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- [00:00]
Don Wildman
Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland. There is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com subscribe to bring the Past Alive
- [00:32]
Hayden
Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.
- [00:40]
Stephen
And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball. But you can call me the Smash Daddy.
- [00:44]
Hayden
And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.
- [00:53]
Stephen
That's right. Hei hei. So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.
- [00:58]
Hayden
And along the way we'll do character, Deep Div, Magic Explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.
- [01:05]
Stephen
Newsflash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday and you can find Fantasy fanfellas wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:12]
Hayden
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- [01:42]
Karim
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- [02:38]
Don Wildman
In 1831, the French political thinker and writer Alexis de Tocqueville visited Memphis, Tennessee. As he stood on the banks of the Mississippi river, he caught sight of a horrendous scene mass removals of Native Choctaw people from their ancestral homelands. In his book Democracy in America, he described what he saw that day. In the whole scene, there was an air of ruin and destruction, something which betrayed a final and irrevocable adieu. One couldn't watch without feeling one's heart wrung. He asked one man why they were leaving. The answer came back simply to be free. What Tocqueville witnessed that day would come to be remembered as one of the darkest chapters of American history, the beginning of what is now commonly referred to as the Trail of Tears. Dear listeners, welcome again to American History hit. I'm Don Wildman. The idea of the frontier to which we've dedicated so much time lately in this series lives on in our collective American imagination still charges the spirit of this country, but the idea of white settlers of the colonial period into the American republic is, of course, in direct opposition to those already living upon that land. As settlers pushed westward, Native nations were pushed aside, pressured, killed. This painful legacy in mind in this, our fifth and final episode of our frontier miniseries, we turn to one of the darkest chapters of this checkered past. The Trail of Tears is a story of forced removal and migration, but it is also one of endurance, identity and survival. And today we explore it all in its particulars, when, why and how it all happened, and of course, what it meant and still means to the native nations who were driven from their homelands. To lead in this telling, I'm joined by Ryan Spring, cultural research associate in the Historic Preservation Department of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and himself a member of the Choctaw Nation. Hello, Ryan. Thank you so much for being with us.
- [04:56]
Ryan Spring
Thank you, Don. It's a pleasure to be here.
- [04:58]
Don Wildman
Before we discuss the Trail of Tears itself, I want to mention that the Trail of Tears is not one thing, but several. There were different forced march migrations for different nations, and we'll discuss all this later. The Choctaw were the First. And so it's helpful especially to understand their experience. But as I say, it's the first of several that happen over a kind of 20 year period, roughly 1830 to 1850. Regarding the Choctaw, who were they and where were their native homelands geographically?
- [05:27]
Ryan Spring
So our stories place the Choctaw people in the southeastern part of the United States since time immemorial. And so we are a western Muskogean speaking people. That's our language group. And so we speak the Choctaw language, which is in common with some of our related tribes that are still here with us today.
- [05:46]
Don Wildman
Yeah. So we're talking about Mississippi, Louisiana. What is today those areas? How large a population are we talking about as far as the Choctaw are concerned?
- [05:57]
Ryan Spring
Yeah. So in the 1831 Armstrong Rule that the US government took of Choctaw people, they estimated choctaw is around 20,000. But we know that our people were much larger than that. So while our homelands are in Mississippi and Alabama, we had several Choctaw people that were living in Louisiana and Arkansas. And so a lot of those people had left the tribe and had made new homes to the west.
- [06:24]
Don Wildman
How was this society organized?
- [06:27]
Ryan Spring
So our society on a large scale level was made up of three districts, which we call Othti. These districts each had a district chief, and each district chief represented all of the individual village chiefs that were under him. So we see at the treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek in 1830, there's over 60 Chiefs in attendance.
- [06:51]
Don Wildman
Wow.
- [06:51]
Ryan Spring
So that means that each district had plus or minus about, you know, 20 villages underneath them. And so each of these villages would have a village chief and they had a war chief. And so the village chief, called the Miko, and the servant chief, called the Tishimenko, helped run all of the political affairs for the village. The war chief would run all affairs when it came to war, you know, attacking, defending the community, that sort of thing. But all the day to day life was run by the women.
- [07:25]
Don Wildman
Yeah.
- [07:26]
Ryan Spring
And so our kinship is passed matrilineally, which means all of our bloodlines go through our women. And so each village had two icsa. Icsa is the word that we have for our moiety and also for our clans. And so moiety is the closest word that we have. There's not many tribes that organize themselves like the Choctaw did. And so we borrow that Scottish word for moiety. And it basically means that each village had two groups in there. You had the beloved people and the people on the other side, also known as the Divided people. And so that basically just means, you know, underneath those two ICSA were several clans. But that's how our communities and that's how our, you know, our tribe was organized.
- [08:12]
Don Wildman
It is a political system, I suppose you could call it a cultural system that has been developed for thousands of years. Right?
- [08:18]
Ryan Spring
Absolutely.
- [08:19]
Don Wildman
Yeah. I mean, when we talk about homelands, we are just. We're talking about places where people have lived generations upon generations in a increasingly ordered and sophisticated society that is frequently misunderstood by people today. You know, as white settlers confront these nations out west, you know, the idea of civilizing them and all that sort of thing, completely wrongheaded, because there was. It had already been civilized on their terms.
