Tribal Land to Private Land: A Century of Oklahoma Choctaw Timberland Alienation from the 1880s to the 1980s

Abstract

The Choctaw of southeastern Oklahoma over the last two centuries have suffered an untimely and inopportune relati onsh ip to prominent events in wo rld and national history, as a result o f which the y have lost tribal control of prime farmland and later prime timberland, in two different parts of the country. At the turn of the nineteenth century the Choctaw still occupied the ir aboriginal homeland in the highly desirable co tto nproducing region of the Miss issippi valley. Between 1801 and 1820 they ceded approximately half of their tribal land to whites, most of it through the persistent efforts of John C. Calhoun, secretary of war under President James Monroe (181720). Wh en Calhoun appointed Andrew Jackson as chief negotiator for removal of the Choctaw in 182 0, Calhoun's own mod erate negot iating tactics gave way to Jackson's unequivocal stand in favor of ea rly removal to Indian Territory. The Treaty of Do ak 's Stand, signed in 1820, sealed the fate of th e Choctaw. In it they ceded about one-third of their Mississippi landhold ings, abo ut five million acres, in exch ange for approximately thirteen million acres of land in what is today the southern half of Oklahoma and western Arkansas,' The Choctaw removal to Indi an Terr i-