Choctaw

The Choctaw (Choctaw: Chahta)[note 1] are a Native American people originally occupying what is now the Southeastern United States (modern-day Alabama, Florida, Mississippi and Louisiana). Their Choctaw language belongs to the Muskogean language family group. Hopewell and Mississippian cultures, who lived throughout the east of the Mississippi River valley and its tributaries. About 1,700 years ago, the Hopewell people built Nanih Waiya, a great earthwork mound located in what is central present-day Mississippi. It is still considered sacred by the Choctaw. The early Spanish explorers of the mid-16th century in the Southeast encountered Mississippian-culture villages and chiefs.[2] The anthropologist John Reed Swanton suggested that the Choctaw derived their name from an early leader.[3] Henry Halbert, a historian, suggests that their name is derived from the Choctaw phrase Hacha hatak (river people).[4]

The Choctaw coalesced as a people in the 17th century, and developed three distinct political and geographical divisions: eastern, western and southern. These different groups sometimes created distinct, independent alliances with nearby European powers. These included the French, based on the Gulf Coast and in Louisiana Territory; the English of the Southeast, and the Spanish of Florida and Louisiana during the colonial era. During the American Revolution, most Choctaw supported the Thirteen Colonies’ bid for independence from the British Crown. They never went to war against the United States but they were forcibly relocated in 1831–1833, as part of the Indian Removal, in order for the US to take over their land for development by European Americans.