Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 5).djvu/164

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PUSHMATAHAW
PUTNAM

death. He held a high place in civil affairs, was engaged in laying out roads and negotiating with the Indians, and for two years was sheriff of Chester county. For many years he was a justice of the peace and of the county courts, and an associate justice of the supreme court, serving also for ten years or more in the assembly, and for more than a quarter of a century in the supreme or provincial council. His name constantly appears in the minutes of the Society of Friends among those who were most active in settling difficulties and in promoting deeds of benevolence. He frequently appeared in the ministry, and as a controversialist and a writer was one of the ablest and most noted of his sect in his day. His reply to Daniel Leeds was liberally subscribed for by the meetings, and widely circulated. He was an intimate friend of George Keith, but, when the latter attacked the Quaker doctrines, Pusey was active among those who pronounced against him. From Pusey, Smith, the early historian, obtained much of the material from which he made up his manuscript history, which formed the basis of Robert Proud's “History of Pennsylvania.” In 1697 Pusey was chosen by the Quakers to be one of the committee to examine all books that the society proposed to publish, which post he held till his death. Among his published writings are “A Serious and Seasonable Warning unto all People occasioned by two most Dangerous Epistles to a late Book of John Falldoe's,” addressed to the people called Anthony Palmer's Church (London, 1675); “A Modest Account from Pennsylvania of the Principal Differences in Point of Doctrine between George Keith and those of the People called Quakers” (1696); “Satan's Harbinger encountered; His False News of a Strumpet detected,” etc., a reply to Daniel Leeds's “News of a Strumpet” (Philadelphia, 1700); “Daniel Leeds justly rebuked for abusing William Penn, and his Folly and Fals-Hoods contained in his Two Printed Challenges to Caleb Pusey made Manifest” (1702); “George Keith once more brought to the Test, and proved a Prevaricator” (1703); “Proteus Ecclesiasticus, or George Keith varied in Fundamentals” (1703); “The Bomb searched and found stuff'd with False Ingredients, being a Just Confutation of an Abusive Printed Half-Sheet, call'd a Bomb, originally published against the Quakers, by Francis Bugg” (1705); “Some Remarks upon a Late Pamphlet signed part by John Talbot and part by Daniel Leeds, called the Great Mystery of Fox-Craft” (1705); and “Some Brief Observations made on Daniel Leeds, his Book, entituled ‘The Second Part of the Mystery of Fox-Craft’” (1706). For a fuller account of the titles of these works see “Issues of the Pennsylvania Press, 1685-1784,” by Charles R. Hildeburn (1885). The imprint of Pusey's works, excepting the first two and the last, bear the name of Reynier Jansen.

PUSHMATAHAW, Choctaw chief, b. in what is now Mississippi, in 1765; d. in Washington, D. C., 24 Dec., 1824. He had distinguished himself on the war-path before he was twenty years old. He joined an expedition against the Osages west of the Mississippi, and was laughed at by the older members of the party because of his youth and a propensity for talking. The Osages were defeated in a desperate conflict that lasted an entire day. The boy disappeared early in the fight, and when he returned at midnight he was jeered at and openly accused of cowardice. “Let those laugh,” was his reply, “who can show more scalps than I can”; whereupon he took five from his pouch and threw them on the ground. They were the result of an onslaught he had made single-handed on the enemy's rear. This feat gained for him the title of “The Eagle.” After spending several years in Mexico, he went alone in the night to a Torauqua village, killed seven men with his own hand, set fire to several tents, and made good his retreat uninjured. During the next two years he made three additional expeditions into the Torauqua country, and added eight fresh scalps to his war costume. For fifteen years nothing is known of his history, but in 1810 he was living on Tombigbee river, and enjoyed the reputation of being an expert at Indian ball-playing. He also boasted that his name was Pushmatahaw, which means “The-warrior's-seat-is-finished.” During the war of 1812 he promptly took sides with the United States. The council that decided the course of the Choctaws lasted ten days. All the warriors counselled neutrality, excepting John Pitchlynn, the interpreter, and Pushmatahaw. Until the last day he kept silence, but then, rising, said: “The Creeks were once our friends. They have joined the English, and we must now follow different trails. When our fathers took the hand of Washington, they told him the Choctaws would always be the friends of his nation, and Pushmatahaw cannot be false to their promises. I am now ready to fight against both the English and the Creeks. . . . I and my warriors are going to Tuscaloosa, and when you hear from us again the Creek fort will be in ashes.” This prophecy was duly fulfilled. The Creeks and Seminoles allied themselves with the British, and Pushmatahaw made war on both tribes with such energy and success that the whites called him “The Indian General.” In 1824 he went to Washington in order, according to his own phraseology, to brighten the chain of peace between the Americans and the Choctaws. He was treated with great consideration by President Monroe and John C. Calhoun, secretary of war, and a record of his communications is to be found in the state archives. After a visit to Gen. Lafayette he was taken seriously ill. Finding that he was near his end, he expressed the wish that he might be buried with military honors and that “big guns” might be fired over his grave. These requests were complied with, and a procession more than a mile in length followed him to his resting-place in the Congressional cemetery. Andrew Jackson frequently expressed the opinion that Pushmatahaw was “the greatest and the bravest Indian he had ever known”; while John Randolph, of Roanoke, in pronouncing a eulogy on him in the U. S. senate, declared that he was “wise in counsel, eloquent in an extraordinary degree and on all occasions, and under all circumstances the white man's friend.”

PUTNAM, Frederick Ward, anthropologist, b. in Salem, Mass., 16 April, 1839. He received an election to the Essex institute in 1855, and in 1856 he entered the Lawrence scientific school as a special student under Louis Agassiz, who soon made him assistant in charge of the collection of fishes at the Harvard museum of comparative zoölogy, where he remained until 1864. Returning to Salem in the latter year, he was given charge of the museum of the Essex institute, and in 1867 he was appointed superintendent of the museum of the East India marine society. These two collections were incorporated as the Peabody academy of sciences, and Prof. Putnam was made its director, which post he held until 1876. He was called to the charge of the collections of the Peabody museum of American archæology and ethnology of Harvard on the death of Jeffries Wyman in September, 1874, and in 1886, in accordance with the ob-