The following text was automatically extracted from the image on this page using optical character recognition software:
74 The Chronicles of Oklahoma
MALMAISON TODAY
By George H. Shirk
Greenwood, Mississippi, holds a place of special importance
in the history of Oklahoma. There was located the magnificent
and renowned home of Chief Greenwood LeFlore of the Choc.
taws. Although he himself did not migrate to Oklahoma, his name
and tradition loom high in this State.
Greenwood LeFlore was born in the year 1800 at LeFleur's
Bluff, then a settlement of importance located near present
Jackson, Mississippi. His parents were Louis LeFlore, of French
Canadian extraction who had risen to a position of eminence
within the community, and Rebecca Cravat, the daughter of a
prominent Choctaw-French family. They named their child
Greenwood after a sea captain and long-time friend of Louis
LeFlore.
When young Greenwood was at the age of twelve, Major
Donley, the contractor for the mail route along the Natchez
Trace, took an interest in his progress and persuaded his parents
to allow Donley to take the boy to Nashville for his education.
He completed his formal education at the age of nineteen, and
was soon taking an active part in Choctaw tribal affairs. He was
selected Chief of the Northwest District in 1826.1 On March 16,
1830, he was elected to the newly created post of Chief of the
entire Nation.
Greenwood LeFlore was married three times. His first wife
was Rosa Donley, the daughter of his childhood benefactor. His
second wife was Elizabeth Coody, daughter of the noted Chero-
kee, William Shorey Coody.' Priscilla Donley, a sister of Rosa,
was the third wife.
In 1835, LeFlore built a frame dwelling on land grants he
had secured near Williams Landing, a settlement on the Yazoo
River in Mississippi. The settlement, named for John Williams,
had come into early prominence following the treaty of Dancing
Rabbit Creek (1830) as a shipping point for the expanding
cotton industry.
G rant Foreman, Indians and Pioneers (Norman, 1936), p. 263.
2 Grant F1reman. Indian Remoal (Norman, 1932), p. 23.
) Emmet Starr, History of the Cherokee Indians (Oklahoma City.
1921), p. 410, (genealogical section of the Ros Family). Elizabeth Coody
(or Coodey) was the niece of Chief John Ross of the Cherokee Nation-
-Carolyn Thomas Foreman, "The Coodey F1erly of the Indian Terri-
tory," The Chronicles of Oklahoma, Vol. XXV, No. 4 Winter, 1947.48h
pp. 323-341).