The Choctaw Indians in This Area

In 1830, the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek forcibly relocated the entire Choctaw nation from their homeland in Mississippi west to what is now known as Southeastern Oklahoma. Over twenty thousand Choctaw Indians were relocated on this long journey. Only seven thousand survived this journey on what has come to be known as "The Trail of Tears". The Choctaw population has now grown from the original seven thousand survivors to more than seventy-thousand. "Okla" (The People) The Choctaws were one of the largest and most advanced tribes in all of North America. Yet, with all of their knowledge they left few if any written records. The first written treaty between the United States and the Choctaw Indians was January 3, 1786. Nine more treaties were agreed upon, the final being the infamous Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek signed September 15, 1830. There were additional treaties made with the Choctaws who had relocated to Indian Territory in what is now the State of Oklahoma. The Choctaw who remained in Mississippi became the target of unscrupulous land speculators as the Federal Government made repeated efforts to remove them. In 1830 the U.S. government passed the Indian Removal Act which was to affect all southeastern Native Americans and immediately followed it up with the Choctaw-specific Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek. To this day there is a tombstone-like marker at Dancing Rabbit Creek commemorating the signing. The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek abrogated all previous agreements and called for the removal of all Choctaw, by 1833, from the remaining ancestral lands to reservations in what was to eventually become Oklahoma. Each individual also had the option of accepting a parcel of land and remaining in Mississippi. However the price of doing this was the loss of Choctaw identity and the acceptance of U.S. and Mississippi citizenship. Choctaw leader, Allen Wright, first suggested the name for Oklahoma, which meant "red people" in the Muskogean language. Wright was a minister who went on to become the Principal Chief of the Choctaw Indians in 1866. After the Removal Act, part of the land (now Oklahoma) was designated Indian Territory. This territory comprised the Choctaw and Cherokee Nations, and later the Chickasaw Nation in 1855. Once the Civil War was over, the U.S. government began to consider the idea of merging all the tribal governments in the territory, at which point Wright suggested they rename the territory Oklahoma. The reorganization did not take place until 1890, in an act passed by Congress.