Cherokee missions retain pride of place in the consciousness of mission historians. Some of the earliest nineteenth-century mission schools were among the Cherokees. They are generally considered to be remarkably successful, achieving high rates of literacy and Christian affiliation and helping to cement the Cherokees’ status as a “civilized” tribe within the ethnic hierarchy of the early nineteenth century. American Board missionaries and their former students played an important role in the ordeals of the 1830s, including the iconic victory at the Supreme Court turned defeat at the hands of Andrew Jackson in Worcester v. Georgia (1832) and the violent political squabbles that followed.
Yet, iconic as the Cherokee experience remains, the mission data from the 1820s reveals that the Choctaw missions were, at least in terms of numbers, an equally significant development. There were twelve Choctaw mission schools run by the American Board over the course of the 1820s, from remote local schools to important hubs at Mayhew and Elliot, plus the Choctaw Academy, a major boarding school outside of Lexington, Kentucky. This compares to eight Cherokee mission schools in both the Southeast and in Arkansas, operated by the ABCFM, the Moravians, and the Baptists.
In large part because the Choctaws spent thousands of dollars of their own annuity money to support a school system (for most of the 1820s, $6,000 a year to the American Board, plus additional amounts to the Choctaw Academy in Kentucky and for Choctaw college students elsewhere), its capacity was larger than those of most tribes. The Choctaw school system that was created with the collaboration of the ABCFM would be destroyed following Removal in 1831, but it would be reconstructed and enlarged in Indian Territory, once again with major tribal funding.
Simply based on the number of stations recorded in the federal data, along with the previously listed financial metrics, the Choctaw mission stations appear to be the largest single initiative of the Civilization Fund during the 1820s. This statement must be qualified, but it represents at least the reality that was visible for the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington.