The Choctaw (alternatively spelled Chahta, Chactas, Tchakta, Chocktaw, and Chactaw) are a Native American people originally from the Southeastern United States (modern-day Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana). The Choctaw language belongs to the Muskogean linguistic group. The Choctaw are descendants of the peoples of the Hopewell and Mississippian cultures, who lived throughout the east of the Mississippi River valley and its tributaries. About 1,700 years ago, the Hopewell people built Nanih Waiya, a great earthwork mound, which is still considered sacred by the Choctaw. The early Spanish explorers of the mid-16th century encountered Mississippian-culture villages and chiefs. The anthropologist John Swanton suggested that the Choctaw derived their name from an early leader. Henry Halbert, a historian, suggests that their name is derived from the Choctaw phrase Hacha hatak (river people).
The Choctaw coalesced as a people in the 17th century, and developed three distinct political and geographical divisions: eastern, western and southern, which sometimes created differing alliances with nearby European powers. These included the French, based on the Gulf Coast and in Louisiana, the English of the Southeast, and the Spanish of Florida and Louisiana during the colonial era. During the American Revolution, most Choctaw supported the Thirteen Colonies’ bid for independence from the British Crown. They never went to war against the United States prior to Indian Removal.
In the 19th century, the Choctaw became known as one of the “Five Civilized Tribes” because they adopted numerous practices of their United States neighbors. The Choctaw and the United States (US) agreed to nine treaties and, by the last three, the US gained vast land cessions and deracinated most Choctaw west of the Mississippi River to Indian Territory. They were the first Native Americans forced under the Indian Removal Act. The Choctaw were exiled because the U.S. wanted to expand territory available for settlement by European Americans, to save the tribe from extinction, and to acquire their natural resources. The Choctaw negotiated the largest area and most desirable lands in Indian Territory. Their early government had three districts, each with its own chief, who together with the town chiefs sat on the National Council. They appointed a Choctaw Delegate to represent them with the US government in Washington, DC.
By the 1831 Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, those Choctaw who chose to stay in the newly formed state of Mississippi were one of the first major non-European ethnic groups to become U.S. citizens. (Article 8 in the 1817 treaty with the Cherokee stated Cherokees may wish to become citizen of the United States.) During the American Civil War, the Choctaw in both Oklahoma and Mississippi mostly sided with the Confederate States of America. The Confederacy suggested it would support a state under Indian control if it won the war. In a new treaty after the war, the US required them to emancipate their slaves and offer them full citizenship; they have become known as Choctaw Freedmen. After the Civil War, the Mississippi Choctaw fell into obscurity for some time.
The Choctaw in Oklahoma struggled to build a nation, transferring the Choctaw Academy there and opening one for girls in the 1840s. In the aftermath of the Dawes Act, the US dissolved tribal governments and appointed chiefs. During World War I, Choctaw soldiers served in the U.S. military as the first Native American codetalkers, using the Choctaw language. After the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, the Choctaw reconstituted their government, and the Choctaw Nation had kept their culture alive despite years of pressure for assimilation. The third largest federally recognized tribe, since the mid-twentieth century, they have created new institutions, such as a tribal college, housing authority, and justice system. Today the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians are the two federally recognized Choctaw tribes; Mississippi recognizes another band, and smaller Choctaw groups are located in Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas.
==History==
===Paleo-Indian period===
Many thousands of years ago groups classified by anthropologists as Paleo-Indians lived in what today is referred to as the American South. These groups were hunter-gatherers who hunted a wide range of animals, including a variety of megafauna, which became extinct following the end of the Pleistocene age. The 19th-century historian Horatio Cushman noted that Choctaw oral history accounts suggested their ancestors had known of mammoths in the Tombigbee River area; this suggests that the Choctaw ancestors had been in the Mississippi area for at least 4,000–8,000 years. Cushman wrote: “the ancient Choctaw through their tradition (said) ‘they saw the mighty beasts of the forests, whose tread shook the earth.” Scholars believe that Paleo-Indians were specialized, highly mobile foragers who hunted late Pleistocene fauna such as bison, mastodons, caribou, and mammoths. Direct evidence in the Southeast is meager, but archaeological discoveries in related areas support this hypothesis.
===Woodland culture===
Later cultures became more complex. Moundbuilding cultures included the Woodland period people who first built Nanih Waiya. Scholars believe the mound was contemporary with such earthworks as Igomar Mound in Mississippi and Pinson Mounds in Tennessee. Based on dating of surface artifacts, the Nanih Waiya mound was likely constructed and first occupied by indigenous peoples about 0-300 CE, in the Middle Woodland period.
The original site was bounded on three sides by an earthwork circular enclosure, about ten feet high and encompassing a square mile. Occupation of Nanih Waiya and several smaller nearby mounds likely continued through 700 CE, the Late Woodland Period. The smaller mounds may also have been built by later cultures. As they have been lost to cultivation since the late 19th century and the area has not been excavated, theories have been speculation.
===Mississippian culture===
The Mississippian culture was a Native American culture that flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from 800 to 1500 CE. The Mississippian culture developed in the lower Mississippi river valley and its tributaries, including the Ohio River. In present-day Mississippi, Moundville, Plaquemine,
When the Spanish made their first forays inland in the 16th century from the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, they encountered some chiefdoms of the Mississippians, but others were already in decline, or had disappeared. The Mississippian culture are the peoples encountered by other early Spanish explorers, beginning on April 2, 1513, with Juan Ponce de León’s Florida landing and the 1526 Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón expedition in South Carolina and Georgia region. A Spanish expedition in the later 16th century, in what is now western North Carolina, encountered people of the Mississippian culture at Joara and settlements further west. The Spanish built a fort at Joara and left a garrison there, as well as five other forts. The following year all the Spanish garrisons were killed and the forts destroyed by the Native Americans, who ended Spanish colonization attempts in the interior.
===17th century emergence of Choctaw ===
The contemporary historian Patricia Galloway argues from fragmentary archaeological and cartographic evidence that the Choctaw did not exist as a unified people before the 17th century. Only then did various southeastern peoples, remnants of Moundville, Plaquemine, and other Mississippian cultures, coalesce to form a self-consciously Choctaw people. The historical homeland of the Choctaw, or of the peoples from whom the Choctaw nation arose, included the area of Nanih Waiya, an earthwork mound in present-day Winston County, Mississippi, which they considered sacred ground. Their homeland was bounded by the Tombigbee River to the east, the Pearl River on the north and west, and “the Leaf-Pascagoula system” to the South. This area was mostly uninhabited during the Mississippian -culture period.
While Nanih Waiya mound continued to be a ceremonial center and object of veneration, scholars believe Native Americans traveled to it during the Mississippian culture period. From the 17th century on, the Choctaw occupied this area and revered this site as the center of their origin stories. These included stories of migration to this site from west of the great river (believed to refer to the Mississippi River.)
In Histoire de La Louisiane (Paris, 1758), French explorer Antoine-Simon Le Page du Pratz recounted that “…when I asked them from whence the Chat-kas {sic} came, to express the suddenness of their appearance they replied that they had come out from under the earth.” American scholars took this as intended to explain the Choctaws’ immediate appearance, and not a literal creation account. It was perhaps the first European writing that included part of the Choctaw origin story.
Early 19th century and contemporary Choctaw storytellers describe that the Choctaw people emerged from either Nanih Waiya mound or cave. A companion story describes their migration journey from the west, beyond the Mississippi River, when they were directed by their leader’s use of a sacred red pole.
===Contact era===
After the castaway Cabeza de Vaca of the ill-fated Narváez expedition returned to Spain, he described to the Court that the New World was the “richest country in the world.” It commissioned the Spaniard Hernando de Soto to lead the first expedition into the interior of the North American continent. De Soto, convinced of the “riches”, wanted Cabeza de Vaca to accompany him on the expedition. Cabeza de Vaca declined because of a payment dispute. From 1540–1543, Hernando de Soto traveled through present-day Florida and Georgia, and then into the Alabama and Mississippi areas that would later be inhabited by the Choctaw.
De Soto had the best-equipped militia at the time. As the brutalities of the de Soto expedition through the Southeast became known, ancestors to the Choctaw rose in defense. The Battle of Mabila, an ambush arranged by Chief Tuskaloosa, was a turning point for the de Soto venture. The battle “broke the back” of the campaign, and they never fully recovered.{Citation needed|date=March 2009}
The archaeological record for the period between 1567 and 1699 is not complete or well-studied. It appears that some Mississippian settlements were abandoned well before the 17th century. Similarities in pottery coloring and burials suggest the following scenario for the emergence of the distinctive Choctaw society.
According to Patricia Galloway, the Choctaw region of Mississippi, generally located between the Yazoo basin to the north and the Natchez bluffs to the south, was slowly occupied by Burial Urn people from the Bottle Creek Indian Mounds area in the Mobile, Alabama delta, along with remnants of people from the Moundville chiefdom (near present-day Tuscaloosa, Alabama), which had collapsed some years before. Facing severe depopulation, they fled westward, where they combined with the Plaquemines and a group of “prairie people” living near the area. When this occurred is not clear. In the space of several generations, they created a new society which became known as Choctaw (albeit with a strong Mississippian background).
