Who Shall Gainsay Our Decision? Choctaw Literary Nationalism in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

This study examines the writing of a group of young Choctaw intellectuals, the first generation of that society of American Indians to embrace literacy as a fully viable tool of discourse. Working in the pre-removal period, 1824-1831, as the Choctaws made preparations for their great emigration from the state of Mississippi to their new sovereign soil west of the Mississippi River, their writing evinces a nationalistic fervor. In conversation with each other, the tribal intellectuals conceptualize their transition from a pre-modern ethno-historical group to a fully-fledged constitutional republic. Primary focal texts for the study include James L. McDonald's Spectre Essay of 1830 and Peter Perkins Pitchlynn's journal of 1828. McDonald's essay presents a translation of an old Choctaw legend into English and a comparative analysis of Choctaw language arts with English language art forms. Pitchlynn's journal chronicles the findings of a multi-tribal delegation, dispatched to explore the southeastern section of Indian Territory, present-day Oklahoma, when the region was largely uninhabited and unimproved wilderness. Pitchlynn reports his encounters with such famous nineteenth century Native luminaries as Tenskwatawa, the Shawnee Prophet, and Pahuska, great chief of the Osages. Secondary texts include correspondence between McDonald, Pitchlynn and their peers in the period right after the removal Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek was signed, but before the emigration actually took place.