In 1832 George Harkins, then 22 years old, wrote the Farewell Letter to the American People.
After ceding nearly 11,000,000 acres (45,000km2), the Choctaw migrated in three stages: the first in the fall of 1831, the second in 1832, and the last in 1833.[1] The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek was ratified by the U.S. Senate on February 25, 1830, and the U.S. President Andrew Jackson was anxious to make the Choctaw project a model of removal.[1]
We go forth sorrowful, knowing that wrong has been done. Will you extend to us your sympathizing regards until all traces of disagreeable oppositions are obliterated, and we again shall have confidence in the professions of our white brethren. Here is the land of our progenitors, and here are their bones; they left them as a sacred deposit, and we have been compelled to venerate its trust; it dear to us, yet we cannot stay, my people are dear to me, with them I must go. Could I stay and forget them and leave them to struggle alone, unaided, unfriended, and forgotten, by our great father? I should then be unworthy the name of a Choctaw, and be a disgrace to my blood. I must go with them; my destiny is cast among the Choctaw people. If they suffer, so will I; if they prosper, then will I rejoice. Let me again ask you to regard us with feelings of kindness.
—George W. Harkins, George W. Harkins to the American People[2]
The people in the first wave of removal suffered the most. The second and third wave "sowed their fields promptly and experienced fewer hardships than the Indians of most of the other expatriated tribes."[3] Removal continued throughout the 19th century. In 1846 1,000 Choctaw removed, and by 1930 only 1,665 remained in Mississippi.[3][4]
The Choctaw and the United States agreed to nine treaties between 1786 and 1830. The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek was the last to be signed by which the Choctaw Nation agreed to cede the last of their lands in the Southeast. Choctaw land was systematically obtained by European governments and the US through treaties, legislation, and threats of warfare. The Choctaw had made treaties with Great Britain, France, and Spain, before nine with the United States. Some treaties, like the Treaty of San Lorenzo, indirectly affected the Choctaw.
The Choctaw considered European laws and diplomacy foreign and puzzling. They found the writing of agreements to be the most confusing aspect of treaty making, as they had no system of written language. As with many Native Americans, the Choctaw transmitted their history orally from generation to generation. During treaty negotiations, the three main Choctaw tribal areas (Upper Towns, Six towns, and Lower Towns) had a "Miko" (chief) to represent them. During the Treaty of Natchez, 1793, the Upper Town Chief was last name King according to curated (verified genealogist research), the Chief of Six Towns was Pushmataha, and the Chief of Western Division was James King, Jr (Frenchimastvbe') representing the Royal Governor Carondolet.[5][non sequitur] Spain made the earliest claims to the Choctaw country, followed by French claims starting in the late 17th century. Following the Treaty of San Lorenzo, the new United States laid claim to Choctaw country starting in 1795.
The Choctaw signed the Treaty of Hopewell in 1786. Although it did not cede any land to the United States, this treaty was important because Article 9 gave the United States Congress the right to regulate, trade, and "manage all their affairs in such a manner as they think proper".[6]
The Treaty of Fort Adams was signed to cede the land at the mouth of the Yazoo River. The Choctaw believed that ceding over 2 million acres to the United States would be enough to satisfy the American need for land, but it was not. Six months later General Wilkinson came back asking for more land and a new treaty.[7]
The Treaty of Mount Dexter was signed in November 1805, and under it the Choctaw ceded more land than by any of the previous treaties. During this time, the plan of the Jefferson administration was to force the Choctaw into debt through trading and then allow them to pay that debt back with their land. In the case of the Mount Dexter Treaty, the Choctaw received $48,000 for the 4.1 million acres of land that they were giving up.[8] With this money, they had to pay back $51,000 to the trading houses they used.[8]
The Treaty of Doak's Stand was considered one of Andrew Jackson's greatest achievements since the Battle of New Orleans. It, and one of the first "significant achievement of Calhoun's policy of moderation."[9] The treaty had the Choctaws ceding five million acres of land, but they were to receive thirteen million acres of land in Arkansas.[10] This treaty foreshadows the removal and degradation of all Indians.[11] This became problematic because the people in Arkansas felt as though their government had abandoned them in order to remove the Indians from Mississippi, so they began launching an all-out effort to prevent the treaty from being ratified.[12] Although the treaty was ratified, President Jackson appointed a surveyor to find another border line that would give the Choctaws the same amount of land without upsetting the status quo of the whites.[13]
Although many leaders of the Choctaw tribe were opposed to the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, Grant Foreman in 1953 wrote that "most of the leaders had been aligned securely by bribery with the government and the treaty."[14] Greenwood LeFlore, Nitakechi, Mushulatubbe, and more than 50 other "favored members" gained land by signing the treaty.[15] According to Foreman, LeFlore had a personal interest in removing the tribes, as he boasted to President Jackson about his ability to remove them even if the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek was not ratified.[16] Before the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek had been ratified, the government allowed LeFlore to send numerous unorganized and ill-provisioned tribe members to the west in the first wave of removal.[16] Of the one thousand Choctaw emigrants sent west by Leflore, Foreman said that only eighty-eight arrived.[17] Since then, other historians have suggested that some Choctaw favored removal because they pragmatically wanted to try to get the best deal from a US that seemed implacably intent on forcing them out.