- [08:49]
Ryan Spring
Yeah. We can see in our identity as Choctaw people, we're tied to the land directly. And so our language, our knowledge, our stories, our entire worldview as Choctaw people comes from the interactions that our ancestors have had with the land and have had with God over 14,000 years. Yeah.
- [09:10]
Don Wildman
I mean, and this is central to the whole story, of course, of this. Of this tragedy, because like all indigenous people, I would say the Choctaw can't be separated from their ancestral lands because their entire system of life is deeply entrenched in that natural connection. History, language, culture, all of that is tied up with the homeland. And that is what we're going to be talking about being destroyed. I want to back up just a little bit more. The creation story is based on this as well. Can you explain that idea that these people come from the land in this story?
- [09:44]
Ryan Spring
So we have an old story. You know, it goes back to time immemorial, but we call it our creation story. It's one of our origin stories. And this story basically states that God had created the land, had created the earth, and he wanted to create people to put upon it these people to be stewards of the land that he had created. And so God took yellow clay from a local creek, which we know today as Naniwaia Creek, and he went deep underground and started shaping people out of the clay. After he had made many, many people, he created an opening in the earth and ushered the people forward to come out to the surface to the world that he had created. And so in Mississippi, there is a mound that we call Nunawaya Chilok, which means it's the cave of creation. And so there is a cave opening where people came out on the side of a hill, a natural hill, and they laid upon the hill. And so the first group of people is to come out. They started Traveling to the east, to the northeast, to the southeast, these people traveled out. They became all of the different tribes that our people are associated with, that we're related to. And so the last group of people came out and they looked back and they saw that there were no more people coming. God had stopped creating people. And so the last group decided to stay at their place of creation and to live there. And they called themselves the Chatha or the Choctaw people. And so the story talks about how, you know, God just didn't create us, but God gave us our language, gave us our laws, and gave us what we call the hinahanta, or the bright path, which is a way to live by. And as long as we would be in the lands that God gave us, we would be successful.
- [11:35]
Don Wildman
It's the kind of story you can find these creation stories in other societies. The Polynesians, you know, finding. Coming from the oceans, it's. It is this direct connection to the land that is continuous through the civilization. Whereas European societies with this industrialization that was happening at the same period, were. Were kind of broken away from the land and thinking of how they were going to build societies. And that's kind of in. In the most general sense, that's the opposition that's happening here. As European settlers move west and into this world. People are of this land, connected to the land, and are about to be wrenched from their lands. When Europeans begin to arrive. What kind of relationships with the Choctaw did they have? I mean, this begins slowly, obviously.
- [12:21]
Ryan Spring
So in the early 1500s, Choctaw people are destabilized by massive loss of life, waves and waves of diseases, diseases that have never been seen by native communities in the Southeast, especially by Choctaw communities, started killing our people. You know, over a 200 year period, over 90% of the native population in the Americas was killed. We're talking about millions of people are dying. And so there's a lot of Choctaw people at this time living in west central and west southern Alabama. And they're living a style of large corn agriculture, having these huge cities. And they've started moving away from this lifestyle at this point, you know, a choice that they had made, but then diseases on top of that really push them away from it. And so it's difficult to understand. But, you know, imagine the town that you're from, and imagine 90% of the people dying. How does your community continue functioning? And so what Choctaw people did is they moved out of these large river valleys and then moved back into their Place of creation. Now, there's already Choctaw people living there. And so these groups from the east, these large Choctaw populations in Alabama, especially around what we call Moundville, which is one of our large urban areas, started moving west, and they started intermingling and melding back in with other Choctaw people that were near our place of creation.
- [13:59]
Don Wildman
Yeah.
- [14:00]
Ryan Spring
And then we had people from southwest Alabama around Mobile Bay living at the Bottle Creek area, and they started coming in and moving. And so as we started absorbing in all of these Choctaw speaking communities, we were able to rebuild. Rebuild our life ways, rebuild our culture. But this is what created our three districts. You have the people that are living there. You have people moving in from the west and people moving in from the Southwest, and it created these three different cultural regions.
- [14:30]
Don Wildman
What year are we talking about here?
- [14:32]
Ryan Spring
It's hard to tell. A lot of this is happening between the 1680s all the way up into the late 1700s.
- [14:40]
Don Wildman
I see. Okay.
- [14:42]
Ryan Spring
And so there's this process of just absorbing these communities in, and this is why we became the largest tribe in the Southeast.
- [14:49]
Don Wildman
I see. Interesting. During this time, of course, this begins with the Spanish conquistadors coming up from the south. That's the early 1500s. It's later on that the French come along, and that will evolve, of course, into the Louisiana Purchase later on and the Americans arriving. I'm just trying to get a handle on how, over this period of time, how the Choctaw understood the coming of the white man and how generally they were going to deal with that.
- [15:19]
Ryan Spring
So, yeah, in 1699, the French first come ashore in the Gulf coast along Choctaw territory. And in about a year later, in 1700, they make a formal alliance with the Choctaw people. And this is what started our 73 year relationship with the French. And for the most part, it was a good relationship. Without our food and without our advanced knowledge on agriculture, the French colonies could never have survived in the Gulf. You know, they relied on us to teach them how to live on this land, and we did that. And in exchange, you know, we got trade goods from the French.
- [16:01]
Hayden
Right.
