Upon their arrival in Oklahoma, the Choctaw Indian people set up a constitutional form of government with three separate branches: legislative, judicial, and executive. They operated in this manner until statehood in 1907. The Choctaw Nation dissolved after statehood, tribal government ceased to exist, and all people were brought under the jurisdiction of the Oklahoma state government. -- excerpt from book's Preface.
During the decades between the Civil War and the establishment of Oklahoma statehood, Choctaws suffered almost daily from murders, thefts, and assaults—usually at the hands of white intruders, but increasingly by Choctaws themselves. This book focuses on two previously unexplored murder cases to illustrate the intense factionalism that emerged among tribal members during those lawless years as conservative Nationalists and pro-assimilation Progressives fought for control of the Choctaw Nation. Devon Abbott Mihesuah describes the brutal murder in 1884 of her own great-great-grandfather, Nationalist Charles Wilson, who was a Choctaw lighthorseman and U.S. deputy marshal. She then relates the killing spree of Progressives by Nationalist Silan Lewis ten years later. Mihesuah draws on a wide array of sources—even in the face of missing court records—to weave a spellbinding account of homicide and political intrigue. She painstakingly delineates a transformative period in Choctaw history to explore emerging gulfs between Choctaw citizens and address growing Indian resistance to white intrusions, federal policies, and the taking of tribal resources. The first book to fully describe this Choctaw factionalism, Choctaw Crime and Punishment is both a riveting narrative and an important analysis of tribal politics.
Choctaw Nation is a story of tribal nation building in the modern era. Valerie Lambert treats nation-building projects as nothing new to the Choctaws of southeastern Oklahoma, who have responded to a number of hard-hitting assaults on Choctaw sovereignty and nationhood by rebuilding their tribal nation.
This evocative story of the Choctaws is told through the lives of two remarkable leaders, Taboca and Franchimastabä, during a period of revolutionary change, 1750-1830. Both men achieved recognition as warriors in the eighteenth century but then followed very different paths of leadership. Taboca was a traditional Choctaw leader, a "prophet-chief" whose authority was deeply rooted in the spiritual realm. The foundation of Franchimastabä's power was more externally driven, resting on trade with Europeans and American colonists and the acquisition of manufactured goods. Franchimastabä responded to shifting circumstances outside the Choctaw nation by pushing the source of authority in novel directions, straddling spiritual and economic power in a way unfathomable to Taboca. The careers of these leaders signal a watershed moment in Choctaw history ? the receding of a traditional mystically oriented world and the dawning of a new market-oriented one. At once engaging and informative, Choctaws in a Revolutionary Age, 1750?1830 highlights the efforts of a nation to preserve its integrity and reform its strength in an increasingly complicated, multicultural world.
Choctaws at the Crossroads examines the political economy of the Choctaws at the end of the twentieth century. Forcibly relocated in the 1830s from the lower Mississippi Valley to the southeastern corner of Indian Territory, the Choctaws today are a dynamic and complex rural ethnic community in Oklahoma. Many work as nonunionized laborers for large corporations, yet they seek to maintain some aspects of their traditional way of life. øCombining fieldwork and archival research, Sandra Faiman-Silva uncovers the processes by which the local economic and social practices of the Choctaws have become intertwined with and, in some respects, dependent on corporate and global economic forces. Low wages and often temporary work force the Choctaws to supplement their income through tribal economic assistance and through traditional practices of horticulture, fishing, craft production, canning, and residence sharing. Faiman-Silva finds a troubling paradox in this strategy. Such traditional economic activities are central to Choctaw identity and way of life and are outside the non-Indian controlled, capitalist system; at the same time, these practices help sustain the power and profits of corporations. This sensitive and theoretically informed study makes an important contribution to understanding the historic, economic, and social conditions of contemporary Native Americas.
Choctaw are the largest tribe belonging to the branch of the Muskogean family that includes the Chickasaw, Creek (Muscogee), and Seminole. According to oral history, the tribe originated from Nanih Waya, a sacred hill near present-day Noxapater, Mississippi. Nanih Waya means "productive or fruitful hill, or mountain." During one of their migrations, they carried a tree that would lean, and every day the people would travel in the direction the tree was leaning. They traveled east and south for sometime until the tree quit leaning, and the people stopped to make their home at this location, in present-day Mississippi. The people have made difficult transitions throughout their history. In 1830, the Choctaw who were removed by the United States from their southeastern U.S. homeland to Indian Territory became known as the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.
