The travels of Lizzie and Amanda Fields: Part II
The first part of this story related how two Cherokee girls from Guntersville, Alabama, traveled north to Keene, New Hampshire to be educated in the early 1830’s. We now complete this saga with the story of their journey to the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma.
The two girls remained in New Hampshire until September 1841 when their father came to take them to their new home in Oklahoma. Mr. Fields had recently been remarried and the four of them traveled together on their journey West. Lizzie wrote a letter from St. Louis to Henry E. Parker (brother of the girl’s teacher) on Oct. 25, 1841, describing their travels:
“After travelling through New York, the empire state, spending a week in wandering over Goat Island, & looking at the Falls, after being tossed for seven days & nights, on the Lakes, after passing over the prairies of Illinois, hearing the howling of prairie wolves, & coming very near breaking down & upsetting several times, after being crowded up on board the smallest Steamboat, I ever saw, or ever hope to see, on the Illinois river, we arrived in St. Louis two weeks ago ....
“The most interesting part of our journey, after we left Niagara, was from Chicago, to this place. We started from Chicago in the Stage, for the whole day it was very pleasant, only two passengers, (with whom we became acquainted on our Boat, from Buffalo,) beside us. We passed through nothing but open prairie, all the day, with sometimes a few trees, like an Oasis in the Desert, a tavern, & one or two dwelling houses, this constituted a village. At night some three more got into our stage, & one crying baby, ten o’clock we stopped to take a fashionable supper, very little sleeping was acomplis’ed, that night, for as soon as we would get into a decent doze, our baby would waken up, & commence crying. The next morning however we found ourselves in a very pretty country, a few miles from the pleasant village of Ottawa, near the junction of the Fox, & Illinois, rivers, there we took breakfast, the remainder of our stage journey was through a beautiful country on the banks of the Illinois. Near noon we arrived at Peru the head of Steamboat navigation, went on board the Exact, & came here more than two hundred miles, in two days. St. Louis is a very pretty place, containing over 30,000 inhabitants, with wide, strait-streets, laid out at right angles, there are many handsome buildings, the Court House, now building, promises to be a splendid one, it occupies one square, & fronts on four streets...
“Tomorrow we start again, on our homeward way, in the Metior, a very fine, large boat, which carries us to Napoleon, a small
town at the mouth of the Arkansas, how we get from there it is uncertain, if the river is high, so that boats can go up, we can get a long very easily, if not we must go in the Stage to Fort Smith, sixty miles from home, & then get along as we can.”{span class=”print trim”}
When they reached Fort Smith, Arkansas, in November 1841, the Fields met a man named Ethan Allen Hitchcock. In his journal he describes meeting the Fields family:
“A Cherokee half-breed, a merchant who has just returned from the north with a wife, a quakeress of Philadelphia and with two Cherokee half-breed daughters (16 and 17) or (15 and 17) who have been educated in New England ... He looks like a white man and his two daughters are very fair and one very pretty. His language is as good as that of any country merchant I ever saw. I had not been told he was a half-breed and supposed he was a white man and hearing his daughters speak of having been at Keene, New Hampshire, I asked Mr. Field if he was from that State. His daughter smiled and he answered at once that he was an Indian born and bred in Alabama but his whole demeanor and language bespeak a gentleman and a man of independence and character. I begin to see how it is that the Cherokees are noted for their progress in civilization.”
Soon after arriving in Oklahoma, Lizzie was married to William Shorey Coodey. He was then about 36 and Lizzie was 19. Her parents objected to the marriage on account of the age difference. In the end they eloped. Carolyn Thomas Foreman, Lizzie’s daughter, records that “Mr. Coodey and his second wife, Elizabeth Fields, established their home at Frozen Rock on the high bank of the Arkansas.” This would be near what is today the town of Muskogee, Oklahoma. William Coodey died in 1849 at the age of 43. After his death, Lizzie and her children returned to New Hampshire to visit the Parker family. She later was remarried to John Shepherd Vann, the son of Joseph Vann, and grandson of Chief James Vann. John Vann lived until 1877. Lizzie died about 1893 at the age of 71.
Amanda Fields was married to General Delos B. Sakett, who was afterward made Brevet Major General and Inspector General of the U.S. Army. Sadly, Amanda died on August 8, 1849 while her husband was serving on the frontier. She would have been in her early twenties when she died.
Lawrence A. Brown is a resident of Rome and the author of a three-volume series titled “The Letters of Henry Elijah Parker.” (Available on Amazon.com) Parker is Lawrence’s greatgreat-grandfather.