| New website follows Chickasaws across the 18th Century |
Less than two years ago, no known Chickasaws and only a handful of Mississippians knew the locations of the four major homeland settlements prior to removal beginning in 1837. These were the four identified as of 1720 by English trader James Adair in his book, History of American Indians.
But today, anyone with access to the Internet can go to a new website that will show approximate locations for not only the ridge-top settlements but some of the individual Chickasaw village sites that make up the settlements.
The village sites are shown on a chronological series of maps throughout the pivotal 18th century as the Chickasaws moved, consolidated and finally dispersed in response to colonial powers that either were courting or trying to crush the tribe. The maps illustrate the villages’ relative location to one another, but don’t provide enough detail for looters to find them. Since Chickasaws buried their dead under their houses, each village is also a cemetery.
The content of the website, aptly named TheChickasawVillages.com, was developed by a Tupelo civil engineer, Steve Cook, who is one of those handful previously alluded to. He developed the website because he wanted to share his knowledge with Chickasaw people.
Growing up in Tupelo, Cook always knew that Chickasaws had formerly lived in the area. He had seen “Indian relics” of farmers and his Uncle Banks Livingston. But he had only a passing interest until the 1970s when he was just starting his engineering career and Tupelo was amidst another phase of expanding and developing. During this highly active stage, large numbers of artifacts and even human remains were unearthed by heavy equipment. When they got no response from officials who they had alerted Cook and friends, Julian Riley and Buddy Palmer, decided to save whatever artifacts they could.
In the late 1970s, as they were assembling their own individual collections, they expanded their search for more artifacts as part of a systematic study of matching artifacts and their locations with descriptions in colonial records. In 1980, they wrote, copyrighted and distributed a paper, “Historic Chickasaw Village Locations.”
The sources cited were all documents with no references to artifacts. Some Harvard archaeologists expressed interest in their paper and findings, but advised them to bolster it by adding information about the artifacts and provenience (discovery location). Because the archaeologists were committed to a long-term project in the lower Mississippi Valley, no collaboration ensued and the paper was not expanded. They hoped to donate or sell their collections to a Chickasaw cultural center which was periodically proposed for Tupelo, but never built.
After the Chickasaw Nation initiated contact with the three men in 2003, negotiations resulted in the tribe acquiring their substantial artifact collections and the information on where most of the artifacts had been unearthed. (See April 2004 Times.) Buoyed by this advance, Cook decided to update and improve the 1980 paper. Eventually, he developed three papers, the first of which is posted on his website.
In one segment of Paper 1, the village locations are presented decade by decade throughout the 18th century. This segment is supplemented and complemented by sections of maps and listings of primary source material and references. Another section provides information on two keys, which enabled the collectors to discover locations of the remnants of long-buried Chickasaw villages. One was English trader James Adair’s general description of three of four ridge-top settlements as of 1720. This is found in Adair’s 500-page book, which was originally published in 1776.
The other key was the 1832 surveyor field maps and notes, noting locations for a variety of useful markers that are no longer evident today. “Prairies” and “oldfields” usually corresponded to areas of former occupation. The locations of numerous swamps virtually surrounding the Old Town area (today in north Tupelo) was the reason why the beleaguered Chickasaws chose to settle in that area through much of the 18th century. Cook believes some of the swamps were created by the dam-producing work of beavers which were much in evidence according to English Indian agent Thomas Nairne in 1708.
In Paper 2, which Cook says should be on-line in December, he explains how he dated the collections’ thousands of European trade beads that he and others found or unearthed at the village sites. It is a technical paper that should generate serious review among archaeologists who specialize in southeastern Indian history. Paper 3 will include an explanation of how dating the beads in association with other artifacts, such as silver and shell ornaments, enabled Cook to develop occupation date ranges. In sum, the papers, illustrations and tables enable the user to see Chickasaw movement throughout the 18th century and understand the related motivating factors.
At the bottom of Cook’s homepage, users may click on author’s e-mail to send him comments or questions.
Printed from www.ChickasawTimes.net.
