Listen to the episode here.

This week, Unhinged History honors the achievements of native Americans and their history.

We hear a lot about the Navajo codetalkers of WWII, but how much do you know about the Choctaw codetalkers of WWI that inspired the Second World War version? If you’re like most of the world, you don’t know much. This week, Theresa takes Angie on a romp through history as she shares the origins of the United States using the languages of indigenous peoples to communicate effectively without their messages getting intercepted.

Angie scares Theresa when she also tells a story about the Choctaw. Instead of talking about WWI, Angie zips back to the mid-1800s to share about the first Choctaw lawyer and the first Native American to be admitted to the bar in the United States. James Lawrence McDonald was educated by the government, then used his education to serve his people and help them when the nation didn’t honor its side of the treaties.

These stories pair well with:
Francis Pegahmagabow
Anandi Joshi

Transcript

Theresa: Hello and welcome to the Unhinged History Podcast, the podcast where two friends are going to just mainline history means on the daily and then wait for a story to pique our interest, compulsively learn every little bit we can, and then word bump on our friend once a week. And you are joining us for word dump. I’m host one, I’m Teresa, and that is host two. 

Angie: I’m LeAngie, you freaking weirdos. And we’re stoked that you’re here. Yeah, we are. There we go. Hey, good morning. 

Theresa: Hi, hi guys. Did you have to move your camera down so that I saw that your shirt said, let’s settle this with paper rock scissors? 

Angie: Oh, no, I had to move my camera because I okay, look at hold on. That’s our other option. Oh, you just want to talk to the eyes up. 

Theresa: I mean, the ceiling fans lovely, but isn’t it beautiful? It’s incredible. I didn’t realize you had full face, five boobs, and ceiling fan and I that was three settings. 

Angie: All so I just was I want you to know I can afford a five blade ceiling fan. 

Theresa: Yeah, the builder special even. 

Angie: There now now I can see you, you can see me. We’re doing good. We’re doing good. Nice. 

Theresa: Well, it looks like I get to go first. Okay. And I, I this has been not officially on my list, but always one of those stories I knew I needed to add. Okay. Okay. And so then I was sort of sitting there in the crock pot. Yeah, basically. 

And so I was just like, Oh, yeah, I’m going to do this one. So I don’t think we’ve actually covered like the Navajo cold talk, the Navajo cold code talkers of World War two. But today, I’m not going to even talk about them. I’m going to talk about the Chak Chak cold. Good grief. They’re not cold talkers. They’re code talkers. The Chak Chak code talkers of World War one. I love all of this. 

Angie: I think we have only briefly mentioned the Navajo code talkers. Yeah. So like, yeah, let’s, let’s do, let’s go on here. 

Theresa: I have two main sources, BDC news, World War one, the original code talkers. Nope, the original cold code talkers by Denise. 

Angie: You said it right the first time. Did I? Yes. 

Theresa: Oh, I’m going to listen to the rewind and be like, Teresa, did you need more coffee? The, set your face out. Yeah, start doing some tongue twisters. Yeah. National Museum, United States Army, World War one code talkers by Jordan, Ginder, and Elnora Larson. 

Okay. So the article from the National United States Army, that starts out with a really brilliant setup. They really go through and discuss how Americans, even when they were British colonists have cited, well, I take that back. They decided how the indigenous support for the country has been around since it’s founding, like what happened, how that worked. They talked about how the tribes would side with people who live near them to support their trading partnership. So this tribe lived closer to more British leaning settlers than they sided with the British. But if they sided with, you know, people who were more American colonists than they 

Angie: were, basically, as far as like the revolutionary war 

Theresa: goes, like, yeah, yeah, from the video, right? Like, okay, because you think about indigenous tribes, they have participated in basically all of the conflicts since we’ve arrived. Right. And so they lend their support to whomever their livelihood depended on. 

Angie: I mean, it makes sense when you hear it like that. 

Theresa: Yeah, absolutely, it does. But I hadn’t really thought of it until I read that. I went, Oh, yeah. And then they said that there’s not a single sole reason that native peoples would choose to enlist. You know, oftentimes it’s like, oh, I’m going to support Billy, Brian and Bartholomew because they support my trade partnerships, and they like buying all the pelts. 

Or it could be, you know, they’re good people or whomever, whatever, whatever it is. Now, some historians have tied Native American military service to this myth of warrior tradition. Okay. And I know that I have just blindly followed along a documentary when they’ve drummed up like, you know, the war chiefs and the whatnot. Now, the myth kind of implies that native peoples have this innate warrior ability. And I think if I thought about it logically, I’d go, Yeah, nobody has an innate or a group of humans do not have an innate ability blank, you know. But while we do have tribes that have a very strong warrior tradition, there are tribes that have a more pacifistic custom. 

And so I just want to make sure that we highlight that so that we can think about this not as a monolith, not as, you know, one tribe or one ideal representing all. So take everything with a grain of salt, basically. Okay. And so when we think about this, we really use analyze the lens we’re using, I think this will allow us to come up with a lot of sense in hindsight. Okay. 

All right. Now, while we do have native soldiers joining the military for a myriad of reasons, the previous director of the National Museum of the American Indian, Kevin Gover, he says that native peoples are acknowledging the mistreatment of their tribes that they’ve suffered at the hands of the United States, yet they still imagine a different and better tribal life in the future, which is beautiful. And I think it shows this hope and resilience and desire to improve life. Agreed. Yeah. 

Meanwhile, and I want to highlight this, when I get cut off by one person on the freeway, I acknowledge that I am personally ready to lead SEAL Team Six into action for this massive scorched earth campaign. 

Angie: For the indignation. Right. For the implied flight. Yeah. So I feel this. 

Theresa: I am all over the place and I do not view myself as redeemable as this ideology that I’m ascribing to a different group of humans. Now, so we think about this, leading up to the Great War, because we didn’t realize we were going to have a couple of these bad boys. We see this path that’s fraught with trauma for Indigenous brothers and sisters. First off, we as Americans, we try to racing them. We try to various myriad, like a variety of means. We tried war, genocide, basic assimilation. Big murdery. Yeah. I mean, everything but just bringing cookies over when I’m honest. 

Angie: I think we tried that too, and it was not good cookies. 

Theresa: Well, yeah. I mean, we did bring blankets, but they were laced with smallpox. That’s exactly what I was thinking. Yep. Now, the U.S., they’d set up boarding schools, and this is where children are forced to speak English and they’re forced to learn Western culture. And even this, as the guys, if we are hoping to help your children into this modern world and to learn the Western ways, it’s basically to just erase the Indian out of the human. And to the point where they have armed guards and police that are forcing some children into the schools. So totally chill. 

Angie: So, America, to beat that chill. Yeah. Yeah. 

Theresa: Now, it’s so militaristic, where the schools are so militaristic, I should say. They have short haircuts, uniforms, unit organizations. It reminded me when I was really looking at this of the story in the Bible of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. 

You know, where they’re taken from their homes, names are changed, haircuts, forced to eat foreign food and speak a foreign language, and Servit King wants to stamp out their culture. 

Angie: Yeah. Okay. I can very much see that connection. 

Theresa: Yeah. And we praise Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego for standing up underneath that oppression. And I just want to make sure that if we’re looking at it from Western lens, we completely look at it, be like, you know what, we like it when they don’t. 

We support the underdog, even though in this case, we’re the overlord. Yeah. So all of that for all of this tough, you know, thing way to look at it. Now, many of the co-talkers that attended the boarding schools, they recalled the schools punishing them for speaking their native languages. Of course. And then later, some of them say that the military feel of the schools really smoothed their transition into military life, which that’s telling. 

Yeah, okay. Oh, basic, basic training, the drill sergeants, that was homeroom. Yeah, we did this in sixth grade. Yeah. 

He was just fine. Yeah. I can do push-ups while I’m sleeping. Thank you. Thanks to Ms. Morgensen. That woman is terrifying. Now, we have that as the background. 

Here’s what we get into the story. It’s late September 18, nope, late September of 1918. And the 13th Infantry Division, they have kind of a big ass problem. The U.S. Army signal communications, well, the messages that they’re sending are not exactly staying secret. 

Unfortunate. The Germans are intercepting these bad boys just as quickly as they’re coming in and translating them into plain English. Oh, I think the messages themselves aren’t plain English. And so they’re just translating like, oh, yeah, they’re going to the grocery store to pick up some eggs. Why don’t we add some mayo to that grocery list and then we’ll just swing by and pick it up and we wipe them out of the trench. Yeah. 

Okay. Now, the enemies that are using these messages, they end up finding allied locations often, and this allows them to gain lots of advantages in the battlefield. So this is some bad news bears. Okay. Now, Matt Reed, who’s the curator of the American Indians collections at the Oklahoma History Center, he goes on to say that it was a huge problem and they really couldn’t figure out a way around it. Yeah. Okay. 

Which just highlights the no dumb move, right? Now, they have a solution they stumble on, and this is because there’s a couple of people who overhear a conversation between two Choctaw soldiers in the 142nd Infantry Regiment. The pair are just chatting in the camp when a captain walked by and asked what language they’re speaking. Now, unbeknownst to them, the captain is realizing this potential for communication and then he asks if there’s any other speakers among the troops. 

Now, the men, they know who their kind are, right? So they know of these Choctaw soldiers at company headquarters. So using a field telephone, the captain got the men to deliver a message and their native tongue with their colleagues could quickly trans back into English. So the Choctaw telephone squad was born and that started the code talking. 

Angie: I love that the Choctaw telephone squad sounds like something we created yesterday to be the name of a band. 

Theresa: Honestly, you say that and I agree to your terms. Yeah. 

Angie: It’s like such a modern phrase. I love it. Yeah. 

Theresa: Let’s go. They play an indie pop or folk. Yeah. Yeah. Now, using the Choctaw language, this apparently gives everyone a big advantage because it was using the Choctaw language had huge advantages. It’s a largely unknown language. 

Only a few American Indian tribes had more than 20,000 people. So the languages individually are not widely spoken. Most are not written down. And even the ones that are written, usually only have Bibles and hymns and those are consumed locally. 

Angie: Interesting. Okay. So I hadn’t thought of something like that before. Right. 

Theresa: So this is something that is, we base the United States just innately had tons of language options that were absolutely secret to the Western world. The Western world here meaning European influence. Right. That is nuts. Okay. Common sense once you hear it. 

Angie: But would not ever thought about it. Right. And I’m sitting here thinking too, like if the written word is like the basic gist of the written word is Bibles and hymns, how many words are missing? 

Theresa: I’ll get into some of that. Right. Because there’s going to be some words that just don’t directly translate. Right. 

Angie: Right. Okay. Carry on. 

Theresa: Yeah. Put a pen in that because that props up here. Now, so this, the Choctaw, Telfa squad, that gets put into action almost instantly. Within hours, eight Choctaw speakers have been dispatched to strategic positions. And they are incredibly instrumental at helping the US troops win several key battles. Love this. They’re so cool. Now the Germans went from intercepting nearly every message, translating it almost immediately, and then just telling everybody what we said. 

Now they’re still listening, but they can’t understand a damn thing. This has to also be, when I think about it, the quickest way to code and decode info, because you’re not coding, you’re translating. 

Angie: Yeah. And this is directly across in a language nobody else understands. Right. Brilliant. 

Theresa: Now the language itself flabbergasts the Germans. And this, who said it, but a man named Reid. So if I say Reid later, we’ll know, you know, this quote comes from him. There’s stories that they thought the US had invented a contraption to speak underwater is the quote. And I, what the hell does that mean? 

Angie: I need to know what it sounds like now. 

Theresa: Like, let’s assume the Americans had figured out a way to speak underwater. That doesn’t mean I know how to translate what is heard from speaking underwater. Yeah. Okay. Reid, I like you. 

You’re weirdo. I mean, but to be fair, he’s just translating or he’s just reading stuff the Germans are writing, but that makes me wonder what the, like, how much gas attacks had that German been under for them to think that was a coherent sentence. Yeah, like, that’s where you went with that. 

Angie: Okay. Yeah. Okay, buddy. I’m gonna go sit back down. 

Theresa: Yeah. You need a juice cup because your blood sugar sounds low. Yeah. Now the Choctaw cover mill mini military didn’t cover mini military terms. So they had to come up with some coded words. Machine gun ends up being little gun shoot fast. 

Angie: Love that. That’s up there. We never not hear it any other way now. Right. 

Theresa: That’s up there with North Korea saying the elevator is the up down machine. Yeah. So I mean, now typically in their native tongue, when they would say machine gun, they would say it just with their own accent on it in the middle of the sentence. But now they can’t say that because it would be like mumble, mumble, mumble machine gun, mumble, mumble, mumble. And so they had to come up with that coded language. 

Angie: Oh my God, it’s like when you’re, it’s like when you’re a parent and your kids or friends figuring out how to spell the word. So you have to figure out how to say it to your spouse without saying it to your spouse. 

Theresa: My parents came up with the term they wouldn’t say pizza out loud. They would call it a circular Italian food object. There you go. 

Angie: Yeah. I like that. It took exactly one time for me to figure out what a pizza was. 

Theresa: I mean, and now I can never not think of it as a circular Italian food object. There. With all of this, there’s a total of 19 Choctaw soldiers that are recruited to the 141st, 142nd, 143rd Infantry Regiments. Many of them knew each other from Oklahoma. Okay. And then later on we get other American tribes that are used in the same way, including like the Cherokee and the Comanche. 

Okay. Now the front line where many of the Choctaw were used was the Muse Argonne Offensive. And this turned out to be the final part of the Allied campaign on this Western front. But it was the work of the Choctaw specifically in shaping military communications and future conflicts. They really set the paradigm for the Navajo and the Comanche co-talkers of World War II and them being the most famous. 

You know, so we don’t even think about World War I and where we got the idea. Right. There is a, I believe woman, yeah, woman, Nuchi Nathoba. And she’s the president of the Choctaw Co-Talkers Association. It was her grandfather, Ben Carter’s bee, who was one of the men used the original test to send that message on the Western front. And she says co-talking was an idea that was copied over and over, but it may have never happened had it been for the Choctaw. 

Angie: That’s, and to think it just came from two guys having a conversation next to each other. Yeah, yeah. 

Theresa: And the same time like that this is happening, the Choctaw language, you know, being used, it’s under pressure in the U.S. And they’re trying to stamp it out using cultural simulations. The government’s attempts to civilize American Indians involved, you know, putting their children in these schools and really punishing them severely any time the language is taught. So you have this situation where the speakers are on the front lines. They hear somebody or they know somebody overheard them speaking and ask them, what are you speaking? And now they’re panicked. 

Are they about to be in trouble just like they were back in boarding school? I hate that. And that was one of those things where what was, you know, something they were just trying to get beaten out of them ended up being the saving grace. 

Usually is. Now, when you think about the Choctaw’s way of life, you know, it was completely under threat at the time of this. It was a little more than a generation before that they were forcibly removed from their ancestral land. It was the 1830s Indian Removal Act where they were marched from the areas around Mississippi to Oklahoma and they were part of the Trail of Tears. And I didn’t realize, I knew the Cherokee were, but I didn’t know the Choctaw were in that group. There were 12,000 Choctaw that were moved and of those 12,000, 2,500 died of disease, hunger, and exhaustion. But then when the Choctaw were needed, the soldiers were incredibly gracious and they shared their language. They didn’t have to, but they did. 

And I think there’s something incredibly beautiful about that. And then nationwide, the American Indians didn’t get citizenship until 1924, years after World War I had finished and 12,000 indigenous people fought for the U.S. according to the National Museum of American Indian. And they volunteered to fight because defending their land and people is a part of their culture, it’s part of their tradition. And I need to call out here that while we had 12,000 that fought, a third of Native peoples at that time weren’t recognized by the federal government. 

That feels right. Now, Reed, who I didn’t put their first name, and I was hoping I would have done by now, says that this was an extension of the tradition, the traditional warrior role that men protect and provided for those who couldn’t do it themselves or weren’t expected to. It’s about what it means to be a man and a leader, warriors regarded with the most, or utmost respect in their communities. It’s the same with veterans and it still is today. 

And I think that’s beautiful. Now, we have these soldiers who come home and we, like, we don’t have a lot of information about it and that’s almost by design because co-talking and what happened in World War I wasn’t really talked about because, you know, you just, you didn’t really, they just didn’t talk about it a whole lot. In most cases, families and communities didn’t know a ton because apparently for the Choctaw, you don’t talk about your own achievements. You let others praise you. 

I like it. So, you know, you let somebody else brag about what you did, right? Now, like it was like the co-talk, like Neshoba, the woman I talked about earlier who leads one of the organizations, she says, co-talkers wouldn’t have told stories about themselves. They regarded what they had done as just their duty. When my great-grandfather was interviewed for a local publication after he returned from the war, he simply said, I went to France, I saw the country and I came back alive. That’s all you get. Done. And so, if you didn’t have your body being like, and Angie was the first person to do that, it wasn’t for Angie kicking some serious ass, then Jerry’s would still be, you know. 

Yeah, that’ll make sense. And I will say that I want to make an important call out here that the Choctaw are the most recorded World War I co-talkers, but there was a group of Eastern Ban Cherokee that used their language to communicate for the 105th Field Artillery Battalion and the 30th Infantry Division, and that these soldiers successfully delivered messages between Allied troops without interception. And they continued their work to the end of the war. 

And then we have evidence to suggest that there’s a group called the Ho-Chunk and they’re the first Native language that were used earlier in 1918. Okay. But it’s anecdotal and I don’t have a ton of detail. The most we have is about the Choctaw. 

Angie: I mean, either way, that’s cool. Now, yeah, I’m impressed. Well done. 

Theresa: So, I’m going to end on this note. It’s 1924 with the Congress Grant citizenship to all Native Americans, and that’s partly because of the Native enlistment during the war, which while I don’t, I think they should have, we should have their citizenship, not give them ours. I think that’s at least a step in the right direction, right? Now, it isn’t until 1975 that tribes gained the full civil rights with passing the Indian Self-Determination Education Assistance Act. This allows Native nations a lot more autonomy and they have the ability to take responsibility for operating programs and services that are ran by the Department of the Interior. And it’s three years later that Congress passes the Indian American Indian Religious Freedom Act. And this basically gives them the freedom to serve whatever religious process or methodology they want. Okay. The government would honor the Navajo Code Talkers for their service in 2000, and then in 2008, Congress recognized all other Native Code Talkers with a Congressional Code Medal. 

Angie: That’s taken an awfully long time. 

Theresa: I feel like anytime I talk about a group that isn’t well known, when I get to, and Congress did this, it’s going to be 60 or 80 years later. At least, yeah. At that point, I’m like, it is what it is. Yeah. 

Angie: I had the wildest English teacher in high school. She did insane things, but one of the coolest things she did is arranged an interview with one of the last Living Code Talkers. So that was pretty cool. That is very neat. Yeah. And that was in 2001. It was pretty single. That is the one thing from the class that I was like, that was, you did a lot of weird stuff, but this was a win. Thank you for that. 

Theresa: I mean, I think some of the best teachers are the ones that are going to go out on a limb. They’re going to do the weird thing. 

Angie: She sure did. She sure did. It was just one of those classes where I’m like, what am I even doing in this class? Did I have homework today? I can’t remember. But yeah. 

Theresa: Enjoy the transition from the Code Talkers. 

Angie: It’s actually not that insane, because I am also speaking about the Chakta today. Okay. 

Theresa: I just panicked. Ha ha ha. 

