Colonel Davis provided passage on his keelboat to Arkansas River Post.

Washburn and Finney, with new colleagues Orr and Hitchcock, and two hired men began the weeks long overland journey to Little Rock’s two buildings. While four were sick from fever and shakes, Washburn accepted an invitation to preach the first ever sermon in Arkansas.

Herbs were obtained and the sickly crew pushed on to Cadron. With a still sick crew, only Washburn and one hired man made it to Dardanelles, where Washburn wrote I was “attacked with the most violent pains in the head

and back and all my bones accompanied by severe rigors. The rigors were soon succeeded by burning fever, accompanied with insatiable thirst. To allay this thirst, I could find nothing but branch water, lukewarm, and most unpalatable-which my stomach soon rejected. My face, and neck, and arms, were blistered as though they had been covered with cantharides, and my whole skin was a bright yellow. Delirium came on so that I had only a kind of dreamy consciousness.”

He continued that the medicine with blood-letting made him better. Since no one knew bloodletting, he had to do it to himself. He sent a courier to Arkansas Post, 400 miles away for a treatment of Peruvian Bark, which cost $16 and $20 for the bearer, a tidy sum at the time.

By the middle of August, three months since leaving Little Rock, Washburn and Finney were well enough to travel 5 miles (half-day) to meet a council of Cherokee Chiefs.

Although Tollunteeskee had died two years before, they explained they had come at his request. Ooluntuskee (John Jolly), the friend of Sam Houston and brother to mother of Jesse Chisolm, succeeded his brother as Chief.

Nothing is simple. One group of Cherokee supported the English education of their children, realizing they needed to be able to survive in the encroaching American world. The opposition were against Christian education since it would forever change their culture. Interestingly, it was the meshing of Christian education that saved some of their culture, which would have been decimated otherwise.

After deliberation by the council, “they approved of all our talk-that they wished us to remain with them, and establish a school; and that we had full liberty to select any place, which we should judge best adapted to our purpose.”

Washburn located a site 4-miles up Illinois Creek from the Arkansas River on a rise with good spring water. Washburn, Orr, and a hired man were the construction crew, while others were sick. They bought a garden from a man leaving the area, then constructed two log cabins by 1 October 1820.

They headed back to Elliot Mission, where their families were hopefully waiting. They travelled by canoe, skiff, steamboat downriver and up the Mississippi to Walnut Hills. The trip through swamps, mosquitoes, lack of food, and incessant rain was formidable. They reached Elliott Mission on 27 Dec 1820.

Now was time to return with families on 23 March 1821 for the seven-week trip back upriver to Dwight mission, reaching home on 10 May 1821.

Even with unfathomable hardships, life continued. Three new people, Ellen Stetson, Nancy Brown, and Asas Hitchock joined them on 22 December. Orr and Minerva Washburn were married, then a month later Nancy Brown and Jacob Hitchcock married. The Gilcrease Museum has Minerva Orr’s correspondence.

These were the people of fortitude who left a good life as well-educated people in Vermont to enter the frontier of Arkansas, because the Chief asked them to go.

Seven years later, they moved the mission station to Indian Territory, when the Cherokee were expelled from Arkansas Territory. Finney left his last sermon notes at Dwight in 1829. Washburn continued until his retirement in 1850, to pastor a church in Ft. Smith before Judge Parker arrived.

Think about the lifestyle of the Native Americans and these Easterners who came to help them survive the encroaching development.

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Excerpts from:

Washburn’s memoirs, “Reminiscences of the Indians” available on Amazon. Dorsey Jones, “Cephas Washburn and His Work in Arkansas,” “The Arkansas Historical Quarterly.”