Group	Choctaw
Population	160,000
Regions
Languages	English, Choctaw
Religions	Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, traditional beliefs
Related	Chickasaw, Muscogee (Creek), and later Seminole }}

The Choctaw (alternatively spelled Chahta, Chactas, Chato, Tchakta, Chocktaw, and Chactaw) are a Native American people originally from the Southeastern United States (Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana). The Choctaw language belongs to the Muskogean linguistic group. Noted 20th century anthropologist John Swanton suggested that the name was derived from a Choctaw leader. Henry Halbert, a historian, suggests that their name is derived from the Choctaw phrase ''Hacha hatak'' (river people).

The Choctaw are descendants of the Mississippian culture and Hopewellian people, who lived throughout the east of the Mississippi River valley and its tributaries. The early Spanish explorers of the 16th century encountered their ancestors. In the 19th century, the Choctaw were known as one of the "Five Civilized Tribes" because they adopted and integrated numerous cultural and technological practices of their European American colonial neighbors. The Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians are the two primary Choctaw associations today, although smaller Choctaw groups are located in Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas.

During the American Revolution, most Choctaw supported the Thirteen Colonies' bid for independence from the British Crown. The Choctaw and the United States agreed to nine treaties. The last three treaties (Treaty of Doak's Stand, Washington City, and Dancing Rabbit) were designed to deracinate most Choctaw west of the Mississippi River.

U.S. President Andrew Jackson made the Choctaw exile a model of Indian removal making them the first Native Americans to travel on the Trail of Tears. The Choctaw were exiled (to the area now called Oklahoma) because the U.S. desired to expand territory available for settlement to European Americans, wanted to save them from extinction, and wanted to acquire their natural resources.

With ratification in 1831 of the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, those Choctaws who chose to stay in the newly formed state of Mississippi were the first major non-European ethnic group to become U.S. citizens. Article 22 sought to put a Choctaw representative in the U.S. House of Representatives. The Choctaw began to seek political representation in the Congress of the United States in 1830. During the Great Irish Famine (1845–1849) nearly twenty years prior to the founding of the Red Cross, the Choctaw were noted for their generosity in providing humanitarian relief for the people of Ireland. During the American Civil War, the Choctaw in both Oklahoma and Mississippi mostly sided with the Confederate States of America.

After the Civil War, the Mississippi Choctaw fell into obscurity. The Choctaw in Oklahoma struggled to maintain a nation. In World War I, they served in the U.S. military as the first Native American codetalkers, using the Choctaw language as a natural code.

History

New World antiquity

Many thousands of years ago groups known as Paleo-Indians lived in what today is referred to as the American South. These groups were hunter-gatherers who hunted a wide range of animals, including the megafauna, which became extinct following the end of the Pleistocene age. 19th-century historian Horatio Cushman noted that Choctaw accounts suggested their ancestors had known of mammoths in the Tombigbee River area; this suggests that the Choctaw ancestors had been in the Mississippi area for at least 4,000–8,000 years. Cushman wrote: "the ancient Choctaw through their tradition (said) 'they saw the mighty beasts of the forests, whose tread shook the earth." Scholars believe that Paleo-Indians were specialized, highly mobile foragers who hunted late Pleistocene fauna such as bison, mastodons, caribou, and mammoths. Direct evidence in the Southeast is meager, but archaeological discoveries in related areas support this hypothesis.

Descent from the moundbuilders

Contemporary historian Patricia Galloway argues from fragmentary archaeological and cartographic evidence that the Choctaw did not exist as a unified people before the 17th century. Only then did various southeastern peoples, remnants of Moundville, Plaquemine, and other Mississippian cultures, coalesce to form a self-consciously Choctaw people. The homeland of the Choctaw, or of the peoples from whom the Choctaw nation arose, included the area of ''Nanih Waiya'', an earthwork mound in present-day Winston County, Mississippi, which they considered sacred ground. Based on dating of surface artifacts, the mound was likely constructed and first occupied by indigenous peoples about 0-300 CE, in the Middle Woodland period. The original site was bounded on three sides by an earthwork circular enclosure, about ten feet high and encompassing a square mile. Occupation of ''Nanih Waiya'' and several smaller nearby mounds likely continued through 700 CE, the Late Woodland Period. The smaller mounds may also have been built by later cultures. As they have been lost to cultivation since the late 19th century and the area has not been excavated, theories have been speculation.

While the mound continued to be a ceremonial center and object of veneration, scholars do not believe it was occupied during the Mississippian culture period. From the 17th century on, the Choctaw revered this site as the center of their origin stories, which also included stories of migration to this site from west of the great river (believed to refer to the Mississippi River.)

In ''Histoire de La Louisiane'' (Paris, 1758), French explorer Antoine-Simon Le Page du Pratz recounted that "...when I asked them from whence the Chat-kas [sic] came, to express the suddenness of their appearance they replied that they had come out from under the earth." American scholars took this account as intended to explain the Choctaws' immediate appearance, and not a literal creation account. It was perhaps the first European writing to contain the seed of the Choctaw origin story.

Early 19th century and contemporary Choctaw storytellers describe that the Choctaw people emerged from either ''Nanih Waiya'' or a cave nearby. A companion story describes their migration journey from the west, beyond the Mississippi River, when they were directed by their leader's use of a sacred pole.

Post-Columbian era

The Choctaw ancestors were likely part of the Mississippian culture in the Mississippi river valley. They were preceded by other moundbuilding cultures, of which people of one of the earliest built ''Nanih Waiya''. Scholars believe the mound was contemporary with such earthworks as Igomar Mound in Mississippi and Pinson Mounds in Tennessee.

The Mississippian culture was a Native American culture that flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from 800 to 1500 C.E. When the Spanish made their first forays inland in the 16th century from the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, they encountered some chiefdoms of the Mississippians, but others were already in decline, or had disappeared. The Mississippian culture is what the earliest Spanish explorers encountered, beginning on April 2, 1513, with Juan Ponce de León's Florida landing and the 1526 Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón expedition in South Carolina and Georgia region.

Spanish Exploration (1540)

After castaway Cabeza de Vaca of the ill-fated Narváez expedition returned to Spain, he described to the Court of Hernando de Soto that the New World was the "richest country in the world." Hernando de Soto was a Spanish explorer and conquistador who led the first expedition into the interior of the North American continent. De Soto, convinced of the "riches", wanted Cabeza de Vaca to accompany him on the expedition. Cabeza de Vaca declined because of a payment dispute of a ship. From 1540–1543, Hernando de Soto travelled through Florida and Georgia, and then down into the Alabama and Mississippi area that would later be inhabited by the Choctaw.

De Soto had the best-equipped militia at the time. His well-known successes attracted people to his expedition in a quest for untold riches in the New World. As the brutalities of the de Soto expedition became known, ancestors to the Choctaw rose in defense. This battle, known as the Battle of ''Mabila'', was a turning point for the de Soto venture. The battle "broke the back" of the campaign, and they never fully recovered.

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French Colonization (1682)

In 1682 La Salle was the first French explorer to venture into the southeast along the Mississippi River. His expedition did not meet with the Choctaw; it established a post along the Arkansas River. The post signaled to the English that the French were serious at colonization attempts in the American Deep South. The Choctaw had to make allies with French colonists because the English had been taking Choctaws for the slave trade.

The first direct recorded contact between the Choctaw and the French was with Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville in 1699; indirect contact had likely occurred between the Choctaw and British settlers through other tribes, including the Creek and Chickasaw. The Choctaw, along with other tribes, had formed a relationship with New France, French Louisiana. Illegal fur trading may have led to further unofficial contact.

The archaeological record for this period between 1567 and 1699 is not complete or well-studied. It appears that some Mississippian settlements were abandoned well before the 17th century. Similarities in pottery coloring and burials suggest the following scenario for the emergence of the distinctive Choctaw society.

