George Strother Gaines

George Strother Gaines (1 May 1784 – 21 January 1873) was a leader in the Mississippi Territory and in both states formed from it, Mississippi and Alabama. At St. Stephens, Alabama, as the duly appointed agent of the United States, he ran a government trading house meant to serve the Choctaws, and was trusted by them. In 1807, his brother Edmund Pendleton Gaines arrested Aaron Burr on charges of treason.

Gaines also served as the president of the Mobile, Alabama, branch bank from 1833 to 1846. Gaines negotiated the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek between the United States and the Choctaw people, acquiring their lands in Alabama and Mississippi. At the request of the Choctaw tribe, Gaines led an expedition to scout the prospective Choctaw lands in the Indian territory, before the Choctaws reluctantly agreed to emigrate there. Gaines was charged with spending too much money on moving the Choctaw, although in comparison he accomplished the task in a relatively humane fashion. He is buried at State Line, Mississippi.

See also

• Gainestown, Alabama, community named in his honor, founded on the site of one of his former trading posts
• Edmund P. Gaines, his half-brother

References

• Pate, James P. "The Reminiscences of George Strother Gaines."
• familysearch.org Accessed October 19, 2007
• Leftwich, George J. Colonel George Strother Gaines and Other Pioneers in Mississippi Territory. Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society, v. 1. Jackson, Miss: Mississippi Historical Society, 1916. googlebooks.com Accessed October 20, 2007
• Pate, James P. "George Strother Gaines." Encyclopedia of Alabama, published February 20, 2008; http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-1476. Accessed August 31, 2010.

Further reading

• Pate, James P. (Editor), The Reminiscences of George Strother Gaines: Pioneer and Statesman of Early Alabama and Mississippi, 1805-1843. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1998.
• Leftwich, George J. Colonel George Strother Gaines and other Pioneers in Mississippi Territory. Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society 1904:442-56.
• DeRosier, Arthur H. The Removal of the Choctaw Indians, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1970.