Choctaws and Missionaries in Mississippi, 1818?1918 by Clara Sue Kidwell

by Clara Sue Kidwell

The present-day Choctaw communities in central Mississippi are a tribute to the ability of the Indian people both to adapt to new situations and to find refuge against the outside world through their uniqueness. Clara Sue Kidwell, whose great-great-grandparents migrated from Mississippi to Indian Territory along the Trail of Tears in 1830, here tells the story of those Choctaws who chose not to move but to stay behind in Mississippi. As Kidwell shows, their story is closely interwoven with that of the missionaries who established the first missions in the area in 1818. While the U.S. government sought to "civilize" Indians through the agency of Christianity, many Choctaw tribal leaders in turn demanded education from Christian missionaries. The missionaries allied themselves with these leaders, mostly mixed-bloods; in so doing, they alienated themselves from the full-blood elements of the tribe and thus failed to achieve widespread Christian conversion and education. Their failure contributed to the growing arguments in Congress and by Mississippi citizens that the Choctaws should he moved to the West and their territory opened to white settlement. The missionaries did establish literacy among the Choctaws, however, with ironic consequences. Although the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek in 1830 compelled the Choctaws to move west, its fourteenth article provided that those who wanted to remain in Mississippi could claim land as individuals and stay in the state as private citizens. The claims were largely denied, and those who remained were often driven from their lands by white buyers, yet the Choctaws maintained their communities by clustering around the few men who did get title to lands, by maintaining traditional customs, and by continuing to speak the Choctaw language. Now Christian missionaries offered the Indian communities a vehicle for survival rather than assimilation.

Genres: History

Paperback

First published February 1, 1997

About the author

Clara Sue Kidwell, former Assistant Director for Cultural Resources at the National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, D.C., is retired as the founding director of the American Indian Center at the University of North Carolina. She is the author of Choctaws in Oklahoma: From Tribe to Nation, 1855–1970.

Reviews

[Jennifer Leighton · Rating 5 out of 5]

The heartbreaking story of the Choctaws in Mississippi and of the men who attempted to "civilize" and "Christianize" them. A very detailed and informative account of the religious and political climate of the Choctaw Nation in the years leading up to their removal. It's a story that echoes that of countless other American Indian nations...of a people who have their culture, traditions and beliefs slowly and systematically stripped from them in the name of progress and religion.

The culprits? White missionaries, the U.S. government, and even some of their own leaders, as in the final years prior to removal the Choctaw Nation was on the verge of civil war, their loyalties firmly divided between the full blooded chiefs who held to the old ways and the half white, much younger leaders who for their own political gain asserted themselves into positions of power.

[Cws]

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