The Choctaw region, generally located between the Natchez bluffs to the south and the Yazoo basin to the north, was slowly occupied by Burial Urn people from the Bottle Creek Indian Mounds area in the Mobile, Alabama delta, along with remnants of the Moundville chiefdom that had collapsed some years before. Facing severe depopulation, they fled westward, where they combined with the Plaquemines and a group of “prairie people” living near the area. When this occurred is not clear. In the space of several generations, they created a new society which became known as Choctaw (albeit with a strong Mississippian background).

United States relations

[[Image:Choctaw Village by Francois Bernard.jpg|375px|thumb|''Choctaw Village near the Chefuncte'' by Francois Bernard, 1869, Peabody Museum Harvard University, The women are preparing dye to color cane strips for making baskets]]

During the American Revolution, Choctaws divided over whether to support Britain or Spain. Chief Franchimastabé led a Choctaw war party with British forces against American rebels in Natchez. The Americans had left by the time Franchimastabé arrived, but the Choctaw occupied Natchez for weeks and convinced residents to remain loyal to Britain.

Other Choctaw companies joined Washington's army during the war, and served the entire duration. Bob Ferguson, a Southeastern Indian historian, noted, "[In] 1775 the American Revolution began a period of new alignments for the Choctaws and other southern Indians. Choctaw scouts served under Washington, Morgan, Wayne and Sullivan."

Over a thousand Choctaw fought for Britain, largely against Spain's campaigns along the Gulf Coast. At the same time, a significant number of Choctaw aided Spain.

After the Revolutionary War, the Choctaws were reluctant to ally themselves with countries hostile to the United States. John R. Swanton wrote, "the Choctaw were never at war with the Americans. A few were induced by ''Tecumseh'' (a Shawnee leader who sought support from various Native American tribes) to ally themselves with the hostile Creeks, but the Nation as a whole was kept out of anti-American alliances by the influence of ''Apushmataha'', greatest of all Choctaw chiefs." Ferguson also wrote that with the end of the Revolution, " 'Franchimastabe', Choctaw head chief, went to Savannah, Georgia to secure American trade." In the next few years, some Choctaw scouts served in Ohio with U.S. General Anthony Wayne in the Northwest Indian War.

George Washington (first U.S. President) and Henry Knox (first U.S. Secretary of War) proposed the cultural transformation of Native Americans. Washington believed that Native Americans were equals but that their society was inferior to that of the European Americans. He formulated a policy to encourage the "civilizing" process, and Thomas Jefferson continued it. Historian Robert Remini wrote, "[T]hey presumed that once the Indians adopted the practice of private property, built homes, farmed, educated their children, and embraced Christianity, these Native Americans would win acceptance from white Americans."

Washington's six-point plan included impartial justice toward Indians; regulated buying of Indian lands; promotion of commerce; promotion of experiments to civilize or improve Indian society; presidential authority to give presents; and punishing those who violated Indian rights. The government appointed agents, such as Benjamin Hawkins, to live among the Indians and to teach them through example and instruction, how to live like whites. The Choctaws accepted Washington's policy as they established schools, adopted yeoman farming practices, converted to Christianity, and built houses like their colonial neighbors.

Hopewell (1786)

Starting in October 1785, ''Taboca'', a Choctaw prophet/chief, led over 125 Choctaws to the Keowee, near Seneca Old Town, now known as Hopewell, South Carolina. After two months of travel, they met with U.S. representatives Benjamin Hawkins, Andrew Pickens, and Joseph Martin. In high Choctaw ceremonial symbolism, they named, adopted, smoked, and performed dances, revealing the complex and serious nature of Choctaw diplomacy. One such dance was the eagle tail dance. The Choctaw explained that the Bald Eagle, who has direct contact with the upper world of the sun, is a symbol of peace. Choctaw women painted in white would adopt and name commissioners as kin. Smoking sealed agreements between peoples and the shared pipes sanctified peace between the two nations.

After the rituals, the Choctaws asked John Woods to live with them to improve communication with the U.S. In exchange they allowed Taboca to visit the United States Congress. On January 3, 1786, the Treaty of Hopewell was signed. Article 11 stated, "[T]he hatchet shall be forever buried, and the peace given by the United States of America, and friendship re-established between the said states on the one part, and all the Choctaw nation on the other part, shall be universal; and the contracting parties shall use their utmost endeavors to maintain the peace given as aforesaid, and friendship re-established."

The treaty required Choctaws to return escaped slaves to colonists, to turn over any Choctaws convicted of crimes by the U.S., establish borderlines between the U.S. and Choctaw Nation, and the return any property captured from colonists during the Revolutionary War.

War of 1812

Early in 1811, ''Tecumseh'' attempted to recover lands from U.S. settlers. Tecumseh met the Choctaws to persuade them to join the alliance. ''Pushmataha'', considered by historians to be the greatest Choctaw leader, countered Tecumseh's influence. As chief for the Six Towns district, Pushmataha strongly resisted such a plan, arguing that the Choctaw and their neighbors the Chickasaw had always lived in peace with European-Americans, had learned valuable skills and technologies, and had received honest treatment and fair trade. The joint Choctaw-Chickasaw council then voted against alliance with Tecumseh. On Tecumseh's departure, Pushmataha accused him of tyranny over his own Shawnee tribe and other tribes. Pushmataha warned Tecumeseh that he would fight against those who fought the United States.

With the outbreak of war, Pushmataha led the Choctaws in alliance with the U.S., arguing in favor of opposing the Creek's alliance with Britain after the massacre at Fort Mims. Pushmataha arrived at St. Stephens, Alabama in mid-1813 with an offer of alliance and recruitment. He was escorted to Mobile to speak with General Flournoy, then commanding the district. Flournoy initially declined Pushmataha's offer, offending the chief. However, Flournoy's staff quickly convinced him to reverse his decision. A courier with a message accepting the offer of alliance caught up with Pushmataha at St. Stephens.

Returning to Choctaw territory, Pushmataha raised a company of 125 Choctaw warriors with a rousing speech and was commissioned (as either a lieutenant colonel or a brigadier general) in the United States Army at St. Stephens. After observing that the officers and their wives would promenade along the Alabama River, Pushmataha summoned his own wife to St. Stephens.

Pushmataha joined the U.S. Army under General Claiborne in mid-November, and some 125 Choctaw warriors took part in an attack on Creek forces at Kantachi (near present day Econochaca, Alabama) on 23 December 1813. With this victory, Choctaws began to volunteer in greater numbers from the other two districts of the tribe. By February 1814, a larger band of Choctaws under Pushmataha had joined General Andrew Jackson's force for the sweeping of the Creek territories near Pensacola, Florida. Many Choctaws departed from Jackson's main force after the final defeat of the Creek at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. By the Battle of New Orleans, only a few Choctaws remained with the army; however, they were the only Native American tribe represented in the battle.

Doak's Stand (1820)

In October 1820, Andrew Jackson and Thomas Hinds were sent as commissioners representing the United States, to conduct a treaty that would require the Choctaw to surrender to the United States a portion of their country located in present day Mississippi. They met with chiefs, mingos (leaders), and headsmen such as Colonel Silas Dinsmore and Chief Pushmataha at Doak's Stand on the Natchez Trace.

