Civil War & Reconstruction
"Tragedy struck in the form of the War Between the States. Many Choctaw youth were killed or maimed in this confrontation. The South's promise of their recognition of the Choctaw rights under Dancing Rabbit Creek went unfulfilled. Many Choctaw packed their few valuables and joined their relatives along the Texas-Oklahoma border. Others, had neither the heart nor the desire to leave their beloved Alabama."
-Peter Rivers (MOWA Tribal Geneologist, President of Alabama Indian Art Council, 1991)
Reconstruction (1865-1877)
The Reconstruction era brought additional stress to the MOWA peaple as nonwhite residents in a biracial society. Lane were written to define people as either white or black. Most American Indians living in the South became a group of people who legally did not exist.
Dawes Act (1887)
The Dawes Act (also known as the General Allotment Act) provided federal authorization to break up reservation lands into small allotments to be parceled out to individual American Indians who were registered on tribal rolls were granted allotments. Although they didn’t have a federal reservation, dozens of MOWA Choctaws submitted enrollment applications for the Dawes Roll.
Alabama Choctaws Recruited for the Confederacy (1862)
During the Civil War another type of round-up further decimated the ancestors of the MOWA Choctaw. The Confederate Secretary of War issued an order to enlist all the Indians east of the Mississippi River as scouts. The Choctaw men were recruited into service at a camp located at the foot of Stone Street in Mobile, Alabama, With the promise of a fifty-dollar bounty, clothes, food and Enfeld Rifles, the Choctaw men enlisted and went off to war.
Widows and Orphans Resettle
With mans of the men killed during the war. the women and children who were left hehind had to find new wats to live. In one Instance, thes Joined the family of Alexander Brashears who was one of the bo people iho repeatedle petitioned the US under the provisions for the Treatyaf Dancing Rabbit Creek to reylster to becume a vitizen as Chotans in the ptate uf Alabama