Land & Timber Industry
While several ancestors of the MOWA Choctaw people held official title to their land, many did not and built their settlements on public lands. This did not become a problem until the mid 1880’s when timber companies began seeking new forests for logging. This displaced families, but it also provided jobs.
Timber Industry
The Wager Lumber Company established a saw mill in Mobil eand expanded to Washington County a few years later. The national demand for timber continued to increase over the next few decades.
Everett & Boykin Store Opens in Washington County (1901)
Business owner and Indian community leader John Everett teamed up with Frank Boykin, the manager of the Seaboard Manufacturing Company's railroad commisary, to build the first brick store in Washington County, By 1905, the pair began investing in sawmills (forerummer of Tensaw Land & Timber Company), real estate and commissary stores. Some of the reael estate acquired by Everett and Boykin came from the ancestors of the MOWA Choctaw people themselves, as land was exchanged for debts owed lo their stores or because of Indian families not being able to pay their property taxes
Logging took community cooperation. Men from different families participated in cutting the tall timber, moving logs to a creek with a team of oxen, and then floating it down the river to market. Periodically, they would combine their logs into an enormous rail for the trip to Mobile.
Roosevelt Weaver describes life at this time: "Before the sawmills come in, old man Johnston run logs in the river and look rafts lo Mobile. They had all them logs rafted up ready to go so that when the water got up it would run them logs down what they called Little River, cause it had plenty of water in it and you could go into Tombigbee out of Little River. It come down in between Bates and Bilbo Creek. You had to hold the raft in that out of the woods and stay on the logs. They had long paddles, about 15 feet. where they could pull that water and hold that rail out of the woods. My daddy said they always had a tent stretched on the logs, on the front end. That's where they cook and eat going lo Mobile…Isaac Johnston catched the train and wend down to get paid for his loves and meet the payday. He was pretty well known in Mobile around the banks and could cash checks. He give the men their money and they bought all the whiskey, or whatever, they wanted. Then he would bring them back home on the train
-Roosevelt Weaver (1946 interview)
Turpentine Industry Takes Off (1920s)
Br1922, Everett and Burkin had expanded into the turpentine industry, running approximate 35 turpentine stills across Baldwin, Washington, and Mobile counties. Drawing heavily on Indian laborers, the turpentine and logging industries became the primary economic mainstay for tribal families. The company also built railroads to connect with larger lines or to the river and established a lumber mill at Fairford, near the Mobile-Washington County line. It built a railroad line as far north as Uniform (near Tibbie) at Tiger Branch, the end of the line where the Turnaround for the train was located.
Boykin's Influence
When John Everett died in 1928, Frank Boykin took over their joint business ventures and later went into policitcs, serving in the House of Representatives from 1935 - 1963.
Tribal elders have expressed the negative impact that Boykins influence and power had on the community. Many tell of his threats that if they tried to work elsewhere, they would be reptored to federal authorities and sent to Oklahoma. Later, when large chemical plansts were established near McIntosh, residents clained that Boykin told compnay managers not to hire local Indians becase they worked exclusively for him. AS a result, for years, the chemical companies refused to accept applications from Indians.
Boykins own correspondence reveals his perspective about his Indian neighbors: “…we have a lof of wild Indians….I still have a lot of them and they work for us. They can see in the dark and teycan trail a eounded deer better than some of our trail dogs.” (Boykin 1960)
The Choctaw language was used as a code in World War 1 by a group of Oklahoma Choctaw Code Talkers