The MOWA Band of Choctaw Indians is a state-recognized tribe located in southwest Alabama, with a population largely based in southern Washington County and some members in northern Mobile County.
The term MOWA is a portmanteau of Mobile and Washington Counties. They were formerly named the Mobile-Washington County Band of Choctaw Indians of South Alabama.
The band's oral traditions trace its tribal lineage to Choctaw people who evaded Indian Removal in the 1830s and remained in Alabama. The Bureau of Indian Affairs declined to federally recognize the group, citing the unreliability of this oral history, and no evidence of Native lineage within the substantial historic documentation of their progenitors.p. 7: "Much of the evidence was oral history and unreliable when tested. [...] Most of the information was found to be unsubstantiated by primary documentation."p. 15: "...the BIA found no evidence to support the petitioner's contention that many of the group's early 19th century ancestors remained unknown or unidentified. Instead, as pointed out by the petitioner, Census data, oral history, land records, military records, court records, marriage records, cemetery records, church and school records all confirm the continuous existence of their community..." Both parties agree the Band descends from 19th-century families who settled in the counties of Washington and Mobile.
History The MOWA Band descends from a racially-diverse group of progenitors who settled in the counties of Washington and Mobile in the early 19th century, documented as whites, freed slaves, and free people of color. p. 24: "Dr. Chastang died in 1813 and left his vast holdings to his “beloved worthy friend and companion, Louison, a free negro woman (who has resided with me for twenty years past and has been my sole attendant in health and particularly so in sickness)” and then to their mixed blood children, called Creoles." Their oral history traces their tribal origins to Indigenous people who stayed in Alabama after others were coerced or forced to leave for areas west of the Mississippi River in the 1830s, including descendants of Choctaw groups. Their communities traditionally live on lands ceded by the Choctaw Nation in 1805, on which several families, including those ancestral to the Band, had begun to settle in the early 19th century.
19th century The first documentation of the progenitors of the MOWA Band was in the early 19th century. The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek was the first removal treaty after the 1830 Removal Act. While the MOWA Band stated they had established their descent from the treaty signatories to a high degree, scholars claim the ancestors of the MOWA Band were mostly or often not signatories, and registered and were denied under Article 14 of the Treaty to receive land and citizenship in Mississippi. Fifteen individuals in the Band descend from the signatory Alexander Brashears, who received land under Article 14, and whose descendants married into the community in the late 19th century, after the Civil War.
The oral histories of the Band state Choctaw were joined over time by additional fugitives, both lacking citizenship, and formed their progenitors in the swamplands and forests of southwest Alabama. They initially raised livestock, typically on small, unimproved tracts, then moved into the lumber industry, some selling firewood themselves. Choctaw communities were attested in south Alabama by William Armstrong in 1847.
MOWA Band historian Jacqueline Anderson Matte noted that locals began to call the ancestors of the Band "Cajuns" or "Cajans" in the 1880s, after L. W. McRae, a local senator, mistook them for relatives of the Louisiana Cajuns. Although the group repudiated the term, and described it as pejorative, it likely stuck because it was an easy way to distinguish the community from the area's white and Black populations. The MOWA Band of Choctaw Indians officially retired the exonym "Cajan" after formation. Scholar Angela Pulley Hudson reports that the community numbered around 750 by 1887, when they encountered the Apache internees brought to Mount Vernon.
Apache internment at Mt. Vernon
The community was known for bootlegging during this time; one of their oral traditions stated an Apache man assisted a family in production. Band ancestor Luke Rivers stated they used to perform with fiddles for the Apaches at their internment camp. The Apache purchased violins in Mobile, which Hudson implies was due to enjoying the fiddle performance.
In the 19th century, Apache children were taken from their parents and sent to American Indian boarding schools, which included Carlisle Indian School and the Haskell Institute in Kansas. After school segregation in Alabama, ancestors of the MOWA Band sent their children to these schools due to their missionary schools not servicing a high school curriculum.
20th century In 1910, many ancestors of the Band were listed in the Washington County census as "mixed" Indian for the first time. Local opinions in anthropological reports varied, with a report in 1937 stating locals considered the ancestors of the Band to be of white, African-American and Native American heritage, whereas a later report in 1975 noted local whites and Black people did not widely refer to them as Native American, or even rejected it as an identification.
Litigation The community was especially impacted by Jim Crow laws, which reified a binary system for racial categorization. This impacted the ancestors of the MOWA Band educationally, economically, and legally.