- [16:02]
Ryan Spring
However, this was a time of turbulence. You know, the French were on and off at war with the British. And the British had agreements with some of our related tribes. Some of the other tribes in the Southeast began to raid us for slaves.
- [16:18]
Don Wildman
I see.
- [16:19]
Ryan Spring
And so they would kill our men and take our women and children as part of this slave trade. And so Choctaw people relied on the French because we needed their Trade goods. We needed their, you know, metal implements and those sort of things because they made things in our society easier. They made advancements in our society. And so we became fairly close with the French throughout that 63 year period.
- [16:44]
Don Wildman
The rug has to be. I mean, it's pulled out from India because of the Louisiana Purchase eventually. Right. Because it becomes a complete shift of mission, really. The French are concerned with primarily the Caribbean and all of that. And suddenly the Americans are coming because this is their land as they now see it. Little do they know. How did the Choctaw deal with the Americans after the Louisiana Purchase on into the war of 1812 and so forth?
- [17:09]
Ryan Spring
Yeah. So when the French were forced to leave control of Choctaw country, the British came in. And so Choctaws had interacted with the British, they had interacted with the Spanish and the French. And we played these powers off back and forth. And so by the 1790s, there was someone new that came into the scene, and that was the Americans. And so Choctaw leaders, we created relationships and alliances. We were large, we were prosperous, and these colonial powers feared our military. And so we would make military alliances with these different European powers. And so what you see is in the late 1790s, you see Choctaw warriors traveling up the Mississippi river to go fight in the Northwest Indian War alongside the United States.
- [18:04]
Don Wildman
Okay.
- [18:05]
Ryan Spring
You see Choctaw scouts that are volunteering themselves during the Revolution. But for the most part, the Choctaw Nation stayed out of the Revolutionary War. They stayed out of, you know, to them, it was just another colonial conflict.
- [18:19]
Don Wildman
Yeah.
- [18:20]
Ryan Spring
You know, they had bigger and better things to do. So it wasn't until the War of 1812 the Choctaw Nation really got involved.
- [18:26]
Don Wildman
Yeah, it's such an important factor. I mean, let's take a short break, but we'll talk afterwards about when this story, you know, more officially begins with 1830 and the Indian Removal Act. But it was important to spend time on this, to understand the subtleties of time. First of all, how many years these nations have been in these lands, how sophisticated they were, how strong they were, having recovered from a lot of what you're talking about, the disease and so forth. They were reorganized and retrenched, and suddenly comes a new kind of threat. And that's what we'll be talking about. This episode brought to you by Best Western Hotels and Resorts. Ah, spring. Trees blossoming, flowers blooming. Not having to defrost your fingers and toes when you get inside. Oh, yeah. And spring break freedom. Warmer climbs and memories. Just waiting to be made. And at Best Western, spring break isn't just what it used to be. It's better this spring. Stay three nights and get a $50 Best Western gift card. Life's a trip. Make the most of it at best Western. Visit bestwestern.com for complete terms and conditions.
- [19:42]
Hayden
Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.
- [19:50]
Stephen
And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball. But you can call me the Smash Daddy.
- [19:54]
Hayden
And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.
- [20:03]
Stephen
That's right.
- [20:03]
Don Wildman
Hey hey.
- [20:04]
Stephen
So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.
- [20:08]
Hayden
And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.
- [20:15]
Stephen
Newsflash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find Fantasy fanfellas wherever you get your podcasts.
- [20:22]
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Ryan Spring
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Ryan Spring
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Don Wildman
On Deck does not lend in North
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Strawberry Me Career Coach
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- [21:55]
Don Wildman
We're back discussing the Trail of Tears with Ryan Spring of the Choctaw Nation. Ryan, we've talked about the ancestral lands and the origin stories of this nation. And then the Europeans arriving, the Spanish, the French, the English, even. I want to now turn to the United States, which has, you know, become such a player now. You know, in terms of the Louisiana Purchase and all of that that's going on.
- [22:20]
Ryan Spring
How were these treaties brokered in the 1790s? We can see from writings by the United States at that time that the United States was afraid of Choctaws. They said if we do not secure an alliance with the Choctaws and the other southeastern tribes and they ally with the Spanish, they could wipe out the United States. And so the US Created an Indian agent for the Southeast to try to broker peace and relationships. So in 1786, we had our first treaty with the United States, the Treaty of Hopewell. And this is an important treaty. There's a lot that goes into this treaty. I won't go into all of it, but this is the beginning of the relationship between the Choctaw people and the United States. And for a long time, as I said, you know, we helped in the Northwest Indian war, and individual warriors may help here and there, but we weren't really involved with the United States conflicts too much. However, in 1801 and 1802, 1803, and 1805, the United States approached us several times for treaties of land cession. And so land cessions are not a new thing to Choctaw people. The British did it to us in 1765. And so we knew that for whatever reason, these colonial powers wanted land. They wouldn't share it, as Choctaw people would often do, but they wanted in perpetuity, which is a completely different concept that Choctaw and other indigenous people have. You can't own land, but that's what the United States wanted to do. So the first treaty was about trade, and Choctaws are all about establishing trade. That's more items, that's more power coming in to these chiefs and being able to provide for their people. In 1802, we cede a small part of land so that they can build a fort next to us. But more importantly, next to the fort, they built a trade house, also known as a trade factory. They used this factory to put our people into debt. So President Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to William Henry Harrison, talks About how if we put these peoples in debt, he's specifically talking about the chiefs, the people in power, then we can leverage them to give us land in exchange for the debts.