Other scholars note the Choctaw oral history recounting their long migration from west of the Mississippi River.
====French colonization (1682)====
In 1682 La Salle was the first French explorer to venture into the southeast along the Mississippi River. His expedition did not meet with the Choctaw; it established a post along the Arkansas River. The post signaled to the English that the French were serious at colonization in the South. The Choctaw allied with French colonists as a defense against the English, who had been taking Choctaws as captives for the Indian slave trade.
The first direct recorded contact between the Choctaw and the French was with Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville in 1699; indirect contact had likely occurred between the Choctaw and British settlers through other tribes, including the Creek and Chickasaw. The Choctaw, along with other tribes, had formed a relationship with New France, French Louisiana. Illegal fur trading may have led to further unofficial contact. {Citation needed|date=March 2009}
As the historian Greg O’Brien has noted, the Choctaw developed three distinct political and geographic regions, which during the colonial period sometimes had differing alliances with trading partners among the French, Spanish and English. They also expressed differences during and after the American Revolutionary War. Their divisions were roughly eastern, western (near present-day Vicksburg, Mississippi) and southern (Six Towns). Each division was headed by a principal chief, and subordinate chiefs led each of the towns within the area. All the chiefs would meet on a National Council, but the society was highly decentralized for some time.
The French were the main trading partners of the Choctaw before the Seven Years’ War, and the British had established some trading. After Great Britain defeated France, it ceded its territory east of the Mississippi River. From 1763 to 1781, Britain was the Choctaw main trading partner. With Spanish forces based in New Orleans in 1766, when they took over French territory west of the Mississippi, the Choctaw sometimes traded with them to the west. Spain declared war against Great Britain during the American Revolution in 1779.
===United States relations===
During the American Revolution, the Choctaw divided over whether to support Britain or Spain. Some Choctaw warriors from the western and eastern divisions supported the British in the defense of Mobile and Pensacola. Chief Franchimastabé led a Choctaw war party with British forces against American rebels in Natchez. The Americans had left by the time Franchimastabé arrived, but the Choctaw occupied Natchez for weeks and convinced residents to remain loyal to Britain.
Other Choctaw companies joined Washington’s army during the war, and served the entire duration. Bob Ferguson, a Southeastern Indian historian, noted, “[In] 1775 the American Revolution began a period of new alignments for the Choctaws and other southern Indians. Choctaw scouts served under Washington, Morgan, Wayne and Sullivan.”
Over a thousand Choctaw fought for Britain, largely against Spain’s campaigns along the Gulf Coast. At the same time, a significant number of Choctaw aided Spain.
Ferguson wrote that with the end of the Revolution, “‘Franchimastabe’, Choctaw head chief, went to Savannah, Georgia to secure American trade.” In the next few years, some Choctaw scouts served in Ohio with U.S. General Anthony Wayne in the Northwest Indian War.{Citation needed|date=March 2009}
George Washington (first U.S. President) and Henry Knox (first U.S. Secretary of War) proposed the cultural transformation of Native Americans. Washington believed that Native Americans were equals but that their society was inferior to that of the European Americans. He formulated a policy to encourage the “civilizing” process, and Thomas Jefferson continued it. The historian Robert Remini wrote, “[T]hey presumed that once the Indians adopted the practice of private property, built homes, farmed, educated their children, and embraced Christianity, these Native Americans would win acceptance from white Americans.”
Washington’s six-point plan included impartial justice toward Indians; regulated buying of Indian lands; promotion of commerce; promotion of experiments to civilize or improve Indian society; presidential authority to give presents; and punishing those who violated Indian rights. The government appointed agents, such as Benjamin Hawkins, to live among the Indians and to teach them through example and instruction, how to live like whites. While living among the Choctaw for nearly 30 years, Hawkins married Lavinia Downs, a Choctaw woman. As the people had a matrilineal system of property and hereditary leadership, their children were born into the mother’s clan and gained their status from her people. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, a number of Scots-Irish traders lived among the Choctaw and married high-status women. Choctaw chiefs saw these as strategic alliances to build stronger relationships with the Americans in a changing environment that influenced ideas of capital and property. The children of such marriages were Choctaw, first and foremost. Some of the sons were educated in Anglo-American schools and became important interpreters and negotiators for Choctaw-US relations.
