Holmes Colbert | |
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![]() Holmes Colbert, 1850s | |
Nationality | Chickasaw |
Occupation | Government official |
Spouse | Betsy Love |
Holmes Colbert was a 19th-century leader of the Chickasaw Nation in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). Of mixed European and Chickasaw ancestry, Colbert was born to his mother's Chickasaw clan and gained significance in the tribe's history through his family's privileged mixed-race status.
Educated in an American school, he knew of both European-American and Chickasaw cultures and contributed to his clan as a mediator between both worlds. He helped write the Chickasaw Nation's constitution in the 1850s after its removal to Indian Territory and reorganization of its government. [1] After the American Civil War, Colbert then went on to serve as the tribe's delegate.
Holmes Colbert was the son of James Isaac Colbert and Sarah "Sally" McLish. His father, James Isaac Colbert, the son of Maj. James Holmes Colbert already had some remote Chickasaw blood since he was the grandson of James Logan Colbert, a Scots trader from North Carolina who settled in Chickasaw country in the mid-18th century, and of his third wife, Minta Hoye, who had a Chickasaw mother herself. Since the Chickasaw have a matrilineal system, children are considered born into their mother's clan and gain recognition in the tribe through her legacy, including any hereditary leadership positions; the whole Colbert family was hence considered a part of the Chickasaw Nation. Regarding the Colberts, the status of the men's mothers, combined with their fathers' access to trade goods, led the male members of the family to become prominent landowners and leaders within the Chickasaw Nation. [2] In all likelihood, Holmes and his wife Betsy had six sons themselves, [1] though divergent sources mention that they had only five.
Historical records indicate that Holmes had six sons going by the names of William, George, Levi, Samuel, Joseph, and Pittman (or James). For nearly a century, the Colberts and their male descendants provided critical leadership as the Chickasaw faced their greatest challenges. The Chickasaw allied with the United States during the War of 1812. William Colbert served under General Andrew Jackson against the Red Sticks during the Creek Wars of 1813–14, a civil war within the Creek involving multiple factions as well as European and US belligerents, and his brothers George and Levi also joined the army. Within their clan and the Chickasaw Nation, the brothers were both affluent landowners and a political force to be reckoned with. George and Levi Colbert served as negotiators and interpreters in the 1820s-1830 during the tribe's negotiations with the US government related to Indian Removal.
Holmes grew up learning about his family's leadership and was groomed for taking responsibilities in tribal affairs. He and his cousin Winchester created the governmental foundation of the Chickasaw Nation in Indian Territory (now known as Oklahoma). In the 1850s, Holmes Colbert helped write the constitution for their government, [1] as after the Choctaw–Chickasaw Treaty of 1854, the Chickasaw constitution, establishing the nation as separate from the Choctaw, was signed in Tishomingo on the 30th of August, 1856.
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Colbert married Elizabeth Betsy Love, daughter of Henry W. Love and his wife Sarah Ann Moore. Henry W Love son of Thomas Love wife Sally Colbert . They were both well educated, having been sent to schools out of state. [3] Their mothers' clans were influential families in the Chickasaw Nation who were grooming their children for the future and believed they needed education to deal with European-Americans. The Colberts had three children together, but two died before the American Civil War. [3]
Colbert and his wife owned about 100 acres (0.40 km2) of cleared land, with more in timber. They held eight adult enslaved African Americans and several children in what is now Oklahoma. [3]
"My mother died when I was real small, and about a year after that my father died. Master Holmes [Colbert] told us children not to cry, that he and Miss Betsy would take good care of us. They did, too. They took us in their house with them and looked after us just as good as they could colored children. We slept in a little room clost to them and she always seen that we was covered up good before she went to bed."
— - Polly Colbert, former slave, Interview: Polly Colbert, 1937
family history states James Holmes Colbert son of James Issac son of James Holmes son of, James Logan was born September 22, 1828, in Marshall County, Mississippi, and died March 24, 1872, in Washington, D.C..He married Elizabeth Love, daughter of Henry Love and Sarah Moore.She was born Abt. 1833 in Mississippi, and died 1914.\\ Love daughter Henry W.son of Sally Colbert,daughter James Logan) was born Abt. 1833 in Mississippi, and died 1914.She married James Holmes Colbert, son of James Colbert and Sarah McLish.He was born September 22, 1828, in Marshall County, Mississippi, and died March 24, 1872, in Washington, D.C..
Children of Elizabeth Love and James Colbert are:
318 i. Eliphett Nott Colbert, born September 21, 1856; died November 21, 1863. 319 ii. Eula Colbert, born July 1869.