- [24:48]
Don Wildman
Wow.
- [24:49]
Ryan Spring
So this is a practice that's illegal today in the United States, but at that time it wasn't sure. And so the Treaty of Hoback and Topah in 1803 and the Treaty of Mount Dexter in 1805 were both done to settle Choctaw debts with this trading company in exchange for land cessions of our southern hunting lands.
- [25:11]
Don Wildman
Ryan, what led to the passing of the Indian removal act of 1830? I mean, that's pretty radical stuff in terms of. In the context of everything we're talking about, which had been pretty subtle event to event kind of things, this is a sweeping new idea. Obviously.
- [25:28]
Ryan Spring
Yeah. You know, the relationship with the United States, you know, at this time, as we talked about, is about a military alliance. So Choctaws fought with the United States during The War of 1812, during the Pensacola campaign, during the Red Stick War. We helped Andrew Jackson defend the Battle of New Orleans, which is what pushed his political career into becoming president later on. But the concept of assimilation of Native peoples started to change. And Choctaw people realized this immediately because our thanks for helping in these conflicts was another session of land. It was the Treaty of Choctaw trading house in 1816. And this left a very sour taste in our leaders mouths.
- [26:15]
Don Wildman
I see.
- [26:16]
Ryan Spring
So our leaders came up with a new plan. They said, we can't become military allies. You know, the United States has become more powerful at this point. Now that they're not worried about threats from the east. They're now looking westward. And you start to see the beginnings of manifest Destiny take root. And the first people in the way of that destiny are the Choctaw.
- [26:39]
Don Wildman
That's interesting to me because we're way down in the Southwest of what is the United States at this point. How is it that the Choctaw are the first versus other more northern tribes and so forth?
- [26:51]
Ryan Spring
So, you know, the Creek nation had been subdued during the War of 1812, and Choctaws were the largest tribe in the Southeast. And so. But we also had a relationship. Andrew Jackson himself knew these Choctaw leaders. The US Indian Agents knew the strengths and weaknesses of the Choctaw people. And so in 1820, who did they send to force us to sign a treaty? They sent Andrew Jackson himself.
- [27:20]
Don Wildman
Interesting.
- [27:20]
Ryan Spring
And so the concept of assimilating peoples. Well, they're not assimilating fast enough. So let's move them farther west so they have time to assimilate and they can become a new generation of American people.
- [27:36]
Don Wildman
Right.
- [27:36]
Ryan Spring
I'm not sure if they really cared about us assimilating as much as they wanted all of the invaluable natural resources that were in the Choctaw Nation.
- [27:46]
Don Wildman
President Andrew Jackson figures centrally to all of this story. He is able to pass, when he becomes president, the Indian removal act of 1830. And let me just explain this for the audience. This authorized the American government to liquidate any Native American title to lands claimed in the Southeast. By the way, there would be no title. I mean, that was not the point. That was the point of their society. It was not a deeded land on their terms. It's amazing that such an eviction needs any kind of legal justification because that's what they're doing. They're just moving on them militarily eventually. But this must have been quite a challenge for any right minded legal expert who were trying to figure out, you know, how do we even frame this in a kind of legality? But that was the Indian Removal act, right? That was the idea. Well, we need a law. We need something to refer to that exists now. So we'll pass this.
- [28:39]
Ryan Spring
I think the Indian Removal act was the weapon. It was the implement that was used to justify it. But the architecture for the Indian Removal act came from federal court cases, which would be later called the Marshall trilogy.
- [28:55]
Don Wildman
I see.
- [28:56]
Ryan Spring
And so the Marshall trilogy ruled that this type of thinking is acceptable. And then the Indian Removal act, which barely, barely narrowly passed Congress, was then passed. And so after the Indian Removal act, negotiators were sent out to all these different tribes in the Southeast. But there was a particular push for Choctaws to be the first to sign this treaty.
- [29:23]
Don Wildman
Why is that?
- [29:24]
Ryan Spring
Well, in 1830, after the Indian Removal act was passed, we had Choctaw leaders that were fighting against removal. They were fighting against this thought of removal. But the state of Mississippi started passing laws that made it illegal for Choctaw people to be a chief. They made it illegal for them to practice our form of government. They made it illegal to be a sovereign nation. And they didn't have any control over it. But it put a lot of pressure on these chiefs. So a lot of the chiefs at this time are involved, not just with the tribe, but also with the state of Mississippi. So these areas that Choctaws were forced to cede throughout all of these decades, you know, there's multi ethnic people living in these areas. And Choctaw people have a relationship with These.
- [30:20]
Don Wildman
Right.
- [30:20]
Ryan Spring
And we still have to secure these trade goods for our communities.
- [30:25]
Don Wildman
So, ironically, the favorable relationships or the more developed relationships end up putting them in the crosshairs more quickly and efficiently than any others. It ends up backfiring. The whole thing ends up backfiring on them. I mean, the simple fact is that, as we've said before, this is all about land, not relationships. We're not building relationships here. We're getting land. The territory of the Choctaw was extremely valuable, especially to cotton growers now who had been, since the late 1700s, equipped with the cotton gin, which had created, you know, much more efficient means of processing cotton, therefore needing more land to grow more cotton. And they were running into lots of problems with that because they didn't have rotational crop technology or science. And so their lands were becoming infertile, and they were needing new ones to the west. Well, where does that come from? That comes from land that is settled already. So let's get rid of these people. That's really at the center of this, isn't it?