With the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the Choctaw people began their journey over the Trail of Tears from their homelands in Mississippi to the new lands of the Choctaw Nation. Suffering a death rate of nearly 20 percent due to exposure, disease, mismanagement, and fraud, they limped into Indian Territory, or, as they knew it, the Land of the Dead (the route taken by the souls of Choctaw people after death on their way to the Choctaw afterlife). Their first few years in the new nation affirmed their name for the land, as hundreds more died from whooping cough, floods, starvation, cholera, and smallpox. Living in the Land of the Dead depicts the story of Choctaw survival, and the evolution of the Choctaw people in their new environment. Culturally, over time, their adaptation was one of homesteads and agriculture, eventually making them self-sufficient in the rich new lands of Indian Territory. Along the Red River and other major waterways several Choctaw families of mixed heritage built plantations, and imported large crews of slave labor to work cotton fields. They developed a sub-economy based on interaction with the world market. However, the vast majority of Choctaws continued with their traditional subsistence economy that was easily adapted to their new environment. The immigrant Choctaws did not, however, move into land that was vacant. The U.S. government, through many questionable and some outright corrupt extralegal maneuvers, chose to believe it had gained title through negotiations with some of the peoples whose homelands and hunting grounds formed Indian Territory. Many of these indigenous peoples reacted furiously to the incursion of the Choctaws onto their rightful lands. They threatened and attacked the Choctaws and other immigrant Indian Nations for years. Intruding on others’ rightful homelands, the farming-based Choctaws, through occupation and economics, disrupted the traditional hunting economy practiced by the Southern Plains Indians, and contributed to the demise of the Plains ways of life.
By planting gardens, engaging in more exercise and sport, and eating traditional foods, Native peoples can emulate the health and fitness of their ancestors."--BOOK JACKET.
Under what conditions can democratic governments be formed and become stable? The author addresses this question in a unique way that brings sociological and political theory to bear on the study of traditional societies, long the preserve of historians and anthropologists. By examining in detail the history of four American Indian societies—the Cherokee, the Choctaw, the Chickasaw, and the Creek—the author documents a general theory of politics and constitutional government. The four societies present an opportunity to study the process of democratic institution building in a controlled, comparative historical context. The societies were subject to similar geopolitical relations with the United States; they were incorporated into the same sequence of world economic system relations (initially fur trade and then the cotton market); they experienced the emergence of class structures; and they all produced some form of constitutional democracy. The Cherokee, however, adopted a stable constitutional government earlier and with less coercion than the other three nations. Why was this so? With the aid of comparative analysis, the author finds the answer in the Cherokee differentiation of politics from the nationally and religiously ordered clan system. This set of institutional relations allowed the Cherokee to maintain a strong sense of social solidarity while tolerating conflict, increased political differentiation, and formation of a political nationality. The other three societies were either less differentiated or less socially unified. They formed their constitutional governments thirty to forty years later than the Cherokee and with more internal political coercion—and, in the Creek case, with less political stability. The formation and stabilization of democratic state governments is a major issue in such contemporary phenomena as political change in Third World nations and the transformation of the governments of Eastern Europe. The four case studies presented in this hook form the basis of a new and powerful theoretical argument for understanding historical patterns of democratic change, political stability, and the relations of political power.
This book tells the story of the shared history of the three federally recognized Choctaw tribes from before the first European contact in the 1530s and then provides the history and contemporary status of each of the three tribes separately. Rather than focusing on a single Choctaw group, this book offers for the first time a combined story of "the Choctaw" as the tribe comprises the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, and the Jean Band of Choctaw Indians. The first portion of the book provides the archaeological history of the native groups that ultimately became the Choctaw, chronicling the development of the people in the southeastern portions of what is now the United States into the people who encountered the first Europeans to set foot on the continent. Though the tribe's contact with European colonists varied depending on the country from where the colonists originated, that contact was forever changed after the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek of 1830 led to the fractionalization of the tribe: some Choctaws moved to what is now Oklahoma, some chose to remain in Mississippi, and others chose to stay in Louisiana. The remainder of the book studies the continued histories of each of the tribes in parallel, offering students and general readers a practicable resource for understanding the Choctaw within the broad context of American history.
