Edmund Pickens (Okchantubby): First Elected Chickasaw Chief, His Life and Times

Edmund Pickens lived through a crucial period in Chickasaw history. During Removal in 1836, he traveled with his wife and children on the sad journey from the Chickasaw homelands to Indian Territory. Like other Chickasaws, he faced many hardships after settling in the new territory. But as Juanita J. Keel Tate shows in this first book-length account of Pickens’s life and times, he persevered and triumphed as a statesman and tribal leader.

Tate devoted forty-seven years to researching and writing about Pickens, visiting many courthouses in the Chickasaw homelands to locate early homesteads and Pickens family records. In Edmund Pickens (Okchantubby): First Elected Chickasaw Chief, His Life and Times, Tate describes Pickens’s service as a representative on several Chickasaw commissions that negotiated important treaties in Washington, D.C., and his work as a member of the delegation that signed the Treaty of Doaksville with Choctaw leaders in 1837. Pickens helped develop the 1856 Chickasaw Constitution and served in the Chickasaw Senate from 1857 to 1861. He signed the treaty of alliance with the Confederate States of America in 1861 and lived through the tumultuous period of the Civil War. Afterward, he served as a commissioner, negotiating the Reconstruction Treaty of 1866. Respected by the Chickasaw people for his devotion and trustworthiness, Pickens was the first elected chief of the Chickasaw Nation. With this insightful biography, Tate provides the testimony to Pickens’s character that this great leader has long deserved.

Juanita J. Keel Tate, ninety-eight-year-old Chickasaw elder, is noted for her considerable knowledge of tribal history and culture. A great-granddaughter of Edmund Pickens, Tate has been inducted into the Chickasaw Nation Hall of Fame and the Chilocco Indian School Hall of Fame.