I have often written about the many people who have lived in the Columbus, Starkville, West Point area and left their footprints across history or the arts. One such individual was Peter Pitchlynn. Pitchlynn was a Choctaw mixed-blood son of John Pitchlynn and was born on the Noxubee River in 1806. In 1810, he moved with his family to Plymouth Bluff at the mouth of Tibbee Creek. About 1824 he moved to just southwest of Artesia and the prairie that runs from south of Artesia to northwest of the Golden Triangle airport became known as Peter Pitchlynn’s Prairie.
In late 1832, he removed with Choctaws from the North East District to the western Indian Territory (Oklahoma). There, George Catlin painted his portrait in 1834. During the early 1840s Pitchlynn encountered two of that era’s greatest figures on steamboats on the Ohio River. In 1840 he was said to have defeated Henry Clay in a friendly public debate on the virtues of marriage. Two years later he had a lengthy conversation with Charles Dickens onboard another boat.
In the 1850s Pitchlynn served as the Choctaw Nation’s delegate-representative in Washington and then became Chief of the Choctaw Nation in 1864. The Choctaw Nation sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War and as Chief (governor) of the Nation, Pitchlynn surrendered the Choctaw Confederate Army division on June 19th 1865. Pitchlynn died in 1881.
Charles Dickens’ meeting with Pitchlynn in 1842 made such an impression on Dickens’ that he wrote of the encounter. The account of their conversation appeared in the November 18, 1842, New York Tribune, several other newspapers and in Dickens’ book, “American Notes,” where he wrote:
“Leaving Cincinnati at eleven o’clock in the forenoon, we embarked for Louisville in the Pike steamboat, which, carrying the mails, was a packet of a much better class than that in which we had come from Pittsburg…There chanced to be on board this boat, in addition to the usual dreary crowd of passengers, one Pitchlynn, a chief of the Choctaw tribe of Indians, who sent in his card to me, and with whom I had the pleasure of a long conversation.
He spoke English perfectly well, though he had not begun to learn the language, he told me, until he was a young man grown. He had read many books; and Scott’s poetry appeared to have left a strong impression on his mind: especially the opening of The Lady of the Lake, and the great battle scene in Marmion… He was dressed in our ordinary everyday costume, which hung about his fine figure loosely, and with indifferent grace. He told me that he had been away from his home, west of the Mississippi, seventeen months: and was now returning. He had been chiefly at Washington on some negotiations pending between his Tribe and the Government… He had no love for Washington; tired of towns and cities very soon; and longed for the Forest and the Prairie. I asked him what he thought of Congress? He answered, with a smile, that it wanted dignity, in an Indian’s eyes…
[We spoke] of Mr. Catlin’s gallery, which he praised highly: observing that his own portrait was among the collection, and that all the likenesses were ‘elegant.’
He was a remarkably handsome man; some years past forty, I should judge; with long black hair, an aquiline nose, broad cheek-bones, a sunburnt complexion, and a very bright, keen, dark, and piercing eye. There were but twenty thousand of the Choctaws left, he said, and their number was decreasing every day…
When we shook hands at parting … He took his leave; as stately and complete a gentleman of Nature’s making, as ever I beheld; and moved among the people in the boat, another kind of being. He sent me a lithographed portrait of himself soon afterwards; very like, though scarcely handsome enough; which I have carefully preserved in memory of our brief acquaintance.”
How fascinating to come upon a window into time and see through the eyes of one of the greatest writers of the Victorian Age the image of one who lived here two centuries ago.
Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected].
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