Angie: Don’t worry. Mine’s like a hundred years before. My sources are the Harmon Museum out of Warren County. It is an article written by Sylvia Outland. She is the art curator for this museum. And then the Museum of Native American History in Bentonville, Arkansas, which has its acronym is MONA. 

So, m-o-n-a-h dot org. And for the longest time, every time I looked at that, I’m like, what? I’ve never heard of the MONA tribe before. 

Why is it saying MONA, but we’re talking about the Chakta. I am so, and then finally I was like, oh my gosh, it’s an acronym, you idiot. And then a really, really well done article on Wikipedia helped sort of fill the blanks in where other sources did not have timeline information or like explain a situation. Wikipedia was there and they were like, we got you friend. 

This is what this means. And I was like, cool, thanks. I needed that. I mean, I love it. Yeah. So today, my offering is the story of the first Indigenous lawyer. 

Theresa: Oh, wow. Carry on. 

Angie: So off the top of your head though, what year do you think they would have been born? 

Theresa: I don’t like this game. You know what you said a hundred years before. I’m going to say 1818. 

Angie: 1801. And I’m going to tell you I was shocked to learn that because as you just mentioned, Native Americans did not get their citizenship until 1924. So when I thought about being a lawyer and what that sort of entails, I would have thought that we wouldn’t have seen the first Native American lawyer until 1930. I don’t want to say that was my bias, but that was what I assumed. Right. 

Theresa: You can practice law, but you can’t leave the country and come back. Yeah. 

Angie: So anyway, I was shocked to discover that James Lawrence McDonald was born in 1801 in the Choctaw Tribal homelands of Mississippi. So there is almost nothing known about his father other than he was a European descent. I mean, by the last name alone, one can guess he’s probably Scottish, but there’s no sources that I found that definitively confirmed that. But given the time and the place, it doesn’t make sense, especially with the last name for him to be at least of some sort of Scottish descent. Now, his mother is called Molly McDonald, which I’m guessing is not her given name, but these sources don’t have that information. So we just call her Molly McDonald. 

She is a landowner and a good straighter. Would you know that? Which I think is pretty cool. Now, the other thing that we know about her besides her being Indigenous was that she saw her son’s education as like the most important thing. Her goal for him was to grow up to be a tribal leader. So for her, his education was like, was paramount, right? 

Like, that’s my job. And because he was born to a Choctaw mother, he is, he’s never viewed as an outsider. Like, he is raised among the tribe and not seen any other way, which I kind of think is sort of par for the course when, at least with the American Indigenous people, when you have a European father, your maternal line is what matters anyway. 

But that’s not, I wouldn’t say that’s for everybody, but I think that’s pretty common. So, mom, okay, the, the other thing I have to say, because I just inherently bilingual, he speaks both English and his native Choctaw, which is like kind of a big deal. Now, mom first enrolled him in the Quaker Run Mission school near their home. And according to the PD article, it’s about 1811, he would have been 10 or 11 years old. His mother then places him in the home of a white man called Silas Dinsmore, who was a government official that served as the federal liaison between the Choctaw Nation and the federal government. What I have to say next, I did not know. 

And I was like, holy cow. We have to remember it is only 1811. And we are still a fairly new nation, right? So going on that vein, according to the PD article, it was not uncommon during the post-revolution years for many Indigenous parents to place their children into white households. 

Theresa: They hate this, but it makes sense. That’s exactly what I said. 

Angie: I had to do a lot of googling on this one because I was like, wait a minute, there’s more to this. There’s more to this. Initially, the basic just is this. They see this as a benefit. Being able to place their children among their white children for their education, this allows them as a way to learn like the white customs and what all the happenings are. And that the expectation is their children would then return and use this experience, use this education and these practices to the advantage of their people. What the PD article didn’t expressly state is that this is sort of the beginning of the whole boarding school thing that we now know and are very familiar with today. It goes on to say that the officials from the American Board missionaries, they’re basically like a, this is such a weird group, but my understanding is the American Board missionaries, they’re like the overboard of education in this area. And I believe they’re all from a Quaker group. They report that their attempts to give the children a proper English education were mostly in vain as they, they being Indigenous children, would we return to their quote, amusement and former follies. They said most white society believed that the Indigenous could never be educated. 

Theresa: Oh, that’s beautiful. 

Angie: Right? Okay. I hate most of the sentences that I’m saying. After two years with Dinsmore, the man who’s caring for James, he is seen as an exemplary student. Like Dinsmore is so impressed with what James is, with what he’s up to. And this catches the eye of Thomas L McKinney, who is the US superintendent of Indian trade at the time. Um, I believe his involvement sort of spurs James McDonald’s next move, because then he is sent to Baltimore by the yearly meeting of friends, which is a Quaker group, right, to study under a man called Philby Thomas. Now I do the Quakers, like we’re having an in early education and things like that at this time. And I know they always have like meeting of friends, but I did not realize that that was like an organizational name. Like I was like, Oh, there’s a lot about Quakers. I don’t know. 

