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

What are the consequences of Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase?

While the ink was still drying on the Purchase of 1803, the first Native Americans crossed the wide, swift, muddy Mississippi. Why? The Treaty of Tellico forced them out of Tennessee. They began the move before Rev. Gideon Blackburn brought acculturation to Chickamauga.

What a difference the timing made. No mission group was aware of the early moved and shaken Native Americans who had already emigrated. So, the this group did not receive any training in the skills brought by the supremely-educated preacher-teachers.

After crossing into the new Louisiana Territory, an occasional circuit riding Methodist preacher came through. But he was not part of their society and did not provide the technical skills necessary to operate and flourish in the growth of the new country.

The first established community church and center of culture was by the son of a Cherokee slave, Reverend Joseph Willis. Willis came with the first influx from western North Carolina and established a Baptist Church in 1804.

What is the difference? Rev. Willis did not have the extensive education of the private, but government encouraged, mission organizations. Nor did Willis have the formal ordination or financial support of his religious association. Nevertheless, look at his lasting accomplishments after two-hundred years.

“His story tells much about the pioneers, who settled in the land. He married four times, due to his wives succumbing in the harsh existence on the frontier. He was a business man to pay for his ministry. He personally founded or was influential in many of the churches north of Bayou Chicot (Louisiana). He received many names of utmost respect, including Apostle to the Atakapa, Apostle to the Opelousas, First Baptist Preacher West of the Mississippi, and Father Willis representing the Catholic adoration.î

The forced migration of the Cherokee and other tribes from North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee established the first non-French settlers and pioneers in Louisiana.

But a migration always displaced someone else. Who was previously in the territory? In 1763, at the end of the French and Indian War, the French allies included the Coushatta (Koasati) Nation in Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama. Under the guise of defeat, they were forced out and crossed the Mississippi into then Spanish controlled Louisiana.

Wait just a minute. The eastern tribes were forced into Tennessee and surrounding area to displace the Coushatta. Now the same tribes are forced out of Tennessee to join the Coushatta in No Man’s Land of Louisiana. Their new location turned out to be the greatest benefit for any Natives dealing with the rapidly growing and expanding United States.

Louisiana obtained statehood in 1812. But the western portion, called No Man’s Land, was still in dispute with Spanish Mexico. The disagreement resulted in an 1806 treaty keeping all military from both sides out of the district. Consequently, because of no government interference, the Native Americans were finally able to keep their homes, unlike other locations.

By the time of the dispute resolution with Spanish Mexico, the Native Americans were settled, established pioneers. Look at their respect and recognition.

“James (Bass) is regaled by (General) Erbon Wise, the publisher of the “Leesville Leaderí newspaper, in his book “Tall Pines II”, as one of the influential Old-Timer farmers in Vernon Parish.”

But all was not well with their cousins, who were still in Tennessee and Georgia.

The state of Louisiana was the southern portion of Jefferson’s Purchase. The area just north became the Arkansas Territory occupying from the Mississippi River westward, north of the Red River to the Spanish Mexico Tejas panhandle.

The Native Americans were not “voluntarily” relocating fast enough, and unfortunately “individual rights” Jefferson was no longer President. His replacement was “common good” President James Madison, who with Congress established the new Cherokee Reservation in “Arkansaw Territory”, west of the Mississippi.

Treaties in 1817 and 1819 “traded” remaining Cherokee communal land in North Carolina, Tennessee and north Georgia for consigned land in the Louisiana Purchase. The people who moved to this reservation were called “Old Settlers” and were eventually enumerated in 1851.

A problem existed! The Osage people were here first. Naturally war occurred, with one a major confrontation at Osage Chief Claremore’s mound, when 600 Cherokee, Shawnee, and Delaware warriors attacked and decimated.

It was into this conflict that the supremely-educated Reverend Epaphras Chapman established Union Mission, Mayes County in 1820. Welcome to the promised land, but to whom.

Think about the conflict between the “individual rights” of the original people and the “common good” for an expanding new country. Treaties were brokered but then broken by the next administration.

How can we as a people address the rights of the individual guaranteed by our Constitution and laws, when others want to break our internal pacts?

Excerpts from our books:

No Man’s Land Pioneers, Louisiana’s Wild, Wild West, ISBN: 9781694632128.