American pressure to force the Choctaw to cede their land continued until the Choctaw fought as their allies against the Creek in the Creek War of 1813. This was in part a civil war within the nation that broke out while the US was engaged against Great Britain in the War of 1812. The Mississippi Band of Choctaw chose to stay in Mississippi and not remove, partly due to the Nation of Choctaw Chief being Brig. General Pushmataha and the respect for his service from the age of 13 in siding with the French of New France. As many Choctaw fought in the Battle of 1812, some Americans began to view them as allies. They were treated better by white settlers and by the natives from Dimery Settlement who entered into Ft Adams after having served in the lands of the Southern Tuscarora.[18] When the Choctaw signed the treaty of Fort St. Stephens, they believed they were at "a friendly banquet [rather than] a meeting of opposing forces".[18] In exchange for the land, the Choctaw received a $6,000 annuity for the next 20 years, and goods such as guns, blankets, and tools for an additional value of $10,000.[18]
Nearly 15,000 Choctaws together with 1000 slaves made the move to what would be called Indian Territory and then later Oklahoma.[19][20] The population transfer occurred in three migrations during the 1831–33 period including the devastating winter blizzard of 1830–31 and the cholera epidemic of 1832.[20] About 2,500 died along the trail of tears. Approximately 5,000–6,000 Choctaws remained in Mississippi in 1831 after the initial removal efforts.[21][22] For the next ten years they were objects of increasing legal conflict, harassment, and intimidation.
The Choctaw remaining in Mississippi described their situation in 1849, "we have had our habitations torn down and burned, our fences destroyed, cattle turned into our fields and we ourselves have been scourged, manacled, fettered and otherwise personally abused, until by such treatment some of our best men have died."[22]Racism was rampant. Joseph B. Cobb, who moved to Mississippi from Georgia, described the Choctaw as having "no nobility or virtue at all, and in some respect he found blacks, especially native Africans, more interesting and admirable, he considered the red man inferior in every way. The Choctaw and Chickasaw, the tribes he knew best, were beneath contempt, that is, even worse than black slaves."[23] The removals continued well into the early 20th century. In 1903, three hundred Mississippi Choctaws were persuaded to move to the Nation in Oklahoma.[24][citation needed]
1 2 Swanton, John (1931). "Choctaw Social and Ceremonial Life". Source Material for the Social and Ceremonial Life of the Choctaw Indians. The University of Alabama Press. p.5. ISBN978-0-8173-1109-4.
↑ Baird, David (1973). "The Choctaws Meet the Americans, 1783 to 1843". The Choctaw People. United States: Indian Tribal Series. p.36. LCCN73-80708.
1 2 Walter, Williams (1979). "Three Efforts at Development among the Choctaws of Mississippi". Southeastern Indians: Since the Removal Era. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press.
↑ Hudson, Charles (1971). "The Ante-Bellum Elite". Red, White, and Black; Symposium on Indians in the Old South. University of Georgia Press. p.80. ISBN978-0-8203-0308-6.
↑ Ferguson, Bob; Leigh Marshall (1997). "Chronology". Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. Archived from the original on October 10, 2007. Retrieved 2008-04-23.
