Forrest N.B. Forrest

[diane]

Seeing it now and learning what it once was is a bit intense.

I realize there is history in every square inch of this Earth, but still. Reading "slave pen" and then looking at this photo stops me in my tracks.

It is a nasty thing we're glad is in the past. It's also interesting that it was located behind a church and next door to his private home. Forrest advertised his jail as the cleanest and healthiest in the Union, and both customers and slaves seemed to agree. Food and clothing was agreeable and he did attract the top dollar. Most former slaves, after the war, didn't have too much to say about their time with him except it could have been worse, and it could have been. Some places were perfectly horrible.

 

[roberts]

Of course there's a Le Flore County in modern-day Oklahoma in the Chickasaw lands there.

There's a Leflore County in Mississippi also. The county seat is Greenwood. Here is Leflore's home...

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[diane]

There's a Leflore County in Mississippi also. The county seat is Greenwood. Here is Leflore's home...

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That's some shack! It's something not much known - the Southern Indian aristocracy. My dad's grandparents were part of that in Kentucky, where they bred horses, which is how Forrest came to know them rather well. He recruited some uncles at Brandenburg, not far from Louisville, and they had good horses. There was a lot of shifting among the Choctaws after the Dancing Rabbit treaty and with Removal - a batch temporarily moved east with the Catawbas in South Carolina and that's how my great-grandfather married up with my great-grandmother. We have one picture we think is her - in a very nice 1850s style dress, long hair and very pretty but distinctly eastern Indian - she was Choctaw and Chickasaw.

Forrest's relationship with the Indians is interesting to me. The uncles were part of his escort and sometimes with the scouts, which is where Choctaw cousins from Oklahoma were. They had been US marshals there, primarily body guards for the chief! Lots of chaos. Bill's middle name, Hezekiah, was after a Cherokee cousin named Hezekiah Forrest - one of his paternal uncles had married a Cherokee. There were also Cherokee cousins on the Baugh side, a little further back. The Forrests speculated in land - of course, Tennessee was opened up after the Revolution, and a way of keeping claim was marriage to Natives. All this land business gave frontier lawyers like Lincoln a good living! Forrest inherited a lawsuit about his grandmother's land - she was a Ledbetter and some of her kin claimed it - when he turned 21...as did all the male Forrests on their 21st birthday! Happy birthday, son, you've been served - oh, and here's your beer...

 

[7th Mississippi Infantry]

The Choctaw LeFlore family were major players in Mississippi history.

Greenwood LeFlore was the son of the French Canadian trader Louis Le Fleur.
It's a fascinating story.

Greenwood LeFlore's father, Louis, was French and his mother, Rebecca, was of mixed French-English-Choctaw heritage and related to the Six Towns leader Pushmataha. Leaders such as LeFlore and Folsom promoted American-style education for their children and participated eagerly in the developing plantation economy of early Mississippi. Their attempts to replace traditional Choctaw notions of inheritance, government, and culture brought them into conflict with other chiefs like Mushulatubbee who, although also participating in the new market economy, espoused traditional notions of culture and authority.

http://mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.u...ctaw-removal-chiefs-confront-a-changing-world

 

[James N.]

There's a Leflore County in Mississippi also. The county seat is Greenwood. Here is Leflore's home...

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Le Flore County together with McCurtain County immediately south of it are my favorite parts of Oklahoma and are known - by boosters at least - as Oklahoma's Little Smokies because of the mountainous terrain. This is true setting for the novel and films True Grit and was the "stomping ground" of all sorts of interesting characters, white, black, and red. Ex-slave Bass Reeves was the famous marshal from "Hanging" Judge Parker's court in Fort Smith that prowled the area looking for renegades and outlaws. Stand Waite was in the area menacing the fort during the war. County Seat Poteau hails more from the postwar era of railroad development but neighboring Heavner is home to the possible relic of Viking exploration The Runestone which reposes on a hilltop in its own state park. Poteau is home to what locals call the highest hill in the world, Cavenal Hill which is only a few feet short of being a mountain.

In more recent times the area was heavily logged in the first quarter of the twentieth century but now as Ouachita National Forest it has recovered nicely, though much pine has replaced the original deciduous forest. The forty-mile-long Talimena Scenic Drive connects Talihina, Oklahoma with Mena, Arkansas along the 2000'+ elevation Rich Mountain and rivals in scenic beauty its better-known eastern counterpart, Skyline Drive overlooking the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. The most beautiful lake in the region is Broken Bow Lake near the town of the same name in McCurtain County. Two of my very favorite and beautiful lodges in which to stay are in the state parks system of the respective states, Queen Wilhelmina Lodge atop Rich Mountain just across the line in Arkansas; and lakeside Broken Bow Lodge in Oklahoma.

Another not-to-be-missed archeological site in the Arkansas River Valley west of Fort Smith is at Spiro, Oklahoma, and is the location of Spiro Mounds State Park where treasures from the Mound Culture were discovered in the 1920's. Unfortunately, many relics were despoiled by pot-hunters but there is a significant collection of them in the Natural History Museum at the University of Oklahoma.