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MRS. JACKSON F MCCURTAIN
Vol. 3 p. 1338-1339

In the midst of a silent valley, abandoned by tradesman with all her
attributes of commerce, grimly and perhaps stoically succumbing to
that which makes all things perish and pass into the realm of memory,
stands the capitol of the Choctaw nation. The bright red of the
council house with its white-rimmed windows and its tall white window
shutters defies all things dreary when the sun makes it smile. Its
builders seem to have put a lasting dye into the nation dissolved and
absorbed might remain to entice the treasure hunter. It stands full
three stories in architectural majesty. Its simple outlines and
unadorned walls are as strikingly modest as the fullblood whose head
bends under the presumptuous stare of an unsophisticated traveler.
Its face is set toward the east, whence came the men for whom it was
built - set that way perhaps that it might give warning to impostors
of Indian blood bent on dividing the fortunes of the pioneers. To the
east, the north and the south are walls of mountains. To the west is
a blue-mantled gateway that is entrance to the prairies, the lands of
the wild tribes and the staked plains. The square little valley has
afforded the seclusion necessary to the enactment of laws whereby the
Choctaws were governed until their nation was but a memory.

More interesting than the council house and its surroundings is a
woman who has been left there by the tribe as custodian of the
building. She is Aunt Jane McCurtain, and is the widow of Principal
Chief Jackson MCCURTAIN, who was one of three brothers the Choctaws
elevated to the highest office in their government. Aunt Jane is
seventy-three years old and every whit an Indian in color and
sentiment, although American blood ran in the veins of both her
parents. She has an English education and is possessed of fluent
speech and a choice and elaborate vocabulary. It is pretty safe to
assert that not other Indian woman of this country, after being
educated in English schools, and having returned to her people and
lived among them for over fifty years, has retained as much of the
culture and delicate and refreshing manners and select phrases of apt
conversational speech as has Aunt Jane.

One enters the big council house, explores its high-walled and wide
measured empty rooms, and enters the chamber of Aunt Jane on the
first floor expecting to encounter considerable difficulty and employ
the art of signs in order to converse with her. Her wrinkled features
change to contours of smiles, for she welcomes the American seeker of
Choctaw knowledge, and in pure English invites him to take a seat.
His preconceived notion of this welcome having been challenged, he
breathes the delightful aroma of flowers that blossom outside as high
as the six-foot window sill, and finds himself already engaged in
pleasing and fluent conversation.

Aunt Jane was born in 1842 near the present site of the Town of
Valliant. Her parents were Louis and Mollie AUSTIN. Her mother was of
Irish descent and had blue eyes and fair skin. Her father, who was
less than fullblood, was born in Mississippi and came with the
Choctaws to Indian Territory in the early '30s. He was a farmer and
blacksmith and possessed great inventive genius. He established the
first and probably only shoe factory in Indian Territory, and in it
during the Civil war he made shoes for the family and neighbors. The
war deprived the Indian country of most of its market facilities and
those who remained at home lacked many of the necessaries of life,
including salt. Louis Austin set his ingenuity to work and became the
first man in Indian Territory to extract salt from water. Aunt Jane
remembers when a teacupful of this salt sold for $5 of Confederate
money. Mollie Austin was a niece of Samuel GARLAND, who represented
his people in Washington in procuring an act of Congress that created
what has become known as the net Proceeds Payment. She was an
industrious little body, who spun and wove her own cloth and out of
it made clothes for the Choctaw soldiers during the Civil war.

Little Miss Jane Austin began attending school at Wheelock Academy.
Rev. Alfred WRIGHT, a Presbyterian minister, established the school
in 1832 and was still in charge while she was a student there. Mr.
Wright was a great man in his church, did great things for the
Indians and established an institution that is continued today by the
United States Government. Aunt Jane is among the few living who
enjoyed his instruction. She made excellent grades the first four
years there, and those grades gave her a scholarship of another four
years. Meanwhile missionaries had opened a school at Sewickleyville,
Pennsylvania, to which Indian children were admitted. Jane and
another Choctaw girl, Fannie WOODS, who is now Mrs. William KING and
lives near Tuskahoma, were awarded scholarships. Rev. John EDWARDS
who succeeded Mr. Wright at the academy, accompanied them to the
East. It was three years before the Civil war began, and there were
few railroads in the West. They went first to New Orleans, then up
the Mississippi to Cairo, Illinois, and then overland through
Indianapolis and Cincinnati to Pittsburgh, near which the school was
situated. "We were given our choice of this route or another by
steamer to New York," says Aunt Jane, "but the ocean waves looked too
scary for me."