The Choctaw are a Native American people originally based in the Southeastern Woodlands, in what is now Alabama and Mississippi. Their Choctaw language is a Western Muskogean language. Today, Choctaw people are enrolled in three federally recognized tribes: the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, and Jena Band of Choctaw Indians in Louisiana.
Indian removal was the United States government policy of forced displacement of self-governing tribes of Native Americans from their ancestral homelands in the eastern United States to lands west of the Mississippi River – specifically, to a designated Indian Territory. The Indian Removal Act, the key law which authorized the removal of Native tribes, was signed by Andrew Jackson in 1830. Although Jackson took a hard line on Indian removal, the law was enforced primarily during the Martin Van Buren administration. After the enactment of the Indian Removal Act in 1830, approximately 60,000 members of the Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations were forcibly removed from their ancestral homelands, with thousands dying during the Trail of Tears.
Indian Territory and the Indian Territories are terms that generally described an evolving land area set aside by the United States government for the relocation of Native Americans who held original Indian title to their land as a sovereign independent state. The concept of an Indian territory was an outcome of the U.S. federal government's 18th- and 19th-century policy of Indian removal. After the American Civil War (1861–1865), the policy of the U.S. government was one of assimilation.
The Trail of Tears was an ethnic cleansing and forced displacement of approximately 60,000 people of the "Five Civilized Tribes" between 1830 and 1850 by the United States government. As part of the Indian removal, members of the Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations were forcibly removed from their ancestral homelands in the Southeastern United States to newly designated Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River after the passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830. The Cherokee removal in 1838 was brought on by the discovery of gold near Dahlonega, Georgia, in 1828, resulting in the Georgia Gold Rush.
The Chickasaw are an Indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands, United States. Their traditional territory was in northern Mississippi, northwestern and northern Alabama, western Tennessee and southwestern Kentucky. Their language is classified as a member of the Muskogean language family. In the present day, they are organized as the federally recognized Chickasaw Nation.
The term Five Civilized Tribes was applied by European Americans in the colonial and early federal period in the history of the United States to the five major Native American nations in the Southeast, the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee (Creek), and Seminoles. Americans of European descent classified them as "civilized" because they had adopted attributes of the Anglo-American culture.
The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek was a treaty which was signed on September 27, 1830, and proclaimed on February 24, 1831, between the Choctaw American Indian tribe and the United States Government. This treaty was the first removal treaty which was carried into effect under the Indian Removal Act. The treaty ceded about 11 million acres (45,000 km2) of the Choctaw Nation in what is now Mississippi in exchange for about 15 million acres (61,000 km2) in the Indian territory, now the state of Oklahoma. The principal Choctaw negotiators were Chief Greenwood LeFlore, Mosholatubbee, and Nittucachee; the U.S. negotiators were Colonel John Coffee and Secretary of War John Eaton.
Greenwood LeFlore or Greenwood Le Fleur served as the elected Principal Chief of the Choctaw in 1830 before removal. Before that, the nation was governed by three district chiefs and a council of chiefs. A wealthy and regionally influential Choctaw of mixed-race, who belonged to the Choctaw elite due to his mother's rank, LeFlore had many connections in state and federal government. In 1830 LeFlore led other chiefs in signing the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, which ceded the remaining Choctaw lands in Mississippi to the US government and agreed to removal to Indian Territory. It also provided that Choctaw who chose to stay in Mississippi would have reserved lands, but the United States government failed to follow through on this provision.
John Ridge, born Skah-tle-loh-skee, was from a prominent family of the Cherokee Nation, then located in present-day Georgia. He went to Cornwall, Connecticut, to study at the Foreign Mission School. He met Sarah Bird Northup, of a New England Yankee family, and they married in 1824. Soon after their return to New Echota in 1825, Ridge was chosen for the Cherokee National Council and became a leader in the tribe.
The Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma is a Native American territory covering about 6,952,960 acres, occupying portions of southeastern Oklahoma in the United States. The Choctaw Nation is the third-largest federally recognized tribe in the United States and the second-largest Indian reservation in area after the Navajo. As of 2011, the tribe has 223,279 enrolled members, of whom 84,670 live within the state of Oklahoma and 41,616 live within the Choctaw Nation's jurisdiction. A total of 233,126 people live within these boundaries, with its tribal jurisdictional area comprising 10.5 counties in the state, with the seat of government being located in Durant, Oklahoma. It shares borders with the reservations of the Chickasaw, Muscogee, and Cherokee, as well as the U.S. states of Texas and Arkansas. By area, the Choctaw Nation is larger than eight U.S. states.
