siOBX; - Smithsonian Institution

SWANTON] CHOCTAW SOCIAL, AND CEEEMOITIAL, LIFE 5
onists and the original occupants of the soil, whose removal to lands
farther west was clamorously urged by the settlers and ultimately
agreed to by the Choctaw themselves at the treaty of Dancing Rabbit
Creek, September 27 and 28, 1830. By this treaty they secured a tract
of land along Red River, in the southeastern part of the present State
of Oklahoma, to which the bulk of the tribe emigrated in 1831, 1832,
and 1833. The first emigrants suffered cruelly, but those who went
later sowed their fields promptly and experienced fewer hardships
than the Indians of most of the other expatriated tribes. A portion
held on in their old territories, though bands of them joined their
western kindred from time to time, 1,000 in 1846, 1,619 in 184T, 118
in 1848, 547 in 1849, 388 in 1853, and more than 300 in 1854. A con-
siderable body still remained, numbering 1,253 in 1910 and 1,665 in
1930. In 1855 the Chickasaw, who had at first enjoyed the privilege
of settling indiscriminately among the Choctaw, were given a separate
territory west of the latter, and an independent government. The
history of the Choctaw national government in Oklahoma would
constitute an interesting contribution to our knowledge of native
American capabilities in the handling of their affairs under a frame
imported from abroad. Like the governments of the other four red
republics of the old Indian Territory, it is now of course a thing of
the past, the Choctaw being citizens of Oklahoma and of the United
States.
THE ORIGIN LEGEND
There are two forms of the Choctaw origin legend, and both are
suggested in the following passage from Du Pratz, which perhaps
contains our earliest reference to it:
According to the tradition of the natives this nation passed so rapidly from
one land to another and arrived so suddenly in the country vphich it occupies
that, when I asked them from whence the Chat-kas came, to express the
suddenness of their appearance they replied that they had come out from
under the earth. Their great numbers imposed respect on the nations near
which they passed, but their wholly unmartial character did not inspire them
with any lust of conquest, so that they entered an uninhabited country the
possession of whicli no one disputed witli them. They have not molested
their neighbors, and the latter did not dare to test their bravery ; this is
doubtless why they have grown, and augmented to their present numbers.^
Romans (1771) says:
These people are the only nation from whom I could learn any idea of a
traditional account of a first origin ; and that is their coming out of a hole
in the ground, which they shew between their nation and the Chickasaws;
they tell us also that tlieir neighbours were surprised at seeing a people rise
at once out of the earth.'
1 Du Pratz, Hist, de La Louisiane, ii, pp. 216-217. Paris, 1758.
* Romans, B., Nat. Hist, of E. and W. Fla., p. 71. New York, 1775.