After the American Civil War, the US required a new treaty from the Chickasaw, as the tribe had supported the Confederacy. Holmes Colbert represented the tribe as a delegate to Washington, DC during these negotiations and later to Congress. One of the provisions of the peace treaty required the Chickasaw to emancipate their slaves, as the US had done, and offer those who wanted to stay in Indian Territory citizenship as Chickasaw or relocate to become US citizens. Their decision during this time to refuse citizenship to the Freedmen who stayed, as well as having previously formed an alliance with the Confederacy, likely played a role in the decision for the US government to take over half the land the Chickasaw owned from previous treaties without any compensation. Unlike the Freedmen of the other "Five Civilized Tribes," from emancipation in 1866 up until Oklahoma gained statehood in 1907, Freedmen that remained inside Chickasaw boundaries were essentially country-less. However they were later documented as Chickasaw Freedmen on the Dawes Rolls.
The Choctaw are a Native American people originally based in the Southeastern Woodlands, in what is now Alabama and Mississippi. Their Choctaw language is a Western Muskogean language. Today, Choctaw people are enrolled in three federally recognized tribes: the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, and Jena Band of Choctaw Indians in Louisiana.
The Chickasaw are an indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands, United States. Their traditional territory was in northern Mississippi, northwestern and northern Alabama, western Tennessee and southwestern Kentucky. Their language is classified as a member of the Muskogean language family. In the present day, they are organized as the federally recognized Chickasaw Nation.
The term Five Civilized Tribes was applied by European Americans in the colonial and early federal period in the history of the United States to the five major Native American nations in the Southeast—the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee, and Seminoles. Americans of European descent classified them as "civilized" because they had adopted attributes of the Anglo-American culture. Examples of such colonial attributes adopted by these five tribes included Christianity, centralized governments, literacy, market participation, written constitutions, intermarriage with white Americans, and chattel slavery practices, including purchase of enslaved African Americans. For a period, the Five Civilized Tribes tended to maintain stable political relations with the European Americans, before the United States promoted Indian removal of these tribes from the Southeast.
Greenwood LeFlore or Greenwood Le Fleur served as the elected Principal Chief of the Choctaw in 1830 before removal. Before that, the nation was governed by three district chiefs and a council of chiefs. A wealthy and regionally influential Choctaw of mixed-race, who belonged to the Choctaw elite due to his mother's rank, LeFlore had many connections in state and federal government. In 1830 LeFlore led other chiefs in signing the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, which ceded the remaining Choctaw lands in Mississippi to the US government and agreed to removal to Indian Territory. It also provided that Choctaw who chose to stay in Mississippi would have reserved lands, but the United States government failed to follow through on this provision.
The Choctaw Nation is a Native American territory covering about 6,952,960 acres, occupying portions of southeastern Oklahoma in the United States. The Choctaw Nation is the third-largest federally recognized tribe in the United States and the second-largest Indian reservation in area after the Navajo. As of 2011, the tribe has 223,279 enrolled members, of whom 84,670 live within the state of Oklahoma and 41,616 live within the Choctaw Nation's jurisdiction. A total of 233,126 people live within these boundaries, with its tribal jurisdictional area comprising 10.5 counties in the state, with the seat of government being located in Durant, Oklahoma. It shares borders with the reservations of the Chickasaw, Muscogee, and Cherokee, as well as the U.S. states of Texas and Arkansas. By area, the Choctaw Nation is larger than eight U.S. states.
Pushmataha, the "Indian General", was one of the three regional chiefs of the major divisions of the Choctaw in the 19th century. Many historians considered him the "greatest of all Choctaw chiefs". Pushmataha was highly regarded among Native Americans, Europeans, and white Americans, for his skill and cunning in both war and diplomacy.
The Chickasaw Nation is a federally recognized Native American tribe with headquarters in Ada, Oklahoma, in the United States. They are an Indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands, originally from northern Mississippi, northwestern Alabama, southwestern Kentucky, and western Tennessee. Today, the Chickasaw Nation is the 13th largest tribe in the United States.
Levi Colbert (1759–1834), also known as Itawamba in Chickasaw, was a leader and chief of the Chickasaw nation. Colbert was called Itte-wamba Mingo, meaning bench chief. He and his brother George Colbert were prominent interpreters and negotiators with United States negotiators in the early decades of the 19th century. They were appointed by President Andrew Jackson's administration to gain cession of their lands and arrange for removal of their people to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River. They were under considerable pressure from the Mississippi state government, white interlopers in their area, and the federal government to cede their lands.
