Legend teaches the Choctaw that their forefathers came to what is now Alabama, Mississippi, Part of Georgia and Tennessee, from the great water far to the west of Father of water (The Mississippi River)
They came many generations ago, and it took them a number of generations to walk from what is now the west coast to Alabama. As they were walking to the East and waiting for a sign from Unseen (God) to tell them to stop their nomadic life and settle down, Some of the elders began to die off. Since the bones of the elders were sacred, they were not left to rot on the prairie, but were carried with Okla (The People).. Over a number of years, the load became more than the young people could carry in one trip so it was necessary to carry a load of bones for a day and the next day go back and get another load and carry them to where the first load was, and later, make a number of trips to get all of the bones moved one day's travel.
When the people came to what they called The Father of water there was a long delay while it was decided if and how to get all of the bones of the elders across the huge river. The river was continuously changing course and would rise to flood stage in just a matter of an hour or so and with each rise of water it would often change course. Sometimes it was just a spear throw and sometimes it would change as far as a day's walk. There were low hills to the East of the river and flat plains to the West. The plains were covered with willow, cottonwood, switch cane, salt cedar, and a number of other small trees that require a lot of water to grow. To the East on the low hills or bluffs there were pine, hickory, pecan, oak, elm, ash, and a lot of larger trees_ The Council decided to camp on a small hill on the East side of the great river and began to carry dirt to add to the size of the hill while waiting for the river to rise again and try to have the hill enlarged enough to withstand the onrush of water. Once the hill was made large enough to insure that it would not be washed away by the ever changing river, The bones of the elders were secreted on the top of the hill and the people waited for the river to rise and fall until one of the flash floods moved the main channel of the river to the west of the hill and the people were able to walk across the remainder of the river and continue to carry the bones up on the hills to the east of the river bed and continue their journey. This is probably what we now know as Poverty Point, La.
There is no record of the time spent preparing to cross the Mississippi, but about one Moon beyond it, was where the people received a vision, telling them to stop, bury the bones of their forefathers, and settle there. They spent about three years burying the bones and then covering them with a lot of dirt to protect them from the elements as well as any thing else that might endanger them. Not all of the people worked at burying the bones. Some of the people were hunters, some were Grainger's, some were warriors to guard the encampment, and some did other necessary work to keep a community in operation. The people lived for many generations in this location and as time went on they began to plant and harvest crops and began to capture various animals and keep them for pets or as oddities. Life was a lot easier in a fixed location so in spite of some of the elders continuing to die off from old age the people began to propagate and had to increase the amount of territory they used for crops and for hunting and fishing.
As the number of people increased it became necessary to spread out and establish more villages. As more people died it became necessary to establish more burial mounds, and to increase the size of the existing ones.
By the early eighteen hundreds there began to appear an occasional pale faced man in the forest around the villages of the people. The whites were invited into the village and fed. Soon the whites and Okla began to develop a line of communications. It must have been difficult since the words and sentences are structured totally different. As an example, in Choctaw a sentence always starts with the noun and the way the noun ends is the verb. Adverbs and adjectives are added on to the end of this and it must be just random because it doesn't seem to have any order or system to it. The last word indicates when the event took or will take place. If the phrase "took" is added at the end of a phrase, it means that it happened a long time ago and if "tuck" is added, it means it happened in the near past. If nothing is added it means it is happening or is going to happen, depending on how the noun ends.
After some type of communication was developed, trade began between the Okla and the Nohoa. The Red man contributed Knowledge of how to hunt, Geography, what plants were edible and which were toxic, and how to make all of the necessities from what was available locally. The White man contributed Firearms, Metal for knives, spear points hatchets and axes, and cooking utensils, cloth , Written language, Missionaries, Smallpox, and V.D. It may seem strange, but the worst of these were the Missionaries. In the words of Vine DeLoren in his book "CUSTER DIED FOR YOUR SINS' The missionaries fell on their knees and prayed, then fell on the Indians and preyed.
The first thing the Missionaries wanted to do was do away with the Indian religion and replace it with which ever denomination was represented by the particular missionary. The next item on the agenda was for the Church to become the administrator of all of the Indian wealth. There was no compromise on the part of the missionary. They felt they had the only true religion and were compelled by God to force it on the rest of the world. They also felt that the Indians were not capable of taking care of their own affairs. The missionary were commissioned by Washington to administer the affairs of the Indians and were re-enforced with the U.S. Army. The whites kept increasing in number around the Indian settlements and at first were welcomed by the Indians. Pretty soon it was becoming obvious that there were too many whites for an all Indian village. It was also obvious that the soldiers were well armed and would enforce anything the Missionary ordered.
