Choctaws

a tribe of Mobilian Indians related to the Seminoles, Chickasaws, etc. In 1540, when De Soto marched westward, they occupied a large extent of territory between their eastern neighbors, the Creeks, and the Mississippi River. They are said to have had forty towns and to have numbered 2,500 warriors. They opposed his progress at Choctaw Bluff, Alabama. In the battle that followed twenty of De Soto's men were killed, and two hundred wounded. The Choctaws were a corn-raising, peaceful people. They gave the settlers far less trouble than the war-like Creeks and the Chickasaws. Nevertheless they were forced to migrate. Between 1785 and 1837 they gave up 30,000 square miles of land in exchange for $2,225,000 in money and goods, and moved to Indian Territory. There they became landholders. They established schools, governed themselves by a legislature, loafed, hunted, farmed, raised stock, and became quite civilized. They still number 10,321--rather more than when the white man first found them. A few hundred still linger along the streams of the Mississippi. See Indians; Cherokees