Page 36 →Page 37 →Chapter 2 “The Father of Native American Missions in Western South Carolina”

T. C. Stuart and the Chickasaw Mission in Western South Carolina before Removal, 1819–34

In his transformative work on the missionary Charles Colcock Jones, historian Donald Mathews discussed writing about missions in the nineteenth-century South: “Awareness of class interest, religious self-delusion, and racial fears, however, should not prevent historians from considering the ironies and almost hopeless contradictions that bemired southern evangelicals …”¹ While no doubt “bemired” Presbyterian missions to the Chickasaw in western South Carolina and what would later become north Mississippi present many historical issues concerning the missionaries themselves, the Chickasaw, enslaved African Americans belonging to the Chickasaw, and the multiethnic nature of the early nineteenth-century church mission experience. Internal and sometimes external contradictions “bemired southern evangelicals,” and the life and work of Presbyterian missionary T. C. Stuart, among others, bears witness to the complexity of those contradictions.²

The missions’ existence among Native Americans in western South Carolina (now northern Mississippi) displayed unique ecclesiastical and theological nuances in the Presbyterian mission’s goals and approach.³ Before the removal of the Chickasaw peoples, Christian missionary men and women worked alongside and worshipped with Indigenous people. Historians have examined missions among the Cherokee,⁴ but historians have not spent a great deal of time on the missions to the Chickasaw, particularly the Monroe Mission, with the exception of a few publications. One cannot separate the Monroe Mission from the overall development of Native American religion in America, in the US South, and specifically on the South Carolina frontier.⁵ Yet Monroe and the work of Stuart are unique and worthy of their own historical analysis.

Page 38 →Historians have traced the role of enslavement within Native American nations. Many were struggling to survive where human chattel enslavement became normative.⁶ Given the prevalence of enslavement in western South Carolina the mission activity in what would become Mississippi included a variety of ethnicities who participated in Presbyterianism. Missions’ multiethnic activity in frontier South Carolina lends complexity to any understanding of T. C. Stuart, the Monroe church, Presbyterian domestic missions, and religion in western South Carolina. Multiethnicity was rooted in centuries of European incursion and tied as much to European ideas of property, race, and enslavement as it was to indigenous, Native American cultural practices.⁷ Enslavement,⁸ blood ideology,⁹ and multiethnic Native American ancestry history¹⁰ have a tremendous impact on any understanding of Presbyterian missions among the Chickasaw.

Like the Cherokees, identity, race, and the impact of a White supremacist culture played significant roles in shaping the domestic Presbyterian mission. White missionaries’ preremoval efforts worked alongside federal policy and were unapologetically Christian and assimilationist in their intent. John C. Calhoun and Thomas McKenney, as well as other early agents of the US government, sought to use “Christian missionaries to mold Indians into the models of American society.”¹¹ Early missionary attempts at “molding” the Chickasaw gave way to the power and influence of leaders who wanted their “children to read and write and do mathematics.”¹² Indeed, missionaries soon realized that the Chickasaw had their own views and uses for missionaries. Chickasaw “leaders saw missionaries as a means of gaining an education in the White man’s ways so that they could learn to deal with the forces infringing on their lives.”¹³

Enslaved African Americans, Native Americans, Native Americans with European ancestry, Native Americans who intermarried with African Americans, along with White settlers from South Carolina created a multiethnic space in which an interracial religious community developed. Mission churches became spaces for reciprocal, multiethnic interaction, which produced complex racial communities, all experiencing the Presbyterian mission space through their own lens. However these spaces also served to reinforce White hegemony and control to shape the Southwestern South Carolina, specifically South Carolina Presbyterians.

This meant making sure the mission church to the Chickasaw and those who attended a Christian worship service reflected an acceptable White Protestant vision within South Carolina Presbyterianism. Missionaries often found Page 39 →themselves at the very center of these interactions. Given the fiercely racialized southern religious hierarchy of the early nineteenth century, missionaries to the Chickasaw would find themselves supporting a vision and agenda larger than their own. The enslaved African Americans, Native Americans, and individuals of mixed ancestry also found themselves forced to choose a variety of ways to practice religion, which often combined elements of indigenous practices, African religion, and White Protestant methods. These racial complexities help us further understand the nature of the early nineteenth-century South, missions in South Carolina, and how religion played a pivotal role in providing a space for interracial interaction and pluralistic religious expression.

Presbyterians in South Carolina, both White and Black, often used the language of Zion, “a phrase commonly used by Southern Presbyterians to speak of the church, especially their church, in an idealized, often triumphalistic way.”¹⁴ Milton Winter has argued that if South Carolina was the true “Zion” of Presbyterianism, then mission churches in western South Carolina (Mississippi) in the early nineteenth century were “outposts of Zion.” Winter argued that many Presbyterians in Mississippi came from South Carolina and the seminary in Columbia, South Carolina and the Southern Presbyterian Review. The capital of the Presbyterian Church United States (or southern branch of Presbyterianism) found its home in South Carolina.¹⁵

Licensed to preach by the South Carolina Presbytery on April 19, 1819, the Reverend Thomas C. Stuart, otherwise known as “Father” Stuart, was one of the earliest Presbyterian missionaries in western South Carolina. Sent by the Synod of South Carolina in 1820, Stuart established the Monroe Mission in northeastern Mississippi and was a missionary among the Chickasaw. The Monroe Mission, or the old Monroe Church, is just six miles south of the town of Pontotoc. In 1823, Stuart organized the church and by 1830 had a membership of over one hundred members. E. T. Winston, biographer and editor of Stuart’s published papers, mentioned that Stuart’s mission to the Chickasaw was the beginning of “religion and education for all of North Mississippi.”¹⁶

For much of the eighteenth-century Presbyterian missions among Native Americans were in the North, but by the beginning of the nineteenth century the work in the South was growing. With the advent of the Second Great Awakening, a religious revival of the early nineteenth century beginning in Cane Ridge, Kentucky in 1804, came a renewed interest in domestic missions in the US South. Southern Presbyterians were among those who shared in this interest. However instead of totally turning their focus toward foreign missions, Page 40 →Presbyterians sent missionaries within domestic spaces neighboring their churches. On June 29, 1810, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) was established. It took only a decade to establish several mission stations among Native American populations. The five main tribes that Presbyterians mostly sent missionaries among were the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole.

The Chickasaw of western South Carolina had a long-standing relationship with Whites in America in what has been referred to by Thompson as “friendly relations.”¹⁷ Indeed one White minister recalled, “In spite of the fact that the same pressure was brought to bear against them by the aggressive white pioneers that the Indians experienced everywhere they (Chickasaws) yielded to the inevitable with good grace.”¹⁸ However Thompson’s description hints at historians’ lack of understanding of the early twentieth century concerning pre-contact Chickasaw history. Further it did not consider the reasons why the Chickasaw might have “yielded to the inevitable with good grace.”

By the time the Presbyterians arrived the Chickasaw nation was in the last stage of slow decline. The nation suffered tremendous loss of life through de Soto’s introduction of smallpox and other European diseases. From 1770 to 1812, English and Scottish settlers brought even more diseases that took their toll on the Chickasaw. By 1820, the last remnants of the Chickasaw nation were using the missionaries as a mode of protection against what they saw as an inevitable federal land grab and further White incursion on their lands. Perhaps if the Chickasaw gave the appearance of being Christian, agricultural, and therefore “civilized” to federal agents in the East, then perhaps they would be permitted to remain on their ancestral lands. In contrast to the work of early twentieth-century historians like Thompson Native Americans’ and enslaved African Americans’ agency will be displayed throughout this book when examining Stuart’s presence among the Chickasaw.

The first Presbyterian synod organized in America in 1717 established a “fund for pious uses” that was “designed for the relief of widows and orphans of deceased ministers, but also to support missionaries on the frontier and to assist in the organization of congregations there.”¹⁹ Some of the first missionaries Presbyterians sent, such as David and John Brainerd, were ministers to Native Americans. “[Their] writings inspired missionaries who later came to Mississippi.”²⁰ After the French and Indian War England offered land to settlers willing to come to Natchez and what was considered West Florida. In 1772, “Captain Ogden sold 19,800 acres to his tract to Richard and the Rev. Samuel Swayze, also of New Jersey.” They established a community in Adams County Page 41 →and “established a community known as the Jersey Settlement.”²¹ Swazye was the first Protestant minister, along with John Bolls, an ordained elder from the Hopewell Church in South Carolina on the land formerly belonging to General Andrew Pickens. Pickens, who served in the American Revolution, was also a ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church (known in Clemson, SC as Old Stone Presbyterian Church) and George Washington chose Pickens to serve as the chief negotiator between the Federal Government and the Cherokee, Chickasaw and Choctaw in the Treaties of Hopewell, the location now being in Pickens Co. South Carolina on the campus of Clemson University. Swayze continued to meet and hold a church community together under the governorship of Manuel Gayoso de Lomos and the Spanish. Swayze died in 1784.

The Treaty of Hopewell, signed on the Pickens Plantation on January 10, 1786, provided “American protection” for the Chickasaw. The boundary line of the nation was also moved below the thirty-first parallel, and much of the land where the Chickasaw lived became territory added to the United States. In 1789, the First General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of the United States met, and missionaries played a major role. Presbyterians thus became “the first American denomination to make regular and systematic effort to reach the burgeoning population of the West.”²² They resolved:

That each of the Synods be, and they are hereby requested to recommend to the General Assembly, at their next meeting, two members, well qualified to be employed in missions on our frontiers; for the purpose of organizing churches, administering ordinances, ordaining elders, collecting information concerning the religious state of those parts, and proposing the best means of establishing gospel ministry among the people.²³

In 1797, both Georgia and South Carolina argued that their states extended into the Mississippi territory. On April 7, 1798, the US Congress passed a piece of legislation creating the Mississippi Territory, and signed by President John Adams.