- [31:20]
Ryan Spring
It really is. They want our water, they want our fertile lands, and they want these developed areas that Choctaw people have been living and improving upon. I mean, if you're going to reset up a community, why clear land and set up something new? It's much easier to take over something that's already existed. Exactly.
- [31:41]
Don Wildman
This leads to the Treaty of the Dancing Creek, 1831. Can you explain that?
- [31:46]
Ryan Spring
So in early part of 1831, Chief Greenwood LaFleur sent an unauthorized treaty to the federal government stating that, okay, we understand that our people are going to be removed. There's no way against this. So Chief lafleur was trying to get ahead of what was going on, but this is very unpopular. I mean, if anyone found out, he might have been killed. And so he did this in secret. The US Government looked at this treaty. They knew that it was not signed by all the chiefs. That didn't matter to them. It was the fact that the Choctaw people got too much out of this treaty, so they denied it. But it was the fact that a Choctaw chief had sent this treaty in that told them, okay, let's remove this tribe because they're ready. They're ready to sign removal.
- [32:35]
Don Wildman
I see.
- [32:36]
Ryan Spring
That's what caused this push for the negotiators to come in and start negotiating the Treaty of Dancing rabbit creek in 1830.
- [32:45]
Don Wildman
And we're talking about 11 million acres of land, which includes Naniwaya Cave, which is the cave of the origin Story of the birth of the Choctaw nation. These are precious lands that are being given up. They are then faced with the choice to either remain in the region and take U.S. citizenship or move west. How is that debate? I imagine it must be a debate
- [33:09]
Ryan Spring
handled by this nation during the treaty negotiations. It was awful. One of the negotiators left the treaty grounds because the other negotiator was spreading such egregious lies. It was an awful experience for people to have to go through. And at the end of the day, they threatened the Choctaw people with, well, we'll just end our relationship with you. We'll end our alliance, and the United States will militarily crush you, put your people into slavery. You will all become wards of the state of Mississippi, and your tribe will cease to exist. So the chiefs were forced to sign this treaty. They didn't want to. But there's a balance between do we stay free as a people, as God intended us to be, or do we stay in our lands, which we're supposed to care for and which our ancestors are buried in?
- [34:02]
Don Wildman
Yeah.
- [34:02]
Ryan Spring
And that our community has always been here.
- [34:05]
Don Wildman
And that whole discussion is being done with a gun to your head. The march that we're talking about, I want to remind people, the Trail of Tears, many people misunderstand. This is not just one thing. It's many things. It's at least five major events within which there are stages. And the Choctaw, as we've explained, are the first of those major migrations that are forced upon native nations. But even within that migration, there are different stages. So it begins in 1831 and moves to 1833. This time period that we're talking about 15,000 Choctaw of a total population of roughly 20,000. So the majority of the Choctaw nation makes the move. 5,000 stay behind. Under what circumstances do they stay?
- [34:51]
Ryan Spring
So Article 14 of the treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek basically stated that if any Choctaw people wanted to stay and become citizens of Mississippi, they could. And they had to register within six months after the signing or the ratification of the treaty. That was not followed through. The Indian agent that was there avoided Choctaw people, and very few people were put on that roll.
- [35:15]
Don Wildman
Yeah.
- [35:15]
Ryan Spring
And so, you know, he was later removed from office, but it was a very comfortable removal of office. So I'm sure that he was being instructed to make sure that no one's allowed to stay.
- [35:30]
Don Wildman
Yeah.
- [35:31]
Ryan Spring
And so it created a lot of chaos, and it created a lot of issues. And this article 14 had issues and implications all the way up until the late 1800s.
- [35:43]
Don Wildman
A man named George W. Harkins, who was a district chief of the Choctaws, summarized the views of many his people in his farewell letter to the American people. There's a famous excerpt from this, if you wouldn't mind reading.
- [35:57]
Ryan Spring
Is with considerable diffidence that I attempt to address the American people. We as Choctaws rather choose to suffer and be free than live under the degrading influence of laws which our voice could not be heard in their formation.
- [36:12]
Don Wildman
Wow. Where was this published? How did the American people see it? Or did they?
- [36:17]
Ryan Spring
When chief Harkins was on his removal in 1831, he was sitting on a steamboat in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and on just some scrap sheets of paper, he started writing a letter. By the time the steamboat had reached Natchez, he had an opportunity to pass off these scribbled notes to a courier with the Natchez newspaper, and they were able to publish this document in the Natchez daily.
- [36:46]
Don Wildman
Wow.
- [36:47]
Ryan Spring
And it took a couple years for it to really circulate around the country. But, you know, it's. It is one of my favorite speeches from a Choctaw leader because he just doesn't talk about, you know, what's happening, you know, the ethnic cleansing that's happening to Choctaw people. But he looks towards the future in a positive light, and he states that he hopes that this will never happen again to Choctaw people, and Choctaw people will be prosperous. Right. And he's looking towards the future, a future of healing and positivity.
- [37:22]
Don Wildman
Right.
