Living in the Land of Death: The Choctaw Nation, 1830-1860

by Donna L. Akers

Overview

With the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the Choctaw people began their journey over the Trail of Tears from their homelands in Mississippi to the new lands of the Choctaw Nation. Suffering a death rate of nearly 20 percent due to exposure, disease, mismanagement, and fraud, they limped into Indian Territory, or, as they knew it, the Land of the Dead (the route taken by the souls of Choctaw people after death on their way to the Choctaw afterlife). Their first few years in the new nation affirmed their name for the land, as hundreds more died from whooping cough, floods, starvation, cholera, and smallpox.
     Living in the Land of the Dead depicts the story of Choctaw survival, and the evolution of the Choctaw people in their new environment. Culturally, over time, their adaptation was one of homesteads and agriculture, eventually making them self-sufficient in the rich new lands of Indian Territory. Along the Red River and other major waterways several Choctaw families of mixed heritage built plantations, and imported large crews of slave labor to work cotton fields. They developed a sub-economy based on interaction with the world market. However, the vast majority of Choctaws continued with their traditional subsistence economy that was easily adapted to their new environment.
     The immigrant Choctaws did not, however, move into land that was vacant. The U.S. government, through many questionable and some outright corrupt extralegal maneuvers, chose to believe it had gained title through negotiations with some of the peoples whose homelands and hunting grounds formed Indian Territory. Many of these indigenous peoples reacted furiously to the incursion of the Choctaws onto their rightful lands. They threatened and attacked the Choctaws and other immigrant Indian Nations for years. Intruding on others’ rightful homelands, the farming-based Choctaws, through occupation and economics, disrupted the traditional hunting economy practiced by the Southern Plains Indians, and contributed to the demise of the Plains ways of life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781628952261
Publisher:	Michigan State University Press
Publication date:	07/31/2004
Series:	American Indian Studies
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	168
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Donna L. Akers, Associate Professor of History and Ethnic Studies at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, is an enrolled tribal member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. Her research specialties include American Indian Studies, Indigenous Women, Global Indigenous Peoples, Genocide in the US, Comparative Colonization, Native Peoples of North America, Human Trafficking, race, gender, and ethnicity, and Decolonization Studies. She has published numerous books and articles and book chapters on Native Americans and Indian-US relations.

Table of Contents

Contents Acknowledgments Preface Introduction 1 A Brief History of the Choctaw People to 1817 2 History, Change, and Tradition 3 The Physical and Spiritual World of the Choctaw People 4 After Doak's Stand: Indian Territory in the 1820s 5 A Perfect Picture of Chaos 6 A New Life in the Land of Death: Decade of Despair 7 Making Death Literal 8 Cultural Continuity and Change Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

Library of Congress Subject Headings for this publication: Choctaw Indians Relocation, Choctaw Indians Social conditions, Indians, Treatment of Southern States History 19th century, Jackson, Andrew, 1767-1845 Relations with Choctaw Indians, United States, Act to Provide for an Exchange of Lands with the Indians Residing in any of the States or Territories, and for Their Removal West of the River Mississippi, Indians of North America Government relations 1789-1869, United States Race relations, United States Politics and government 19th century, United States Social conditions 19th century