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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 February 2017
In September 1830 the U.S. government negotiated the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek with some leaders of the Choctaw Nation. The treaty reinforced the congressional Indian Removal Act of 1830, which paved the way for the large-scale physical removal of tens of thousands of tribal people of the southeast, including many of the Choctaw. It provided for the “removal” of the Choctaw from their traditional homeland in Mississippi to Indian Territory. Over a two-year period, from 1831 to 1833, roughly thirteen thousand to fifteen thousand Choctaw, or about half of the tribe, moved to the region we now call southeastern Oklahoma
1 Akers, Donna L., “Removing the Heart of the Choctaw People: Indian Removal from a Native Perspective,” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 23 (1999): 63–76; Satz, Ronald N., American Indian Policy in the Jacksonian Era (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1975), 82–83. For an excellent bibliography on Choctaw history, see Clara Sue Kidwell and Charles Roberts, The Choctaws: A Critical Bibliography (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980). The author thanks Dr. Jane Haladay at the University of California, Davis for reviewing this article. I also give thanks to Choctaw historians Dr. Charles Roberts at California State University, Sacramento, and Dr. Donna Akers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln for also reviewing this article. I assume responsibility for any errors within this work.
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