Mushulatubbee was the chief of the Choctaw Okla Tannap, one of the three major Choctaw divisions during the early 19th century. When the Principal Chief Greenwood LeFlore stayed in Mississippi at the time of removal, Mushulatubbee was elected as principal chief, leading the tribe to Indian Territory.
The Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians is one of three federally recognized tribes of Choctaw people, and the only one in the state of Mississippi. On April 20, 1945, this tribe organized under the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. Their reservation included lands in Neshoba, Leake, Newton, Scott, Jones, Attala, Kemper, and Winston counties. The Mississippi Choctaw regained stewardship of their mother mound, Nanih Waiya mounds and cave in 2008. The Mississippi Band of Choctaw have declared August 18 as a tribal holiday to celebrate their regaining control of the sacred site. The other two Choctaw groups are the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, the third largest tribe in the United States, and the Jena Band of Choctaw Indians, located in Louisiana.
The "Farewell Letter to the American People" was a widely published letter by Choctaw Chief George W. Harkins in February 1832. It denounced the removal of the Choctaw Nation to Oklahoma.
The Treaty of Doak's Stand was signed on October 18, 1820 between the United States and the Choctaw Indian tribe. Based on the terms of the accord, the Choctaw agreed to give up approximately one-half of their remaining Choctaw homeland. In October 1820, Andrew Jackson and Thomas Hinds were sent as commissioners who represented the United States to negotiate a treaty to surrender a large portion of Choctaw country in Mississippi. They met with tribal representatives at Doak's Stand on the Natchez Trace. They met with the chiefs Pushmataha, Mushulatubbee, and Apuckshunubbee, who represented the three major regional divisions of the Choctaw. Chiefs of the towns and other prominent men accompanied them, such as Colonel Silas Dinsmoor.
The Dancing Rabbit Creek Treaty Site is a historic Choctaw Native American gathering place in rural Noxubee County, Mississippi. Located near a freshwater spring above the floodplain of Dancing Rabbit Creek in the southwestern part of the county, it was the site of a treaty negotiation between the Choctaw and the federal government in 1830, resulting in the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, in which the Choctaw agreed to surrender their ancestral lands for territory in what is now Oklahoma. It was the first treaty negotiated after passage of the Indian Removal Act, and served as a model for other treaties passed pursuant to that act. It also led to the Choctaw Trail of Tears. The site, now marked by a stone memorial and a small Choctaw cemetery, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1996.
Apuckshunubbee was one of three principal chiefs of the Choctaw Native American tribe in the early nineteenth century, from before 1800. He led the western or Okla Falaya District of the Choctaw, of which the eastern edge ran roughly southeast from modern Winston County to Lauderdale County, then roughly southwest to Scott County, then roughly south-southeast to the western edge of Perry County. His contemporaries were Pushmataha and Moshulatubbee, who respectively led the southern district Okla Hannali and the north-eastern district Okla Tannap.
United States v. John, 437 U.S. 634 (1978), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that lands designated as a reservation in Mississippi are "Indian country" as defined by statute, although the reservation was established nearly a century after Indian removal and related treaties. The court ruled that, under the Major Crimes Act, the State has no jurisdiction to try a Native American for crimes covered by that act that occurred on reservation land.
The Treaty of Pontotoc Creek was a treaty signed on October 20, 1832 by representatives of the United States and the Chiefs of the Chickasaw Nation assembled at the National Council House on Pontotoc Creek in Pontotoc, Mississippi. The treaty ceded the 6,283,804 million acres of the remaining Chickasaw homeland in Mississippi in return for Chickasaw relocation on an equal amount of land west of the Mississippi River.
The History of the Choctaws, or Chahtas, are a Native American people originally from the Southeast of what is currently known as the United States. They are known for their rapid post-colonial adoption of a written language, transitioning to yeoman farming methods, and having European-American and African-Americans lifestyles enforced in their society.
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