Theresa: Um, to the point where I, I had a neighbor at one point who grew up Quaker, and I would just say, Hey friend, like just in general, and she’s just like, Are you Quaker? 

Angie: No, no, you’re Fred. 

Theresa: Like I could have said any other word like, Hey cat, Hey, cool cat, Hey, Hey, and I just said friend. And she’s like, Oh, that’s a Quaker term. And then I felt uncomfortable saying friend. And it took a while to be like, I don’t want to co-op somebody’s religious language. 

Angie: Yeah, no, right. And so when I was first reading about this yearly meeting of friends, I’m like, What is this? So I was like, Google help us to stir out. And immediately they were like, This is the Quakers. 

And I was like, Well, okay, don’t I feel silly. So our guy goes to Baltimore. He studies in the home of a man called Philip E. Thomas. Now there’s a lot of men involved in his education. But McKinney, for his part, wanted to use James McDonald as an example, that providing good education would allow the indigenous to assimilate faster into the American mainstream. Okay. That said, I do not think McKinney was malevolent in his actions. I think he thought that was genuinely the proper thing to do for the better for like, for the good of everyone. 

Sure. Obviously, I think he’s wrong, right? But everything he does is to set up McDonald’s for a better life. And they have a close relationship. Now, at the moment, though, McDonald is living with this man called Thomas. And Thomas is the president of the Maryland school. And he seems to have been a good educator, but I don’t necessarily believe that he was really out for the good of this particular student. Because as he starts to see him see what sort of example of a student he is, that he is just this phenomenal, the phenomenal kid that does all of these things and is perpetually learning and is like excited to be learning. He writes a letter to the Department of War describing McDonald’s potential and how he could possibly be used as quote a means to assist in the removal of Native Americans from their tribal homelands. 

Theresa: I hate the idea of exploiting children, right? 

Angie: I honestly don’t see how this can be seen as a good and wonderful thing for him to try to accomplish. You know what I mean? Now, McKinney, who I mentioned earlier, has, so James McDonald spends a couple of years in the home of Thomas, Philippe Thomas, or being cared for by Philippe Thomas. But those couple of years pass, and McKinney sort of takes over his housing and provides him a job in a dry dead store until he graduates in 1818. 

Now, this quote I’m going to give is direct from the P article because it both infuriated me and gave me hope for McDonald at the same time. When McDonald graduated school in 1818, McKinney offered him a job at the Office of Indian Trade. Their relationship as federal employees evolved into friendship, and the superintendent treated the young chock-tie as an adopted son by giving a home and a quote white job. During his time with the department, McDonald continued to take various classes and worked at a local dry good store. In an 1819 letter, McDonald writes that he had quote spent 20 months learning business at the store, received an education in surveying, attended a course of lectures on national and experimental philosophy, learned Latin, and partially studied mechanics and astronomy. McDonald continued to learn about business culture and economics. While working in DC, McDonald was constantly impressing his superiors with his hard work, his dedication, and his skill. In 1819, McKinney wrote Secretary of John C. Calhoun about McDonald’s academic progress and his encouraging of McDonald’s to attend law school. In the letter, which included McDonald’s letter, McDonald declined any desire to attend law school. Instead, he expressed a desire to travel to his home in the Choctaw Nation and farm for the government. He also stated that the nostalgia of being reared on a farm beckoned, yet he closed saying, so this isn’t McDonald speaking, quote, but I must confess, I have some ambition to distinguish myself, some disposition to be useful and a desire to be free of the character educated Indian youth with some degree of justice cast upon it of a proneness to relapse into savages. 

Oh, geez. So when I first read this, I was like, okay, so he really, he like wants to make something of himself and he wants this education. He just doesn’t want to be a lawyer. He would rather be a farmer and that’s cool too, because he is literally like, hey, I want to farm for the government, which seems to me like a terrible idea, but for him that was his goal. And then I reread the sentence, the last sentence about him wanting to be free of the character of the Indian youth. And I was like, this poor man is a man torn between two worlds. 

Theresa: Yeah, yeah, he’s had down, he’s had his ethnicity ripped from his, his mind. 

Angie: Yeah, like in the harshest way possible, as far as I can imagine, when maybe not in the physical way, but when you are, you spent most of your life in the home of white men who believe that 

Theresa: that you’re lesser and you’ve internalized that racism. 

Angie: Yeah, how you then react, especially when you yourself are half white. 

Theresa: Yeah, and they’re probably saying all of your goodness is from the whiteness. Oh, you’re smarter than the rest. Oh, I like being smarter. It’s probably because of your white daddy. 

Angie: Which we know literally nothing about. And I absolutely hate that for him, because the more I was reading, the more I was learning that like, you know, when we have people like Blackjack Pershings, you have these characters that are these very complicated, sometimes we do the right thing, and then sometimes we say the absolute wrong thing, or we do the wrong thing, but we’re still viewed as a hero. 