The convention began on October 10 with a talk by "Sharp Knife", the nickname of Jackson, to more than 500 Choctaws. Pushmataha accused Jackson of deceiving them about the quality of land west of the Mississippi. Pushmataha responded to Jackson's retort with "I know the country well ... The grass is everywhere very short ... There are but few beavers, and the honey and fruit are rare things." Jackson resorted to threats, which pressured the Choctaws to sign the Doak's Stand treaty. Pushmataha would continue to argue with Jackson about the conditions of the treaty. Pushmataha assertively stated "that no alteration shall be made in the boundaries of the portion of our territory that will remain, until the Choctaw people are sufficiently progressed in the arts of civilzation to become citzens of the States, owning land and homes of their own, on an equal footing with the white people." Jackson responded with "That ... is a magnificent rangement and we consent to it, [American Citizenship], readily." Historian Anna Lewis stated that ''Apuckshunubbee'', a Choctaw district chief, was blackmailed by Jackson to sign the treaty. On October 18, the Treaty of Doak's Stand was signed.

Article 4 of the Treaty of Doak's Stand prepared Choctaws to become U.S. citizens when he or she became "civilized." This article would later influence Article 14 in the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek.

Delegation to Washington City (1824)

Apuckshunubbee, Pushmataha, and Mosholatubbee, the principal leaders of the Choctaws, went to Washington City (the 19th century name for Washington, D.C.) to discuss European-Americans' squatting on Choctaw lands. They sought either expulsion of the settlers or financial compensation for the loss of their lands. The group also included Talking Warrior, Red Fort, Nittahkachee; Col. Robert Cole and David Folsom, both mixed-race Indians; Captain Daniel McCurtain, and Major John Pitchlynn, the U.S. interpreter, who also was mixed-race, with European ancestry.

Pushmataha met with President James Monroe and gave a speech to Secretary of War John C. Calhoun, reminding him of the longstanding alliances between the United States and the Choctaws. He said, "[I] can say and tell the truth that no Choctaw ever drew his bow against the United States ... My nation has given of their country until it is very small. We are in trouble." On January 20, 1825, the Treaty of Washington City was signed, by which the Choctaw ceded even more territory to the United States.

Apuckshunubbee died in Maysville, Kentucky; and Pushmataha died in Washington. Apuckshunubbee was reported to have died from a broken neck caused by a fall from a hotel balcony. Other historians said he fell from a cliff, an account carried in a local paper. Pushmataha died of croup, even though the disease usually only afflicts infants and young children. Pushmataha was given full U.S. Military burial honors in a ceremony of burial at the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C. The deaths of these two leaders effectively crippled the Choctaw Nation. Within six years the Choctaw were forced to cede their last remaining territory in Mississippi to the United States.

Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek (1830)

At Andrew Jackson's request, the United States Congress opened what became a fierce debate on an Indian Removal Bill. In the end, the bill passed, but the vote was very close. The Senate passed the measure 28 to 19, while in the House it narrowly passed, 102 to 97. Jackson signed the legislation into law June 30, 1830, and turned his focus onto the Choctaw in Mississippi Territory.

On August 25, 1830, the Choctaw were supposed to meet with Andrew Jackson in Franklin, Tennessee, but Greenwood Leflore, a district Choctaw chief, informed Secretary of War John H. Eaton that his warriors were fiercely opposed to attending. President Jackson was angered. Journalist Len Green writes "although angered by the Choctaw refusal to meet him in Tennessee, Jackson felt from LeFlore's words that he might have a foot in the door and dispatched Secretary of War Eaton and John Coffee to meet with the Choctaws in their nation." Jackson appointed Eaton and General John Coffee as commissioners to represent him to meet the Choctaws at the Dancing Rabbit Creek near present-day Noxubee County, Mississippi.

The commissioners met with the chiefs and headmen on September 15, 1830, at Dancing Rabbit Creek. In a carnival-like atmosphere, they tried to explain the policy of removal to an audience of 6,000 men, women, and children. The Choctaws faced migration or submitting to U.S. law as citizens. The treaty required the to cede their remaining traditional homeland to the United States; however, a provision in the treaty made removal more acceptable.

On September 27, 1830, the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek was signed. It represented one of the largest transfers of land that was signed between the U.S. Government and Native Americans without being instigated by warfare. By the treaty, the Choctaw signed away their remaining traditional homelands, opening them up for European-American settlement. Article 14 allowed for some Choctaw to stay in Mississippi, and nearly 1,300 Choctaws chose to do so. They were the first major non-European ethnic group to become U.S. citizens. Article 22 sought to put a Choctaw representative in the U.S. House of Representatives. The Choctaw at this crucial time split into two distinct groups: the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. The nation retained its autonomy, but the tribe in Mississippi submitted to state and federal laws.

Removal era

After ceding nearly , the Choctaw emigrated in three stages: the first in the fall of 1831, the second in 1832 and the last in 1833. Nearly 15,000 Choctaws made the move to what would be called Indian Territory and then later Oklahoma. About 2,500 died along the Trail of Tears. The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek was ratified by the U.S. Senate on February 25, 1831, and the President was anxious to make it a model of removal. Principal Chief George W. Harkins wrote a farewell letter to the American people before the removals began. It was widely published

Alexis de Tocqueville, noted French political thinker and historian, witnessed the Choctaw removals while in Memphis, Tennessee in 1831:

Approximately 4,000–6,000 Choctaw remained in Mississippi in 1831 after the initial removal efforts. The U.S. agent William Ward, who was responsible for Choctaw registration in Mississippi under article XIV, strongly opposed their treaty rights. Although estimates suggested 5000 Choctaw remained in Mississippi, only 143 family heads (for a total of 276 adult persons) received lands under the provisions of Article 14. For the next ten years, the Choctaws in Mississippi were objects of increasing legal conflict, racism, harassment, and intimidation. The Choctaws described their situation in 1849: "we have had our habitations torn down and burned, our fences destroyed, cattle turned into our fields and we ourselves have been scourged, manacled, fettered and otherwise personally abused, until by such treatment some of our best men have died." Joseph B. Cobb, who moved to Mississippi from Georgia, described the Choctaw as having "no nobility or virtue at all, and in some respect he found blacks, especially native Africans, more interesting and admirable, the red man's superior in every way. The Choctaw and Chickasaw, the tribes he knew best, were beneath contempt, that is, even worse than black slaves." Removal continued throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. In 1846 1,000 Choctaw removed, and in 1903, another 300 Mississippi Choctaw were persuaded to move to the Nation in Oklahoma. By 1930 only 1,665 remained in Mississippi.

Pre-Civil War (1840)

thumb|right|315px|Choctaw chief Greenwood LeFlore's plantation home, Malmaison, was built in 1852 near Greenwood, Mississippi and was described as a "palace in the wilderness."

In the 1840s, the Choctaw chief Greenwood LeFlore stayed in Mississippi after the signing of Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek and became an American citizen, a successful businessman, and a state politician. He was elected as a Mississippi representative and senator, was a fixture of Mississippi high society, and a personal friend of Jefferson Davis. He represented his county in the state house for two terms and served as a state senator for one term. Some of the elite used Latin language, an indulgence used by some politicians. LeFlore, in defense of his heritage, spoke in the Choctaw language and asked the Senate floor which was better understood, Latin or Choctaw.

Midway through the Great Irish Famine (1845–1849), a group of Choctaw collected $710 (although many articles say the original amount was $170 after a misprint in Angi Debo's ''The Rise and Fall of the Choctaw Nation'') and sent it to help starving Irish men, women and children.

"It had been just 16 years since the Choctaw people had experienced the Trail of Tears, and they had faced starvation ... It was an amazing gesture. By today's standards, it might be a million dollars" according to Judy Allen, editor of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma's newspaper, ''Bishinik'', based at the Oklahoma Choctaw tribal headquarters in Durant, Oklahoma.

To mark the 150th anniversary, eight Irish people retraced the Trail of Tears In the late 20th century, Irish President Mary Robinson extolled the donation in a public commemoration.

