Sometimes when you are walking across a piece of property, the land seems to speak. There seems to be almost a spiritual presence as though it is a special or holy place. Often that piece of earth is the location of some historic event or of religious significance.
On Friday I was at a beautiful spot on the prairie north of Brooksville and the feelings of both history and holy merged. I was at a retreat called the Dwelling Place.
Helping preserve one of the most significant historic locations in the area is a “Catholic house of hospitality and prayer founded on the principals of St. Francis” which welcomes anyone seeking a place of peace and respite.
When Sisters Clare Van Lent and Maggie Kosse of the Sisters of St. Francis set out to make the Dwelling Place a reality, they never dreamed just how historic the landscape around its location was. It was the site of an important Choctaw village and one of the homes of Mushulatubbee, an important Choctaw chief. Across the rolling prairie, events unfolded there in 1811 that helped shape American history.
One of the famous figures in early American history was the great leader of the Shawnee Nation, Tecumseh. In 1811, he traveled through the Indian nations of present-day Alabama and Mississippi in an attempt to convince the Chickasaws, Choctaws and Creeks to reject the quickly spreading Euro-American influences. It was probably in the late spring of 1811 that he entered the Mississippi Territory. He met first with the Chickasaws. He sought the help of the influential Chickasaw George Colbert. Colbert, however, rejected Tecumseh’s overture and responded that the Chickasaws were at peace with the whites and wished to remain so.
Tecumseh then traveled south and, in order to avoid John Pitchlynn’s residence at Plymouth Bluff, crossed Tibbee Creek near where present-day Highway 45 Alternate crosses it below West Point. Tradition says that he was met there by Choctaw Capt. Tisha Homa a.k.a. “Captain Red Pepper.” Red Pepper was known as a man of peace and lived southwest of Columbus near the present site of the international plant.
The first night Tecumseh was in the Choctaw Nation, he and the 20 Shawnee warriors and prophets who accompanied him camped in a grove of trees on a hill in the southwest corner of present-day Lowndes County. The next day he arrived at a home of Mushulatubbee, the chief of the Northern District of the Choctaw Nation (present day Mushulaville). Finding his message not well received, he journeyed deeper into the Choctaw Nation to hold councils seeking an alliance with the Choctaws. After several councils, there was to be one last national council at Mushulatubbee’s prairie village.
In 1903, William Love, a historian whose farm was in southern Lowndes County, published an article, “Mingo Moshulitubbee’s (another spelling of Mushulatubbee) Prairie Village,” in Volume 7 of the Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society. Love wrote that, “Major Thomas G Blewett, bought the home (Moshulatubbee’s) and two sections of land of Moshulitubbee at some time in the early part of 1832. Major Blewett often stated to various persons that he was informed by Moshulitubbee that the council was held there and that he was present and an eye witness to everything that occurred; that Moshulitubbee called his attention more than once to the large red oak tree under which the council was held and to the several small lakes in the lowlands around which encamped the large number of Choctaws who attended the council.”
Tecumseh arrived at the council site after some of the most important figures in the Choctaw Nation had already assembled. Those assembled included Pushmataha, Hoentubbee, Puckshenubbee, John Pitchlyn, David Folsom and Mushulatubbee.
Love related that: “At the council, Tecumseh spoke first followed the next day by Choctaw Southern District Chief Pushmataha. In an impassioned response Pushmataha spoke of the Choctaw’s long friendship with the white people and stated that any Choctaw who joined with Tecumseh, if not killed in battle, would be put to death if he returned home. The council ended with Tecumseh being ordered to leave the Choctaw Nation and David Folsom was directed to escort him to the Tombigbee River.”
In the Creek Nation, Tecumseh had a much more favorable reception which helped lead to division and civil war among the Creek people and laid the foundation for the Creek Indian War that would erupt two years later as a phase of the War of 1812.
Tecumseh was killed in October 1813, fighting alongside the British against United States troops at the Battle of Thames in Canada. It was said in 1850 that in his last battle he displayed “a degree of courage and sagacity beyond that of the British commander, whose ally he was.”
In 1832, Mushulatubbee, the faithful friend of the white settlers, left his homeland in the Indian removal after the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek. He traveled the Choctaw Trail of Tears across the Mississippi to a new home far from his beloved prairie village. He lived near the Choctaw Agency on the Arkansas River where he died of smallpox on Aug. 30, 1838.
All but forgotten are the sites of the council ground and the prairie village of Mushulatubbee. According to Love: “thus made an historic spot, commemorative alike of the unswerving friendship of the Choctaws towards the Americans, and of the zeal and devoted loyalty to his own race of the great Tecumseh.”
Somewhere at or near the Dwelling Place are these historic places, and walking across the ground there it is as though the earth wants to speak, saying “This land is sacred.”
The Dwelling Place is located on Mushlatubbee’s beautiful rolling prairie about five miles north of Brooksville. It may be contacted at 662-738-5348 or [email protected]. Its website is www.dwellingplace.com
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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