- [37:22]
Ryan Spring
Which is one of our values that we still focus on today when it comes to the trail of tears, and
- [37:28]
Don Wildman
I want to underscore one phrase there, we as Choctaws rather chose to suffer and be free than live under the degrading influence of laws which our voice could not be heard in their formation. So it's the autonomy of the nation that is the priority versus staying and assimilating, as were Americans. Expectations of Native Americans. Accounts we have from the victims of this trail of tears are relatively scarce, and this is intentional. Many of their children did not wish to pass down the stories of these horrors because of the starting anew, trying to guard their children from these stories. Right.
- [38:06]
Ryan Spring
Absolutely. You know, we know of the history of what happened. We know of some of the accounts, but overall, Choctaw people chose to let these stories go to sleep instead of passing on that trauma. So we have a few examples of some eyewitness accounts, but for the Most part, these stories were, as I said, left to sleep.
- [38:30]
Don Wildman
Yeah, well, we're left talking rather generally about it. And as I say, there are three stages. The first wave happens November 1831. This is arguably where people suffered the most. Two groups left Memphis and another left from Vicksburg. The nuts and bolts of this kind of migration, I think, are really important to understand. How did it work?
- [38:50]
Ryan Spring
So the 1831 removal was the first removal that the United States had ever done, and it was just fraught with chaos from day one. So you have thousands of people coming to Vicksburg, and you have thousands of people going to Memphis. And they'd be taking steamboats. The goal was to have these steamboats take them to a central part in Arkansas where then they could walk on military roads, which had just been created. However, this decade suffered some of the worst winter weather that's ever been seen in recorded history.
- [39:28]
Don Wildman
That would be my first question. They started in November. I mean, why would you do that?
- [39:33]
Ryan Spring
Well, for Choctaw people, the winter months were the traditional time period for what we would call the Owachito or the Big Hunt. And so throughout the year, you have a responsibility to your community. And during the spring, during the summer, and during the fall, you put your community first. And part of that is taking care of the agricultural fields, making sure that the community has crops to feed on. But then, after those obligations to your community are completed, the winter months are the traditional time of year that Choctaw people would move. You know, today we would say, go on holiday.
- [40:12]
Don Wildman
I see.
- [40:12]
Ryan Spring
Or on vacation. Okay, so traditionally, this is that time of year that Choctaw people culturally said, okay, this is the time to move. If we move now during the winter, we will have time to set up our crops and get ready for the next year. Coming into Indian Territory, it was all structured around moving quickly, getting resettled, getting the crops together. Yeah, and then getting our new society over in Indian Territory up and running as efficiently as possible.
- [40:41]
Don Wildman
Two questions. Did they know where they were going? Had there been scouts sent ahead? Were there agents that understood what they were going to set up? Had that already been set up for them or not?
- [40:51]
Ryan Spring
So Choctaw leaders, a lot of the men knew of these lands to the west. And so there's a famous speech by Pushmataha at the Treaty of Doke Stand. And he, as a warrior, had traveled to Oklahoma and parts of East Texas for hunting. During this time of year, in the 1790s and 1800s and 18 teens, a lot of these Choctaw warriors knew this area, and they knew it well. But part of the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek was that survey parties would be brought by the federal government out of these Choctaw leaders to survey the lands. So there was one group that was sponsored by the federal government that went out and surveyed lands, areas where they could reestablish communities. And then there was another group of Choctaw leaders that went out on their own to do the same thing. And so, again, we're not a passive people. We're a very active people. We know that we're going to suffer removal. We know that we're going to be removed. So let's do everything we can to help establish these communities. We even had a group of choctaw people in 1830 remove out early to try to establish corn fields and get food ready for the first wave of removal.
- [42:10]
Don Wildman
But as you say, winter is particularly bad this year, 1831. And as a result, wagons get stuck in those conditions. Their disease, cholera, dysentery, runs rampant. Obviously, most of the victims are going to be the elders and the. And the young. As always, this. The description of this trail is one of tears and death, which is attributed to a Choctaw named Mikko, a chief after this removal. So this does not go well at all. Do the Choctaw and the US Government learn their lessons in the following migrations?
- [42:43]
Ryan Spring
No, absolutely not. I mean, the 1831 removal was fraught with negligence. So the Indian agent in the east, the Indian agent in the west, are not communicating. And that negligence led to the death of Choctaw people. Supplies, food, equipment, everything is in the wrong place. Things are not scheduled on time, and that with the weather, you know, in some cases, the weather's hitting zero degrees Fahrenheit, we are hitting inches of ice and snow, and people are left in the elements to die.
- [43:16]
Don Wildman
Yeah.
- [43:16]
Ryan Spring
And so the 1831 removal was so expensive and it had so many issues that the US Government said, if we continue removing the tribes of the southeast, the United States will go broke if we continue in this fashion. So in 1832, they took the responsibility of removal away from the Indian agents, and they gave it to the Department of War. And the Department of War is who would remove all other tribes in US History.
- [43:46]
Don Wildman
Right. The military takes over. The US army takes over.
- [43:50]
Ryan Spring
They were efficient at the cost of our lives. They were very efficient at moving people quickly and without remorse.
- [43:57]
Don Wildman
Right.
- [43:57]
Ryan Spring
And so in 1832, we see a cholera epidemic hit the United States for the first time. And so it comes up through New Orleans. It hits Vicksburg, it hits Memphis, and it continues to St. Louis. And Choctaw people are right in the middle of this epidemic. So now they're loaded into cramped spaces and camps on steamboats, and they're contracting cholera and they're dying.