For the Choctaw who remained in or returned to Mississippi after 1855, the situation deteriorated. Many lost their lands and money to unscrupulous whites. the state of Mississippi refused the Choctaw any participation in government. Their limited understanding of the English language caused them to live in isolated groups. In addition, they were prohibited from attending any of the few institutions of higher learning, as the European Americans considered them free people of color and excluded from the segregated white institutions. The state had no public schools prior to those established during the Reconstruction era.

American Civil War (1861)

At the beginning of the American Civil War, Albert Pike was appointed as Confederate envoy to Native Americans. In this capacity he negotiated several treaties, including the Treaty with Choctaws and Chickasaws in July 1861. The treaty covered sixty-four terms, covering many subjects, such as Choctaw and Chickasaw nation sovereignty, Confederate States of America citizenship possibilities, and an entitled delegate in the House of Representatives of the Confederate States of America.

Some Choctaw identified with the Southern cause and a few owned slaves. In addition, they well remembered and resented the Indian removals from thirty years earlier, and the poor services they received from the federal government. The main reason the Choctaw Nation agreed to sign the treaty was for protection from regional tribes. Soon Confederate battalions were formed in Indian Territory and later in Mississippi in support of the southern cause. The ''Mobile Advertiser and Register'' advertised for recruits:

General Arnold Spann organized the first battalion of Choctaw in Mississippi in February 1863. After a train wreck, referred to as the Chunky Creek Train Wreck of 1863, near Hickory, Mississippi, the Choctaw Battalion, which had been organized days earlier, led rescue and recovery efforts. Led by Jack Amos and Elder Williams, the Indians rushed to the scene, stripped, and plunged into the flooded creek. Many of the passengers were rescued due to their heroic acts." Noted Choctaw Historian Clara Kidwell writes, "in an act of heroism in Mississippi, Choctaws rescued twenty three survivors and retrieved ninety bodies when a Confederate troop train plunged off a bridge and fell into the Chunky River."

Major S. G. Spann, Commander of Dabney H. Maury Camp of Meridian, Mississippi, wrote about the deeds of the Choctaw years after the Civil War had ended. Mississippi Choctaws were captured in Ponchatoula, Louisiana, and several died in a Union prison in New York. Spann describes the incident, "[Maj. J.W. Pearce] established two camps—a recruiting camp in Newton County and a drill camp at Tangipahoa—just beyond the State boundary line in Louisiana in the fall of 1862. New Orleans at that time was in the hands of the Federal Gen. B.F. Butler. Without notice a reconnoitering party of the enemy raided the camp, and captured over two dozen Indians and several noncommissioned white officers and carried them to New Orleans. All the officers and several of the Indians escaped and returned to the Newton County camp; but all the balance of the captured Indians were carried to New York, and were daily paraded in the public parks as curiosities for the sport of sight-seers.

Choctaw Under Reconstruction (1865)

Mississippi Choctaw

From about 1865 to 1918, Mississippi Choctaws were largely ignored by governmental, health, and educational services and fell into obscurity. In the aftermath of the Civil War, their issues were pushed aside in the struggle between defeated Confederates, freedmen and Union sympathizers. Records about the Mississippi Choctaw during this period are non-existent. They had no legal recourse, and were often bullied and intimidated by local whites. They chose to live in isolation and practiced their culture as they had for generations.

Following Reconstruction and conservative Democrats' regaining power in the late 1870s, white state legislators passed laws establishing Jim Crow laws and legal segregation by race. In addition they disfranchised Native Americans by constitutional changes in 1890 regarding voter registration and elections. Such legislators included Mississippi Choctaws in the "colored" population, subjecting them to racial segregation and exclusion from public facilities along with freedmen and their descendants. The Choctaw were non-white, landless, and had minimal legal protection.

At the turn of the 20th century, only 1,253 Choctaw Indians remained in Mississippi. "The beginning of the 20th century found Mississippi Choctaws struggling to overcome poverty, discrimination, and lack of opportunity."

After a US Congressional investigation discovered their poor living conditions, in 1918 the US Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) established the Choctaw Agency. Under segregation, few schools were open to Choctaw children, who were included with other non-whites. The Choctaw agency was based in Philadelphia, Mississippi, a center of several Indian communities. It set up elementary schools and worked to address the poor health conditions of the Choctaw, building a hospital in Philadelphia for tribal members. Dr. Frank McKinley was the first superintendent. Prior to McKinley's arrival, the Choctaws had grouped themselves in six communities.

Because the state remained dependent on agriculture, despite the declining price of cotton, most landless men earned a living by becoming sharecroppers. The women created and sold traditional hand-woven baskets. Choctaw sharecropping declined in the 1950s after farming mechanization had become more prevalent.

Choctaw Nation

The Confederacy’s loss was also the Choctaw Nation’s loss. Prior to removal, the Choctaws had interacted with Africans in their native homeland of Mississippi. Slavery was a European-American institution which the Choctaws had adopted. During the pre-civil war period, enslaved African-Americans had more formal legal protection than did the Choctaw. Moshulatubbee, an important Choctaw chief, had slaves, as did many of the Europeans who married into the Choctaw nation. The Choctaw Nation, in what will be Oklahoma, kept slavery until 1866. After the Civil War, they were required by treaty with the United States to free the slaves within their nation. Former slaves of the Choctaw Nation were called the Choctaw Freedmen. After considerable debate, Choctaw Freedmen were granted Choctaw Nation citizenship in 1885. In post-war treaties, the US government also acquired land in the western part of the territory and access rights for railroads to be built across Indian Territory. Choctaw chief Allen Wright suggested ''Oklahoma'' (red man, a portmanteau of the choctaw words okla "man" and humma "red") as the name of the newly ceded territory.

The improved transportation afforded by the railroads drew large-scale mining and timber operations. These added to tribal receipts. The railroads and industries also attracted European-American settlers, including new immigrants to the United States.

Continuing the struggle over land and assimilation, the US proposed the end to the tribal lands held in common, and allotment of lands to tribal members in severalty (individually). This would also enable new settlers to buy land from those Native Americans who wished to sell. The US government set up the Dawes Commission to manage the land allotment policy.

Beginning in 1894, the Dawes Commission was established to register Choctaw and other families of the Indian Territory, so that the former tribal lands could be properly distributed among them. The final list included 18,981 citizens of the Choctaw Nation, 1,639 Mississippi Choctaw, and 5,994 former slaves, most held by Choctaws in the Indian/Oklahoma Territory. (At the same time, the Dawes Commission registered members of the other Five Civilized Tribes.) Following completion of the land allotments, the US proposed to end tribal governments of the Five Civilized Tribes and admit the territories as a state.

Territory transition to Oklahoma statehood (1889)

The establishment of Oklahoma Territory following the Civil War was a required land cession by the Five Civilized Tribes, who had supported the Confederacy. The government used its railroad access to the Oklahoma Territory to stimulate development there. The Indian Appropriations Bill of 1889 included an amendment by Illinois Representative William McKendree Springer, that authorized President Benjamin Harrison to open the two million acres (8,000 km²) of Oklahoma Territory for settlement, resulting in the Land Run of 1889. The Choctaw Nation was overwhelmed with new settlers and could not regulate their activities. In the late 19th century Choctaws suffered almost daily from violent crimes, murders, thefts and assaults from whites and from other Choctaws. Intense factionalism divided the traditionalistic "Nationalists" and pro-assimilation "Progressives," who fought for control.

In 1905, the Five Civilized Tribes met at the Sequoyah Convention to counter proposed dissolution of their governments by creating an alternate State of Sequoyah. Although they took a thoroughly developed proposal to Washington, DC, seeking approval, there was political opposition from eastern states' representatives. President Theodore Roosevelt ruled that the Oklahoma and Indian territories would be merged to be admitted as one state, Oklahoma. Nonetheless, many of the Native American representatives from the Sequoyah Convention participated in the new state convention. Its constitution was based on many elements of the one developed for the State of Sequoyah.

