Relocation

In spite of all their contributions to U. S. causes and their acceptance of Euroamerican ways of life, the Choctaw were mistreated. Non-Indian settlers wanted their lands, and both state governments and the federal government sided with whites over Indians. In the Creek War, the Choctaw had fought under the man who later became president of the United States, Andrew Jackson. Even so, Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act of 1830, calling for the relocation of all eastern tribes to territory west of the Mississippi River. This was the start of the Trail of Tears, a phrase originally used to describe the CHEROKEE removal but which has come to stand for the forced march of all the relocated Southeast tribes.

The Choctaw were the first tribe forced from their homeland under the removal policy. In 1830, a few among them, who did not represent the majority, were bribed into signing the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, which ceded all Choctaw lands in the state of Mississippi. Some Choctaw refused to depart and hid out in the backwoods of Mississippi and Louisiana. But the vast majority were herded westward by U. S. Army bluecoats. Conditions on the many forced marches from 1831 to 1834 were horrific. There were shortages of food, blankets, horses, and wagons. The soldiers turned their backs when bandits ambushed the migrants. Disease also struck down the exhausted travelers. About a quarter of the Choctaw died on the trip, and many more perished after their arrival in the Indian Territory, from disease, starvation, and attacks by hostile western Indians.

The Choctaw persisted, reorganizing as a tribe and making the most of their new home. Because they adopted a republican style of government modeled after that of the United States, as well as other Euroamerican customs, the Choctaw came to be referred to as one of the “Five Civilized Tribes” along with the Chickasaw, Creek, Cherokee, and SEMINOLE. Pressures caused by non-Indian expansion did not cease, however. The General Allotment Act of 1887, designed to force the breakup of tribal landholdings for increased development, caused the eventual loss of much acreage. What was supposed to exist permanently for native peoples as the Indian Territory became the state of Oklahoma in 1907. (Oklahoma is a Muskogean word, coined by the Choctaw Allen Wright to mean “red people,” and first applied to the western half of the Indian Territory in 1890.)