A little before the war was declared it was necessary that the
Indian girls be brought back to their own people. They were taken
first to Washington, D.C. It was during the administration of
President BUCHANAN, and while in the capital they witnessed the
funeral of General JESSUPS, and visited Congress and some other
departments of Government. On their return they came by way of
Richmond, Memphis and Little Rock, driving overland by stage from
there to the Choctaw country.

Aunt Jane had then had eleven years of English schools and she
determined to become a teacher among the Choctaws. She taught for two
years in what were known as neighborhood schools. After the close of
the first term of nine months the local trustees presented her with
$420 in gold as payment for her services. "I offered a hundred
dollars of this to my father," she says, "He was poor and needed the
money, but he shook his head. 'I am proud to know that a child of
mine so gratefully remembers her father,' he said, 'but I cannot take
the money. You have earned it and it is for you to spend it.' I then
offered fifty dollars to my mother and the little woman danced over
the floor in glee, 'Just what I needed to buy me some new cotton
cards,' she said. And there's the difference between the man and the
woman on the money question."

In 1865 Miss Austin married to Jackson F. McCurtain, who had become
a successful farmer and stock raiser. He was for a number of years a
member of the Choctaw Senate and was president of the Senate when
Principal Chief GARVIN died, and he succeeded Garvin as principal
chief. He was then elected by the people for principal chief and
again re-elected, and he thus served five years as chief. McCurtain
was a strong willed, determined man, and it is said to not other
chief ever has had his people so thoroughly in accord with him. He
died November 14, 1885, three days after the Choctaw Legislature had
convened to the new council house, which he had planned and the
construction of which probably was his greatest ambition.

Chief McCurtain had entered into a contract with the builders of the
Frisco Railroad whereby the road was to build through Tuskahoma,
which was the name of the village that grew up around the first
council house. After his death, however, speculators influenced the
company and the road missed the old capital two miles. A new town of
Tuskahoma was built on the bank of the Kiamichi River two miles to
the South.

The Choctaws established their first capitol near the present site.
The building was of large pine logs, cut from a nearby forest, and
those logs, yet in good state of preservation, constitute the
foundation and part of the walls of a warehouse in the new Town of
Tuskahoma. The first capital the Choctaws named Nanih Waya, meaning
stooping mountain. Later the capital was moved to Skullaville [sic]
and after that to Doaksville. During the Civil war the government was
conducted at Armstrong Academy, and after the war the authorities
moved back to the old site.

Aunt Jane McCurtain for thirty-two years in succession has lived in
Tuskahoma. In 1884 Chief McCurtain built a handsome large home a
stone's throw from the capitol. It remains standing today, but most
of it has been abandoned. Mrs. McCurtain for a number of years has
lived in the council house, and the Government pays her a moderate
sum to remain its mistress. She has been there during the
administration of several principal chiefs and has met more men of
prominence from the North and East than probably any other living
Indian woman. With her lives her daughter, Miss Eliza, and near her
are her other children: Mrs. C. A HURD, wife of the Pushmataha County
court clerk at Antlers; Mrs. Lyman MOORE, wife of a banker at Spire;
Mrs. Lizzie MCCOY, a widow, who lives at Idabel; and Allen C., her
only son, who occupies a farm near the capitol.

Mrs. McCurtain came into possession of a fortune of $20,000 shortly
after the death of her husband as a result of his activities on
behalf of the nation in developing the coal industry of the
segregated land district. This she invested profitably after paying
off her husband's numerous debts.

The coffin in which Jackson McCurtain was buried reached his home
from Denison, Texas, nine days before his death. He had been ill for
some days when he announced that he was going to die and asked that
the coffin be brought. He selected the site of his grave and gave
detailed instructions as to how the grave should be dug. His body
lies in a private burying ground in which also are buried two white
men, one of whom was an adventurer that died near Tuskahoma in the
'70s.

Typed for OKGenWeb by Sherry Van Scoy Hall, October 28, 1998.