CHOCTAW

North American Indian tribe of Muskogean linguistic stock that lived in what is now southeastern Mississippi. The Choctaw dialect is practically identical to that of the Chickasaw (q.v.), and there is evidence that they are a branch of the latter tribe. In the mid-18th century there were 20,000 Choctaw living in 60 or 70 settlements along the Pearl, Chickasawhay, and Pascagoula rivers. Their dwellings were thatched-roof cabins of logs or bark, plastered over with mud. Among the southeastern agriculturalists the Choctaw were the most skillful farmers, the only tribe who had surplus produce to sell or trade. They planted corn (maize), beans, and pumpkins; fished; gathered nuts and wild fruits; and hunted deer and bear. The Choctaw wore their hair long. They picked the bones of their dead in a rite performed some days after death by professional bone pickers, male and female, who had distinctive tattooing and long fingernails. The Choctaw also practiced head deformation, flattening the heads of male infants; this was a common custom among the Southeast Indians. Their most important religious ceremony was the Busk, or Green Corn, festival, a first-fruits and new-fire rite celebrated at midsummer. In the power struggles that took place after white settlement, the Choctaw were generally allied with the French against the English and other Indian tribes. They also fought a succession of wars with the Chickasaw. After the French defeat in the French and Indian War (1754-63), some Choctaw land was ceded to the U.S. and they began moving west across the Mississippi. In the 19th century the growth of the European market for cotton increased the pressure for the acquisition of Choctaw land, and in 1820 they ceded 5,000,000 acres in west central Mississippi to the U.S. Along with the Creek, Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Seminole, they were forced to move to what is now Oklahoma in the 1830s. For three-quarters of a century each tribe had a land allotment and a quasi-autonomous government modelled on that of the U.S. In preparation for Oklahoma statehood (1907), some of this land was allotted to individual Indians; the rest was opened up to white homesteaders, held in trust by the federal government, or allotted to freed slaves. Tribal governments were effectively dissolved in 1906 but have continued to exist in a limited form. Some Indians now live on tribal landholdings that are informally called reservations. In the late 20th century, Choctaw descendants in eastern Oklahoma numbered about 17,500. There is also a Choctaw reservation in Mississippi.