====Hopewell council and treaty (1786)====
Starting in October 1785, Taboca, a Choctaw prophet/chief, led over 125 Choctaws to the Keowee, near Seneca Old Town, now known as Hopewell, South Carolina. After two months of travel, they met with U.S. representatives Benjamin Hawkins, Andrew Pickens, and Joseph Martin. In high Choctaw ceremonial symbolism, they named, adopted, smoked, and performed dances, revealing the complex and serious nature of Choctaw diplomacy. One such dance was the eagle tail dance. The Choctaw explained that the Bald Eagle, who has direct contact with the upper world of the sun, is a symbol of peace. Choctaw women painted in white would adopt and name commissioners as kin. Smoking sealed agreements between peoples and the shared pipes sanctified peace between the two nations.
After the rituals, the Choctaw asked John Woods to live with them to improve communication with the U.S. In exchange they allowed Taboca to visit the United States Congress. On January 3, 1786, the Treaty of Hopewell was signed. Article 11 stated, “[T]he hatchet shall be forever buried, and the peace given by the United States of America, and friendship re-established between the said states on the one part, and all the Choctaw nation on the other part, shall be universal; and the contracting parties shall use their utmost endeavors to maintain the peace given as aforesaid, and friendship re-established.”
The treaty required Choctaws to return escaped slaves to colonists, to turn over any Choctaw convicted of crimes by the U.S., establish borderlines between the U.S. and Choctaw Nation, and the return any property captured from colonists during the Revolutionary War.
After the Revolutionary War, the Choctaw were reluctant to ally themselves with countries hostile to the United States. John R. Swanton wrote, “the Choctaw were never at war with the Americans. A few were induced by Tecumseh (a Shawnee leader who sought support from various Native American tribes) to ally themselves with the hostile Creeks [in the early 19th century], but the Nation as a whole was kept out of anti-American alliances by the influence of Apushmataha, greatest of all Choctaw chiefs.”
====War of 1812====
Early in 1811, the Shawnee leader Tecumseh gathered Indian tribes in an alliance to try to expel U.S. settlers from the Northwest area south of the Great Lakes. Tecumseh met the Choctaws to persuade them to join the alliance. Pushmataha, considered by historians to be the greatest Choctaw leader, countered Tecumseh’s influence. As chief for the Six Towns (southern) district, Pushmataha strongly resisted such a plan, arguing that the Choctaw and their neighbors the Chickasaw had always lived in peace with European Americans, had learned valuable skills and technologies, and had received honest treatment and fair trade. The joint Choctaw-Chickasaw council voted against alliance with Tecumseh. On Tecumseh’s departure, Pushmataha accused him of tyranny over his own Shawnee and other tribes. Pushmataha warned Tecumeseh that he would fight against those who fought the United States.
On the eve of the War of 1812, Governor William C. C. Claiborne of Louisiana sent interpreter Simon Favre to give a talk to the Choctaws, urging them to stay out of this “white man’s war.” Ultimately, however, the Choctaw did become involved, and with the outbreak of the war, Pushmataha led the Choctaws in alliance with the U.S., arguing in favor of opposing the Creek Red Sticks’ alliance with Britain after the massacre at Fort Mims. Pushmataha arrived at St. Stephens, Alabama in mid-1813 with an offer of alliance and recruitment. He was escorted to Mobile to speak with General Flournoy, then commanding the district. Flournoy initially declined Pushmataha’s offer and offended the chief. However, Flournoy’s staff quickly convinced him to reverse his decision. A courier with a message accepting the offer of alliance caught up with Pushmataha at St. Stephens.
Returning to Choctaw territory, Pushmataha raised a company of 125 Choctaw warriors with a rousing speech and was commissioned (as either a lieutenant colonel or a brigadier general) in the United States Army at St. Stephens. After observing that the officers and their wives would promenade along the Alabama River, Pushmataha summoned his own wife to St. Stephens to accompany him.
He joined the U.S. Army under General Ferdinand Claiborne in mid-November, and some 125 Choctaw warriors took part in an attack on Creek forces at Kantachi (near present day Econochaca, Alabama) on 23 December 1813. With this victory, Choctaw began to volunteer in greater numbers from the other two districts of the tribe. By February 1814, a larger band of Choctaws under Pushmataha had joined General Andrew Jackson’s force for the sweeping of the Creek territories near Pensacola, Florida. Many Choctaw departed from Jackson’s main force after the final defeat of the Creek at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. By the Battle of New Orleans, only a few Choctaw remained with the army; they were the only Native American tribe represented in the battle.
Source(s): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choctaw