MY CHOCTAW HERITAGE

At a Choctaw village in northern Mississippi, Old World influences mingle with traditional folkways -- from the European-style clothes to the log-cabin construction of the house to the chickens and the sheaf of wheat in the foreground. The painting is by 10th century artist Francois Bernard. 

We grew up knowing it's wrong to have more than you need. It means you're not taking care of your people. Win three races in a row, you better slow down a little. Let somebody else win. Or if somebody gets drunk and runs into your car and tears you all up, you don't sue him, you just forgive and pray for him to be cured of his own problems.

The Choctaws are a proud people. They have overcome enormous obstacles in their quest for self-reliance in a changing and often hostile world.

Culturally, the Choctaws have always honored their women as the head of every family household. They were, and still are today, considered the care-takers of our children, our elders and the house. 

The Choctaw Indian Nation traces it's ancestry to Mississippi and Alabama. In 1830, the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek forced 20,000 Choctaws from their homeland in Mississippi to what is now known as Oklahoma. About 13,000 people died along that march, which was part of the "Trail of Tears" of the 1830s.

The Choctaws were among the first to leave their lands when ordered to do so. Moving from Mississippi to eastern Oklahoma in large groups, some went by boat up the Arkansas River; others trekked overland. For all, it was a long and sorrowful trip. The boats were crowded and unsanitary, the land convoys poorly supplied and ill equipped for cold weather.

During the bitter winter of 1831-1832, one party of Choctaws walked for 24 hours barefoot through the snow and ice. An army officer supervising the operation sadly noted, "Our poor emigrants, many of them quite naked, and without much shelter, must suffer, it is impossible to do otherwise." David Folsom, Choctaw, 1830, records, "We are exceedingly tired. We have just heard of the ratification of the Choctaw Treaty. Our doom is sealed. There is no other course for us but to turn our faces to our new homes toward the setting sun."

Cholera and other diseases swept throughout the boats and the caravans, causing illness, sorrows and death. Better planning and more provisions made the process less hazardous to life and limb in later years, but nothing could heal the suffering of those leaving the soil of their ancestors. It was a journey, wrote one mournful Choctaw, "calculated to embitter the human heart."

Anyone reading the history of the Trail of Tears story, cannot help but be affected by it.. It was a raw, open wound upon the nation, both for the whites and the indian.

The Choctaw population has grown from the original 7,000 survivors to more than 105,000. They are still looking for people with CHoctaw ancestry and are attempting to put together a more thorough history of the tribe. At this point in time, all they have are bits and pieces dating back from the 1700s.

In 1540 the Spaniard, De Soto, had reached the territory of the great Choctaw chief Tuscaloosa. The chief, seated on cushions in a raised pavilion in the town plaza, received the strangers with regal pomp. About his shoulders hung a floor-length feather cape, behind him stood and attendant holding a fan-shaped parasol. De Soto demanded 400 bearers, which Tuscaloosa graciously provided, and also 100 women. These, the Choctaw said, would be waiting at the next town, Mabila.

So the Spanish set off. At Mabila, they entered a massive stockade with 15 foot-high mud-plastered walls and tall defensive watchtowers. Suddenly Choctaw warriors poured into the central plaza and fell upon the intruders. De Soto had been ambushed. After hours of ferocious combat, thousands of Tuscaloosa's men had fallen and it was devastating to the Spaniards also. Their horses and supplies were mostly destroyed and the men were either wounded or dead. For a man like De Soto that had carried death and destruction in his march across the country, it was a terrible blow.

Tuscaloosa was one of the great chiefs of the Choctaws. And today, the Choctaws still are fighting for the right to govern themselves. Please go to some of the links that I have provided and learn more about the Choctaw people... They are working very hard to maintain their rights, even as they did so many years ago. 

 

A little touch of history: During the Irish famine, back in the middle of the last century, near Coagh Patrick, (Ireland's holy mountain, where St Patrick fasted for 40 days), all the people tried to get food in Louisburgh (a few miles from Coagh Patrick) and were told they had to walk 11 miles to another place called Delphi Lodge in order to get papers that would say they were officially paupers, so that they could get food. They set off, but many never made it, and when they got there, the officials were having dinner, couldn't be bothered and told them to go home. Lots of them died on the way back, and the whole sad sage of the famine continued. Some survivers, however, eventually were able to get to America and start a new life. Apparently, there was this particular tribe of Choctaw Indians who got to hear about how all these poor Irish people were starving to death.... they just couldn't understand how a nation could not feed it's own people. So they sold everything they had, for which they got $170. and they sent it to Ireland! How about that? And then later to find that their own nation did the same thing to them.........