Choctaw Nation is a story of tribal nation building in the modern era. Valerie Lambert treats nation-building projects as nothing new to the Choctaws of southeastern Oklahoma, who have responded to a number of hard-hitting assaults on Choctaw sovereignty and nationhood by rebuilding their tribal nation.

The Rich Culture and History of the Choctaw Tribe - and the Remarkable Mississippi Band...The Choctaw Indians are one of the oldest tribes in the Americas, dating from the era when the woolly mammoth roamed the Southeast. They are the native inhabitants of the area now comprising the states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi. The Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians still continues to speak their own language, maintain their unique culture, and live on their indigenous land in Mississippi. In this beautifully researched book, Dr. Kennith York draws upon oral traditions, historical documents, and accounts of observers and scholars to illuminate the prehistory, culture, language, and history of the Chahta Okla People. Join this resilient, creative, and memorable band as they survive the Spanish terrorist attack of 1540, the French and British invasion of the 1700s, the US Government Policy of Indian Removal of 1830, the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Civil Rights Era of the 1960s, and the current economic recession, which threatens the survival of 10,300 Choctaws. Recognized as community leaders in community and economic development through business, education, health care, gaming, and tourism, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians stand out as a shining example of a people striving to embrace their heritage while working within the constraints placed upon them by the US government. This valuable book provides an update to John Swanton's work on the Choctaw Indians.

The Choctaws in Oklahoma begins with the Choctaws' removal from Mississippi to Indian Territory in the 1830s and then traces the history of the tribe's subsequent efforts to retain and expand its rights and to reassert tribal sovereignty in the late twentieth century. This book illustrates the Choctaws' remarkable success in asserting their sovereignty and establishing a national identity in the face of seemingly insurmountable legal obstacles.

This complete overview of the Choctaw people, from ancient times to the present, includes sections on history, cuisine, music and dance, current issues, oral traditions and language, social relationships, and traditional world view. Endeavoring to replace stereotypical images with a more accurate understanding of Native Americans, Culture and Customs of the Choctaw Indians explores the traditional lives of the Choctaw people, their history and oppression by the dominant society, and their struggles to maintain a unique identity in the face of overwhelming pressures to assimilate. The book begins with a historical overview of traditional Choctaw life, belief systems, social customs, and traditions. Moving to contemporary Choctaw communities, it looks at the modern-day Choctaw and the important issues they face. Separate chapters cover cuisine, social and kinship systems, oral traditions, arts, music, and dance, as well as current issues and tribal politics. Readers will see how many Choctaw people blend traditional beliefs with participation in and knowledge of the dominant society and economy, while continuing to speak and teach the Choctaw language and traditions in homes, churches, and schools.

When the Choctaws were removed from their Mississippi homeland to Indian Territory in 1830, several thousand remained behind, planning to take advantage of Article 14 in the removal treaty, which promised that any Choctaws who wished to remain in Mississippi could apply for allotments of land. When the remaining Choctaws applied for their allotments, however, the government reneged, and the Choctaws were left dispossessed and impoverished. Thus begins the history of the Mississippi Choctaws as a distinct people. Despite overwhelming poverty and significant racial prejudice in the rural South, the Mississippi Choctaws managed, over the course of a century and a half, to maintain their ethnic identity, persuade the Office of Indian Affairs to provide them with services and lands, create a functioning tribal government, and establish a prosperous and stable reservation economy. The Choctaws’ struggle against segregation in the 1950s and 1960s is an overlooked story of the civil rights movement, and this study of white supremacist support for Choctaw tribalism considerably complicates our understanding of southern history. Choctaw Resurgence in Mississippi traces the Choctaw’s remarkable tribal rebirth, attributing it to their sustained political and social activism.