In 1906 the U.S. dissolved the governments of the Five Civilized Tribes in an attempt to assimilate the tribes as citizens of the United States. This action was part of continuing negotiations by Native Americans and European Americans over the best proposals for the future. The Choctaw Nation continued to protect resources not stipulated in treaty or law. On November 16, 1907, Oklahoma was admitted to the union as the 46th state.

World War I (1918)

In the closing days of World War I, a group of Choctaws serving in the U.S. Army used their native language as the basis for secret communication among Americans, as Germans could not understand it. They are now called the Choctaw Code Talkers. The Choctaws were the Native American innovators who served as code talkers. Captain Lawrence, a company commander, overheard Solomon Louis and Mitchell Bobb conversing in the Choctaw language. He asked them if there were more Choctaws and found out there were eight men in the battalion.

14 Choctaw Indian men in the Army's 36th Division trained to use their language for military communications. Their communications, which could not be understood by Germans, helped the American Expeditionary Force win several key battles in the Meuse-Argonne Campaign in France, during the last big German offensive of the war. Within 24 hours after the US Army starting using their Choctaw speakers, the tide of the battle had turned. In less than 72 hours the Germans were retreating and the Allies were on full attack. The 14 Choctaw Code Talkers were Albert Billy, Mitchell Bobb, Victor Brown, Ben Caterby, James Edwards, Tobias Frazer, Ben Hampton, Solomon Louis, Pete Maytubby, Jeff Nelson, Joseph Oklahombi, Robert Taylor, Calvin Wilson, and Walter Veach.

More than 70 years passed before the contributions of the Choctaw Code talkers were fully recognized. On November 3, 1989, in recognition of the important role the Choctaw Code Talkers played during World War I, the French government presented the ''Chevalier de L'Ordre National du Mérite'' (the Knight of the National Order of Merit) to the Choctaws Code Talkers.

The US Army again used Choctaw speakers for coded language during World War II.

Reorganization (1934)

During the Great Depression and the Roosevelt Administration, officials began numerous initiatives to alleviate some of the social and economic conditions in the South. The 1933 ''Special Narrative Report'' described the dismal state of welfare of Mississippi Choctaws, whose population by 1930 had declined to 1,665 people. John Collier, the US Commissioner for Indian Affairs (now BIA), used the report as instrumental support in a proposal to re-organize the Mississippi Choctaw as the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. This enabled them to establish their own tribal government, as well as to have a beneficial relationship with the federal government.

In 1934, President Franklin Roosevelt signed into law the Indian Reorganization Act. This law proved critical for survival of the Mississippi Choctaw. Baxter York, Emmett York, and Joe Chitto worked on gaining recognition for the Choctaw. They realized that the only way to gain recognition was to adopt a constitution. A rival organization, the Mississippi Choctaw Indian Federation, opposed tribal recognition because of fears of dominance by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). They disbanded after leaders of the opposition were moved to another jurisdiction. The first Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians tribal council members were Baxter and Emmett York with Joe Chitto as the first chairperson.

With the tribe's adoption of government, in 1944 the Secretary of the Interior declared that would be held in trust for the Choctaw of Mississippi. Lands in Neshoba and surrounding counties were set aside as a federal Indian reservation. Eight communities were included in the reservation land: Bogue Chitto, Bogue Homa, Conehatta, Crystal Ridge, Pearl River, Red Water, Tucker, and Standing Pine.

Under the Indian Reorganization Act, the Mississippi Choctaws re-organized on April 20, 1945 as the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. This gave them some independence from the state government, which continued with its system of racial segregation under the Democratic Party.

World War II (1941)

World War II was a significant turning point for Choctaws and Native Americans in general. Although the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek stated Mississippi Choctaws had U.S. citizenship, they had become associated with "colored people" as non-white in a state that had imposed racial segregation under Jim Crow laws. State services for Native Americans were non-existent. The state was poor and still dependent on agriculture. In its system of segregation, services for minorities were consistently underfunded. The state constitution and voter registration rules dating from the turn of the 20th century kept most Native Americans from voting, serving on juries or being eligible for any local offices.

Van Barfoot, a Choctaw from Mississippi, who was a Sergeant and later a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Army, 157th Infantry, 45th Infantry Division, received the Medal of Honor. Barfoot was commissioned a Second Lieutenant after he destroyed two German machine gun nests, took 17 prisoners, and disabled an enemy tank.

Post-Reorganization (1946)

After World War II, pressure in Congress mounted to reduce Washington's authority on Native American lands and liquidate the government's responsibilities to them. In 1953 the House of Representatives passed Resolution 108, proposing an end to federal services for 13 tribes deemed ready to handle their own affairs. The same year, Public Law 280 transferred jurisdiction over tribal lands to state and local governments in five states. Within a decade Congress terminated federal services to more than sixty groups despite intense opposition by Indians. Congress settled on a policy to terminate tribes as quickly as possible. Out of concern for the isolation of many Native Americans in rural areas, the federal government created relocation programs to cities to try to expand their employment opportunities. Indian policy experts hoped to expedite assimilation of Native Americans to the larger American society, which was becoming urban.

President John F. Kennedy halted further termination in 1961 and decided against implementing additional terminations. He did enact some of the last terminations in process, such as with the Ponca. Both presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon repudiated termination of the federal government's relationship with Native American tribes. In 1959, the Choctaw Termination Act was passed. Unless repealed by the federal government, the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma would effectively be terminated as a sovereign nation as of August 25, 1970.

Mississippi Choctaw Self-Determination Era

The Choctaw people continued to struggle economically due to bigotry, cultural isolation, and lack of jobs. The Choctaws, who for 150 years had been neither white nor black, were "left where they had always been"-- in poverty. Will Campbell, a Baptist minister and Civil Rights activist, witnessed the destitution of the Choctaw. He would later write, "the thing I remember the most ... was the depressing sight of the Choctaws, their shanties along the country roads, grown men lounging on the dirt streets of their villages in demeaning idleness, sometimes drinking from a common bottle, sharing a roll-your-own cigarette, their half-clad children a picture of hurting that would never end." With reorganization and establishment of tribal government, however, over the next decades they took control of "schools, health care facilities, legal and judicial systems, and social service programs."

The Choctaws witnessed the social forces that brought Freedom Summer and it after effects to their ancient homeland. The Civil Rights Era produced significant social change for the Choctaws in Mississippi, as their civil rights were also enhanced. Prior to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, most jobs were given to whites, then blacks. Donna Ladd wrote that a Choctaw, now in her 40s, remembers "as a little girl, she thought that a 'white only' sign in a local store meant she could only order white, or vanilla, ice cream. It was a small story, but one that shows how a third race can easily get left out of the attempts for understanding." On June 21, 1964 James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner (renowned civil rights workers) disappeared; their remains were later found in a newly constructed dam. A crucial turning point in the FBI investigation came when the charred remains of the murdered Mississippi civil rights workers' station wagon was found on a Mississippi Choctaw reservation. Two Choctaw women, who were in the back seat of a deputy's patrol car, said they witnessed the meeting of two conspirators who expressed their desire to "beat-up" the boys. The end of legalized racial segregation permitted the Choctaws to participate in public institutions and facilities that had been reserved exclusively for white patrons. In 1981, African American Marcus Dupree's final High School footballgame was played on the Choctaw Indian Resevation's tribal high school's Warriors Stadium. He finished with 5,284 rushing yards on 8.3 yards per carry; there was considerable media coverage to witness the record breaking event that was multi-racially praised.

