The Treaty of Tuscaloosa was signed in October 1818, and ratified by congress in January 1819. endorsed by President James Monroe. It was one of a series of treaties made between the Chickasaw Indians and the United States that year. The Treaty of Tuscaloosa was represented by Senator Andrew Jackson and ex-governor Isaac Shelby to the Chickasaw. It resulted in the acquisition of the Jackson Purchase (which included extreme western Kentucky and most of the West Tennessee division).
On October 19, 1818, state senator Jackson and former Kentucky governor Shelby, as plenipotentiaries for the state of Kentucky, completed negotiations with the Chickasaw on what was to become known as the Treaty of Tuscaloosa, one of several treaties consummated in 1818 which resulted in the Jackson Purchase. [1] The treaty targeted land that had been recognized as Chickasaw territory by the 1786 Treaty of Hopewell; that is, the lands in Tennessee and Kentucky that were west of the Tennessee River, an uninhabited woodland area of about 10,700 square miles of territory that the tribe controlled. [1]
Prior to the signing of the treaty, Levi Colbert (Itawamba Mingo), who along with his brother George (Tootesmastube), had inherited the leadership of the Chickasaw tribe, had agreed to this transfer of the tribe's hunting grounds. [2] This was purportedly due to the acceptance of a bribe by the Colberts. [1] The expanse of land between the Mississippi River and the western valley of the Tennessee River was traded for $300,000, to be paid in twenty annual installments. [1] Other Chickasaw leaders party to the treaties were Chinubby and Tishomingo. [3]
The Treaty of Tuscaloosa was ratified by the Congress and Senate of the United States, and confirmed by President James Monroe on January 7, 1819. [3] With the acquisition, the state of Kentucky gained about 2,000 square miles, and Tennessee was enlarged by about 6,000 square miles. [3]
There was an immediate rush of settlement to the area. Jackson, along with John Overton and James Winchester, founded Memphis soon after. By 1824, there were sixteen counties established in the acquired region. [1]
The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition of the territory of Louisiana by the United States from the French First Republic in 1803. This consisted of most of the land in the Mississippi River's drainage basin west of the river. In return for fifteen million dollars, or approximately eighteen dollars per square mile, the United States nominally acquired a total of 828,000 sq mi in Middle America. However, France only controlled a small fraction of this area, most of which was inhabited by Native Americans; effectively, for the majority of the area, the United States bought the preemptive right to obtain Indian lands by treaty or by conquest, to the exclusion of other colonial powers.
Tipton County is a county located on the western end of the U.S. state of Tennessee, in the Mississippi Delta region. As of the 2020 census, the population was 60,970. Its county seat is Covington. Tipton County, founded in 1823, is part of the Memphis, TN-MS-AR Metropolitan Statistical Area.
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 Jackson Purchase, also known as the Purchase Region or simply the Purchase, is a region in the U.S. state of Kentucky bounded by the Mississippi River to the west, the Ohio River to the north, and the Tennessee River to the east.
West Tennessee is one of the three Grand Divisions of Tennessee that roughly comprises the western quarter of the state. The region includes 21 counties between the Tennessee and Mississippi rivers, delineated by state law. Its geography consists primarily of flat lands with rich soil and vast floodplain areas of the Mississippi River. Of the three regions, West Tennessee is the most sharply defined geographically, and is the lowest-lying. It is both the least populous and smallest, in land area, of the three Grand Divisions. Its largest city is Memphis, the state's second most populous city.
The Territory South of the River Ohio, more commonly known as the Southwest Territory, was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from May 26, 1790, until June 1, 1796, when it was admitted to the United States as the State of Tennessee. The Southwest Territory was created by the Southwest Ordinance from lands of the Washington District that had been ceded to the U.S. federal government by North Carolina. The territory's lone governor was William Blount.
The Platte Purchase was a land acquisition in 1836 by the United States government from American Indian tribes of the region. It comprised lands along the east bank of the Missouri River and added 3,149 square miles (8,156 km2) to the northwest corner of the state of Missouri.
Newton Cannon was an American politician who served as the eighth Governor of Tennessee from 1835 to 1839. He also served several terms in the United States House of Representatives, from 1814 to 1817, and from 1819 to 1823. Cannon was a long-time foe of Andrew Jackson, and spent much of his political career opposing Jacksonite policies. Cannon was succeeded as Governor of Tennessee by James K. Polk in 1839, who later became President of the United States.
George Strother Gaines was a federal Indian agent in the Mississippi Territory. He began as the US Indian agent to the Choctaw, explored the country west of the Mississippi River, and supervised the removal of the Choctaw to Indian Territory in the 1830s. He worked as a banker, and served as a state senator and railroad lobbyist, becoming even more influential in the early history of the region.
Three agreements, each known as a Treaty of Hopewell, were signed between representatives of the Congress of the United States and the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw peoples. They were negotiated and signed at the Hopewell plantation in South Carolina over 45 days during the winter of 1785–86.
The Chickasaw Nation is an Indigenous nation formally recognized by the United States government. The Chickasaw citizenry descends from the historical population of a Chickasaw-speaking Indigenous nation established in the American Southeast whose original territory was appropriated by the United States in the 19th century and subsequently organized into what is now the northern Mississippi and Alabama and the western reaches of Tennessee and Kentucky. As of 2023, the Chickasaw Nation is the 12th largest Indigenous nation in the United States by population, counting a total worldwide population exceeding 80,000 citizens, the majority of which reside in Oklahoma, where the Chickasaw national government is established in Ada.
The presidency of James Monroe began on March 4, 1817, when James Monroe was inaugurated as President of the United States, and ended on March 4, 1825. Monroe, the fifth United States president, took office after winning the 1816 presidential election by an overwhelming margin over Federalist Rufus King. This election was the last in which the Federalists fielded a presidential candidate, and Monroe was unopposed in the 1820 presidential election. A member of the Democratic-Republican Party, Monroe was succeeded by his Secretary of State John Quincy Adams.
The Treaty with Choctaws and Chickasaws was a treaty signed on July 12, 1861 between the Choctaw and Chickasaw and the Confederate States.
Randolph is an unincorporated rural community in Tipton County, Tennessee, United States, located on the banks of the Mississippi River. The lands of the Mississippi River Basin were inhabited by Paleo-Indians and later Native American tribes of the Mississippian culture for thousands of years. The Tipton phase people and the Chickasaw Indian tribe populated the Mississippi River valley near Randolph during the Mississippian period. In 1541, Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto crossed the Mississippi River at or near Randolph. French explorer Cavelier de La Salle built the first French fortification at or near Randolph on his 1682 canoe expedition of the Mississippi River.
George Colbert was an early 19th-century Chickasaw leader. During the Creek War he commanded 350 Chickasaw auxiliary troops whom he had recruited, as a senior officer of militia, under Andrew Jackson. At the end of the War of 1812, he served a second time under Jackson.
Events from the year 1818 in the United States.
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.
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 the people her children enslaved to pay off a debt that her husband owed, a trial ensued. The verdict—that Allen was in effect a feme soleunder 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.