- [44:21]
Don Wildman
Yeah, well, when those three waves are achieved, by 1833, 15,000 Choctaw have left, that removal becomes the desired model for the removal of other tribes from other areas in later years to come. The Cherokee, the Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw tribes were also removed as well. That becomes, as in total, the idea of the Trail of Tears, but, as I said, broken up into many of them. Let's take another break, Ryan. We'll come back and discuss the aftermath of the Trail of Tears for the Choctaw specifically, and its lasting legacy.
- [44:59]
Hayden
Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fanfellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.
- [45:07]
Stephen
And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball, but you can call me the Smash Daddy.
- [45:11]
Hayden
And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.
- [45:20]
Stephen
That's right.
- [45:20]
Don Wildman
Hey.
- [45:21]
Stephen
Hey. So each week, you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.
- [45:25]
Hayden
And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.
- [45:32]
Stephen
News flash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find Fantasy fanfellas wherever you get your putty podcasts.
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- [46:42]
Don Wildman
We're back with Ryan Spring of the Choctaw Nation talking about the Trail of Tears. Ryan. After three waves, the bulk of the Choctaw were displaced, relocated to modern day Oklahoma. What conditions awaited them there in so called Indian territory? What did they find when they came and how was that arrival and resettlement organized?
- [47:03]
Ryan Spring
You know, the first thing they came to was that they were promised, through the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, supplies and everything that was needed to reset up our communities. However, because of the horrible winters that were happening, there was a lot of rainfall and floods were killing crops in Oklahoma. So the first two years, 1831 and 1832, were miserable for Choctaw people. And there was a lot of starvation after coming off the trail. Government rations were not supplied as they were supposed to be because the government was trying to save money from all the funds they had spent on the removal. And so there's one instance where there's a removal party that gets off the trail and they are given spoiled pork. And so those people starving, ate that spoiled meat and they died from it. And then you have disease that's also going through the communities. You still have cholera. And then as people are trying to get re established, our brother tribe, the Chickasaw, come in later on, and they bring a smallpox epidemic with them that hits our community. And so despite all this, though, Choctaw people persevered. And by 1834, we had met, we had restarted our government, established our second constitution, and just 10 years later, by the 1840s, we were sending kids to college again. On the east coast was the governance
- [48:28]
Don Wildman
structure similar to that which was in the native lands.
- [48:31]
Ryan Spring
There was a lot of changes in Choctaw country. So in 1826, the Choctaw Nation established its first constitution while we were still in Mississippi. But the 1834 Constitution was different. And it was different because our people were different now. You know, their experiences, both negative and positive, reshaped our people. And so we drew upon a lot of aspects from our original constitution, which came from traditional law that, you know, our communities had already. And we reshape that into something that would help propel us into the future. And that new form of governance that we had was very successful. By the 1850s, the Choctaw Nation had completely rebounded from the trilotiers. We were the strongest economic power in Indian Territory. We had the largest school system west of the Mississippi river and the most progressive school system in all of the United States.
- [49:31]
Don Wildman
Really, that's Amazing. What about those who had stayed behind? I just want to close a chapter on that decision. There were 4 to 6,000 Choctaw who had remained there, facing incredible hardship. It must have been incredibly awkward as they shifted into a whole different kind of assimilated life, right?
- [49:49]
Ryan Spring
Yeah, absolutely. You know, as you stated, we had 15,000 Choctaws removed in those first three years. And about 25 to 30% of them died on the first wave of removal. So about 12,000 people made it. So you have this other remaining contingent in Mississippi, in Alabama, we have Choctaw people still in Louisiana and Arkansas too. And so throughout the 1840s and 1850s, there were additional removals. Another 7,000 Choctaw were removed. And so there's more generations that are happening. But these people that were in our homeland still, they weren't allowed to stay. You know, they were burned out of their communities. They were pushed to the fringes of where American settlers wouldn't live. And so life in the homelands became very difficult. We weren't even second class citizens. We weren't even classified as human beings. And so Choctaw people suffered and which is what caused many to continue removing in the 1840s and 1850s.
- [50:55]
Don Wildman
I see. Is there a significant Choctaw population in that same area now or not?
- [51:00]
Ryan Spring
There is today. They were organized in the 1830s. The Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians still exists. They come from about 12 to 1500 Choctaw people that were still there in the 1900s. And they are a tribe of 12,000 people today.
- [51:17]
Don Wildman
Do they have their own land now? Was that ever negotiated?
- [51:20]
Ryan Spring
Yeah. So during the Indian Reorganization act in the 1930s, they were able to reestablish their own government and they were able to re establish their own lands. So the Mississippi Band has several reservations in Mississippi. And you know, they are. They're Choctaws just as we are.
- [51:39]
Don Wildman
Gotcha.
- [51:40]
Ryan Spring
And you know, we still interact with them today because we're all one people.
- [51:43]
Don Wildman
Right. The casualties for those later removals of Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw tribes, It's estimated that 60,000 people crossed these trails of tears, of which 10 to 15,000 died from starvation, disease and attacks. 60,000. 15,000 dying. These removals are echoed by others that are even in the 20th century. This is a constant movement that's happening of this population.
- [52:11]
Ryan Spring
So in 1902 and 1903, there were another wave of removals that were done by train. So over 2,000 Choctaw people were taken from Mississippi and Louisiana, brought by train, and taken to Indian territory to get ready for allotment.
