The History of the Choctaws recounts the experiences of the Choctaw people, Native Americans originally from Mississippi and Alabama Southeastern United States. Some migrated into Louisiana, while many were forcibly removed west into Indian Territory. Today, the Choctaw tribes are headquartered in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Oklahoma.
Precontact history Origins
One Choctaw origin story relates how in precontact times the Choctaw people migrated from the West along with the Chickasaw. Linguists estimate that the Choctaw and Chickasaw broke away from their Muskogean parent stock circa 800 CE.
Another oral history explains how Choctaw people originated from the Nanih Waiya Cave near Nanih Waiya, "the leaning mound," a platform mound on the Pearl River near Noxapater, Mississippi.
Mississippian culture
During the Mississippian era around 800 to 1500 CE, some ancestral Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Chakchiuma peoples may have been part of Moundville, the second-largest polity in the Mississippian era. Located in central Alabama, the polity flourished from circa 1000 to 1450 CE. As Moundville began to fracture in the 15th century, Proto-Choctaw people migrated south and began the Burial Urn culture. They dispersed with many living along the Black Prairie zone, an arc of fertile lands in Alabama, and into western Mississippi.
The Mississippian Ideological Interaction Sphere was religious, cultural, and trade network, centered along the Mississippi river valley and spanning much of the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States.
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.
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 to 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.
History
17th century emergence 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. They were joined by remnants of people from Moundville (around present-day Tuscaloosa, Alabama), which had started fracturing some years before. Facing severe depopulation, these groups moved westward, where they combined with the Plaquemine and a group of "prairie people" living near the area. When this occurred is not clear. In the space of several generations and the process of ethnogenesis, they developed a new society which became known as Choctaw (albeit with a strong Mississippian background).
Other scholars note the Choctaw oral history recounts their long migration to the Mississippi area from west of the Mississippi River.
In 1718 the French renamed Bulbancha which means "place of many tongues" in Choctaw to the city New Orleans after Phillip II Duke of Orléans.
The contemporary historian Patricia Galloway argues from fragmentary archaeological and cartographic evidence that the Choctaw did not exist as a unified culture 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.)Ken Carleton, "Nanih Waiya: Mother Mound of the Choctaw", The Delta Endangered, Spring 1996, Vol.1 (1), NPS Archeology Program, Common Ground, accessed 16 November 2009
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 came, to express the suddenness of their appearance they replied that they had come out from under the earth." American scholars later took this as intended to explain the Choctaws' immediate appearance, and not as 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.
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 to the west of the Mississippi. The post signaled to the English that the French were serious at colonization in the South.
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 English traders through other tribes, including the Muscogee Creek and Chickasaw. The Choctaw, along with other tribes, formed a relationship with French settlers in New France and Louisiana. Illegal fur trading may have led to further unofficial contact. The Choctaw allied with the French primarily to defend against slave raids from Indian tribes allied to English colonists in Carolina such as the Chickasaw.
As the historian Greg O'Brien has noted, the Choctaw developed three distinct political and geographic regions. During the colonial period, these regions sometimes had differing alliances with trading partners among French, Spanish and English colonists, often dependent on geography and the nearest trading partner. 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. The chiefs met on a National Council, but the society was highly decentralized for some time, and based in town decisionmaking."The Conqueror Meets the Unconquered: Negotiating Cultural Boundaries on the Post-Revolutionary Southern Frontier", Journal of Southern History, Vol. 67, 2001, accessed 15 October 2011
Before the Seven Years' War, the French were the main trading partners of the Choctaw, as they had established themselves in the Mobile and New Orleans areas of La Louisiane. The British had primarily colonized along the Atlantic Coast, from which some traders travelled to interior tribes. Trade disputes between the eastern and western divisions contributed to the Choctaw Civil War, which was fought between 1747 and 1750, with the pro-French eastern division emerging victorious.Struggle and Survival in Colonial America by David G. Sweet, Gary B. Nash Edition: University of California Press, 1982
After being defeated by Great Britain in the Seven Years' War, France ceded its territory east of the Mississippi River to Britain. From 1763 to 1781, Britain was the Choctaw main European trading partner. Spanish forces were based in New Orleans in 1766, after they took over French territory west of the Mississippi. The western Choctaw sometimes traded with them in that area. Spain declared war against Great Britain in 1779, during the American Revolution.
United States relations
American Revolutionary War
During the American Revolution, the Choctaw bands 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, Alabama, and Pensacola, Florida. 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."
More than 1,000 Choctaw fought for Britain, largely against Spain's campaigns along the Gulf Coast. At the same time, a significant number of Choctaw aided Spain.
Post-American Revolutionary War 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.
George Washington (first U.S. President) and Henry Knox (first U.S. Secretary of War) proposed the cultural transformation of Native Americans. While Washington believed that Native American society was inferior to that of the European Americans, he also recognized the Choctaw and the other Civilized Tribes as equals (an uncommon opinion for American leaders at the time). He formulated a policy to encourage the "civilizing" process, and Thomas Jefferson continued it. 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 Southeast 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.