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In 1832, when the lands obtained from the Choctaws in Mississippi were being brought into market, the office of register in the land-office in that State was an important one. It was given to Gwinn by Jackson, who was then President. When the nomination was sent to the Senate, opposition was made to its confirmation by George Poindexter, a senator from Mississippi.
The others he had won in the course of a long, furious, and stubborn contest of the tribe with the Chickasaws, who, always impolitic, headlong, and brave, were now reduced by their own valor in their many wars from ten thousand fighting men to a few hundred. He had attained the "warrior's crown" when he had shown their kindred Choctaws a mettle as fierce and a craft as keen as their own.
After visiting the Creeks and Choctaws, he was to pass through the land of the Osages and return by the Missouri river. Before his return, the last hope of the red man was to be forever crushed, and the old dream of Pontiac forever dispelled. The Governor has paid a just and worthy tribute to his savage foe.
America! land of savages! land of Pawnees and Choctaws! land where cooking must be in its crude infancy!
The Cherokees, with a population of twenty-four thousand individuals; the Creeks, with twenty thousand, and the Choctaws, with fifteen, as soon as they reached their new country, applied themselves to agriculture, and as they possessed wealth, slaves, and cattle, their cotton plantations soon became the finest west from the Mississippi, and latterly all the cotton grown by the Americans and the Texans, within one hundred miles from the Indian settlements, has been brought up to their mills and presses, to be cleaned and put into bales, before it was shipped to New Orleans.
Their neighbors were made, through French influence, to fall upon and destroy them. The Chickasaws and Choctaws great nations, having multitudes of warriors were under the dominion of these pale-faced intruders, and they feared they might be turned upon them in an unsuspecting hour. There was among the Natchez a mighty chief and warrior.
Indeed, Florida was the Indian's paradise, was of little value to us, and it was a great pity to remove the Seminoles at all, for we could have collected there all the Choctaws, Creeks, Cherokees, and Chickasaws, in addition to the Seminoles.
This sum is divided under the following heads, viz., national fund, $1,008,285.07; school fund, $532,407.01; orphan fund, $175,935.31. The interest on these several sums is paid to the treasurer of the Cherokee nation, to be used under the direction of the National Council for the objects indicated by said heads. Choctaws and Chickasaws. These tribes are for certain national purposes confederated.
And by what is mentioned in Colonel Grant's letter, we fear that our implacable enemies the French have already spirited up and prevailed with the Choctaws to assist the Cherokees against us.
He himself escaped into the land of the Choctaws and Creeks, disguised as a Mississippi boatman; but a month later he was arrested near the Spanish border, and sent back to Washington. Thus ended ingloriously the wildest, most spectacular, and least dangerous, of all the intrigues for Western disunion. It never contained within itself the least hope of success.
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