Phillip Martin, who had served in the U. S. Army in Europe during World War II, returned to visit his former Neshoba County, Mississippi home. After seeing the poverty of his people, he decided to stay to help. Martin served as chairperson in various Choctaw committees up until 1977. Martin was then elected as Chief of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. He served a total of 30 years, being re-elected until 2007. Martin died in Jackson, Mississippi, on February 4, 2010, and was eulogized as a visionary leader who lifted his people out of poverty with business and casinos built on tribal land.

Choctaws today

In the social changes around the Civil Rights era, between 1965 and 1982 Native Americans renewed their commitments to the value of their ancient heritage. Working to celebrate their own strengths and exercise appropriate rights; they dramatically reversed the trend toward abandonment of Indian culture and tradition. During the 1960s, Community Action programs connected with Native Americans were based on citizen participation. In the 1970s, the Choctaws repudiated the extremes of Indian activism. The Oklahoma Choctaw sought a local grassroots solution to reclaim their cultural identity and sovereignty as a nation. The Mississippi Choctaw would lay the foundations of business ventures. Policy continued toward the ideology of Self-Determination.

Soon after this, Congress passed the landmark Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975, completing a 15-year period of federal policy reform with regard to American Indian tribes. The legislation included means by which tribes could negotiate contracts with the BIA to manage more of their own education and social service programs. In addition, it provided direct grants to help tribes develop plans for assuming responsibility. It also provided for Indian parents' involvement on school boards.

Beginning in 1979 the tribal council worked on a variety of economic development initiatives, first geared toward attracting industry to the reservation. They had many people available to work, natural resources and no taxes. Industries have included automotive parts, greeting cards, direct mail and printing, and plastic-molding. The Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians is one of the state's largest employers, running 19 businesses and employing 7,800 people.

Starting with New Hampshire in 1963, numerous state governments began to operate lotteries and other gambling to raise money for government services. In 1987 the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that federally recognized tribes could operate gaming facilities on reservation land free from state regulation. In 1988 the U.S. Congress enacted the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA). It set the terms for Native American tribes to operate casinos.

After years of waiting under the Ray Mabus administration, Mississippi Governor Kirk Fordice in 1992 gave permission for the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians to develop Class III gaming. The Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians (MBCI) has one of the largest casino resorts in the nation; it is located in Philadelphia, Mississippi. The Silver Star Casino opened its doors in 1994. The Golden Moon Casino opened in 2002. The casinos are collectively known as the Pearl River Resort.

The Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma has its own gaming operations: the Choctaw Casino Resort and Choctaw Casino Bingo, popular gaming destinations in Durant. Near the Oklahoma-Texas border, they serve residents of Southern Oklahoma and North Texas. The largest regional population base from which they draw is the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.

After nearly two hundred years, the Choctaw have retaken control of the ancient site of Nanih Waiya. For years protected as a Mississippi state park, ''Nanih Waiya'' was returned to the Choctaw in 2006, under Mississippi Legislature State Bill 2803.

Jack Abramoff's Introduction to Indian lobbying

In the second half of the 1990s, Abramoff was employed by Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds LLP, the lobbying arm of Preston Gates & Ellis LLP law firm based in Seattle, WA. In 1995, Abramoff began representing Native American tribes with gambling interests, starting with the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians.

The Choctaw originally had lobbied the federal government directly, but beginning in 1994, they found that many of the congressional members who were respondent to their issues had either retired or were defeated in the "Republican Revolution" of the 1994 elections. Nell Rogers, the tribe's specialist on legislative affairs, had a friend who was familiar with Abramoff's father and Abramoff's work as a Republican activist. The tribe contacted Preston Gates, and soon after hired the firm and Abramoff.

One of Abramoff's first acts was to defeat a Congressional bill, that sought to use the unrelated business income tax (UBIT) to tax Native American casinos, sponsored by Reps. Bill Archer (R-TX) and Ernest Istook (R-OK). Since the matter involved taxation, Abramoff enlisted help from his College Republican acquaintance Grover Norquist, and his Americans for Tax Reform (ATR). The bill was eventually defeated in 1996 in the Senate, due in part to grassroots work by ATR, for which the Choctaw paid $60,000.

According to ''Washington Business Forward'', a lobbying trade magazine, "[Tom DeLay] was a major factor in those victories, and the fight helped cement the alliance between the two men.

Purporting to represent Native Americans before Congress and state governments in this new field, Jack Abramoff and Michael Scanlon used fraudulent means to gain profits of $15 million in payment from the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. Congressional hearings were held and charges were brought against Abramoff and Scanlon. In an e-mail sent January 29, 2002, Abramoff tells Scanlon "I have to meet with the monkeys from the Choctaw tribal council."

On January 3, 2006, Abramoff pled guilty to three felony counts — conspiracy, fraud, and tax evasion — involving charges stemming principally from his lobbying activities in Washington on behalf of Native American tribes. In addition, Abramoff and other defendants must make restitution of at least $25 million that was defrauded from clients, most notably the Native American tribes.

MOWA Choctaw

For generations Choctaw Indians lived in Mobile and Washington Counties in southwestern Alabama. These Indians traced their lineage to two groups of Choctaw that settled the area in the early 19th century. The first group had been allies of the Red Sticks during the Creek War of 1813-14 and hid in the remote swamps after their defeat. The second group arrived in the 1830s, when they hid rather than be removed to the western Indian Territories. These two groups merged and lived in relative isolation from white contact for several decades. Over the years, the MOWA (for Mobile and Washington) faced discrimination, persecution, and debt peonage because of their racial status, which in the eyes of the federal government was undocumented and ambiguous. Despite achieving official recognition as a Native American tribe by the state of Alabama, the MOWA Choctaw were still fighting for federal recognition in the 21st century.

Culture

After the fall of the Mississippian Culture, Choctaw culture would be established and greatly evolve over the centuries, combining mostly European-American influences; however, interaction with Spain, France, and England greatly shaped it as well. They were known for their rapid incorporation of modernity, developing a written language, transitioning to yeoman farming methods, and accepting European-Americans and African-Americans into their society. The Choctaw also practiced Head Flattening, but the practice eventually fell out of favor. In mid-summer the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians celebrate their culture during the Choctaw Indian Fair with ball games, dancing, cooking and entertainment.

Clans

Within the Choctaws were two distinct Moieties: Imoklashas (elders) and Inhulalatas (youth). Each moiety had several clans or Iskas, it is estimated there were about 12 Iskas altogether. Identity was established first by Moiety and Iska, so a Choctaw identified himself first as Imoklasha or Inhulata and second as Choctaw. Children belonged to the Iska of their mother meaning they are matrilineal. The following were some major districts:

Okla Hannalli (people of six towns)

Okla Tannap (people from the other side)

Okla Fayala (people who are widely dispersed)

John Swanton writes "there are only the faintest traces of groups with truly totemic designations, the animal and plant names which occur seeming not to have had a totemic connotation." Swanton also adds 'Adam Hodgson ... who "spoke English very well," told ... "that there were tribes or families among the Indians, somewhat similar to the Scottish clans; such as, the Panther family, the Bird family, Raccoon Family, the Wolf family."' The following are possible totemic clan designations:

Wind

Bear

Deer

Wolf

Panther

Holly Leaf

Bird

Raccoon

Crawfish

Games

Choctaw stickball, the oldest field sport in North America, was also known as the "little brother of war" because of its roughness and substitution for war. When disputes arose between Choctaw communities, stickball provided a civil way to settle issues. The stickball games would involve as few as twenty or as many as 300 players. The goal posts could be from a few hundred feet apart to a few miles. Goal posts were sometimes located within each opposing team's village. A Jesuit priest referenced stickball in 1729, and George Catlin painted the subject. The Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians continue to practice the sport.

