CHOCTAW

CHOCTAW. The Choctaws comprise two American Indian tribes whose origins are in central and eastern Mississippi. Their ancestors lived in fortified villages, raised corn, and hunted deer. They first encountered Europeans when Hernando de Soto led his forces from 1539 to 1541 through the Southeast. In the eighteenth century, they traded food and deerskins to British and French traders in exchange for weapons and cloth. Their major public ceremonies were funerals, but otherwise Choctaw religious beliefs were matters of private dreams or visions. They traced descent through the mother's line. The Choctaws settled conflicts between towns or with neighboring tribes on the stickball field, where each team tried to hit a ball of deerskin beyond the other's goal. The game was violent, but its outcome kept peace within the nation. During the American Revolution the Choctaws remained neutral, and they rejected the Shawnee leader Tecumseh's effort to form an alliance against the Americans before the War of 1812. In 1826, to assert their national identity and to show that they were adapting to white civilization, they adopted a written constitution that established a representative form of government. Despite the Choctaws' friendship and signs of adopting American customs, President Andrew Jackson pressed all Indians east of the Mississippi to cede their lands and move west. In 1830, Choctaw leaders signed the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, and approximately fifteen thousand Choctaws moved to what is now Oklahoma. There they reestablished their constitutional form of government and controlled their own school system. They allied with the Confederacy during the Civil War and afterward were forced to sign new treaties with the United States that ceded parts of their land and allowed railroads to cross their territory. Railroads brought non-Indians to Choctaw lands, and in 1907 the tribal government was dissolved when Oklahoma became a state. Mineral resources, however, remained as communal holdings, and the federal government continued to recognize titular chiefs. Political activism in the 1960s led to a resurgence in tribal identity. At the turn of the twenty-first century, the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma had over 127,000 members throughout the United States, and the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, descendents

of those who resisted removal, numbered over 8,300.

CHOCTAW

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