Saturday, October 16, 2010

Chief Tuscumbia

Chief Tuscumbia became a legend at the Muscle Shoals. He was one of the few inhabitants of the area
when the first white settlers arrived. His name in the Chickasaw language was “Tashka Ambi”, or “Tashkambi”,meaning “the warrior who kills.” It was the English, Scots and
Irish who later changed the spelling to “Tuscumbia.”
Although he wore the title of Chief, he has never been listed among the principal chiefs of his
people. One source in Mississippi referred to him as one of the priesthood, being labeled as “Chief
Rainmaker of the Chickasaw Tribe”.
Chief Tashka Ambi was a contemporary of other notable Indians who lived at the Muscle Shoals. Chickasaw Chief George Colbert operated a ferry and an inn a few miles west of Tuscumbia on the Tennessee River at the crossing of the Natchez Trace. Cherokee Chief Doublehead lived across the
river in what later was to become Lauderdale County, and Chiefs Bigfoot and Glass were at one time or another in the Colbert County area.
The Chickasaw Nation, with a population that ranged between an estimated 3,500 to 4,500, was small in comparison to its neighbors, the Cherokees, Choctaws and Creeks. The early domain of the Chickasaws included Northern Mississippi, Eastern Tennessee, Southwestern Kentucky and a small
section of Northwest Alabama.
The Chickasaws’ closest cultural affinity was with the Choctaws, and it is believed that in more ancient times they were an integral part of the Choctaw tribe. The Chickasaw and
Choctaw language, except for dialect differences, were the same.
Their language, known as the Muskhogean, was described by early settlers as very agreeable to the ear, courteous, gentle and musical.
At the time Chief Tashka Ambi lived at the Big Spring in what would become Tuscumbia. The cap-ital of the Chickasaws was in Mississippi at Old Pontotoc, or Long Town, near what was to become Tupelo.
How the Chickasaws came to this part of the Southeast is a basic part of their early religious belief. According to the tradition of their elders, their original home at some remote historic time was in the land of the setting sun; which was probably in Mexico or Central America. Each generation, it was said, was instructed in the long and difficult search for the homeland ordained by their deities. Their guide was an oracular pole, carried on each day’s march by the tribe’s holy men.
Each night the priests placed the pole upright in the ground. During the night, the pole would, shift about and the direction to which it had shifted served as a compass to guide the new day’s march. Almost without fail they moved toward the rising sun and eventually crossed the Mississippi and continued eastward until they reached the Tennessee River.
They journeyed as far as what is now Madison County, Alabama, and at that point the pole remained erect. With great rejoicing the tribe believed they had found the “Promised Land.”
They cleared their fields, planted corn and built settlements. After a time, however, the pole leaned westward and the Chickasaws abandoned their settlements and marched in the direction from whence they had come. In the Tombigbee high-lands of Northeast Mississippi the pole once again remained erect, and this, their new promised land, was where they were when the white settlers came into the territory.
When the white people made their first contact, Chief Tuscumbia was living with a small group of his people at the Muscle Shoals. His brother Jack lived near what was to become Corinth, Mississippi.
Colonel James Robertson of Nashville led a raid in June 1787 to the mouth of Spring Creek. At that time he burned the Indian village known as Oka Kapassa and the French Trading Post that had thrived there for some time. Twenty-six Indians, three French traders, and a white woman were killed.
Robertson had learned from the Chickasaws that the warriors from this village at the Muscle Shoals, mainly Creeks and Cherokees, were the ones responsible for the raids against the white settlers in Middle Tennessee.
Chief Tashka Ambi was a young warrior at that time, it is doubtful he had any connections with the people at Oka Kapassa. However, one historian, in writing about this era at the Muscle Shoals, had this to say about Chief Tuscumbia:
“The settlements were continually being harassed by Indians from all quarters, but the Indians’ particular stronghold was the territory along the Tennessee River and to the South of Tennessee. One of the particularly spiteful chiefs was named Tuscumbia who lived at the great spring where the city of Tuscumbia is now located.”