Chunkey was a game that consisted of a stone-shaped disk that was about 1–2 inches in length. The disk was thrown down a corridor so that it could roll past the players at great speed. As the disk rolled down the corridor, players would throw wooden shafts at it. The object of the game was to strike the disk or prevent your opponents from hitting it.

Other games included corn, cane, and moccasin games. The corn game included five to seven kernels of corn. One side was blackened and the other side white. Points were assigned for each color. One point was awarded for the black side and 5-7 points for the white side. There were usually only two players.

Language

The Choctaw language is a member of the Muskogean family and was well known among the frontiersmen, such as U.S. President Andrew Jackson and William Henry Harrison, of the early 19th century. The language is closely related to Chickasaw, and some linguists consider the two dialects a single language. The Choctaw language is the essence of tribal culture, tradition, and identity. Many Choctaw adults learned to speak the language before speaking English. The language is a part of daily life on the Mississippi Choctaw reservation. The following table is an example of Choctaw text and its translation:

	English Language: That all free men, when they form a special compact, are equal in rights, and that no man or set of men are entitled to exclusive, separate public emolument or privileges from the community, but in consideration of public services.

Religion

The Choctaws believed in a good spirit and an evil spirit. They may have been sun, or ''Hushtahli'', worshippers. The historian Swanton wrote, "[T]he Choctaws anciently regarded the sun as a deity ... the sun was ascribed the power of life and death. He was represented as looking down upon the earth, and as long as he kept his flaming eye fixed on any one, the person was safe ... fire, as the most striking representation of the sun, was considered as possessing intelligence, and as acting in concert with the sun ... [having] constant intercourse with the sun ..." The word ''nanpisa'' (the one who sees) expressed the reverence the Choctaw had for the sun.

Prayers may have been introduced by missionaries; however, Choctaw prophets were known to have addressed the sun. Swanton wrote, "an old Choctaw informed Wright that before the arrival of the missionaries, they had no conception of prayer. However, he adds, 'I have indeed heard it asserted by some, that anciently their hopaii, or prophets, on some occasions were accustomed to address the sun ...'"

Traditional clothing

The colorful dresses worn by today's Choctaw are made by hand and adapted from the 19th century European-American designs. Choctaws today wear Choctaw clothing mainly for special events. Choctaw elders, especially the Choctaw women, dress in their traditional garb every day. Choctaw dresses are trimmed by full diamond, half diamond or circle and crosses that represent stickball sticks.

Treaties

Land was the most valuable asset, which the Native Americans held in collective stewardship. The United States systematically obtained Choctaw land for conventional European-American settlement through treaties, legislation, and threats of warfare. Although the Choctaw made treaties with Great Britain, France, Spain, and the Confederate States of America; the nation signed only nine treaties with the United States. Some treaties which the US made with other nations, such as the Treaty of San Lorenzo, indirectly affected the Choctaw.

The Treaty of Mount Dexter

The Treaty of Mount Dexter treaty conveyed vast amounts of land in what is now southeastern Mississippi and southwestern Alabama, including much of the western portion of Clarke County, Alabama, to the United States.

Reservations

Reservations can be found in Alabama-(MOWA Band of Choctaw Indians), Louisiana-(Jena Band of Choctaw Indians; United Houma Nation; Choctaw-Apache of Ebarb; Bayou Lacombe Choctaw; Clifton Choctaw), Texas-(Mount Tabor Indian Community), Mississippi-(Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians), and Oklahoma-(Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma). Other population centers include California, Oregon, Dallas, Houston and Chicago.

Influential leaders

Tuscaloosa (?-d. October 1540) retaliated against Hernando de Soto at the Battle of Mabilia. The battle was the first major conflict in North America between Native Americans and Europeans.

Franchimastabe (d. 19th c.) was a transitional benefactor and a contemporary of Taboca. To some Americans he was the "leading chief of the Choctaws." He led a war party with British forces against American rebels.

Taboca (d. 19th c.) was a traditional "prophet-chief" who led a delegation starting in October 1785 to Hopewell, South Carolina.

Apuckshunubbee (ca. 1740–1824) was chief of the Okla Falaya (Tall People) district in old Choctaw nation. He died in Kentucky on his way to Washington D.C. to conduct negotiations.

Pushmataha (Apushmataha) (1760s–December 24, 1824) was a chief in old Choctaw nation. He negotiated treaties with the United States and fought on the American's side in the War of 1812. He died in Washington D.C. and is buried in the Congressional Cemetery in Washington D.C.

Mosholatubbee (1770–1836) was a chief in the Choctaw nation before the removal and after. He went to Washington D.C. to negotiate for the tribe in 1824 and was the only major leader to return. In the summer of 1830, he ran for a seat in the Congress of the United States to represent the state of Mississippi.

Greenwood LeFlore (June 3, 1800–August 31, 1865) was a District Chief of the Choctaws in Mississippi. He was an influential state representative and senator in Mississippi.

George W. Harkins (1810–1890) was a district Choctaw chief in Indian Territory (1850–1857) prior to the Civil War and author of the "Farewell Letter to the American People".

Peter Pitchlynn (January 30, 1806–January 17, 1881) was a highly influential leader during the removal era and long after. He represented the Choctaws in Washington D.C. for some years and is buried in the Congressional Cemetery. Charles Dickens described him "as stately and complete a gentleman of nature's making as ever I beheld."

Phillip Martin (March 13, 1926–February 4, 2010) was the Chief of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians from 1979–2007 and worked in tribal government for over fifty years. He encouraged outside investment and reduced unemployment to nearly 0% on the reservation.

See also

William Bartram

Choctaw Culture

Choctaw mythology

Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma

Choctaw Trail of Tears

Cyrus Byington

Jena Band of Choctaw Indians

Gideon Lincecum

List of Choctaw Treaties

List of sites and peoples visited by the Hernando de Soto Expedition

Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians

MOWA Band of Choctaw Indians

okay ("okeh")

References

Further reading

External links

Official websites of Choctaw Governments:

*Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians (official site)

*Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma (official site)

*Jena Band of Choctaw Indians (official site)

Choctaw Indian Fair

"Choctaws" by Dr. D.L. Birchfield

Choctaw, Oklahoma Historical Society article

Category:Native American tribes in Alabama Category:Native American tribes in Florida Category:Native American tribes in Louisiana Category:Native American tribes in Mississippi Category:Native American tribes in Oklahoma Category:Native American history of Alabama Category:Native American history of Florida Category:Native American history of Mississippi Category:Native American history of Oklahoma Category:South Appalachian Mississippian culture

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name	James McMurtry
background	solo_singer
birth date	March 18, 1962
origin	Leesburg, Virginia
genre	Americana, Folk Rock, Rock
occupation	Singer, songwriter, guitarist & bandleader
years active	1989–present
website	www.jamesmcmurtry.com }}

James McMurtry (born March 18, 1962 in Fort Worth, Texas) is a Texas rock/Texas Country singer, songwriter, guitarist, bandleader and occasional actor (''Daisy Miller'', ''Lonesome Dove''). He performs with veteran bandmates and rhythm section The Heartless Bastards (Darren Hess and Ronnie Johnson - not to be confused with the Cincinnati, OH, band of the same name).

His father, novelist Larry McMurtry, gave him his first guitar at age seven. His mother, an English professor, taught him how to play it: "My mother taught me three chords and the rest I just stole as I went along. I learned everything by ear or by watching people."

Biography

McMurtry spent the first seven years of his boyhood in Ft. Worth but was raised mostly in Leesburg, Virginia. He attended the Woodberry Forest School, Orange, Virginia. He began performing in his teens, writing bits and pieces. He started performing his own songs at a downtown beer garden while studying English and Spanish at the University of Arizona in Tucson. After traveling to Alaska and playing a few gigs, he returned to Texas and his father's "little bitty ranch house crammed with 10,000 books". After a time, he left for San Antonio, where he worked as a house painter, actor, bartender, and sometimes singer, performing at writer's nights and open mics.