The first Presbyterians baptized in Mississippi were likely not White. The first work among Native Americans was in 1799, when the Reverend Joseph Bullen came to the Chickasaw village of Big Town. Presbyterian “labor among the Chickasaw Indians began in 1799 by the New York Missionary Society.”²⁴ Vermonter Joseph Bullen labored among the Chickasaw by visiting with Native families, preaching to them, teaching the Bible, conducting baptisms, conducting funerals, and his son even learned Chickasaw so he could teach Native American children to read. Bullen made “considerable progress among Page 42 →the Chickasaws” especially regarding “religious instruction, husbandry,” and other late eighteenth-century notions of “civilized” behavior.²⁵ The Chickasaw allowed Bullen to live and work in their community for almost four years. Bullen’s extensive diary points to his headquarters, the Chickasaw people’s culture in the early nineteenth century, and the “extent to which white settlers had already come among the Native Americans, for even then, pressure was mounting to have the Indians moved west, so that the fertile area could be opened up to white settlement.”²⁶

Bullen’s time with the Chickasaw provided a small glimpse into the world into which South Carolina Presbyterians would later enter. Bullen was surrounded by sickness, could not speak the Chickasaw language, depended on an enslaved African American interpreter, and spent time with many White settlers who had moved to the region after the American Revolution and married Chickasaw women.²⁷ Bullen preached his first sermon on June 2, 1799, and he taught reading, writing, and catechisms using the Bible. Bullen and his son translated the Lord’s Prayer and the Decalogue into Chickasaw. Bullen also preached to enslaved African Americans owned by the Chickasaw, describing “the character and great love of Christ, that he loves poor blacks as well as others; told them how we should love Christ, and how a poor woman washed his feet with her tears.”²⁸

Bullen met with the chief of the nation, preached to several audiences, performed marriage ceremonies as well as baptisms and funerals, and constantly complained of the dangers of alcohol and drunkenness caused by rum sent via trade routes. In Bullen’s time the Chickasaw would also see the coming of federal post roads via the Natchez Trace, which would eventually run across two hundred miles of Chickasaw land. Indeed “on June 18, 1800, Congress appropriated $20,000.00 for negotiations with the Chickasaws and Choctaws for rights-of-way through their lands and improvements on the Natchez Trace.”²⁹ Bullen and his son taught woodworking, blacksmithing, reading, and writing as well as modern agricultural practices. However by 1803 Bullen closed the mission and left to work in Natchez. But his labors would be an important foundation for the work of later Presbyterian Missionaries from South Carolina.

Thomas Jefferson negotiated safe passage rights for travelers along the Natchez Trace and later gained about 2.6 million acres surrounding Natchez. The territorial Governor W. C. C. Clairborne and federal agents in the territory regarded Native Americans as uncivilized “savages” and attempted to “civilize” them using a variety of different accommodationist tactics. As the practices of Page 43 →spinning, weaving, wheelwrighting, blacksmithing, and modern forms of agriculture made their way into the territory, more Chickasaw farms and families began implementing log houses, plows, and wagons, and raised cattle, grew cotton, and became enslavers of African Americans.³⁰

After the Louisiana Purchase, the War of 1812, and Andrew Jackson’s battles with the Creek, politicians began to publicly advocate for the removal of the Chickasaw into lands to the southwest. Land cessions had begun in 1801 with the Treaty of Fort Adams and continued as the population of White settlers doubled in Mississippi. President James Monroe and his secretary of war, John C. Calhoun, believed that the peaceful removal of the Choctaw would encourage the Chickasaw to act accordingly.³¹ Often the goals of the missions and the federal government were one and the same. Missionaries coming to work with the Chickasaw often cited their heavenly father as well as their earthly fathers, John Adams, and James Monroe, for the reasons they were present among the Chickasaw. Promoting education and an acceptance of western and European-based labor systems throughout the early nineteenth century would be advantageous both to the missionaries looking to Christianize as well as their government leaders looking for Indigenous assimilation.

In 1819, the federal government passed the Civilization Act, which urged churches to cooperate with federal and state governments in teaching agriculture and other “civilizing” techniques to Native Americans. A “conscious acculturation” settled in among the Chickasaw, and White missionaries often became agents working on behalf of the federal government as well as their denominations, synods, and mission boards. Perhaps based on Bullen’s early contact, Presbyterians, particularly from the South Carolina Synod, continued to discuss a continued missionary presence among Native Americans in their western borders. Later that year, the South Carolina Synod resolved “that it is expedient to form a society for the purpose of sending the Gospel to the destitute within our bounds in South Carolina and Georgia, and for promoting the civilization and religious instruction of our aborigines in our southwestern border.”³² In spring 1819, the Missionary Society of the Synod of South Carolina appointed Thomas C. Stuart and the Reverend David Humphries to go on a fact-finding mission to gain information regarding a suitable location for a mission.³³

The South Carolina and Georgia Synod’s autumn 1819 session resolved to send a missionary to the “Southern Indians just east of the Mississippi River.”³⁴ That spring Stuart and Humphries left Reverend John Harrison’s house in Georgia. Just a young licentiate Thomas C. Stuart was an assistant to the elder Page 44 →Humphries on the voyage to find suitable environs from which to conduct the mission. They traveled over 180 miles before reaching Chickasaw territory. On their journey Stuart and Humphries stopped and preached in several places in Alabama and Mississippi. Armed with documents from the War Department, as well as a congressional appropriation of $10,000, Humphries and Stuart’s first encounter with a Native American nation was with the Creek. According to Stuart’s letter of June 17, 1820, “the documents for the War Department, among which was a letter of introduction” from Secretary of War John C. Calhoun contained a letter “to the agents of the different tribes we might visit.”³⁵ The missionaries “addressed them (Creek) in their town house stating our purpose in coming among them. We held forth to them that we desired to preach the gospel among them and also establish schools for the education of their children without any cost to them.” Stuart recalled that “they listened attentively, but after short consultation they rejected our proposal.”³⁶ Not surprisingly this rather quick refusal among the Creeks was likely grounded in previous experience with missionaries, interactions with the US Army, combined with a prescient knowledge of the intentions of the US government.

The Creek were justified in their apprehension. According to Stuart’s recollection, the War Department required Native Americans to “teach their children agriculture and the various arts of domestic life, believing that they never could be civilized without this.”³⁷ The federal government appointed funds that could be given to missionaries who brought a civilization plan to Native American nations through educational institutions, which taught agriculture and the “importance of domesticity.” The Creeks rejected Humphries’s and Stuart’s offer responding “that if they wanted their children to work, they could teach them themselves.”³⁸ Further the lack of immunity to European bacteria and germs had decimated populations of Native Americans for centuries. To many Native American groups, including the Creek, the coming of a White missionary was more the deed of a demon than of a benevolent god.³⁹

Undaunted in their attempt to settle among a population of Native Americans and conduct a mission, Humphries and Stuart kept pushing west. Their arrival among the Chickasaw nation in 1820 was on the eve of a council to elect a new leader, Ishtohotopah.⁴⁰ The Chickasaw nation of northern Mississippi numbered about six thousand at the time of Stuart’s arrival.⁴¹ Presbyterian historian C. W. Grafton mentioned that “here they found a very different feeling between the races and especially between these races and the whites.”⁴² According to Grafton the Chickasaws had fought with the English against the French in 1715 and considered the English historic allies. Grafton mentioned Page 45 →that the Chickasaw “had a great hatred for the Spaniard and for the French.”⁴³ Winter confirms this association mentioning “British traders came to the Chickasaw nation, and the number of whites residing there increased,” and “whites entered the area to farm, and a substantial number of intermarriages with Chickasaw persons occurred. The resulting biracial population was more proficient in English than the natives, and a new ruling class emerged.”⁴⁴ The Chickasaw would continue to support the British in the American Revolution up to the Treaty of Paris in 1783.

