LOST AMONG THE CHOCTAWS
DURING A TOUR IN THE INDIAN TERRITORY, 1845
By Rev. William Graham, A.M.*
At the time of which I write-the year 1845-Christian civilization had but
imperfectly influenced the Choctaw Indians. In localities remote from the
United States Agency, and from the mission schools, primitive Indian cus.
toms still prevailed. Those who were least inclined to adopt Anglo-Saxon
habits, and who were most tenacious in retaining their own, were naturally
drawn to these less cultured regions. Like the pioneer settler, who despises
the trappings of fashion and the annoyances of culture, and who pulls up
stakes and penetrates further into the wilderness when he is encroached
upon by the advance of civilization, so many of these Indians, long accus-
tomed to the unrestrained freedom of the woods, seek to get beyond the
trammels of civilized institutions. Besides a natural preference for the
usages of their ancestors, they have a lurking suspicion of the white man.
There is much ground for this suspicion. They were reluctant to leave their
homes in Mississippi, and those who would not be bribed by annuities from
the Government were forced away from the graves of their fathers. They
were not slow to detect the cause for their removal, as they believe, when
they saw their new country. Interested parties had assured them that the
lands offered them by their great father at Washington abounded in game,
and were superior in quality to their former homes. But how false were these
representationsI The soil is thin and unproductive, the timber light and
stunted, and the game had been hunted out by the roving tribes of the West.
Fierce and warlike tribes scour the plains between them and the buffalo-
range-tribes, too, of whose marauding incursions they are in continual
dread. Evidently they have been wronged, and they know and feel it. Hence
they are slow to believe even that the self-sacrificing missionary is sincere,
and many of them spurn with disdain the proposition to exchange their
cherished primitive customs for those of their oppressors. They were the
 Rev. William Graham was a Methodist missionary serving at Fort Coffee Academy for
Choctaw boys in 18.5 when he made a tour of the Red River country in the intecsts of Metho-
diht missions among the Choctaws. The account of his tour appeared under the title of "Lst
Among the Chocs   in "Frontier Sketches." published in The Idi s s Repository, a monthly
devoted to literature and religion in 1863 (Cincinnati: Poe & Hitchcock), edited by Rev. D. W.
Clark, D. D. The reprint of "Lost Among the Choctaws" in Thi Chronids is through the
courtesy of Mr. O. B. Campbell of Vinita, Oklahoma. taken from the rare copy of The iier
Reporisory in his collection of Oklahoma historical items.
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