Figure 1.--French-born artist Alfred Boisseau arrived in New Orleans (1845). He was fascinated by Native Americans, blacks, and Creoles. He painted this view of Native Americans in the bayous shortly after he arrived (1846). We believe that they are probably Chocktaw. The Federal Government renoved the Choktaw to the Indian Territory (1830). Louisiana is mostly west of the Mississippi and some Chocktaw remainec in remote areas of the bayous, marginal land not suitable for plantation agriculture.

The Choctaw for several centuries were agriculturists inhabiting what is now the southeastern United States. They were part of the Muskogean linguistic family. Linguistic studies were a major ways of tracing tribal relations. Thus the Chioctaw were known to be related to the extensive mound-building, maize-based society that dominated the Mississippi River Valley for over a milenium before he arrival of the Europeans. The Choctaw's first encounter with Europeans was the arrival of Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto and his force of Coquistadores (1540). The result was a bloody fight. The area did not have much gold and thus was not an area of great kinterest tothe Europeans. European traders arrive (18th century). They were of great interwst because of the trade goods they brought. Until the American Revolution, the Choctaw were not much affected by the Europeans. British policy was to keep the Colonists from moving west beyound the Appalachins. President Washington initiated a Nayive American policy of integrating Southeastern tribes into American culture. Many Choctaw began to adopt American ways. Many intermarried, converted to Christianity, and adopted a range of 'white' customs. Thus the Choctaw were one of the Five Civilized Tribes (Chickasaw, Cherokee, Creek and Seminole). The Choctaw signed a series of treaties with the United States. The first was the Treaty of Hopewell (1786), only a few years after the Revolution. The Treaty set boundaries and established a 'universal' peace between the two nations. The Chocktaw as the rest of the Southeast was powerfully affected by Eli Witney's invention of the cotton gin (1793) and the Louisian Purchase (1803). Whitney's cotton gin This provided a way of separating the seeds from the cotton and meant that cotton could be profitably grown. It also radically changed the value of agricultural land in the Southeast. The Louisiana Purchase enab;ed the United States to acquire huge areas beyond the Mississippi River. Subsequent treaties after Hopewell redefined the borders of the Choctaw lands as settlers poured over the Appalachins into the Southeastern United States. The settlers thus seized millions of acres of Choctaw land. The United States finally seized the last of the Tribe's ancestral territory and forced the Choctaw to relocate to the Indian Territory west of the Mississippi (1830). The Choctaw people were cthe were the first of the tribes thst had to make the trek now known as the Trail of Tears. About 2,500 Chocktaws, including many children and elderly perished along the trail. When they arrived in the Indian Terrirory some of the first things they did was to build a school and a church. They then drafted a brand new constitution. A decade later when the Potato Famine strick Ireland, the Choctaws sent money collected in the churches to aid the suffering Irish. The Choktaw during World war I helped pioneer the Code Talkers during the fighting against the Germans in France. The Chocktaw today number about 200,000 membes, the third largest United States tribe.

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Created: 7:05 PM 1/13/2012
Last updated: 7:05 PM 1/13/2012