After Removal

This informative study helps to complete the saga of the Choctaw by documenting the life and culture of those who escaped removal. It is an account that until now has been left largely untold.

The Choctaw Indians, once one of the largest and most advanced tribes in North America, have mainly been studied as the first victims of removal during the Jacksonian era. After signing the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek in 1830, the great mass of the tribe—about 20,000 of perhaps 25,000—was resettled in what is present-day Oklahoma. What became of the thousands that remained?

The history of the Choctaw remaining in Mississippi has been given only scant attention by scholars, and generally it has been forgotten by the public. As this new book points out, several thousand remained on individual land allotments or as itinerant farm workers and continued to follow old customs. Many of mixed blood abandoned their ancestral ways and were merged into the white community. Some faded into the wilderness.

Despite many obstacles, the remnants of this Mississippi Choctaw society endured and in the modern era through federal legislation have been recognized as a society known as the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians.