EAST TEXAS INDIANS

And Their Customs

I ask J. C. Thompson to tell me about the East Texas Indians and I am so glad that he did. Thank you for a wonderful insite on some of our adcestors..

There were quite a number of groups in east Texas during the early years of the Republic. In addition to the Cherokee, there were the Miami, Quapaw, Delaware, Muscogee (Creek), Alabama, Coushatta, Shawnee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Biloxi and scattered families of other tribes plus the native Caddo, Tonkawa, Karankawa and Atakapan.

Our families were part of the original Cherokee group led by Bowles that came in 1819. After the attack on the Cherokees in 1839, some remained. This is proven by the 1840 Republic tax records that list such individuals as Devireaux J. Bell. His brother John Adair Bell was a signer of the Treaty of New Echota in 1835. Devireaux died at Mt. Tabor from illness contracted during the civil war.

Due to friction between the Ross Raction and the Ridge Party (they were New Echota treaty signers and suporters) a near civil war state existed in the Cherokee Nation. President Polk recognized the Ridge Party as a seperate Cherokee tribe and told them to go to Texas to find lands. They did this in the fall of 1845. They settled near Devireaux and his brother Samuel near present day Kilgore founding the Mt. Tabor community. It was John Adair Bell as recorded in the book Cherokee Cavaliers that coined the name Mt. Tabor. Possibly a biblical recollection due to the battles that took place near the other Mt. Tabor in northern Isreal. The community thrived until the Civil War. At that time it became the center of Cherokee Confederate activity with the families of the most prominant leaders residing there including General Stand Watie. Prior to that a group of Choctaws along with some Chickasaws settled on Attoyac Bayou in 1835. They were a party to the Treaty of 1836 with the Republic. Again tax records show them still there in 1840. They were related through their white sides to the Cherokees at Mt. Tabor. Thus you have Cherokee and Choctaw McCoys and Thompsons. Same families different tribes!

In 1851 more Choctaws, the relatives of the former arrived settling near Overton. The leader of this group was Archibald Thompson, where as the leaders of the Cherokees were more varied than just one or two. After the war and the death of John Ross in 1866, most of the Cherokees left and went to the Cherokee Nation, but not all. The Thompsons, Beans, Starrs and a few of the Bells, Fields and Ridges remained. In 1871 William Penn Adair started a law suit to get the Texas lands back. He was from Mt. Tabor the son of Black Watt Adair and Rachel Thompson. Rachel was the sister of Benjamin Franklin Thompson who settled Laird Hill in Rusk County. He and many of the family are buried in the Thompson cemetery next to the old plantation house at Laird Hill. His grand daughter was Lou Della Crim whose land was the second well discovered in east Texas. The families begain to look to Oklahoma for leadership after the death of John Martin Thompson. Claude Muskrat became the chairman and took the case to the Supreme Court in 1920. After him W.W. Keeler became chairman and took the case to the Indian Claims Commission in 1948.

In 1949 US President Harry Truman appointed Keeler as Chief of the Cherokee Nation. Keeler resigned as chairman of the Texas Cherokees in 1972 to run for the position of Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation. Judge Foster Bean replaced him in Texas. In 1975 the Cherokee Nation was again recognized as a soverign tribe, yet we were left out in Texas because as Texans our families did not qualify for enrollment in the Cherokee Nation on the Dawes Roll. I replaced Foster Bean as chairman in 1988 and in may of this year W.W. Potts replaced me as chairman. The problem today is that the Choctaws of which I am also descended, outnumber the Cherokees. The meting in Troup or Lufkin, along with that earlier this year is to make some major decisions regarding this. As to the other groups, I know of a number of what I refer to as phony tribes popping up. They cannot prove Indian descent but call themselves tribes or nations. There are some Creek descendants which seem legitimate in Angelina County. Other than that, there was a Cherokee settlement during the civil war in the Waco area as well. As to where it's descendants are today, I don't know. Some of the Ridge family settled near Lampassas, but it was a single family group not an organized band.