I recently came across a map published in the December 1832 issue of the Missionary Herald that showed the location of all the Indian missions and schools that were in Mississippi.
The Missionary Herald was the monthly publication of The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions who operated Mayhew, Hebron and the other Choctaw missions in Mississippi. I was surprised to see that the map showed a school named Hikas hub baha, that I had never heard of and in a surprising location. The school was located about 10 miles south of the Hebron Mission, 10 miles north of Col. Folsom’s Robinson Road residence and southwest of the Mayhew Mission. That places its location at or very near present day Starkville.
The school opened in 1830 with 19 students, 12 boys and seven girls. The first teacher was a Choctaw who had been educated at mission schools and taught in the Choctaw language. Anna Burnham, who had been teaching at the Mayhew Mission since 1822, became the teacher there in 1831. The students were taught in both Choctaw and English. The course work included reading, writing, grammar and spelling in English and arithmetic and geography. They learned hymns and memorized passages from the Bible, which was also the book from which they learned to read.
The school, though, was in operation only from 1830 to 1832. It closed with the removal of the Choctaw Nation and the Trail of Tears. Part of the route of the Choctaw Trail of Tears passed through what is now northwest Starkville and was known as the Indian Immigration Road. The road disappeared from maps by the 1840s.
The school’s name “Hikas hub baha,” which in Choctaw seems to mean “long sweet gums” and is very close to “Hic A Sha ba Ha,” the name of a spring located in what is now downtown Starkville. The spring appears to be associated with the creek, which is behind the First Methodist Church in and is the subject of a state historic marker there that says it is the site of the first Methodist church service in Starkville in 1834, which took place near a spring in a grove of sweetgum trees.
With the name of the school and the spring being so similar and the school having been in the general area of Starkville, one can’t help but wonder if they could have been on the same site. One can even wonder if the school building might have been used for the first Methodist church in Starkville.
Anna’s story, however, does not end at the little schoolhouse in Starkville. Her story is a story of courage, perseverance, and devotion. With the removal of the Choctaw people, she went west with them and taught at a trail of schools across Arkansas and Oklahoma until she retired in 1845. It is a story that begs to be told of a deeply Christian person who lived what she preached.
Anna was born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1778. Her uncle was John Fitch, who had been issued a patent in 1791 for the first steamboat. She was a teacher and received an appointment from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to teach at the Mayhew Choctaw Mission. In the summer of 1822, she set out from Lenox, Massachusetts, for the Choctaw Nation. She traveled with Israel and McKee Folsom, two young men of a prominent Choctaw family who were returning home after attending school in Cornwell, Massachusetts. After the long trek across the United States they arrived at Mayhew on Dec. 13, 1822.
When Anna arrived at Mayhew in 1822, she found 47 students with the missionaries and teachers living in a large frame dwelling and a new schoolhouse with a capacity for 100 students. It was more of a village than a missionary outpost in the wilderness. William Hooper was the teacher for boys and Anna became the girl’s teacher. Many of her students began to think of Anna as a second mother and she won the trust of both her students and their parents. A letter written to her by a student in 1826 when Anna was visiting at another mission begins, “My Dear Mother,” and was signed, “Your affectionate daughter, Emily Folsom.” By 1831, Anna had been reassigned to be the teacher at Hikas hub baha.
With the closing of her school and removal of most of the Choctaws in 1832, Anna’s school and all the other missions and Choctaw schools in Mississippi except for two closed. Mayhew and Yoknokchaya remained open for the scattered remnant of the Choctaw Nation still in their homeland.
Anna took a job teaching in Havanna, Green County, Alabama. However, she felt her calling was to return to teaching the Choctaw children. In the summer of 1833 at the age of 52, she headed west on another wilderness journey. She declined assistance from the Board of Missions to pay for her moving expenses and covered the cost with money she had saved. By October 1833, she was teaching at Wheelock Choctaw Mission School in Arkansas.
She followed the Choctaw to their new home and in 1835 found her teaching at the Clear Creek Choctaw Mission. In 1837, she reunited with Rev. Cyrus Kingsbury and his wife at the Pine Ridge Mission. They had been at Mayhew when Anna arrived there in 1822. Anna was back at Wheelock Mission in 1840. This time she was serving as both a teacher and the assistant to Alfred Wright who was the missionary there. She was teaching at the Red River Mission by February 1843 and retired from the mission field in 1845.
An article on Anna appeared in the Tulsa World, Tulsa, Oklahoma, April 12, 1936, and summed up her service as a teacher and missionary. Of her work, Missionary Alfred Wright wrote in 1842, “Miss Burnham’s labours are on the Red River, about eight miles from Wheelock. She resided there from October to May, and taught school during the week and superintended a Sabbath school and Bible class on the Sabbath. At the age of 64, the oldest in the service of the board, she goes every Sabbath, with untiring diligence, to her work.” When her health failed and she retired in 1845 “Old Choctaws, struggling with the alphabet, missed her guiding hand and her patient repetitions; children, learning quickly, missed her judicious praise. They said the Choctaws had lost their mother.”
After retiring in 1845, she returned to New England and married Ruben Belden in 1846. She died on Sept 18, 1847, and her simple obituary which appeared in several New England newspapers said it all. “She was for 25 years a teacher among the Choctaw Indians under the patronage of The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. ‘The memory of the just is blessed.’”
Thanks to Carolyn Kaye for helping with research.
Rufus Ward is a local historian.
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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