The Little Osage Captive: The Tragic Saga of Lydia Carter

Abstract

PUBLISHED IN 1822 AND DESCRIBING THE POIGNANT LIFE of an Osage Indian girl, The Little Osage Captive, An Authentic Narrative declared its intention promote zeal in the missionary cause and to enlighten and convert the heathen. Recommended for children and placement in schools, it described Indians, or Native Americans, as savages who needed civilizing and Christianizing.1 Yet its narrative has much offer the modern reader. Spanning the years 1817 1821, this intriguing story grew out of a ruthless struggle between neighboring divisions of the Osage and Cherokee tribes living in the region then known as Arkansaw.2 The dramatic events began in what was then the Missouri Territory before moving east Alabama Territory, Tennessee, Mississippi, and even Washington, D.C. The story would conclude back west in the newly-created Arkansas Territory (established March 2, 1819) and provides a rare glimpse of life along the lower Arkansas River more than a decade before Arkansas statehood. It offers a vivid sense, too, of the complex human consequences of the federal government's policy of removing eastern Indians territory long occupied by other native peoples. Rev. Elias Cornelius, the narrative's author, graduated from Connecticut's Yale College in September 1813 and received a ministerial license from the Congregational Church on June 4, 1816. Within a few weeks, he was appointed an agent of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), an early movement Christianize Native Americans, which operated with the support of Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists.3 As part of his ABCFM commission, Cornelius embarked on a lengthy journey in January 1817 converse with the [southern] natives and obtain their consent have schools, and other institutions, established among them, for the purpose of instructing them in Christianity, and the most useful arts of civilized life, and raise funds support these efforts.4 Twenty-three and unmarried, Cornelius would travel for twenty months and reach New Orleans before returning home. In Washington, D.C., Cornelius met with the secretary of the treasury, William H. Crawford, and a correspondence with the acting secretary of war, George Graham, and the agent for the Office of Indian Trade, Thomas L. McKenney. From these officials, Cornelius received warm assurances of friendship and cooperation and letters of introduction addressed agents of the Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Cherokee tribes.5 Arriving in Tennessee and Cherokee-occupied lands by September 1817, Cornelius spent two months at newly opened Brainerd Mission.6 This ABCFM-sponsored school had opened the previous March under superintendent Cyrus Kingsbury with help from the Cherokee agent, Col. Return Jonathan Meigs.7 They, along with Gen. Andrew Jackson, had persuaded Cherokee leaders support the school at a council meeting the previous year. As a result, Kingsbury purchased 160 acres for $500 from John McDonald (grandfather of John Ross, the future Cherokee leader) for the new school and farm. Initially called Chickamaugah after a nearby Cherokee town, the school's name was changed during its second year honor David Brainerd, a pioneer missionary New England Indians. Through Brainerd and similar schools, the ABCFM hoped the whole [Cherokee] tribe English in language, civilized in habits, and Christian in religion.8 Cornelius left Brainerd continue his journey on November 6, 1817. Traveling west on a road from Huntsville Natchez, Cornelius and his companions reached Caney Creek, at a spot two miles south of the Tennessee River in present-day Colbert County, Alabama, on November 15. Two hundred miles west of Brainerd, Caney Creek marked the eastern boundary of the Chickasaw Nation. Normally just a small stream, the creek was severely flooded from recent rains. After several futile attempts cross, the group decided make camp and try again the following day. …