 At the request of General Andrew Jackson, Hinds had surveyed central Mississippi and chose the site for the state capital, Jackson, before settling nearby in the area which is now Hinds County.Collier killed his first bear at the age of ten; thereafter, his job was to supply meat for the table of the Hinds family and the field hands.With the outbreak of the American Civil War, Collier’s master Howell Hinds and his seventeen-year-old son Tom, who was Collier's childhood companion, left for the war.