It was about this time in the late 1780’s that Chief Tuscumbia married Im Mi, whose full name was Im Mi Ah Key. There was a strict rule among the Chickasaws that a brave had to go outside his home clan to find a wife. It is believed Tuscumbia found his bride in the eastern part of the nation. It was also not
uncommon among the Chickasaws for a brave to have more than one wife at the same time, especially if there were a number of sisters in the bride’s family. Im Mi apparently had no sisters therefore, from all accounts; she remained Chief Tuscumbia’s only wife as long as he lived.
The Chickasaw marriage came about after the brave declared his matrimonial intentions by sending the young lady a small present. “If she accepted the gift,” they were considered engaged.
The marriage ceremony was a gala event in the village and quite different from the traditions brought into the land by the white settlers. James Adair, who lived among the Chickasaws, described the proceedings as follows:
When Michael Dickson and his family landed at Muscle Shoals in 1815, they found Chief Tuscumbia and Im Mi to be an amiable couple. Dickson was able to persuade the chief to sell him the site of the City of Tuscumbia, plus all the land between the Big Spring and Tuscumbia Mountain to the South, and all the land to the Tennessee River on the North, for the amazing price of five dollars and two pole axes. This became known as “the Tomahawk Claim.” After the Federal Government acquired “the groom divides an ear of corn in two pieces before witnesses.
He keeps one of the pieces and presents his bride with the other half. After accepting the corn, or sometimes a deer’s foot, the bride then proceeds to present her new husband with some cakes
of bread that she has prepared for the marriage occasion”. the Indian lands following the Treaty of 1816, they allowed Dickson two lots in the town of Tuscumbia for his claim.
The city that later was to be named for Chief Tuscumbia was incorporated December 20, 1820 as Cold Water. Six months later the name was changed to Big Spring, and on December 31, 1822, it was changed a third time to Tuscumbia. There is a legend that the citizens were asked to select either the name “Annie”, in honor of the infant daughter of Michael Dickson, who was the first white child born at that place, or the name “Tuscumbia” in honor of the old chief who was still living in the community. The name Tuscumbia won by a majority of one vote, and the Chickasaw chieftain was so pleased that he
presented little Annie with a tiny pair of moccasins.
Sometime after 1822, Chief Tuscumbia and his wife, Im Mi, moved back to his old home some nine miles South of the present city of Corinth, near the Danville community. Here Chief Tuscumbia built a small cabin on land that adjoined his brother Jack’s property. The Chief spent the remaining years of his life
as a farmer; it was said, using a primitive plow drawn behind a pinto pony.
Chief Tuscumbia died about the year 1834. A grave was dug under the couch, inside the house, where he had died. They washed his body, anointed his head with oil, painted his face red, and dressed him in his best clothes. The body was placed in a sitting position facing west, and his personal effects, including his gun, ammunition, pipe, tobacco and a supply of corn, were placed alongside the body in the grave. The mourning for the chief involved extinguishing the fire in his house, removing all ashes, and starting a new fire. His widow, Im Mi, according to Chickasaw tradition, wept over his grave just before
sunup and sundown for a month.
In December 1836, a neighbor, Ruffin Coleman, bought Im Mi’s land for $820; she had been granted this farm by the Treaty of 1834. In 1838 Im Mi and her children were forced to follow the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma with the other Chickasaws.
Chief Tuscumbia’s grave near Danville, Mississippi, was only a short distance from the Tuscumbia River that bears his name.
In 1838, Im Mi’s old homeplace was sold again, this time to Hesekiah Balch Mitchell, for the price of $2,000. Mitchell built his home, which became known as “The White House” on the high ground where he and his son, Lyman, had earlier attended the funeral of Chief Tuscumbia. Not wishing to build over the
old chief, he removed Tuscumbia’s body to another location, and in the passing of time, the exact site of the second grave has been lost.
But the name of Tuscumbia will not soon be forgotten, for there is a river in Mississippi, and a city and a mountain in Alabama named for him. They speak softly of the noble warrior who lived among these lands before the white man came to take it from a proud people known as the Chickasaws.