Stuart’s original biographer E. T. Winston, writing in the mid-1920s, said of this sentiment, “Though having an inveterate hatred of the Spaniards, through their contact with Hernando Desoto, . . . they held the English, who had long taken ‘pot-luck’ with them, intermarried with them, fought their battles etc., in the highest esteem, and they were staunch friends and allies in their joint enterprises.”⁴⁵ Winston then asserted, “the King, we may add, was Ish-to-hoto-pah, the last king of the Chickasaws. As a ruler, he was at this period a mere figurehead in the government of the tribe. The real rulers were the Colbert family, the eldest of whom, and perhaps the most influential, resided in the neighborhood.”⁴⁶

Chickasaw with European ancestry, like the Colbert family, played a tremendous role in the early admittance of the missionaries into the Chickasaw nation. Likely this was the result of the long intermarriage and relationship of the Chickasaw people with the Colbert family. According to Winston the Colbert “brothers—William, George, Levi and James—were descended from Logan Colbert, a Scotchman or Englishman who came from Georgia and settled among the Chickasaws early in the eighteenth century.”⁴⁷ Winston placed a great deal of importance on James Logan Colbert, known among the Chickasaw for his leadership during wars with the French. Winston noted that “Logan Colbert’s celebrity was so great that the French writers of that period conferred his name upon the Mississippi river or ‘Father of Waters,’ calling it the Rivere de Colvert.”⁴⁸ Colbert was a Scotch-Irish trader who had married a Chickasaw woman and become very wealthy. Despite his prominent place in Chickasaw history, Colbert apparently did not live among the Chickasaw for long. However Winston is careful to mention that “he perpetuated his name through a most honorable lineage of distinguished Chickasaw.”⁴⁹

The Chickasaw through the Colbert family had a long tradition of interaction with the US federal government and were cognizant of America’s intentions toward Native American peoples. Indeed Winston recalled the story of one Chickasaw leader who visited General Washington in Philadelphia in the Page 46 →late eighteenth century. This individual brought back “a small shovel plough, which was presented to him by Washington, and was carefully preserved by him in his house until he died. It was a great pleasure to the venerable chief to relate its history to his white guests.”⁵⁰ Winston described how the man would repeat Washington’s words to visitors in his home:

When you go home, tell your people that if they attempt in this age to live as their fathers did, by war and by hunting, they will perish and pass away from the earth like the many tribes who have died where the white men live. But if they will quit war and hunting, and make corn with the plough, and use the tools of the white men in clearing their land, building houses and cultivating the earth; and if they will raise horses, cattle and hogs, and adopt the religion and customs of the civilized and Christian nations, they will live long and prosper as a people.⁵¹

Washington’s words lived on in Chickasaw oral history and folklore regarding the US government’s expectations of Indigenous peoples.

The long relationship between the US government, Colbert leaders, and the early acceptance of Stuart by Colbert descendants among the Chickasaw was the most likely reason for the establishment of a mission church. The Chickasaw realized, based on their history of interactions with Whites as well as George Washington’s warning, that if they were going to keep their land they would have to adopt or “seem to adopt” the methods, religious practices, and culture of their White neighbors to the east. Likely it was William Colbert who “was no doubt instrumental in securing the Monroe mission for his people. Later his name, with that of his wife Mimey, together with several of their children, appears on the church rolls at old Monroe, and he was one of ‘Father’ Stuart’s elders.”⁵² Winter noted that in late May 1820 “Stuart and Humphrey traveled further west and arrived at the home of Levis Colbert near Cottin Gin Port on the Tombigbee.”⁵³ Levi Colbert also “informed his visitors that a ball-play and election of a kind would soon be held at his brother George Colbert’s,” which would be “an opportunity for Stuart and Humphrey to present the proposal for a mission school to leaders of the Chickasaw Nation.”⁵⁴

Marriages between Europeans and Native Americans were somewhat common among the Chickasaw. This unique aspect of Chickasaw heredity, which, in some ways, would serve to influence a religious framework buttressed by Stuart, helps to explain the reasoning behind admittance of Stuart and Humphries among the Chickasaw. Chickasaw with European ancestry seemed eager to bring in a missionary who might “legitimize” their nation Page 47 →in the eyes of the federal government. In his thesis on missions to the Choctaw and Chickasaw in Mississippi, William Hiemstra confirms this sentiment and desire to “legitimize” claiming that “the missionary deputation was more favorably received by the Chickasaws.” His reasoning was that “they had become envious of the missions obtained by the Cherokees and Choctaws. The Chickasaw also believed that they must adopt the white man’s civilization or become extinct.” The Chickasaw’s early reception of missionaries, and the desire to “adopt civilization or become extinct” were tremendous influences on the Chickasaw. It is possible that the Chickasaw allowed a missionary station for a multitude of reasons. Some within the nation legitimately wanted a mission school, families like the Colbert’s seemed interested in religious instruction, while others might have wanted to use the missionaries as a tool to stave off White incursion and removal.⁵⁵

The Chickasaw council, held on June 22, 1820, granted the missionaries permission to stay, and the council chose a site for the future mission. Humphries, Stuart, Ishtohotopah, and several Chickasaw representatives signed a formal agreement for the missionaries’ presence. The fact-finding team of Humphries and Stuart had found a future home and returned to South Carolina. A council of the Synod of South Carolina and Georgia met later in 1820, and the members of the council reached a decision that Humphries and Stuart should establish a mission among the Chickasaw. The synod most likely decided on the Chickasaw establishment after communicating with Humphries and Stuart, who no doubt insinuated that meetings with the Chickasaws were hospitable in nature and successful. Further a letter from the Chickasaw nation to the corresponding secretary later that July no doubt cemented their decision. The letter read:

Chickasaw Nation, July 8, 1820

Friends and Brother Missionary,

My head men address themselves a few lines to you to inform you that we had the Pleasure of seeing our brothers, Mr. D. Humphries and Mr. Thomas C. Stuart, which our head men are much pleased with their conduct, and wish strongly for them to return and educate their children. It is the request of my head men in general. Now we shall look for them in the course of the winter. Friends and brothers.⁵⁶

However Humphries later received a call to be the pastor of the Roberts and Good Hope churches in South Carolina, which he accepted rather than moving west as a missionary. According to Winston Humphries “had a family and no resources. The probabilities are that it was never his purpose to become an Page 48 →Indian missionary, and having discharged the duty imposed upon him as exploring agent, he doubtless felt justified in accepting work at home.”⁵⁷ However this left the still young and largely untested Stuart as the best-qualified missionary candidate to the Chickasaw people. He and Humphries made contact, signed the agreement, and knew the landscape. The synod accepted Stuart’s service, and he made preparations to move west into the Mississippi territory to begin his work as a missionary to the Chickasaw people.

Arriving on January 27, 1821, Stuart and his family reached the site mutually agreed upon to be the residence of the Presbyterian mission in Mississippi. One historian recalled that the Stuarts were “received by the Indians with expressions of gratitude and joy.”⁵⁸ Whether this gratitude was sincere or part of the agenda toward cultivating a relationship with a future intermediary, the community accepted Stuart.

Later a few families from South Carolina, including a “farmer named Pickens and a mechanic named Vernon,” joined Stuart and helped build the original mission site in fall 1821. The families built houses, started self-sustaining farms, and preached to the Chickasaw using an interpreter, Malcolm McGee, who came later. The mission was named Monroe, after James Monroe, then president of the United States and “under whose administration schools for Native Americans had been encouraged and financed.”⁵⁹ It took Stuart and company just over eighteen months to clear the land, erect homes, and build a church. In April the small clan of Carolinians were joined by “Messrs. Hamilton V. Turner and James Wilson, the former a mechanic and the latter a farmer and teacher,” along with their wives and families. Within a month, a school opened and was home to sixteen new students from among the Chickasaw nation.⁶⁰ Winter noted that “youngsters from six to sixteen took part. The school initially enrolled seventeen Chickasaws, but the number soon increased to twenty-five. By 1828, 100 acres had been cleared and eighty-one pupils were enrolled.”⁶¹

Stuart and his colleagues received little if any compensation from the Missionary Society. The annual report of the Board of Managers of the Missionary Society of the Synod of South Carolina read, “As in the instance of Mr. Stuart, they receive no other compensation for their laborious service than food and raiment.” The Board pronounced, “Theirs is to be a life of self-denial, their only reward in this world is to be the approbation of conscience in the discharge of their duty. To them we fully believe it will be no meager return for their toil and their multiplied care.”⁶² This would put a great deal of pressure on Stuart to receive support from the federal government and the Chickasaw nation. It Page 49 →displayed an unreasonable notion that somehow missionaries should be made to suffer financially to accomplish their labor on behalf of an ecclesiastical body. Certainly had the board of missions provided more financial care for the missionaries they would not have been as dependent upon the federal government as well as to ask for support from among the Chickasaw, which likely would have increased their prominence and positive impact on the community.

This put Stuart in a precarious position. In one sense, Stuart and the missionaries were to provide education, provide a Christian church, and acculturate the Chickasaw in the ways of their White neighbors both socially and economically. Stuart was not in a position of either economic or social autonomy. He was dependent upon the Chickasaw for his survival. Stuart was also a product of nineteenth-century notions of race in South Carolina, believing that Whites were superior to persons of color. In reality he could not apply that worldview in a space in which he was wholly dependent upon a people whom he considered inferior, and also to live, work, and be successful. What further complicated this position were enslaved African Americans among the Chickasaw. As we will see, many more African Americans ended up worshipping in the mission churches and becoming members of Monroe Mission than did Native Americans. Enslaved African Americans and Native Americans in mission schools and mission churches ministered autonomously in their own communities. Stuart’s absolute dependence upon these communities highlights the absurd notion of any Native American or African American inferiority.

Part of the reason for the mission’s unique racial ecclesiastical makeup was the space itself: the frontier. Historian Ursula Smith has argued that “patriarchal patterns were less firmly established in a region that was defining itself as it went along.”⁶³ While there was some adoption by White missionaries and Native American landholders of nineteenth-century southern hierarchies inherent in the institution of enslavement, there were also more expanded opportunities in a mission church on the frontier than in a particularized congregation in the southeastern coastal cities like Charleston, Savannah, or Norfolk.⁶⁴ This multiethnic community in the space of a southwestern frontier complicates our understanding of the nineteenth-century southern religious landscape. While segregation in worship became the overwhelming historical narrative of southern religious history during the late nineteenth century and into the twentieth century, southern churches also had stories of multiethnic worship and ecclesiastical interactions across racial lines in an antebellum context in a frontier space that is distinct from interracial worship on plantation missions or urban settings.⁶⁵ Indeed the interracial interaction in a frontier Page 50 →mission space in the US South complicates our understanding of southern religion.

