West Tennessee and the Jackson Purchase of 1818

I’ve been spending a bit of my spare time this summer working on my Williams family line. The first confirmed ancestor in that line is George S. Williams (1797-1852). In the early 1830s, a group of Haywood County, Tennessee settlers from Bertie County, North Carolina recruited Williams to migrate from Bertie County to Haywood County to be the first pastor of Zion Baptist Church.

I knew the West Tennessee land my ancestors were settling at that time had been Native American hunting grounds, but I was curious about how it became available for them to settle in the first place.

Hernando de Soto to the Trail of Tears

In 1540, Hernando de Soto became the first non-Native American to engage with Indians in what would become Tennessee when his expedition came upon the town of Chiaha near what is today Dandridge, Tennessee. All went well until Soto and his men decided to try to take thirty women with them when they departed. However, that’s another story.

The decades between that first encounter and the tragic 1830 Trail of Tears is filled with various wars, legislative acts, broken treaties and swindles by American politicians, government officials and land speculators. The land belonging to Native Americans decreased with each passing decade.

Manifest Destiny

With wilderness teeming with animals that could be hunted for food and clothing, fertile soil and many rivers and tributaries to provide transportation, West Tennessee was especially valuable to settlers. And the area also provided fodder for fertile imaginations and creative writing.

One of my favorite Tennessee historians, Samuel Cole Williams (no relation), included in his book, Beginnings of West Tennessee, a reference to a journal entry from 1791 in which Colonel John Pope of Virginia recorded one of the earliest descriptions of West Tennessee’s Chickasaw Bluff:

By the early 1800s, the exploding population of the farms and plantations along the east coast resulted in a serious deficit of farm and timberland. If you wanted to expand your family’s wealth, there was nowhere to grow but west.

And there was really only one thing standing between white settlers and what they considered their “manifest destiny” to conquer and settle the wilderness—the Native Americans.

Land Between the Rivers

In 1817, President James Monroe appointed Andrew Jackson, representing Tennessee, and Isaac Shelby, representing Kentucky, to negotiate a treaty with the Chickasaw who were making it very difficult for settlers wanting to occupy what was called the “Land Between the Rivers.”

This area, used primarily by the Native Americans as a hunting ground, included the Tennessee River on the east, the Ohio River on the north and the Mississippi River on the west.

Jackson and Shelby were an unlikely pair. In 1818, 44-year-old Tennessee lawyer Andrew Jackson was already famous as a judge, war hero and popular political leader. Although he was actually a wealthy, slave-owning planter who was very successful as a land speculator, he branded himself one of the “common” men and women. At least some of his income—like that of many other speculators—came from land that had belonged to the Cherokee and Chickasaw Indians and was sometimes acquired by questionable means. 

Isaac Shelby, on the other hand, was an aging Revolutionary War hero and former Kentucky governor. In 1816, President Monroe had offered Shelby the position of Secretary of War, but Shelby declined, citing his age.

The Chiefs

Representing the Chickasaws were Levi and George Colbert, Chinubby—nicknamed the boy king—and Chief Tishomingo.

Tishomingo and Jackson were well acquainted as the chief had served under Jackson in the War of 1812. Respected and noted for his personal integrity and bravery in battle, Tishomingo was even awarded a silver medal from President George Washington.

The mixed-race Colbert brothers were two of the six sons of James Logan Colbert who was half Cherokee and half Scottish, and his wife, Minta Hoye, a full-blooded Cherokee. In this negotiation, as happened in many cases, mixed-race Indians were able to take over control from their full-blooded counterparts and make sure the deals included a little extra incentive for themselves.

Jacksonland

For 8,500 square miles, Jackson and Shelby agreed on behalf of the United States to the Treaty of Tecumseh in which the Chickasaws were paid $300,000, at the rate of $20,000 annually for 15 years, in return for the right to all Chickasaw land east of the Mississippi River and north of the Mississippi state line.

As Steve Inskeep of NPR News writes in his book Jacksonland, the agreement Jackson and Shelby ended up with appeared to favor the Chickasaws and was quite controversial at the time. Later, it was determined a portion of the government’s money went to Levi Colbert for his “personal” land and that he received such an inflated price, it was an obvious bribe.

Inskeep points out that many of Jackson’s land deals helped his friends or himself financially, as was the case here.

However, it does appear Jackson was not the only one looking to further his own finances as explained in a 1906 (pro-Jackson) report from the American Historical Association:

While it may not be by quite fair to ascribe mercenary motives to Jackson personally, as the Shelby family is said to have done later, this much is certain, he was the easy dupe of designing men, and was the devoted friend of land speculators. Upon his several Indian missions, he was invariably surrounded by a group of these, selfish and unscrupulous, who never lost a single opportunity to gain their own ends. More

In one story, it appears the Chickasaw chiefs were more inclined to negotiate with Jackson than with Shelby. According to A. A. North’s Jan. 19, 1914 letter to the editor of the Nashville newspaper, the Tennessean and American, the chiefs were so “captivated by the winning manners and polished address” of Jackson and his reputation as a warier against their mutual enemies, they quickly came to an agreement for the Tennessee portion of the deal. The negotiations for the Kentucky land with Shelby were not coming together, and they seemed to be at a stalemate. According to North’s account, which I have not substantiated, Jackson convinced the chiefs—likely the Colbert brothers—to include the Kentucky land in the sale.  Shelby was so furious when he heard that he challenged Jackson to a duel. Jackson then signed, sealed and delivered the deed for the Kentucky land to Shelby and the duel was called off.

The Treaty of Tecumseh was ratified by the United States Senate and confirmed by President James Monroe on January 7, 1819 and settlers began flooding the area. 15 years later, most of my maternal and paternal family lines had migrated to Haywood County and begun clearing the land, building cabins, farms, and Zion Baptist Church, which is where this blog entry began. 

The Indian Removal Act

Sadly, this was not the end of the story. The Indian Removal Act of 1830, authorized by then President Jackson, declared all land west of the Mississippi River as belonging to America and exchanging it for land in Oklahoma.

Of the 16,000 Native Americans who were forced to move from several states to present-day Oklahoma, more than 4,000 died due to disease, starvation, and exposure to bad weather.

Interestingly, George Colbert and Chief Tishominko, both instrumental in the Jackson Purchase, were among those who died on the Trail of Tears.

Isaac Shelby died in 1826, so he didn’t have to see his nemesis become the seventh President of the United States. And, although Shelby is no where near as well remembered as Jackson, he is not completely forgotten. The Tennessee county I was born and raised in was created by an act of the Tennessee General Assembly on November 24, 1819 and named…Shelby County.

You can find more about my family lines at HaywoodCountyLine.com or read more blog posts about the history of West Tennessee on my blog page.

Sources:

• Manifest Destiny and Indian Removal, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Blackburn, Bob L. From Blood Revenge to the Lighthorsemen: Evolution of Law Enforcement Institutions among the Five Civilized Tribes to 1861. American Indian Law Review 8, no. 1, 1980. 49-63. Link
• Tishomingo, MS
• Soto Expedition, Tennessee Encyclopedia
• Semmer, Blythe. “Jackson Purchase, Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture.” Tennessee Historical Society. Link
• Perrin, W. H. Kentucky: A History of the State. Louisville: F. A. Battey and Company, 1887. 550. Link
• Walcut, Charles D. Annual Report of the American Historical Association. Volume 1. Washington: Washington Government Printing Office, 1908. 284-285. Link