Theresa: You know what, like, I’m not going to say it’s limited to characters like Blackjack Pershings that are complicated. I’m going to say humanity is complicated. I’m going to say Teresa has said fairly problematic things at multiple points in her life. 

Angie: Haven’t we all? Right. Like, to me, he was just, he’s one of those individuals that that really stands out for him. Like, the duality of his life must have been so hard for him to like deal within his own brain, right? Okay. So anyway, I hated that paragraph, but here we are. McKinney, he is obviously impressed. And I believe that that former paragraph is sort of why he’s reaching out to Calhoun, the Secretary of War, because he wants to help further McDonald’s education. 

So according to the Harmon Museum about this time, McDonald’s education gets taken over by the government and, quote, funded by the government through the help of the Secretary of War, John C. Calhoun, McDonald would continue his studies in Greek, Latin, Flossy, Business, Surveying, and Science. Holy cow, what are we doing? That is so many different categories of interest. Yeah. 

Theresa: Yeah. Right? Basically, Ida said, pick a lane. Let’s, let’s become a master of one first. 

Angie: Right. Like, he is just doing all the things. Now, McKinney and Calhoun are both big for him. Like, they, they want to see how far he can go and what he can do. And they both pressure him to pursue either a law degree or perhaps a degree in science or theology. But James wants to go home to the Choctaw territory to be near his mother. That said, in 1821, he began studying law under the Ohio Supreme Court Justice John McLean, who happened to be besties with Calhoun. 

Theresa: John McLean, isn’t that the name of Die Hard? Okay. I just want to make sure I just, I had a very different visual of this man. 

Angie: I can’t say it without the grid. I was like, don’t, don’t, don’t do it to the face. 

Theresa: Did this justice wear shoes? Because I can’t imagine he did. 

Angie: I, I didn’t see his photo. I’m unclear. Let’s just pretend he never wore shoes. It is what it is. In just two years, McDonald will become the first native to be admitted to the Ohio bar and by default, the first in the US. The Harmon Museum has a quote from the Western Star from July 12 of 1823 saying, at the Supreme Court, lately held at Dayton, Phineas Ross, Jesse Corwin, James L. McDonald and Thomas G. Ward were severely, severely admitted to practice as counselors, solicitors and attorneys in the several courts of record in this state. So our guy is official. Immediately, Calhoun and McKinney worked to convince McDonald to help assist the quote, federal government from in persuading Choctaw to leave or assimilate to Western culture. 

Theresa: Maybe you should have gone first. I feel like this would have been a better transition with that line. 

Angie: Right. Now, keep in mind that this is also about the time we are seeing a big increase of tension and confrontation between Southern states and the local indigenous groups. Shocked, I know you are. 

Theresa: I mean, yeah, we’re also heading up to night or 1830 where they’re going to do the removal. Right. 

Angie: So it’s just, there’s a lot going on and McDonald is seeing it like he is, he is very aware. Additionally, so because he’s seeing it, McDonald is actively working on his education when the DOAC Treaty of 1820 is signed. 

The DOAC Treaty or the Treaty of DOACSAN was the seventh of nine major treaties that were ratified from the period of 1786 through 1866 between the United States and the Choctaw Nation. This is of course during a time of intense and rapid westward expansion of white settlers. Now, under the treaty, the Choctaw seceded about six million acres of their land in Mississippi. 

It’s this is 1820. They have succeeded about six million acres of their land in Mississippi in exchange for roughly 13 million acres in the Arkansas territory. The US government promised that profits from the sale of Mississippi lands would be used to build schools for Choctaw youth, part of a whole policy to civilize the tribe and all that. However, shocking, the promise arrangements fail. The proceeds from the land sales were not used to support the schools as promised and no treaty guarantees and the treaty guarantees weren’t honored. As a result, the Choctaw and many other tribes increasingly found that treaties with the US were unreliable. They had to depend on lawyers and litigation to try to enforce treaty obligations by US officials. 

Theresa: Shocking. I wish history wasn’t so damn consistent. 

Angie: Right? So keep that in mind because remember, the white men in McDonald’s life are really trying to get him on board with assisting in the removal or assimilation of his people and he has already expressed a deep desire to go home and farm. 

Theresa: So, but how about if we move that home? Is home a mindset set or is it a location? Say mindset. 

Angie: Right. Okay. So McDonald, he refuses and returns home and becomes the first Choctaw lawyer. What do you think his thing was like his soapbox, if you will? Well, you guessed it. He is an adamant opponent of removal. 

Theresa: Surprise, surprise. I’m glad that he’s standing up for this. Right? 

Angie: Now, he sets about using his law degree to not only benefit his people, but like also his mother. And okay, so this is one of those moments where we learn just how complicated people are. Her, his mother, remember, she is a landowner and she’s a good trader. 

Right? So she purchases a slave on credit. Her collectors come early and obviously because they’ve come early, she does not have the money to pay off the balance. So they take her property quote unquote, the slave. And so she turns around and tells her son who cites the fourth sections of the Indian trade loss and gets a hold of Calhoun. 