There were certainly motivating factors beyond religious sentiment that caused Stuart to move hundreds of miles from home with little to no remuneration. Because Stuart and his family were dependent upon the Chickasaw for survival the missions work forced Stuart and his colleagues to reconsider nineteenth-century notions of race and White superiority more closely. The Monroe Mission was a multiethnic religious community in the US South in the nineteenth century in which African Americans as well as Native Americans were considered savage, subhuman, and undeserving of equal status to that of Whites. One example of this sentiment existing in South Carolina can be found in Ben Robertson’s memoir of the Upcountry of South Carolina entitled Red Hills and Cotton. Discussing his great-great-aunt Narcissa, who lived in the early Republic period as the ABCFM was discussing missions to the Chickasaw, Roberston recalled “she told the children to keep the Ten Commandments, to believe in God and to love their neighbors.” One of her great-grandsons asked “are the savages our neighbors?” to which Narcissa replied, “No, the savages have no souls.”⁶⁶

However Stuart’s view was different. Through working intimately with Native American and African American populations the missionaries at Monroe grew to possess a view of human beings in the church that allowed for a broader sense of ecclesiastical rights, which were nonexistent in many particularized southern congregations in more urbanized southeastern towns and cities.⁶⁷ Given the time period the prevalence of racism among southern Whites and the entrenched status of enslavement within southern culture, it is surprising that the Monroe church did not more clearly reflect accepted racial hierarchies in church membership, leadership, and educational opportunities. Perhaps this had something to do with Stuart. As Thompson remembered Stuart was called “Father” among the Chickasaw, possessing the “tenderest and gentlest spirit that touched and transformed the Indians of the Southwest.”⁶⁸

Perhaps the brutal existence of frontier life and his dependence upon Native American communities for survival forced Stuart to wrestle with and confront preconceived racial categories. Perhaps the Chickasaws’ exposure to the English and Scots for many decades gave the Chickasaw a certain respectability in Stuart’s estimation. His acceptance of a role in a patriarchal framework could have allowed him to view the Chickasaw as children. Finally it is possible that Stuart’s exegesis of the parable of the good Samaritan and of the Ten Commandments was different from great Aunt Narcissa’s. Perhaps he believed Page 51 →the Chickasaw were his neighbors, possessed souls, and were made in the imago dei.

There are many missionaries in American history with a troubling past: spreading disease, buttressing racism inherent within the institution of enslavement, disregarding Native American culture in their practices, and caring nothing for the condition of Native Americans through removal. Others were concerned with the “condition of men,” both spiritual and physical. Presbyterian historian E. T. Thompson touched on an interesting facet and an intriguing question of nineteenth-century domestic missionaries’ work in the South. He mentioned that some missionaries “renounced titles and estates to engage in the work; most of them were of finished scholarship and refined habits.” “They faced all manner of privation merely for the sake of making some portion of the world a better place in which to live, or to improve the condition of a fellow mortal, no matter how unworthy the latter may have been considered in the esteem of mankind.”⁶⁹ Why did these southern Whites of relative influence and impressive education desire to spend their lives to labor for spiritual and physical support of men and women who were considered of “unworthy esteem” in this particular time in a largely unknown wilderness?

While the direct answer to this question remains unknown, as we cannot see into the hearts and minds of men and women two hundred years ago, it is certain that missionaries to Native Americans sacrificed worldly interests for what they viewed as eternal kingdom work. Not only was Stuart not paid, but he and his wife were virtually cut off from extended family. Increasing “isolation promoted depression and loneliness, a shortage of personnel caused the small staff to be over-worked,” and the missionaries performed other duties outside of their expertise such as “food administrators, physicians, registrars of vital statistics,” teachers, and school administrators.⁷⁰ Presbyterian missions’ unique contribution arose out of the latter two vocations as Presbyterians were typically valued education and possessed theological training. It is also possible that the Chickasaw nation saw some value in the schools as the “tribe allocated $5,000.00 in 1824 for additional schools.”⁷¹ The Missionary Herald, a publication that reached a variety of Christian churches mentioned that the Chickasaw “are more and more convinced of the importance of education,” and their growing dependence upon agriculture given the lack of game to hunt “facilitates our communication with them, and gives us a more full opportunity of instructing them in the agricultural and mechanical arts.”⁷²

Unique especially in their attitudes toward Whites, the Chickasaw displayed an interesting and cautious “openness” to Stuart. Perhaps this was due Page 52 →to their history with the English, or maybe it was the intermarriages and subsequent “rule” of the Colbert brothers. However in reconstructing the source material from the viewpoint of and a reexamination of the behavioral attitudes of the Chickasaw, perhaps something even more complex is revealed. Throughout Chickasaw history, before removal, the Chickasaw interacted in methods of positive exchange with English settlers. Perhaps instead of the missionary using the Chickasaw for evangelical and “civilizing” purposes, it was the Chickasaw using the missionary as a future intermediary to what they foresaw as eventual removal by the federal government.

It is possible that this foresight extended to recognizing that a connection with the religion of eastern Whites might gain favor or good opinion of the Chickasaw as “civilized” for later negotiating purposes with the federal government. The Chickasaw nation was no doubt aware of the missionaries’ possession of letters from the War Department. It would also be naive to assume that the Chickasaw were unaware of the military technology, that the US Army possessed or interests that Western settlers had in Chickasaw land. If a successful relationship with the missionary might be cultivated, maintained, and used then perhaps the Chickasaw could present a model of being a “civilized” tribe to an ever-westward-expanding government, and Washington’s recommendation would come to fulfillment. This adaptation of seemingly adopting western culture and “legitimization” might even help the Chickasaw from eventual removal.

The Monroe Mission church itself was small and was where religious services occurred. Mrs. Julia Daggett Harris, a resident who lived close to the old Monroe Church, reported that it “was an interesting sight. It was a diminutive room 16 x 16, built of small poles” and had a “dirt and stick chimney and a large open fireplace, where, in the winter, the worshipers warmed their frost-bitten fingers.”⁷³ There was only one window in the church, which was “a hole cut through logs and closed with a clapboard.”⁷⁴ The Monroe Mission was an accessible location as it was centrally located within various travel routes for Native American traders. From the north and south, the “Cotton Gin Road” passed through Monroe as well as the Natchez Trace, which came from the northeast and went south.⁷⁵ Winter mentioned that “at times Stuart preached to as many as 250 at this location.”⁷⁶

For education, the first order of business for the new mission was to build a boarding school for Chickasaw children. Stuart wrote, “Early in the spring of 1823 the school was opened with fifty scholars, most of whom were boarded with the family.” Men of influence, such as Samuel Seely, in the Chickasaw Page 53 →district where Monroe was located, came and spoke to the school often. Seely eventually sent his son to be a student at Monroe. Stuart recalled, “From this time until the Chickasaws ceded away their country and agreed to remove to their distant home in the West, the school was kept up, with some interruptions, under the trials and difficulties that always attend a similar enterprise amongst an unenlightened and uncivilized people.”⁷⁷ It is clear in this statement that Stuart’s recognition of the Chickasaw as “uncivilized and unenlightened” reflects his views moving onto the frontier from southeastern South Carolina. Stuart established a school to “enlighten” the Chickasaw, but the Chickasaw people used their resources to start two more. Many within the Chickasaw nation saw schooling for children as important if their children were going to survive and even thrive in a changing landscape where, more and more, White settlers marginalized Native Americans economically, socially, culturally, and politically.

In 1824, “the chiefs of the council appropriated $5,000 to establish two more schools, and $2,500 per annum for their support.”⁷⁸ The schools were open to both boys and girls and they learned to speak, read, and write in English. However according to Stuart “the number who obtained anything like a good English education was comparatively small.” Among others, one reason might possibly have been the school’s strict regulations regarding attendance. Indeed “the requirements of the station imposed such a restraint on their former roving habits that many of them ran off and never returned.” Stuart made sure to note that “this was often a matter of deep regret and a cause of great annoyance to us; but it was one of those discouragements with which missionaries amongst an ignorant and heathen people have always had to contend.”⁷⁹

This student truancy is not surprising given the level of independence and autonomy that Chickasaw children were accustomed to in educational settings. Despite boarding school obstacles throughout the mid to late 1820s, the church grew from 8 missionaries at the outset of 1820 to almost fifteen times its original size just before removal with 123 individuals. Distinctions of one’s cultural or ecclesiastical status stemming from ethnic and cultural differences seemed to be present but ambiguous with regard to function in Stuart’s missionary model. One acquaintance recalled, “He earned the appreciation of all, regardless of color or condition or creed.” Mission records showed a heterogeneous membership with twenty-nine Whites, sixty-nine African Americans, and twenty-five Indians in the late 1820s.⁸⁰ The heterogeneous makeup of the Chickasaw nation added complexity to this ecclesiastical and educational space because of intermarriage of the Chickasaw with Whites, the presence Page 54 →of enslaved African Americans, and with the presence of White South Carolinians as well as Chickasaw who had intermarried with African Americans. Each played a significant role in the churches and schools. Enslaved African American people played an outsized role in the mission church leadership structure and greatly assisted Stuart as translators, prayer meeting attendees, prayer leaders, and members.