In the 1920s, Percy and Daniel Reed, cousins ancestral to the Band, were both convicted under anti-miscegenation laws with respect to their marriages to white women. Both were unable to convince courts their ancestor Rose Reed was Native American, rather than Black, which would have allowed them to avoid convictions. The attendance of Percy's nieces and nephews at white schools was not enough to convince the jury of his whiteness, which scholar Leslie Tucker stated was an indication that one's racial school did not always correspond to their racial identity.
Both successfully appealed their convictions. During an appeal, the prosecution was unable to prove Percy was Black, because the appellate court ruled that the determination of his race had been based upon hearsay and appearance, while a defense witness and even his trial judge deemed him to be of "Indian and Spanish origin". In 1927, in response to cases such as these, the legislature brought in the "one-drop rule", where anyone with any Black heritage was considered Black. As Tucker noted, ancestors of the Band would bring up their discrimination against Black people in courts, displaying the gradations in society that existed after the white-Black binary in society that resulted from the one-drop rule. She suggested this testimony relied on the assumption that a defendant would not discriminate against their own race, and that it offered them a point of commonality with the white "club" whose community they wished to join.
Segregation
From 1921, missionaries from the Southern Baptist Church and Methodist Episcopal Church visited the area, bringing formal education and religion to the community. This led to the creation of Indian churches, such as Reeds Chapel, which became a center for community life. These newly established Indian missions doubled as school buildings. While they had convinced the Washington and Mobile County districts to offer a third school system especially for themselves, it remained inadequate for their needs.
By this time, the community was more educationally deprived than Black people; until desegregation, they were typically barred from white schools and refused to attend Black schools, accept Black teachers, or allow church membership to those who married Black people. Descendants of those who married Black people were ostracized from the community. A few were able to pass and attend white schools, but their low literacy hindered economic advancement. After tribal formation, two chiefs have testified saying the predecessors of the Band were banned from Black schools.
The community was denied a high school education until the 1960s. Instead, many adults attended Bacone College, an Indian school run by the Southern Baptist Convention in Muskogee, Oklahoma. A few also attended a BLA-supported high school on the Mississippi Choctaw Reservation, which was relatively close.
Civil rights movement and tribal formation During the era of segregation, many local businesses in Mobile would not hire Native Americans, including the ancestors of the MOWA Band, supposedly because they would have to create a third set of bathrooms for them. The passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 superseded earlier Jim Crow laws, allowing many members of the community to find employment in chemical and industrial plants across the southeast.
By 1969, most of them went to desegregated schools, with only Reed Chapel school remaining. According to Historian Mark Edwin Miller, the community's Indian churches continue to play an important role in its members' sense of identity and pride.
When the civil rights movement in the 1960s saw an increase in Native American political consciousness, the community was able to organize politically. From the 1970s, members of the community began openly identifying as Native American on censuses, and in 1980, they formally organized as the MOWA Band of Choctaw Indians. In 1984, the group played a central role in the formation of the Alabama Indian Affairs Commission. Since 2000, the Census Bureau has referred to members of the band under the category "American Indian and Alaska Native", subcategory "Choctaw", as using the assigned code C12, for the label "Mowa Band of Choctaw".
Historical analysis and oral traditions Miller notes that the MOWA Band represents a long-standing community with an established identity as a Native American people, but that its exact tribal heritage is contested. Vine Deloria Jr., MOWA Band advocate and noted supporter of unrecognized tribes in the Southeastern United States, described their historical profile as "typical" of southeastern Native Americans, with documentation connecting them to Choctaw villages before Indian removal. Like other tribes in the region, research into the origins of the MOWA Band has historically been complicated by ambiguous terminology, the racial problems of the American South, and orders from the U.S. government not to count Native Americans in censuses during the early 19th century. Hudson described the policy of disregarding Native groups or lumping them in with others as a "pencil genocide".
Miller stated the MOWA Band's case "reveals the true complexities behind tribal recognition decisions and debates about Indian authenticity", noting that although the tribe's members have oral traditions of "Choctaw, Cherokee, and Creek descent", their triracial heritage was not seen as justification for federal recognition by nearby tribes. Miller also stated that the Bureau of Indian Affairs views ambiguities in other categories as less important for federal recognition if documented tribal ancestry exists, which he stated the BIA and the Band could not locate. Former Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Kevin Gover, who handled their petition, has expressed support for them having a chance to re-petition under a revised process.