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William Clyde Thompson (1839–1912) was a Texas Choctaw-Chickasaw leader of the Mount Tabor Indian Community in Texas and an officer of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War. After moving north to the Chickasaw Nation in 1889, he led an effort to gain enrollment of his family and other Texas Choctaws as Citizens by blood of the Choctaw Nation in Indian Territory. This was at the time of enrollment for the Final Roll of the Five Civilized Tribes, also known as the Dawes Rolls, which established citizenship in order for the nations to be broken up for white settlement and to allot communal tribal lands to individual Indians. The Choctaw Advisory Board opposed inclusion of the Texas Choctaw as well as the Jena Choctaws in Louisiana, as they had both lived primarily outside of the Choctaw Nation. Thompson's case eventually went to the United States Supreme Court to be decided where he and about 70 other Texas Choctaws who had relocated to Indian Territory ultimately had their status restored as Citizens by Blood in the Choctaw Nation.
The Treaty with Choctaws and Chickasaws was a treaty signed on July 12, 1861 between the Choctaw and Chickasaw and the Confederate States. At the beginning of the American Civil War, Albert Pike was appointed as Confederate envoy to Native Americans. In this capacity he negotiated several treaties, one of the most important being with Cherokee chief John Ross, which was concluded in 1861. The treaty was ratified and proclaimed on December 20, 1861 by the Confederacy. The Choctaw and Chickasaw also duly ratified the treaty.
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Chief George Colbert, also known as Tootemastubbe in Chickasaw, was a leader and war chief of the Chickasaw people in the early 19th century, then occupying territory in what are now the jurisdictions of Alabama and Mississippi. During the Creek War of 1813–1814, he commanded 350 Chickasaw auxiliary troops, whom he had recruited, as a militia captain under Andrew Jackson. Later he joined the US Army under Jackson for the remainder of the War of 1812.
On the eve of the American Civil War in 1861, a significant number of Indigenous peoples of the Americas had been relocated from the Southeastern United States to Indian Territory, west of the Mississippi. The inhabitants of the eastern part of the Indian Territory, the Five Civilized Tribes, were suzerain nations with established tribal governments, well established cultures, and legal systems that allowed for slavery. Before European Contact these tribes were generally matriarchial societies, with agriculture being the primary economic pursuit. The bulk of the tribes lived in towns with planned streets, residential and public areas. The people were ruled by complex hereditary chiefdoms of varying size and complexity with high levels of military organization.
Czarina Conlan (1871-1958) was a Choctaw-Chickasaw archivist and museum curator. She worked at the Oklahoma Historical Society museum for 24 years. She founded the first woman's club in Indian Territory and served as the chair of the Oklahoma Indian Welfare Committee of the Oklahoma State Federation of Women's Clubs for 12 years. She was the first woman elected to serve on a school board in the state. Although the Attorney General of Oklahoma ruled she could not serve, she defied the order and completed a two-year term on the Lindsay School Board.
Estelle Chisholm Ward was a Chickasaw teacher, journalist, and magazine publisher from Oklahoma. She was active in politics both civic and tribal and was elected as county treasurer of Johnston County, Oklahoma. Ward was the first woman to represent the Chickasaw Nation as a delegate to Washington, DC.
The Treaty of Pontotoc Creek was a treaty signed on October 20, 1832 by representatives of the United States and the Chiefs of the Chickasaw Nation assembled at the National Council House on Pontotoc Creek in Pontotoc, Mississippi. The treaty ceded the 6,283,804 million acres of the remaining Chickasaw homeland in Mississippi in return for Chickasaw relocation on an equal amount of land west of the Mississippi River.
Cyrus H. Harris, a mixed-blood Chickasaw born in Mississippi, was elected the first Governor of the Chickasaw Nation, and served five non-consecutive two-year terms. Although his formal schooling was limited at an elementary level, he became fluent in both the English and Chickasaw languages. He and his family relocated to Indian Territory in 1837, where he was employed in business and also served as an interpreter and developed a keen interest in Chickasaw politics. In 1856, he was elected to his first term as governor of the newly established Chickasaw Nation His accomplishments included organizing a national government after the Chickasaw Nation and Choctaw Nation formally separated into two distinct entities. He also executed a formal alliance between his nation and the Confederate States of America after the outbreak of the American Civil War. After the cessation of hostilities, he played a major role in the recovery of the nation from its devastated condition. He retired from politics in 1874, after serving his fifth term as governor. He died in 1887 at his home in Mill Valley, and was buried at the cemetery in Mill Valley.
Betsy Love Allen was a Chickasaw merchant and planter who ran a trading post on the Natchez Trace and maintained a large cattle plantation. Born into a wealthy and influential family, she owned property in her own right under Chickasaw law. When an attorney attempted to seize one of her children's slaves to pay off a debt that her husband owed, a trial ensued. The verdict, that Allen was in effect a feme sole, under Chickasaw law, and not subject to coverture, established the legal precedent for the State of Mississippi to pass the first Married Women's Property Act in the United States.