- [52:28]
Don Wildman
How is the Trail of Tears now remembered and commemorated by the Choctaw people?
- [52:33]
Ryan Spring
So since the 1990s, the Choctaw Nation has done an annual memorial Trail of Tears walk. And this is a way that we just. We're not just remembering those that didn't make the journey, but we're remembering those that did survive, and then that helped build the legacy that the Choctaw Nation now has today. You know, we have over 235,000 tribal members today, and we wouldn't be here if it wasn't for these leaders and all of these Choctaw people that persevered through this dark time.
- [53:05]
Don Wildman
Yes.
- [53:06]
Ryan Spring
And so from that, we've had families and communities that have done their own celebrations and their own honorings of the Trail of Tears. With COVID we had another impact in our community. And so we started doing a virtual Trail of Tears walk. And so the majority of our people don't live within our reservation. And that's because additional removals done by the US Government during the Indian Urban Relocation Program removed the majority of Choctaw families in the 1960s and 70s out of our reservation to all these big cities around the U.S. and so these later removals disconnected a lot of our people. So the virtual Trail of Tears walk is a way that we can engage with our people that don't necessarily live here, but are still a part of our greater community. We also have our Trail of Tears bike riders, which is an amazing group of people that, you know, over a week, journey, ride segments of the Trail of Tears from Mississippi all the way to Oklahoma. And to help commemorate that history.
- [54:17]
Don Wildman
It's an incredible story of survival, really, not just of people and lives, but also of a culture when you consider the odds against this society. Amazing story. And shared with other groups that had to do the same sort of relocation. Where did the concept of the memorial walk, the memorial Trail of Tears, come from?
- [54:37]
Ryan Spring
In 1990, we had citizens from the Republic of Ireland visit the Choctaw Nation, and they reawakened a story about the Choctaw Irish gift exchange. So in 1847, there were two gifts of donations from the Choctaw people given to the people of Ireland during the famine. One gift at Sculleyville was for a little over $170, and the second gift down in Dokesville was a little over $150. So we had forgot about this history. We forgot about these gifts. And so in the 90s, this knowledge was reawakened by visitors from Ireland that came to talk with us about this. Choctaw people were excited about relearning this history, reawakening this history. And so a delegation of our leaders went to the Republic of Ireland in 1991, and they participated in Archbishop Desmond Tutu's Famine walk that he was hosting, I see, as part of the memorial walk.
- [55:39]
Don Wildman
Nice. I want to ask you a question, one I struggle with, and I imagine a lot of listeners share this confusion. The United States, we talk about it a lot as a nation, roots itself in the ideals of fairness and justice. Yet when you look at this history of removal, the Trail of Tears, how do you, as a member of this nation, make any sense of the contradiction between that national self image and the historical reality? Where do you guys come down with this and process this?
- [56:06]
Ryan Spring
That is a difficult question. I will say that, you know, on an individual level, that's something that every Choctaw person has to come to terms with. You know, we are a bicultural people. We're not just Choctaws. We're also modern Americans. And so it's something that I've struggled with, you know, growing up doing the Pledge of Allegiance every day in class, attending events, and doing the Pledge of Allegiance. You know, where does all that fit in? And, you know, I have. My grandfather and my father both fought for the U.S. armed forces. And so we have a legacy of Choctaw people that have fought and died for the United States. And so at the end of the day, we have to continue moving forward, and we have to continue being positive. Right. This is something that happened to us. You know, this was ethnic cleansing. You know, this was genocide. But we have to move on from that, and we have to continue forward. We have to learn our history so that it doesn't happen again to us. But we have to do that in a positive way that we continue to rebuild our communities. You know, as Choctaw people, we are the indigenous people of the United States. We are elders here, and we have so much that our culture and our history can share with modern day American people. We have ways of improving American culture and American life, and we're just waiting for those opportunities to be able to make this such a beautiful place to live again. Interesting.
- [57:44]
Don Wildman
Wise words. Thank you so much. Ryan Spring is a cultural research associate at the Historic Preservation Department of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. How do listeners know more about the Choctaw Nation? Is there a website they should go to?
- [57:57]
Ryan Spring
Absolutely. You can go tochoctaw choctawnation.com. there, you can find information on the Choctaw Nation today. And then you can find further information on the Choctaw Trail of Tears by looking at the Biscuit section, which is our travel newspaper.
- [58:12]
Don Wildman
Thank you so much, Ryan. Nice to meet you.
- [58:14]
Ryan Spring
Thank you, Don.
- [58:17]
Don Wildman
Hey, thanks for listening to American History hit. You know, every week we release new episodes. Two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays. All kinds of content from mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode by hitting like and follow. You help us out, which is great, but you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, share it with a friend. American History hit with me, Don Wildman. So grateful for your support.
- [58:52]
Hayden
Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.
- [59:00]
Stephen
And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball, but you can call me the Smash Daddy.
- [59:04]
Hayden
And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.
- [59:12]
Stephen
That's right.
- [59:13]
Don Wildman
Hey.
- [59:13]
Stephen
Hey. So each week, you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.
- [59:17]
Hayden
And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.
- [59:24]
Stephen
Newsflash, I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find fantasy fan fellows wherever you get your podcasts.
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Ryan Spring
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