And within a couple of months, she receives compensation for her slave. Here’s the thing. I could have easily left that part out, but I think it is so important to be able to see all of the sides of humanity. Right. And this event also showed McDonald what he could do with a full understanding of the role he could play regarding Indian affairs from his government funded education, which I think is beautiful. Like I’m so curious if at any point in his life he was sitting there getting that education funded by the government going, I am literally going to use this against you. 

I mean, I hope me too. In 1825, with the help of a man called David Folsom, he is able to ensure the protection of mission schools obtained high annuity payments and the forgiveness of debts for the Choctaw. So he is working. 

He is doing a thing. In a declaration to Congress, he noted that the native man would be made to become like the white man, but the tribe would not be doomed to extinction. And despite them becoming like white men, they would not cease being American Indians. He additionally argued that the federal government had a duty to protect tribal rights on the founding principles of liberty and equality. He also said that the nation’s deepest political commitments to these principles would ensure the protection of the Choctaw rights. 

And that race should not be a factor between the tribes and the U.S., but instead the rule of the law, which I was like, wow, brilliant. I wish we just work off that. Yeah, same. Right? 

Theresa: I think that the problem when you look at systemic racism is that it’s the system has been built to uphold. So the laws themselves were created in such a way to keep people under the rule of thumb. 

Angie: I would agree with you on that. But I think in this case, he knew the law as it regarded his people, and he would was working on the hope that laws could be what protected his people. So obviously some things need to be changed, right? But at the end of the day, we should not look at each other by our race. We should look at each other based on this idea of equality and the U.S. government’s role in protecting those rights for not just white people, but every people. Now, according to the Harmon Museum, quote, as an advocate of schooling, learning of social and cultural differences, and his experience of the harsh treatment he encountered during previous negotiations, James later came to believe that the only way for the Choctaw to survive was to agree to removal. In 1830, he signed the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek. This treaty allowed those Choctaw who wished to remain in Mississippi and became the first major non-European ethnic group to gain recognition as a U.S. citizen. 

Like P.D. says, he later regretted his involvement in this treaty, which I think is interesting, but I think maybe he realized that removals, despite the fact that it may keep his people safe, is not the goal as it’s never been, you know? Then in late September or early October of 1831, when he was just 30 years old, he dies. 

No! The mostly accepted story is that he falls in love with a white woman who scorns him supposedly because he’s Native and he drowns himself. Here’s the thing, and I struggle with sort of all of these ideas. He was evidently already suffering with depression and alcoholism according to the Museum of Native American History, and here’s the thing. 

If his whole statement was that he didn’t want to fall into the ways of the character that the Indian person has, do you really think he’s going to start picking up alcohol? Like what happened between the two moments, right? Well, I mean, you can’t… 

Theresa: Okay, self-medicating is self-medicating. He’s attempting to fix a problem. So if he has depressive tendencies, could he try to find something to help him? Sure. Right. Like you can’t say he’s depressive. Ergo, he’s going to… Like if you are having trouble, you are going to try to get that… work with that discomfort. Right. 

Angie: I just find it… To me, I’m not sure that I believe depression and alcoholism were involved because of all the things he said before, but also the other side to that is holy crap, this man’s life has been insane since minutes one. So maybe depression has been something we have been fighting with for a very long time, and the self-medicating of alcohol is pretty much sort of what we have available to us in 1830. You know what I mean? 

Theresa: I mean, that’s a lot of them. Let’s be honest. 

Angie: There’s not a lot of options. Now, according to the American Board missionary, they wrote at the time that, quote, McDonald had been indulging in his dissipated habits, and he drowned himself, having previously expressed the conviction that his damnation was sealed. McKinney, for his part, writes a very colorful version in his memoir saying, quote, after a white woman in Jackson rejected his proposal for marriage with promptness, and as he thought, with scorn, McDonald rushed to the river, sprang off a bluff, and drowned himself. I have not read McKinney’s memoir, but I feel like the whole thing is very colorful, and now I want to read it. There is also a book called Indians and the Family by Don Peterson that suggests McDonald could have made enemies in the South over his outspoken political opinions about Jackson’s politics, and perhaps that’s what did. 

Theresa: I mean, it could be he, some white dude, saw him making an advance at a white woman, even though he got shot down, they went, we’re going to deal with this. 

Angie: Right? So there’s really no way to know for sure, but that’s the story of the first Indigenous lawyer. Oh, wow. Okay. 

Theresa: Well, thank you for sharing. I close to each other. Yeah, I will admit, I puckered when you said you were sticking with the Choctaw, I was like, well, crap, she’s going to do it to me. She is going to tell the same story. 

Angie: How wild will that have been? 

Theresa: We keep talking about how it’s going to happen one day. And today I thought it did. But if you want to tune in for next week where we inevitably come up with the same story, rate, review, subscribe, and share this with your favorite, this person should have been a lawyer. 

Angie: Or your favorite lawyer. 

Theresa: Yeah. And on that note, favorite lawyer. Goodbye. 

Theresa: Bye.