This book tells the story of the shared history of the three federally recognized Choctaw tribes from before the first European contact in the 1530s and then provides the history and contemporary status of each of the three tribes separately. Rather than focusing on a single Choctaw group, this book offers for the first time a combined story of "the Choctaw" as the tribe comprises the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, and the Jean Band of Choctaw Indians. The first portion of the book provides the archaeological history of the native groups that ultimately became the Choctaw, chronicling the development of the people in the southeastern portions of what is now the United States into the people who encountered the first Europeans to set foot on the continent. Though the tribe's contact with European colonists varied depending on the country from where the colonists originated, that contact was forever changed after the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek of 1830 led to the fractionalization of the tribe: some Choctaws moved to what is now Oklahoma, some chose to remain in Mississippi, and others chose to stay in Louisiana. The remainder of the book studies the continued histories of each of the tribes in parallel, offering students and general readers a practicable resource for understanding the Choctaw within the broad context of American history.

In the nineteenth century, Native American writing and oratory extended a long tradition of diplomacy between indigenous people and settler states. As the crisis of forced removal profoundly reshaped Indian country between 1820 and 1860, tribal leaders and intellectuals worked with coauthors, interpreters, and amanuenses to address the impact of American imperialism on Indian nations. These collaborative publication projects operated through institutions of Indian diplomacy, but also intervened in them to contest colonial ideas about empire, the frontier, and nationalism. In this book, Frank Kelderman traces this literary history in the heart of the continent, from the Great Lakes to the Upper Missouri River Valley. Because their writings often were edited and published by colonial institutions, many early Native American writers have long been misread, discredited, or simply ignored. Authorized Agents demonstrates why their works should not be dismissed as simply extending the discourses of government agencies or religious organizations. Through analyses of a range of texts, including oratory, newspapers, autobiographies, petitions, and government papers, Kelderman offers an interdisciplinary method for examining how Native authors claimed a place in public discourse, and how the conventions of Indian diplomacy shaped their texts.

For 350 years the Chickasaws-one of the Five Civilized Tribes-made a sustained effort to preserve their tribal institutions and independence in the face of increasing encroachments by white men. This is the first book-length account of their valiant-but doomed-struggle. Against an ethnohistorical background, the author relates the story of the Chickasaws from their first recorded contacts with Europeans in the lower Mississippi Valley in 1540 to final dissolution of the Chickasaw Nation in 1906. Included are the years of alliance with the British, the dealings with the Americans, and the inevitable removal to Indian Territory (Oklahoma) in 1837 under pressure from settlers in Mississippi and Alabama. Among the significant events in Chickasaw history were the tribe’s surprisingly strong alliance with the South during the Civil War and the federal actions thereafter which eventually resulted in the absorption of the Chickasaw Nation into the emerging state of Oklahoma.

In The Native South, Tim Alan Garrison and Greg O'Brien assemble contributions from leading ethnohistorians of the American South in a state-of-the-field volume of Native American history from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century. Spanning such subjects as Seminole-African American kinship systems, Cherokee notions of guilt and innocence in evolving tribal jurisprudence, Indian captives and American empire, and second-wave feminist activism among Cherokee women in the 1970s, The Native South offers a dynamic examination of ethnohistorical methodology and evolving research subjects in southern Native American history. Theda Perdue and Michael Green, pioneers in the modern historiography of the Native South who developed it into a major field of scholarly inquiry today, speak in interviews with the editors about how that field evolved in the late twentieth century after the foundational work of James Mooney, John Swanton, Angie Debo, and Charles Hudson. For scholars, graduate students, and undergraduates in this field of American history, this collection offers original essays by Mikaëla Adams, James Taylor Carson, Tim Alan Garrison, Izumi Ishii, Malinda Maynor Lowery, Rowena McClinton, David A. Nichols, Greg O'Brien, Meg Devlin O'Sullivan, Julie L. Reed, Christina Snyder, and Rose Stremlau.

First Americans provides a comprehensive history of Native Americans from their earliest appearance in North America to the present, highlighting the complexity and diversity of their cultures and their experiences. Native voices permeate the text and shape its narrative, underlining the agency and vitality of Native peoples and cultures in the context of regional, continental, and global developments. This updated edition of First Americans continues to trace Native experiences through the Obama administration years and up to the present day. The book includes a variety of pedagogical tools including short biographical profiles, key review questions, a rich series of maps and illustrations, chapter chronologies, and recommendations for further reading. Lucid and readable yet rigorous in its coverage, First Americans remains the indispensable student introduction to Native American history.