In 1823, the Monroe Mission made the transition from mission to formalized or particularized church. On June 7, 1823, the Reverend Hugh Dickson, representing the Presbytery of South Carolina, was “commissioned by the Missionary Society of the Synod of South Carolina and Georgia to visit the Chickasaw missions in Mississippi.”⁸¹ Seven charter members were listed on the roll and Reverend Thomas Stuart was “nominated as stated supply, with other ministerial members of the mission serving as the church’s session.⁸² It was not until the next December that the first Native American made a profession of faith.”⁸³ The Reverend Hugh Dickson was sent from South Carolina to examine if “the mission family having a desire to be united in a church capacity, that they may regularly enjoy the privileges of the sealing ordinances of the gospel.” On June 7, 1823, the church was “organized with the following members, viz: Hamilton V. Turner, James Wilson, Nancy Turner, Mary Ann Wilson, Ethalinda Wilson, Prudence Wilson and Susan Stuart.”⁸⁴

The register listed no Chickasaw or Chickasaw names as founding members. This may have been the result of historically strict standards regarding Presbyterian Church membership. Admission as a member in good standing of a Presbyterian church in the nineteenth century was a laborious task compared to other denominations. This would especially be true for some members of society that White Presbyterians deemed inferior, “heathenish,” or “uncivilized.” A candidate would have to appear before the session, where he or she would be questioned and would have to provide a satisfactory description of his or her faith. Another reason for low numbers among the Chickasaw may have been the product of an existing cautiousness among the Chickasaw toward their new White neighbors and their hesitancy to abandon their own religious practices. Stuart and his colleagues had been with the Chickasaw for almost two years by the time the mission became an official church. However while the Chickasaw were cautious to join early on, records display an eagerness for membership among the enslaved African Americans in their midst.

After the opening services the first session or ruling body of the church met in what was considered the “prayer hall.” Church session records showed that “a black woman named Dinah, belonging to Mr. James Gunn, applied to Page 55 →be received into the newly-organized church.” The Carolina Presbyterians in Mississippi were indeed supporters of and participants in the institution of enslavement. It also indicates that enslaved African Americans were a part of what was becoming a racially diverse ecclesiastical community. However records also indicated that the Chickasaw were cautious of membership. If an enslaved African American woman in Mississippi in 1823 were deemed examinable for church membership, then surely a leader like Ishtohotopah, or a member of the Chickasaw nation, would have been considered. In allowing Dinah to become a member Stuart provided places of ecclesiastical membership for early non-White members. Indeed some enslaved members possessed prominent ministerial roles, on which Stuart relied heavily.

Services at Monroe were unique. Indeed “Stuart and the other ministers of Monroe Mission preached with the help of interpreters. The evangelistic program consisted of divine service on Sunday and prayer meetings twice a week and on the first Monday of each month, when prayers were offered for the missionary cause.” When the preaching happened “the missionary would give a sermon in English, after which an interpreter would explain informally ‘the free way of salvation through the Gospel.’ This was followed by hymns in Chickasaw, and the service ended with prayers and exhortation.”⁸⁵

Monroe was certainly unique for a nineteenth-century southern Presbyterian mission church. Its nonsubscription to nineteenth-century cultural expectations concerning race and interracial interaction was evident on numerous occasions. One instance displaying unique multiethnic interchange was the prominence in leadership positions for some enslaved African Americans at Monroe. One such individual was the aforementioned Dinah, “a black woman, the first fruit of the Chickasaw Mission,” who “being a native of the country, spoke the Chickasaw language fluently; and having the confidence of the Indians, I (Stuart) employed her as my interpreter, for several years in preaching the gospel to them.”⁸⁶ For Stuart to employ an African American woman in a place of such prominence was unusual in nineteenth-century Presbyterian churches even among domestic missions. She was put in a powerful position of translating Stuart’s preaching to the Chickasaw. This must have communicated something to both the White, African American, and Chickasaw attendees that only a human, with a soul, made in the imago dei, with ecclesiastical membership, rights, and responsibilities in the church would be given such a position of responsibility.

Slave mission churches on the frontier and even in some urban spaces in the South⁸⁷ were places in which ecclesiastical leadership opportunity and Page 56 →education for African American members occurred. Some enslaved African Americans became members at Monroe and their children even experienced ecclesiastical rights and opportunities. The church records of August 3, 1823, show that Stuart baptized Dinah’s children Chloe, William, and Lucy. Indeed “Dinah, having previously expressed desire to have her children baptized, and having given us satisfactory evidence of her knowledge of this holy ordinance, presented her three children . . . to God in baptism.”⁸⁸ Covenantal baptism is an important ceremony to Presbyterians as it brings in and recognizes the children of believing Christians as communing members of the household of faith. Other members take vows to support believers’ children. To be a member and to have her children baptized was communicating something about Dinah’s ecclesiastical service and the way that the leadership and membership viewed her presence as something positive in the community.

However sometimes the drastic nature of mission work allowed missionaries the freedom to maneuver even some of their own myopic notions concerning race. The session admitted Dinah and “after a careful examination the session felt satisfied with her Christian experience, and accordingly admitted her to the privileges of the household of faith.”⁸⁹ Admittance was not a mere symbolic ceremony like modern church standards. As one became a member there were certain commitments and vows to which a member would be expected to agree. Further membership was something that a session continued to evaluate based on one’s attendance, behavior, and level of engagement. It was something a person could lose easily if the individual was not conforming to the accepted standards and vows taken. There were individuals not accepted at Monroe. According to the session minutes recorded on July 1, 1827, the “session convened, and proceeded to examine several persons, who were not received” for membership. Furthermore church membership meant that Dinah was a member with equal ecclesiastical standing with her fellow Whites, with all the “privileges of the household of faith.” This meant that she had equal voting rights within the church, an equal place at the communion table, and could receive benefits such as support if she were sick.⁹⁰ Stuart used the enslaved persons’ relationship with their Native American owners and their knowledge of the Chickasaw language almost as autonomous missionaries to convince their Chickasaw enslavers to attend church. This nuance of Native American missions was how Esther (an enslaved African American) could have persuaded Mrs. Colbert, the second Chickasaw to become a member of the church, to attend Monroe.⁹¹

Page 57 →Dinah was not the only person of African American ethnicity present at Monroe.⁹² The records of May 15, 1824, indicate that the church excluded Rindah, “a black woman belonging to Mr. Turner,” due to improper behavior. However Rindah “made application to be restored” and “on professing sorrow for her offense, and promising amendment, was reinstated.” Also on May 15 Abraham, “a black man belonging to an Indian, and husband to the woman received at our last communion, applied for church privileges.”⁹³ These individuals further represented the heterogeneous and ethnically diverse makeup of Monroe Church.

Many walked several miles to attend service. Winter, historian of Presbyterianism in Mississippi, recorded the example of Cornelia Pelham, a member at Monroe, and wrote that African American members at Monroe Church taught within their own communities and even had their own missions to the Chickasaw. According to Winter some “effective mission to the Chickasaw at Monroe” were “conducted wholly by the slave.”⁹⁴ Pelham recorded:

A black man member of the mission church opened his little cabin for prayer on every Wednesday evening, which was usually attended by half a dozen colored persons. In 1830 that number increased to more than 50, many of whom were full Indians. The meetings were conducted whole by Christian slaves, in the Chickasaw language. One of their number can read fluently in the Bible, and many of the others can sing hymns, which they have committed to memory from hearing them sung and recited. The chiefs began to manifest increasing regard for the school and religious instruction.

Enslaved African American members of Monroe took it upon themselves to conduct missions among Native Americans, which seemed even more successful than their ordained White counterparts at prompting Native Americans to attend. These opportunities for African American-led worship were not as common in White-led mission churches on plantations in the southeast, or in particularized congregations and were therefore indicative of the fluidity of the frontier and opportunities that African Americans claimed through multiethnic mission churches in this frontier space.

Abraham, an enslaved African American attended Monroe and his owner was apparently present at the ceremony of membership induction. This could have been his owner’s gesture to politely attend. Another possibility is that the owner was cautiously trying to detect what Stuart and his followers were doing. Page 58 →It is possible Abraham attended of his own volition, or perhaps he came because of his wife’s request. Finally it could be a combination of the three as human beings, their motivating factors, and religious worldviews are complex and can come from different motivations at different times.

It is possible that this attendance is indicative of the caution with which the Chickasaw approached early missionaries at Monroe. The Chickasaw, familiar with western European ideology concerning land, economics, and trade practices, allowed a missionary church to exist within their nation. However far more enslaved African Americans whom the Chickasaw owned attended Monroe than did members of the Chickasaw nation. Perhaps this had to do with African American familiarity with Christianity in the southeastern United States, in the Caribbean “West Indies,” and perhaps even in Africa. Likely the Chickasaw allowed the missionaries to live among them and held them at arm’s length in an attempt to appear legitimate in the eyes of the federal government, which also funded the work in hopes of “civilizing” the Chickasaw.⁹⁵

The first Native American to become a member of the Monroe Church was a woman, Tennessee Bynum, on December 4, 1824. Described in the session records as “a native,” Bynum joined along with Esther, “a black woman belonging to Mrs. Colbert.”⁹⁶ Following Bynum a few years later on May 7, 1826, was Molly Colbert, “a native,” of the influential Colbert family. The late arrival of individuals from the Chickasaw nation as members of Monroe is telling. The hesitancy on behalf of the Chickasaw to gain membership reveals the Chickasaw cautious approach to Stuart and the Monroe Mission, which had been accepting members for over a year in 1824. In that time only two Chickasaw joined, the aforementioned women, one of whom was from European and Native American ancestry. On September 29, 1827, William Colbert, also a Chickasaw with European ancestry, was the first male Chickasaw admitted to membership. He decided to join some six years after Stuart and his family arrived in northern Mississippi. According to Howe, Colbert was “a scholar in the school and on the 5th of April, 1834 was elected and ordained a ruling elder in our Church.”⁹⁷

This was significant in terms of Stuart’s racial categories and leadership opportunities. A ruling elder not only had shepherding rule over the congregation but could rule over White members through church discipline cases. This was a major reason why there were seldom African American elders in Presbyterian churches throughout particularized congregations in the southeast until after the Civil War. A “native,” albeit with European ancestry, having such a prominent role in the Monroe Church displayed Stuart’s notions of ecclesiastical Page 59 →leadership opportunities for those with a multiethnic backgrounds in contrast with accepted notions of racial distinctions throughout the Southeast. Colbert was from a prominent family among the Chickasaw and this, as well as the family’s wealth and influence and his experiences as a student of Stuart’s in the Chickasaw school, surely played a role in his nomination, selection, election, and ordination.

Hiemstra, a historian who studied missionaries among the Chickasaw, found that “attendance at the services was considered excellent. In addition to the regular Sunday worship the missionaries conducted ‘protracted meetings’ and prayer services. Funerals and temperance meetings presented the missionaries with additional opportunities for preaching.”⁹⁸ Many Chickasaw could have come in and out of church services without Stuart recording them. Not always having an interpreter on hand could also have played a vital role in this lack of membership since the session needed one for examination. The December 29, 1827, session minutes mentioned that “Mrs. Colbert, a native, also applied for admission. There being no good interpreter present, it was resolved to keep the session open and meet Mrs. Colbert at the house of Mrs. John Bynum on the next Monday morning with a suitable interpreter.”⁹⁹ Regardless the Chickasaw hesitancy to become members en masse displayed the concern and sense of caution to invest fully in Stuart’s work. Ultimately Stuart regretted that “comparatively few of our scholars embraced religion and united with our church.”¹⁰⁰

While the Monroe Church admitted enslaved African Americans as full members their surnames do not appear in the church records. Some Presbyterian mission churches in the South chose to display surnames so there was some precedent.¹⁰¹ Native American surnames do however appear in the records. While this might seem like a small detail, it speaks volumes about the White record keeper’s (probably Stuart himself) perception of enslaved African Americans and Native Americans. Acknowledgement of a surname in a church roll book was a public declaration that ran counter to the southern ideology behind the institution of enslavement: that enslaved African Americans were property and could not possess lineages and an identity beyond their property holders. Surnames declared that enslaved African Americans were more than property; they were human beings with everlasting souls and individuals with a family bloodline that superseded their status as property.

What does this indicate about the White membership’s perceptions of enslaved African Americans and Native Americans? First, enslaved African Americans were full members, but their surnames were absent. Instead of Page 60 →listing a first name followed by a surname, it was “Abraham, belonging to” and “Dinah, owned by.” Therefore it was more likely that missionaries saw membership as a necessity rather than an outright expression of ecclesiastical equality. Second, it is likely that enslavers were comfortable with church membership because it gave an extra layer of White oversight of African American behavior and movement. However it was still significant that enslaved African Americans were full members since this was seldom the case in particularized churches in the southeast. Third, membership was something prized highly by the missionaries, session members, and something the congregation took seriously. To admit someone to full membership status in the church who did not possess any kind of civic status beyond being chattel property spoke to the value that the church placed on the enslaved people’s humanity.

In contrast, the recording of the last names of the Chickasaw displayed that Stuart and his session did see the Native Americans as human beings equal in full status (at least ecclesiastically speaking) to Whites. It also exhibited that White missionaries made a conscious distinction between African Americans and Native Americans. This distinction was so important that it compelled Stuart to note it in the records. This is supported by Hiemstra’s research; he concluded that “it is evident that the missionaries never considered the Choctaws and Chickasaws to be members of an inferior race. The curriculum maintained by the various schools reveals that the Indian was regarded as one who had not received opportunities for cultural advancement; in no case was the Indian believed to have been born with inferior mentality.”¹⁰² Indeed racial categories and distinctions were prevalent among the mission churches between Whites, Native Americans, and African Americans. Stuart was a shepherd who let the “savage wolves” of this time come into the flock and created artificial distinctions, categories, and hierarchies, which should not have existed and did not exist in traditional ecclesiastical polity over previous centuries. While frontier mission spaces afforded the most possible fluidity to test accepted racial hierarchies, it seems that Stuart’s mission reinforced those categories rather than test them with a biblical picture of community laid out in the book of Revelation chapter seven verses nine and following.

After its organization and particularization, “the Monroe congregation was under the care of the North Alabama Presbytery. This presbytery was, after 1826, part of the synod of West Tennessee.”¹⁰³ On May 4, 1826, all the Presbyterian missionaries who served the Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Cherokee met at Monroe. In that meeting the missionaries organized the Association of Missionaries in the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations. These individuals later Page 61 →formed the bulk of what became the Tombigbee Presbytery, which they later established on June 5, 1829.¹⁰⁴ By 1830, the membership was flourishing. The church numbered 110 members in the fall of 1830, “of these about one-half were natives, a few Whites, and the balance blacks, of whom there were a considerable number in the neighborhood of the station.”¹⁰⁵ In 1832, “after the Presbytery of Tombeckbee was organized, the Monroe Church was transferred to its jurisdiction. The congregation achieved its largest membership in 1836, with 127 on the roll.”¹⁰⁶

More Chickasaw members, as well as a few Creek women, joined the Monroe Church after particularization, which is the formal process leading a mission church to an autonomous congregation able to function and rule on its own with a local session administering. Indeed a very interesting aspect of the church’s racial heterogeneity struck Stuart. The African American members “generally spoke the Indian language; and being on an equality with their owners, and having more intercourse with them than is usual among white people, through their instrumentality a knowledge of the gospel was extended among the Indians.” Therefore Stuart was able to use the Chickasaw model of enslavement to encourage his enslaved African American members to convince their Native American owners to visit the church. Further “the change, too, in their deportment had a tendency to convince them of the reality and excellence of religion, and to eradicate their (Native American) prejudices against it.”¹⁰⁷

In 1827, the Monroe Mission became part of the American Missionary Board, which supported similar missionaries to the Cherokee and the Choctaw. Stuart’s letters suggest this as a welcome connection declaring, “To this we did not object, because it brought us into more immediate contact with the missionaries of the Choctaws, to whom we were much attached.”¹⁰⁸ As the church moved into the 1830s, session records indicate that growth continued. With this growth, church discipline cases became more and more frequent. For example, Ishtimayi, “a native member of our church, having for a long time absented herself from the means of grace, and giving sad evidence that she is yet in a state of sin and heathenish darkness, was excommunicated.”¹⁰⁹ Ishtimayi was brought up on discipline charges for not displaying regular attendance as a member. Given knowledge of Native American practices, it seems harsh to apply Western standards of attendance to a recent Chickasaw member, who might not have known fully the Western Christian standards and expectations associated with regular attendance and membership.

Indeed applying racial categories to church discipline cases in a way that negatively affected people of color occurred within the few church discipline Page 62 →cases mentioned in the session records in 1827–28. Regarding church discipline church membership included a responsibility to live in accordance with the tenets of Christianity and under the authority of the session, which possessed “spiritual oversight” over the flock. In the two discipline cases one was a White man named Mr. Cheadle and the other an African American woman named Mila. Both were guilty of a “heinous sin,” and a meeting of the session examined the “circumstance of the offense.” Both made full confessions of the crime, promised amendment, and expressed contrition. Mila was “suspended from the communion of the church until she gave evidence by her deportment that she is truly penitent,” and she was “publicly suspended in the presence of the congregation.” The church session felt that Mr. Cheadle “ought not be excluded from the privileges of the church.” Mila’s case had become public, while Mr. Cheadle’s case seemed to be between him and the session. The session records read, “Since her offense has become public, she is publicly suspended in the presence of the congregation.”¹¹⁰ This also displayed a distinction of how women in church discipline cases at Monroe might have been treated differently than male members. Potentially certain sins could be treated and “disciplined” differently based on the gender of the offender. Mr. Cheadle’s sin was dealt with privately while Mila’s became public. One was brought back into the congregation while another was suspended.

While both acts were “heinous” Mila’s case had become public knowledge to the church membership and the Chickasaw nation, likely influencing the session’s decision. This unequal treatment was indicative of the session’s racial and even gendered handling of discipline cases of male and female members. On January 3, 1829, the session restored Mila’s membership because of her “having given satisfactory evidence of sincerity of her repentance, and having obtained a good report of her.” However Mila left the Monroe Church the following July and joined another church within the Choctaw nation.¹¹¹ It is significant that Mila had the autonomy to make this decision and essentially decide for herself on her own church membership by leaving for another church.