Lore of the River by: Dr. William L. McDonald
Copyright 2007 by
Bluewater Publications – Heart of Dixie Publishing

More history stories by Dr. McDonald can be found in “Lore of the River”. To locate “Lore of the River”, search Amazon.com with ISBN # 0971994625
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The Civil War stories found in Dr. McDonald’s Civil War Tales of the Tennessee Valley, can be found at Amazon.com or  http://www.amazon.com/Lore-River-Shoals-Long-Ago/dp/0971994625/ref=pd_rhf_shvl_1
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Wednesday, October 13, 2010

CIVIL WAR WEDDING

CIVIL WAR WEDDING

     This story is about a wedding in Florence on January 22, 1864, during the bleak days of the Civil War.  Its circumstances could well have been a part of the romantic fairy tales of the Old World. The bride, Ann America Burtwell, called Mic by her friends, was a nurse in the hospital located in what is now Pope’s Tavern and Museum.  The groom, Eugene Louis Frederic de Freudenreich Falconnet, a native of Bern, Switzerland, was a Major in the Confederate 14th Alabama Cavalry.
           
     The bride’s father, John Trumbull Burtwell, had been a riverboat captain prior to his death in 1862.  Her mother, Cornelia, was a daughter of Dr. John R. Bedford, whose plantation overlooked what is now Chisholm Road and Cox Creek Parkway.  Her older brother, John, was Inspector General on General Braxton Bragg’s staff.  Her younger
brother, James, was in the 16th Alabama Infantry.
          
     Dr. William H. Mitchell, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, read the vows in the Burtwell home on North Pine Street.  In 1916 this two-storied residence was converted into Florence’s first high school.
          
     The bride’s former boyfriend, Lieutenant Colonel Jesse J. Phillips of the U. S. 9th Illinois Mounted Infantry, had been among the occupying forces at Florence on two previous occasions. He had met Mic Burtwell while visiting a wounded soldier in the hospital.
          
     Colonel Phillips received a dispatch from Brigadier General Grenville Dodge on January 9th with information about the anticipated Florence wedding.  He rightly guessed that several Confederate officers would be in attendance and offered to reinforce Phillips from Pulaski if he would try to capture them. 
          
     As a precautionary measure, the bridegroom had stationed pickets at the entrances to the city.  The bride’s aunt, Eliza Bedford Weakley, had likewise placed her carriage and driver at the Burtwell home as a means of escape in case it was needed.
          
     Dr. Mitchell had completed the ceremony and the wedding party was in the receiving line when the warning was sounded that Phillips was approaching the outskirts of town.  The bride and groom were rushed to the river in the waiting carriage.  According to one account they were rowed across to safety within Confederate lines in a skiff which had been placed there by the groom.  Family tradition has it that Falconnet “wrapped his bride in a blanket, put her in a canoe and eluded the federal troops by means of the river.”
          
     The newly married couple spent their wedding night at Moorefield, located on what is now the Wilson Dam Reservation.  This was the plantation of George Jackson, son of James Jackson of the Forks of Cypress near Florence.  It is said that a piece of the wedding cake, made from hoarded sugar provided by the aged widow of General John Coffee, was sent to Colonel Phillips under a flag of truce.
          
     The Union Colonel who failed in his efforts to stop the wedding later won the hand of a young lady in nearby Athens.  Following the war the Falconnets moved to Nashville.  He was credited with surveying the railroad to the Alabama line, which later was extended into East Florence.  He was also a brilliant inventor, having designed an air ship some fifteen years before the German Count von Zepplin’s first air flight.  Ann died in 1883 when she was only thirty-eight years old.  Her husband died four years later.  


