Theodore (Andrew Jackson captive)

Battles of the Creek War, sometimes called the Red Stick War, in upper Alabama 1813–14

Theodore (c. 1813 – before March 1814) was a Native American baby or child who was "adopted" by Andrew Jackson during the early 1810s and sent to live at the Hermitage. He is presumed to have been of Muscogee heritage,[1]: 140  but his family background and tribal affiliation are unclear.[2]: 131  According to one researcher, "Because Theodore lived with the Jacksons prior to the Creek War, a Muscogee, Cherokee, or Choctaw chief probably gave him to Jackson in early to mid-1813. Jackson referred to Theodore as 'Indian' but he could have belonged to any nation. Some historians have posited that Theodore was an enslaved African-American...Since chiefs often gave children whom they had obtained from raids, or through captive-raiding and adoption practices, Theodore could have belonged to any nearby native nation and may have had some white or African-American ancestry."[2]: 131  He was possibly one of the 30 prisoners taken from the settlement of Littafuchee, near Big Canoe Creek in present-day St. Clair County, Alabama.[3]: 36 [4]: 278  He was described as a "pet" or playmate for Andrew Jackson Jr., who was then about five years old.

Theodore died in the spring of 1814. Jackson wrote his wife from Fort Strother on March 4, 1814, "...I am sorry, that little theodore is no more, I regret it on Andrew account, I expect he lamented his loss-to amuse him, and to make him forget his loss, I have asked Col Hays to carry Lyncoya to him..."[5] Historian Evan Nooe wrote of Theodore's successor, Lyncoya, who survived until he was 16, "[He] lived a short life under the oversight of his parents' killers."[6]: 81 

According to one historian, Jackson Jr. "threw a fit when his own playmate died and coveted Charley," who was another Indigenous captive and the assigned playmate of Andrew Jackson Donelson.[7]: 91  Lyncoya Jackson, who was captured at the Battle of Tallushatchee ("all his family is destroyed") arrived at the Hermitage in May 1814.[8]: 444 

Jackson's motives in adopting Theodore, Charley, and Lyncoya were likely complex. He repeatedly described Muscogee people as savage and barbaric "wretches" but simultaneously "Jackson's claims to Indian territories and enslaved people of African descent revolved around the assumption that anyone who was not white and male needed the paternal oversight of Southern white men such as himself."[1]: 141  Individual tour guides at the Hermitage have used Jackson's "fostering of Lyncoya, Theodore, and Charley [to suggest] that he did not 'hate the Indians,' as visitors so often complained. This infused conceptions of color-blindness into the historic interpretation of racialized systems of oppression...which in itself undergirds white supremacy and protects whiteness...Some interpreters also raise the longstanding story that when Lyncoya's family was killed, the women in the village 'refused' to care for him and were going to leave him to die," which is part of what David Matza and Gresham Sykes called in 1957 a technique of neutralization, specifically condemning the condemners.[9]: 130 

  1. ^ a b Peterson, Dawn (2017). "5. Adoption in Andrew Jackson's Empire". Indians in the Family: Adoption and the Politics of Antebellum Expansion. Harvard University Press. doi:10.4159/9780674978720. ISBN 978-0-674-97872-0.
  2. ^ a b Gismondi, Melissa (2017-06-12). Rachel Jackson and the Search for Zion, 1760s–1830s (PhD, History thesis). Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia. doi:10.18130/v3q364.
  3. ^ Jackson, Andrew (1991-01-01). "The Papers of Andrew Jackson, Volume III, 1814-1815". The Papers of Andrew Jackson.
  4. ^ Braund, Kathryn E. Holland (October 2011). "Reflections on "Shee Coocys" and the Motherless Child: Creek Women in a Time of War". Alabama Review. 64 (4): 255–284. doi:10.1353/ala.2011.0004. ISSN 2166-9961.
  5. ^ "General Jackson's lady; a story of the life and times of Rachel Donelson Jackson, beloved wife of General Andrew Jackson, seventh president of the United ..." HathiTrust. p. 285. Retrieved 2024-10-14.
  6. ^ Nooe, F. Evan (2024). Aggression and sufferings: settler violence, native resistance, and the coalescence of the Old South. Indians and southern history. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press. ISBN 978-0-8173-9473-8.
  7. ^ Snyder, Christina (2017). "Andrew Jackson's Indian Son: Native Captives and American Empire". In Garrison, Tim Alan; O'Brien, Greg (eds.). The Native South: New Histories and Enduring Legacies. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. pp. 84–106. doi:10.2307/j.ctt1q1xq7h.9. ISBN 978-0-8032-9690-9. JSTOR j.ctt1q1xq7h.9.
  8. ^ Various; Jackson, Andrew (1984). Moser, Harold D.; MacPherson, Sharon (eds.). The Papers of Andrew Jackson, Volume II, 1804–1813. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. ISBN 978-0-87049-441-3. LCCN 79015078. OCLC 5029597. Free access icon
  9. ^ Barna, Elizabeth Kathryn (2020-07-24). Between Plantation, President, and Public: Institutionalized Polysemy and the Representation of Slavery, Genocide, and Democracy at Andrew Jackson's Hermitage (Thesis). Nashville, Tennessee: Vanderbilt University.