Others who were disciplined included Dinah, who was considered an “adulteress”; Primus, “who has been living in adultery (having taken a woman who was put away by her husband)”; and Frances, “a black woman,” who was “also excommunicated for the sin of fornication.” The church excommunicated for a time and in some cases indefinitely all who confessed committing sins of a sexual nature. Many of those who expressed repentance, showed sincerity in their demeanor, and showed a change in their lifestyle could reapply for membership. The session often accepted them as new members. However some were Page 63 →under suspension “from the privileges of the church for a length of time and giving no evidence of repentance, but continued impenitent, were solemnly excommunicated.” There was little chance of their readmittance. Such individuals included Molly Gunn, Nancy Colbert, Sally Fraser, James B. Allen, Benjamin Love, and Saiyo. Although two White men are included in this list before April 1834, seemingly every case of excommunication for adultery included either an African American or a Native American woman. Although displayed late in the record there was some consistency along gendered and even racial lines for excommunications and church discipline.¹¹² Rather than addressing the issues within the confines of the ecclesiastical body first the session chose to punish the woman publicly and to ostracize her from the ecclesiastical body. Mila would have had little to no power within the church or in Mississippi in 1827.

The session gave in to accepted cultural, social, and political pressures of how a southeastern church dealt with powerless women of color in the early nineteenth-century South. For example, Mr. Cheadle as a male possessed the same “heinous” sin, and he was not discharged from the congregation, nor was his case made public. The preference of the session here seems to give more respect, dignity, advocacy, and support to a man who already possessed some measure of power over a woman of color in the nineteenth-century South. As shepherds, these men could have advocated for the weak and powerless and at the very least treated the cases equally and showed that social norms dominating the landscape did not apply to the Monroe session. Instead the shepherds reflected patterns that were common and ruled in favor of Mr. Cheadle, thus reaffirming southern ecclesiastical patriarchy, which also seemed consistent with preexisting racial categories.

The session records also indicate a sense of concern among the elders of Monroe Church with both African American and Native American men practicing “experimental religion.” For instance Edom, “a black man belonging to Mr. Wetherall, applied for admission” and “it being known that he is in good standing and the session having conversed with him on experimental religion, he was received.” Also George, “a native man, was examined on experimental religion. His evidence of change appearing good, he was admitted to the privileges of the church.”¹¹³ By “experimental religion,” Stuart was referring to both African American and Native American religious practices that often included seemingly non-Christian or un-Presbyterian practices.

Both African American and Native American religions possessed emotive and interactive components. Among African Americans, dancing, expressive Page 64 →singing, as well as collectively acting out historical religious events were common.¹¹⁴ The Chickasaw incorporated dancing and much singing around fires through the evening, in some cases until dawn, performing medicinal treatments using “various roots and barks steeped in water.”¹¹⁵ Stuart alluded to this “experimental religion” in his letter to the Southern Presbyterian in June 1861. He lectured, “An Indian was seen slipping in, as if by stealth, with a large hand-gourd filled with tea, made of Yopon leaves, to which they attached a superstition of efficacy, believing that it enlightened their minds and led them to correct decisions.”¹¹⁶ Rather than incorporating, enveloping, or weaving these practices into a Christian experience at Monroe by using Yopon tea in social settings, the session disallowed “experimentation,” which was considered “heathenish,” rather than as sincere expressions of faith, religious zeal, or spiritual experience. The mission church seemed to be asking the new members to completely disregard and even discard cultural or historical religious practices and behavior in their new worship experience. In a sense they were asked to worship Christianity as White Europeans. This may be yet another reason why the Chickasaws remained cautious and why only a few dozen of the over six thousand members of the Chickasaw nation became members at Monroe.¹¹⁷

Historic Protestantism has included different kinds of wine, grape juice, and drinks in its communion or Lord’s Supper celebrations for centuries. Wafers, crackers, and all manner of “breads” have replaced bread. Perhaps the church budget did not allow the congregation to purchase enough bread. Modern Presbyterian churches even carry gluten-free wafers to consider those who struggle with gluten allergies. It seems as if, instead of engaging in a process of trying to understand Chickasaw religion and incorporate aspects of it into ecclesiastical life, the missionaries forced the Chickasaw to completely abandon everything about their own religious culture and background.

Despite the early warm reception they gave the Presbyterians, the Chickasaw were cautious about Stuart and the Monroe Mission’s progress. One historian noted, “Though Monroe Church was organized in 1823, it was December 1824, before the first Chickasaw made a profession of faith in Christ. Eventually, however, a number of the leaders of the nation were converted, and the mission began to make substantial progress.”¹¹⁸ The most prominent conversion, a personal friend of Stuart’s, was Tishu Miko or Tishomingo, a leader of the Chickasaw where Monroe resided. Tishomingo and Stuart were friends throughout the existence of the mission until removal in 1839.

Another member was French Nancy. French Nancy was about five years old when she originally came to live with the Chickasaw. Her family was a Page 65 →member of D’Artaguette’s expedition from Illinois in the mid-1730s. After a major battle at Ogoula Tchetoka the Chickasaw destroyed D’Artaguette’s forces in 1736 and pushed back a French-led force of 150 French soldiers and several hundred more Native American militias. Hlikukhlo-hosh, a Chickasaw warrior, noticed Nancy while she was fleeing and captured the young fugitive. He spared her life and took her to live with the Chickasaw under the care of an elderly Chickasaw woman “to be reared and instructed in the most approved manner.” As she grew and became a woman, she and Hlikukhlo-hosh were married, and together they “reared a large family, and was honored and loved by the Chickasaw nation.” Indeed “she was regarded by the Chickasaws as a living monument of their victory over the inveterate enemies, the French.” French Nancy was in her mid- to late nineties when she joined the church. She would tell Stuart stories about “some of the circumstances of her capture” and that she “retained her European features, but in other respects was Chickasaw.”¹¹⁹

With French Nancy, the Colbert family, and a long tradition of interaction with both the British and the French, the Chickasaw people were well versed in European traditions, behavior, and culture. This also lends credence to the argument that the Chickasaw were using Monroe and Stuart as another interactive relationship to acquire legitimization.¹²⁰ In short the Chickasaw possessed their own agency and designs for the mission activity. In many ways the Chickasaw were directors of the mission, allowed it to function and practice, were financially supporting its presence, and controlled the mission’s limits or bounds.

Among the Chickasaw the heritage of intermarriage with English officers created a context steeped in knowledge of Western European culture and identity. Behind the scenes and from the time of Logan Colbert members of the influential Colbert family seemed to possess a great deal of power in the Chickasaw nation. The fluency with Western ideological frameworks and understanding of property seemed to put the Chickasaw mixed-heritage elite at some economic and political advantage when considering settler expansion. It also allowed the Chickasaw a unique avenue from which to pursue appeasement with a powerfully armed federal government. Pontotoc County land records show that William Colbert was intimately involved in the arrival of T. C. Stuart in Pontotoc. While Tishomingo served as leader and political facilitator, William Colbert donated the land on which Stuart built his home and the mission. “The property included Gen. Colbert’s allotment of three sections under the Chickasaw cession, and the section on which the missionary lived (S. 17, T. 11, R. 3).” Undoubtedly it was the influence of prominent Native Americans with European ancestry, such as William Colbert and his brothers, who helped Page 66 →persuade the Chickasaw to be more receptive to hosting Christian missionaries. One example of the Colberts’s influence is found in Stuart’s letter to the Southern Presbyterian in July 1861. He recalled his first meeting with the nation in 1820, noting that “there was a frolic on hand. Parties began to assemble, dressed out in their best, and instead of an Indian dance, such as I have witnessed many a time since, it turned out a regular ball, conducted with great propriety, and attended by the elite of the nation.”¹²¹

Perhaps the Colberts were working to influence the Chickasaw nation to engage in greater levels of agricultural practices accepted in and Christian practices common in eastern states. Hence the Chickasaw would be perceived as more “civilized” and thus potentially exempt from removal. However, the strategy ultimately failed. Despite the Chickasaw accommodationist tactics and willingness to let Stuart bring Christian missions into their nation through the adoption of Christianity, education, and agricultural practices, these responses were unsuccessful. The federal government’s highly racialized removal policies proved too strong for the Chickasaw legitimization plan. Federal removal policies did not account for adapted Chickasaw behavioral, religious, agricultural, and or economic shifts, but were consumed by the prospect of land speculation. In the end federal policy used race, culture, and religion to justify a land grab no matter how much the Chickasaw exhibited adaptation.¹²² The Chickasaw were Native Americans and thus were dispensable to a United States federal government with notions of fulfilling the “manifest destiny” of filling every corner of their new land. In the minds of many land-hungry agents and speculators, Native American removal was a practical necessity. Many eastern would-be settlers sought Native American land with a ferocious greed, and the federal and state governments buttressed this greed with an intentional and thorough removal policy.¹²³ It is also likely that several of the new settlers would be Christians with no concern for their Christian brothers and sisters among the Chickasaw nation. They were only concerned with land for themselves.

Despite the mission’s success in converting many and adding memberships along with the support of the Colbert family, Ishtohotopah, and Tishomingo, thousands more Chickasaw rejected membership. This indicated that the majority of the Chickasaw nation was either indifferent to Christianity or it was using Stuart as a buffer and as a future intermediary between itself and the impending removal policies of the federal government. The Monroe Mission grew exponentially in the nineteen years of its presence. The multiethnic mission can be seen as an example of interracial ecclesiastical activity in the nineteenth-century South that complicates the history of mission churches, Page 67 →which have been typically categorized as biracial spaces. At least in the frontier mission context there was far more interracial fluidity, multiethnic interaction, cultural reciprocity, interracial discourse, multiethnic ecclesiastical relationships, and complex cultural exchange. Despite the efforts of some Chickasaw to embrace Christianity and American acculturation throughout the first quarter of the nineteenth century the Chickasaw succumbed to the same fate as the surrounding Native American nations, and the federal government, fueled by land speculation, forced removal in 1834.¹²⁴

The mission had the opportunity to reflect something different about race and gender to a watching world. It could have been a space that affirmed ecclesiastical equality and disregarded race and gender distinctions as membership distinctions and how cases were disciplined. Instead the Presbyterian missions to the Chickasaw, the enslaved African Americans, female members, and White male members had different levels of membership, discipline, and advocacy, or lack thereof, in the church based on one’s race and gender. Rather than shepherding a congregation with a “kingdom” view or a view that took into account one’s bearing the imago dei, or trying to achieve a heavenly view of human beings as Galatians 3:28 suggested, the Monroe Mission used American categories for race and gender, applying those categories to a functional ecclesiastical rule, membership, worship practices, and relationships. The mission largely reflected the culture in which it existed rather than challenge the culture with a higher view of human relationship. By doing this, the church sanctioned these categories, distinctions, and hierarchies based on race and gender, which worked to prevent African Americans and Native Americans from achieving full civic rights over the next century.

Stuart’s missions to the Chickasaw “received the equivalent of a death blow when removal to the West became a reality.”¹²⁵ However various acquaintances of “Father” Stuart recalled his animated and affable stories about interactions with Native Americans. These stories have led to the memory of Stuart as a paternalistic figure and as “father” of the Chickasaw Mission. Julia Daggett Harris left her remembrances of “Father” Stuart and the Monroe Church in the Minutes of the Presbyterian Historical Society of the Mississippi Synod in 1907. She recalled, “I first saw Mr. Stuart at my father’s home near the old Monroe Church in 1854. At this time of course the last of the Chickasaws had long since left the red hills of their Mississippi home for the wild west.” She particularly noted that “a never-failing theme of conversation with Mr. Stuart was his early Indian work.”¹²⁶

Page 68 →Education seemed to be a concern and focus behind Stuart’s conversations. Harris noted, “An interesting phase of their conversation was that the Christian education of the Chickasaws in Pontotoc county was the basis of their Indian Territory civilization.”¹²⁷ Others mentioned that Stuart “never lost interest in his Indian converts, and frequently visited them in their western home.” After removal Stuart would ford rivers and travel across country with his daughter, Mary Jane Stuart, to visit his old Chickasaw flock. He was remembered as a “genial, kindhearted man.” Reminiscences of Stuart’s life reflected his passion and desire for missions work among the Chickasaw. Some remembered him as “a typical educated South Carolinian” who “radiated an air of culture and refinement.”¹²⁸

However Stuart’s own letters indicate a sense of failure about his life’s work. He wrote, “I often feel ashamed and deeply humbled that so little was accomplished.” Yet he took solace in his faith saying, “It would be wrong not to render thanks to God that He was pleased to give any degree of success to the means employed.” Stuart further justified his work noting “a large number of youth of both sexes were educated; much useful instruction was communicated, and a foundation laid for a degree of civilization and refinement which never could have been attained without it.”¹²⁹ The number of Chickasaw who continued in Christian faith and practice also encouraged him. He wrote, “I visited the Chickasaws in their new home, and found a few of my old church members still living, and walking by faith.”¹³⁰ Ultimately while Stuart felt that he failed he was consoled as a Presbyterian that God had foreordained him for this work and had brought him to this people. Expressing his own feelings on this matter, he wrote, “I would render thanks to God, that he counted me worthy to be employed in such a blessed work.”¹³¹

While many affluent South Carolinians would have found this frontier lifestyle odious, Stuart counted himself blessed to be in such a position. While his imperialist-minded, racially prejudiced, and Western view of the Chickasaws was undoubtedly flawed, there is something to be acknowledged about his level of commitment and the personal sacrifices he made to leave his family and home for frontier missionary work. Stuart attempted to provide for the physical as well as spiritual estate of those around him and worked to alleviate the pain of the sick and bring literacy to those who could not read. He served his part within the Chickasaw legitimization plan to potentially assuage the fears of government officials in civilizing the Chickasaw. While this plan ultimately failed the relationships he cultivated and maintained with the Chickasaw persisted. Page 69 →Forms of education common in the east, as a direct result of Presbyterian efforts, continued to be a tool of interest among the Chickasaw after removal.¹³²

The Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions continued to provide educational opportunities to the Chickasaw after removal to Oklahoma. The 1852 annual report for the board showed that the Chickasaw’s interest in education was not fleeting. Indeed, parents discouraged truancy, students filled the schools to capacity, and “they (parents) sacrificed the services of the children at home in order that they might attend Spencer Academy or another boarding school. It was not uncommon for hundreds of parents and friends to be present at commencement exercises in May of each year.” To be sure, much of this sustained enthusiasm about education was begun in Stuart’s work in the schoolhouses of the Monroe Mission in Mississippi. This legacy of education may not have been as intentional as spreading the gospel but nevertheless became an important facet of Chickasaw culture after removal.¹³³ After removal Stuart continued to meet with his Chickasaw friends until his death. A favorite acquaintance was James Gamble. Gamble, educated at Monroe, continued his education in Mesopotamia, Alabama. As Stuart noted Gamble became a “great man of his nation-is a senator in their legislature-national interpreter and translator, and is their commissioner to Washington City to transact their business with the Federal Government.” Stuart later remarked in 1861 that Gamble was a “standing refutation of the oft-repeated slander that an Indian cannot be civilized.”¹³⁴ Stuart’s devotion, as well as a reflection of his role in assimilation, to his former members was also apparent in his recollections of trips to Oklahoma. He wrote, “I was delighted with the advances made in civilization which were everywhere apparent.” Due to the lack of game in their new territory the Chickasaw had given up hunting and relied fully on agricultural practices for sustenance. The Chickasaw built homes out of logs with chimneys and by 1840 had abandoned “the office of chiefs and councils for the government of the people, and have organized a regular state government, with a written constitution, after the model of our sovereign states.” Indeed many of the nominated candidates to rule over the legislature and the Chickasaw nation were educated at Monroe.¹³⁵

After the removal of the Chickasaw Stuart continued to dwell in Pontotoc for thirty-seven more years. He preached to a growing community of new arrivals and “buried the dead, performed marriage ceremonies, and taught at intervals.” Stuart’s wife died on September 23, 1851, and Stuart had one living child, a daughter named Mary Jane. Mary Jane “became his companion and Page 70 →comforter in his old age.” Mary Jane would also travel with her father to visit the remnant of the Chickasaw nation in Oklahoma.¹³⁶

During the Civil War Stuart served as an instructor at Chickasaw Female College in Pontotoc, Mississippi. According to Winston, “He sought the place that he could do the most good, and readily found it. The war having disrupted the entire educational system of the South, and it was a rare opportunity that was offered to this section by keeping the school going through the troublous times.” Stuart stayed on at Chickasaw Female College and taught throughout the tumultuous period of Reconstruction in Mississippi. The college was used as a hospital by both Union and Confederate soldiers. After the war, with Stuart’s help, the college became a “respectable” academic institution, and by the end of the nineteenth century Chickasaw Female College was one of the oldest and most renowned coeducational colleges in the state. The school closed in 1936 due to financial nonviability.¹³⁷

In the latter half of the 1870s Stuart and his daughter moved to Tupelo. Stuart died in Tupelo at the home of his daughter in 1883. He was buried in the Pontotoc cemetery, and it “probably appealed to him as a place of sepulcher” undoubtedly because “in 1852, a government deed conveyed the ground to the ‘Chickasaws and their white friends forever as public burying ground.’” The Reverend T. C. Stuart’s epitaph appropriately reads “For many years a missionary to the Chickasaw Indians.”¹³⁸

Some wounds in American history simply cut too deep. The difficult and tumultuous relationship between the United States and the Chickasaw nation is certainly one of those wounds. But perhaps some hope for future healing can be drawn from a deeper understanding of the injustices in our past. Today in an era in which attempts at multiethnic religious interaction seem rooted only in recent history, it is important to see how such attempts at multiethnic ecclesiastical interaction can be found further back in our shared history. These historic communities included Whites, Native Americans with European ancestry, African Americans, and Native Americans. “What these churches reveal are human beings from various racial, cultural, and religious backgrounds struggling to communicate, to know one another, and to make some sense of their changing worlds. In many ways, it was not unlike our twenty-first-century efforts to overcome divisions of race, religion, and culture. Studying the experiences of these mission communities can help us navigate the multiethnic dimensions of our national identity.”¹³⁹

These shepherds ministered to both Native American and African American communities. However rather than letting an orthodox, historical, and Page 71 →biblically informed perspective drive the work of the mission, Stuart and others let the savage wolves of racial categories ravage their flock. They gave way and provided preference in the church to a southern landscape bent on the greed of land ownership, which preferred gaining wealth on the total enslavement of African Americans. Rather than challenge these ideas the mission supported them. The mission created different categories for membership and applied discipline in different ways based on race and gender. The agenda and interests of the federal government, along with the interest in land by speculators and individuals interested in land holding, which required removal of Native American brothers and sisters in Christ, became normal and accepted within the Monroe Mission and among missionaries to the Chickasaw. For these missionaries the savage wolves were especially hungry for land, the labor of the enslaved, and were allowed in to feast upon the sheep under their care.