The Civil War Tales of the Tennessee Valley
Copyright 2003 by
Bluewater Publications – Heart of Dixie Publishing
www.Bluewaterpublications.com

The Civil War stories found in Dr. McDonald’s Civil War Tales of the Tennessee Valley, can be found at Amazon.com or  http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0971994676/ref=dp_olp_0/103-3940205-0330202?ie=UTF8&qid=1187314598&sr=8-1&condition=all
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Tuesday, October 12, 2010

TERMS OF SURRENDER AMID BOTTLES OF LIQUOR

TERMS OF SURRENDER AMID BOTTLES OF LIQUOR

Dr. William L. McDonald

     Company C of the 9th Tennessee Cavalry surrendered at Waterloo in April 1865.  They had been ordered to lay down their arms at a Yankee garrison in East Port, Mississippi.  Federal authorities reasoned, however, that it would be expedient to send over a few officers to Waterloo so as to administer the oaths of allegiance rather than to ferry an entire company of Rebels across the river to East Port.  These officers brought along bottles of whiskey which they passed around to the defeated Confederates.  One of the soldiers who surrendered that day was Dr. John Wesley Young.  More than fifty years later he wrote about this historic occasion:  “… we became so intoxicated that we ran home without taking the oath.”
          
     Private Young didn’t have far to run.  His boyhood home was near Gravelly Springs, some ten or twelve miles east of Waterloo. Here he worked on the family farm for two years before earning his medical degree from the University of Georgia in 1870. Afterwards, Dr. Young served as a physician in Clinton, South Carolina, until his retirement some forty-seven years later.
          
     In 1922, at the age of 79 years, Dr. Young responded to a questionnaire that had been mailed to surviving veterans of the Civil War.  He mentioned his father’s 700-acre farm in Gravelly Springs and the eight slaves who lived with them:  “My father and I … worked in the fields along with the slaves.  We did all sorts of work that is to be done on a farm.  My mother had no regular servants in the house.  Sometimes she would get the Negro women on the place to help her.  She and my sisters wove, cooked, spun, etc.”
He described the school he attended at Gravelly Springs as an “old field or country school.”  There were several of these in this area of Lauderdale County, he said, where “anyone was allowed to attend … if the parents paid tuition.”
          
     Dr. Young enlisted in the Confederate cavalry in April, 1861. His unit was first sent to Horse Creek in Hardin County, Tennessee, where “we pulled down telephone wires and tore up railroads.”  His first battle occurred about a month later at Parkers Cross Roads where he barely escaped being captured. On August 24, 1862, his company became a part of a new regiment that was being organized by the colorful cavalry leader, Colonel Jacob Biffle of Wayne County, Tennessee.  Although this unit was officially designated as the 19th Tennessee, its members served throughout the war believing they were the 9th Tennessee Cavalry.
          
     Biffle, a veteran of the Mexican War, was one of Forrest’s most able lieutenants.  Although accused by the enemy of sometimes engaging in “unconventional warfare,” he generally lived off the land and, consequently, was able to provide for the men in his regiment.  Dr. Young gave an interesting account of these war-time conditions in the 9th  Tennessee: “During all of my war experience I was fairly well clothed.  Sometimes we had tents, but often we lived in the open, slept on the ground, frequently in sleet, rain, and snow.  Generally we were right fortunate in having plenty to eat.” When we ran out of food we made raids on the nearby neighbors, capturing whatever we could.”
          
     Perhaps the terms of surrender afforded Company C at Waterloo was unique in the annals of military history.  It could be observed, as well, that the federals were dealing with an unusual company of soldiers.


Dr. William L. McDonald



The Civil War Tales of the Tennessee Valley
Copyright 2003 by
Bluewater Publications – Heart of Dixie Publishing
www.Bluewaterpublications.com

The Civil War stories found in Dr. McDonald’s Civil War Tales of the Tennessee Valley, can be found at Amazon.com or  http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0971994676/ref=dp_olp_0/103-3940205-0330202?ie=UTF8&qid=1187314598&sr=8-1&condition=all
To join Bluewater Publications’ Historical Truth 101 at http://www.historicaltruth101.com/