John DeWitt Clinton Atkins

The plaque lists the offices; the lasting damage came from the last of them. As Commissioner of Indian Affairs from 1885 to 1888, Atkins forbade Native languages in reservation schools. Teaching in them, he wrote in 1887, was "detrimental to the cause of their education and civilization," so Native children were to learn in English. He was a farmer who had enslaved people before the war and sat in the Confederate Congress, and he retired to Paris, where he is buried in the cemetery beside the marker.

What the plaque says

John DeWitt Clinton Atkins Born in Henry County, J.D.C. Atkins was a member, Tenn. General Assembly, 1849-53 and 1855-57; U.S. Congressman, 1857-59 and 1873-83; Lt. Col., 5th TN Infantry, CSA. 1861; Rep., Confederate Congress, 1861-65; co-founder, Paris Intelligencer, 1867; and U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1885-88. While in Congress, he was Chairman, House Appropriations Committee, and was instrumental in obtaining removal of Federal troops from the South. He is buried in City Cemetery here.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tennessee National Wildlife Refuge — 11 mi
  A 51,000-acre refuge along Kentucky Lake and the Tennessee River, created in 1945 for migratory birds, with a visitor center in Springville and a drowned Archaic site nearby.
• Paris Landing State Park — 16 mi
  A Kentucky Lake state park on the site of a Tennessee River steamboat landing, created after the 1944 TVA dam drowned a sulphur-spring resort.
• Patsy Cline Crash Site Memorial — 19 mi
  An engraved rock off Mt. Carmel Road near Camden marking where a small plane carrying Patsy Cline, Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins went down on March 5, 1963.
• Johnsonville State Historic Park — 26 mi
  A Tennessee River park on the site of a Union supply depot shelled in November 1864 and of the town later drowned by Kentucky Lake, with earthworks, a railroad bed and an African American cemetery.

More markers nearby

• David Edward Jackson — steps away
• John Wesley Crockett — steps away
• James Davis Porter — steps away
• Edwin Wiley Grove — steps away