This was the environment into which the U S. Government introduced the Treaty of Cow Skin Prairie of 1834 to the Indians. At first none of them wanted to agree to it, but after a number of promises were made by the Whites, and not written into the treaty, and after a generous portion of sofkee (Whiskey) was provided to each of the Chiefs, most of the chiefs agreed to abide by the treaty. By Indian standards, this did not mean that all of the Indians should abide by the treaty., Only the ones who had agreed to do so. No one had the authority to make a promise for someone else and anyone who made a promise was bound by it, to the extent that He would be banished from the klan if he did not do as He had promised, and it did not matter if He was drunk at the time. This meant that most of the chiefs were moving to a reservation west of The Mississippi river and their families would go with them. Most of the clan finally decided to go, even if it meant leaving the bones of their ancestors. Some of the Indians were by this time married to whites so they would not be moving and a small number had decided to stay where they were, so it was believed that enough were staying to preserve the remains of their elders. They had been told that it was a short journey to the new land and that it was very rich and productive. Indians had never known anyone who did not tell the truth at all times so they were persuaded to abandon their homes and farms and start for the "FIVE CIVILIZED TRIBE'S RESERVATION” located west of the father of water. Most of them had suba (horses) and wagons when they left Alabama but very little food or clothing and it was in the late fall when they were ordered to leave. There were no roads as we know them today (unless you happen to live in Afghanistan or Shelby County Texas) and it was sometimes necessary to chop down trees to clear a wide enough trace through the forest to allow the wagons to pass.. All of the people did not leave at the same time. Some left in early Chivfiskono (Oct. or little hungry), some in Chivoohito (Nov. or big hungry) and more in Hvsh koe chito ( Dec. or big lion month). In December the rains started and did not abate until some two or three years later for any length of time. Due to the mud, lack of feed for the livestock.. lack of roads and bridges, and because it was often necessary to stop until the hunters could kill some game for food, it took more than a moon to go from Tuscaloosa (Black warrior ) Alabama to The eastern bank of the Mississippi river across from seven devils swamp. As the crow flies, this is less than 250 miles but these crows had to drive wagons in mud up to the hubs. It was necessary to build rafts to ferry the wagons across the Mississippi and the livestock had to swim. The men and older boys swam and helped pull the rafts, some of them crossing the river many times, and the women and children rode in the wagons on the rafts. The crossing wasn't made in a day or a week . In fact, it was more or less an ongoing operation, until all of the Indians were across.
The trip and the misery continued across Arkansas from the south eastern corner all the way across to the west side and into Ft. Smith, I.T.. (Oklahoma) with a little over half of the people not surviving the trip. Most of the livestock and wagons did not survive it either. This was a very foot sore, under nourished, ragged, and disillusioned band who reached I.T.
From Ft. Smith, this band of Indians went south West for five days and established Tuskahoma (Red Warrior) on the Eufalia river. This was one of the first bands to move from Alabama and they were lead by chief Eufala Chief Mulgee lead another band and Chief Tahlequah led a small band who settled North West of Ft. Smith the later bands tried making rafts when they came to the Mississippi and using them to haul their meager possessions up Bock Homma (Red River) from about Black Hawk La. to the mouth of Clear Boggy Creek, I. T.
A small number were affluent enough to be able to hire whites to transport them and their possessions to the new territory and they fared a little better than the ones who had to make it on their own. None of them had been there before and were traveling by instinct.
Other hands continued to be forced to leave their homes and move to I.T. There were five tribes and a number of klans within each tribe with the Choctaw being the most numerous. The Cherokee were the best educated. The Creek and Chickasaw were really off shoots of the original Choctaw nation who had disagreed with the main tribe at some time in the past and had split off and formed their own nation.
By the time the tribes had reached I.T. and picked out some home sites, built shelters. and tried to plant some pitifully small patches of crops it was pretty late into the season and much more than was normal for that area, so the crops the first year were negligible. The second year the people had cleared a little more land and had planted a little bigger fields of beans, squash, pumpkins corn, beets, and other truck crops, but again, it rained most of the year and the crops were not very good.
I ndians do not believe that anyone can own land, only use it and if you are not careful the land will wind up owning you, so it was hard for them to understand why the Nohoa claimed to own the land in Alabama and were able to force the Indians to move to I.T.
TRAIL OF TEARS By: Carl Adams