Increasing Pressures
"Brothers listen- you must now make a voluntary choice: remove-seek a home beyond the Mississippi, or else remain, where you are, under the laws of the state, and as good people endeavor to conform to them. No other alternative is presented."
-President Andrew Jackson (1830)
Andrew Jackson
Choctaw Family at the Dancing Rabbit Creek Memorial in the 1940’s
Did You Know
Between 1800 and 1830 the Federal Government approached the Choctaws forty times to negotiate land sessions. More than 20 million acres were ceded.
”The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek acted as a bomb thrown among the Choctaws. It filled them with surprise, astonishment, excitement, grief, and resentment. Not a single Choctaw favored the sale and cession of the lands of the tribe. It had not a solitary advocate among them.”
-George S. Gaines,
Southeast Tribal Territories
at the time of Tribal Removal
Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek (1830)
The Choctaw Nation was one of the first southeastern tribes to be approached about entering a removal agreement. The treaty provided that the Choctaws would receive about 15 million acres in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) in exchange for the remaining Choctaw lands in Mississippi (about 1 million acres). Choctaws leaders opposed the treaty, but a small number were bribed or persuaded by what seemed an inevitable fate to sign the document. Several of the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Crock signatures are progenitors of the MOWA Band of Choctaws.
Article fourteen of the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek promised the Choctaw people who wanted to stay in the Mississippi rather than relocated allotments of land and dual citizenship as Choctaws and Mississippians, making them the first Indigenous people to gain recognition as U.S. Citizens. The Choctaw ancestors of the MOWA people are among those who elected to stay and become citizens.
However, only a few received titles to their lands. Other Choctaws who stayed never received land or an annuity as promised by the treaty, leaving them no choice but to become squatters in what was once their own homeland.
Treaty of Doak's Stand (1820)
The Choctaw Nation ceded more than 5 million acres in their Mississippi homelands in exchange for 13 million acres in Indian Territory (Oklahoma)
Choctaw Chiefs Journey to Washington, D.C. (1824)
To rectify the problems and concerns of the 1820 treaty, several chiefs traveled to Washington to advocate for their people. Chief Pushmatala died there and was buried at Washington National Cemetery.
Treaty of Washington City (1825)
This treaty provided options for the Choctaws to stay in Mississippi in addition to financial annuities for the tribe It also resulted in the cession of lands in what was then Arkansas Territory.
Andrew Jackson Elected President (1828)
The breaking of treaty promises and withdrawal of federal troops intended to protect Choctaw lands from colonists created a chaotic situation as more Choctaws were forced off their land and out of their homes. With the election of Andrew Jackson as President, who ran on a platform that called for the expulsion of Indigenous peoples, it became clear that things were only going to get worse.
By the following year, Mississippi illegally took over Choctaw territory and extended state jurisdiction over it. Choctaws were exiled in their own land.
Indian Removal Act Passes Congress (1830)
This authorized President Andrew Jackson to facilitate the removal of Indigenous peoples in the southeast and other areas to lands west of the Mississippi in exchange for Indian lands within existing state borders.
While some members of each impacted tribe, including the Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, and Seminoles, left voluntarily, most refused lo leave and fought back, evading capture, or later returning to their homelands