In 1987 McMutry's career entered an upswing. A friend in San Antonio suggested McMurtry enter the New Folk songwriter contest; he became one of six winners that year. Also around this time John Mellencamp was starring in a film based on a script by McMurtry's father, which gave McMurtry the opportunity to get a demo tape to Mellencamp. Mellencamp subsequently served as co-producer on McMurtry's 1989 debut album, ''Too Long in the Wasteland''. McMurtry also appeared on the soundtrack of the film ''Falling from Grace'', working with Mellencamp, John Prine, Joe Ely, and Dwight Yoakam in a "supergroup" called Buzzin' Cousins.

McMurtry released follow-up albums in ''Candyland'' (1992) and ''Where'd You Hide the Body'' (1995). ''Walk Between the Raindrops'' followed in 1998 and 2002 brought ''St. Mary of the Woods''. In April 2004, McMurtry released a tour album called ''Live In Aught-Three''.

In 2005, McMurtry released his first studio album in three years. ''Childish Things'' again received high critical praise, winning the song and album of the year at the 5th Annual Americana Awards in Nashville, Tennessee. The album was perhaps McMurtry at his most political, as his working-class anthem "We Can't Make It Here" included direct criticism of George W. Bush, the Iraq War, and Wal-Mart. The music critic Robert Christgau ranked "We Can't Make It Here" as the best song of the 2000s.

McMurtry released his follow-up album to ''Childish Things'' in April 2008. ''Just Us Kids'' continued with the previous album's political themes and included the song ''Cheney's Toy'', McMurtry's most direct criticism of George W. Bush so far. Like ''We Can't Make It Here'' from the previous album, ''Cheney's Toy'' was made available as a free Internet download.

McMurtry currently resides in Austin, Texas. When in Austin McMurtry and The Heartless Bastards play a midnight set at The Continental Club on Wednesday nights. He is usually preceded by another Austin roots rock legend, Jon Dee Graham.

Discography

Year	Album	Chart Positions				Label
		! width="45"	! width="45"	! width="45"	! width="45"
1989	''Too Long in the Wasteland''
1992	''Candyland''
1995	''Where'd You Hide the Body''
1997	''It Had to Happen''
1998	''Walk Between the Raindrops''
2002	''Saint Mary of the Woods''
2004	''Live in Aught-Three''
2005	''Childish Things''
2007	''Best of the Sugar Hill Years''					Sugar Hill
2008	''Just Us Kids''
2009	''Live in Europe''

External links

Official site

One on One with James McMurtry

Interview and Live Performance on Chicago TV show "Corporate Country Sucks"

BBC News: Rocker Young wins Americana award

Ron Rosenbaum, in Slate, on why McMurtry's "Choctaw Bingo" should be the new national anthem

Media

Video of James McMurtry

Video of James Mcmurtry. "Poor Lost Soul" from Too Long in the Wasteland

References

http://www.hobotrashcan.com/2008/04/17/one-on-one-with-james-mcmurtry/

Category:1962 births Category:American folk guitarists Category:American male singers Category:American singer-songwriters Category:Kerrville New Folk Competition finalists Category:Living people Category:People from Austin, Texas Category:People from Fort Worth, Texas Category:Musicians from Texas

de:James McMurtry sv:James McMurtry

Name	Alison Krauss
Landscape	Yes
Background	solo_singer
Born	July 23, 1971Decatur, IllinoisUnited States
Occupation	Musician, Songwriter, Producer, Bandleader
Instrument	Vocals, Fiddle, Viola
Genre(s)	Bluegrass, Country, Adult Contemporary, R&B;
Years active	1984–present
Associated acts	Dan Tyminski, Robert Plant, John Waite, Rhonda Vincent, Dolly Parton, Brad Paisley, Ricky Skaggs, Vince Gill, Jerry Douglas
Label	Rounder
Website	AlisonKrauss.com}}

Alison Krauss (born July 23, 1971) is an American bluegrass-country singer, songwriter and fiddler. She entered the music industry at an early age, winning local contests by the age of ten and recording for the first time at fourteen. She signed with Rounder Records in 1985 and released her first solo album in 1987. She was invited to join the band with which she still performs, Alison Krauss and Union Station (AKUS), and later released her first album with them as a group in 1989.

She has released twelve albums, appeared on numerous soundtracks, and helped renew interest in bluegrass music in the United States. Her soundtrack performances have led to further popularity, including the ''O Brother, Where Art Thou?'' soundtrack, an album also credited with raising American interest in bluegrass, and the ''Cold Mountain'' soundtrack, which led to her performance at the 2004 Academy Awards. As of the 2011 Grammy Awards, she has won 26 Grammy Awards, making her the most awarded singer, the most awarded female artist, and tied for the third most awarded artist overall in Grammy history. At the time of her first award, at the 1991 Grammy Awards, she was the second youngest winner ever (currently tied as third youngest).

Biography

Alison Maria Krauss was born in Decatur, Illinois. Her parents are originally from Columbus, Mississippi. Krauss was raised in Champaign, Illinois. She began studying classical violin at age five but soon switched to bluegrass. Krauss said she first became involved with music because "[my] mother tried to find interesting things for me to do" and "wanted to get me involved in music, in addition to art and sports." At the age eight she started entering local talent contests, and at ten she had her own band. At 13 she won the Walnut Valley Festival Fiddle Championship, and the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass in America named her the Most Promising Fiddler in the Midwest. Krauss first met Dan Tyminski around 1984 at a festival held by the Society. Every current member of her band, Union Station, first met her at these festivals.

1985–1991: Early career

Krauss made her recording debut in 1985 on the independent album, ''Different Strokes'', featuring her brother Viktor, Swamp Weiss and Jim Hoiles. From the age of 12 she performed with bassist and songwriter John Pennell in a band called "Silver Rail". Pennell later formed Union Station, and Krauss joined at his invitation, replacing their previous fiddler Andrea Zonn. Pennell remains one of her favorite songwriters and wrote some of her early work including the popular "Every Time You Say Goodbye."

Later that year she signed to Rounder Records, and in 1987, at 16, she released her debut album ''Too Late to Cry'' with Union Station as her backup band.

Krauss' debut solo album was followed shortly by her first group album with Union Station in 1989 ''Two Highways''. The album includes the traditional tunes, Wild Bill Jones and Beaumont Rag, along with a bluegrass interpretation of The Allman Brothers' "Midnight Rider." Alison Krauss and Union Station would later perform at the 1989 Newport Folk Festival.

Krauss' contract with Rounder required her to alternate between releasing a solo album and an album with Union Station, and she released the solo album ''I've Got That Old Feeling'' in 1990. It was her first album to rise onto the Billboard charts, peaking in the top seventy-five on the country chart. The album also was a notable point in her career as she earned her first Grammy Award, the single "Steel Rails" was her first single tracked by Billboard, and the title single "I've Got That Old Feeling" was the first song for which she recorded a music video.

1992–1999: Rising success

{| Class=wikitable style="float:right;margin:0 0 0 1em;" |- !colspan=2|Alison Krauss & Union Station |- !align="center" valign="bottom"|Name !align="center" valign="bottom"|Role |- |Alison Krauss |Lead vocals, fiddle, viola |- |Larry Atamanuik |drums, Percussion |- |Barry Bales |Bass |- |Ron Block |Guitar, Banjo |- |Jerry Douglas |Dobro |- |Dan Tyminski |Guitar, Mandolin |- |} Krauss' second Union Station album ''Everytime You Say Goodbye'' was released in 1992, and she went on to win her second Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album of the year. She then joined the Grand Ole Opry in 1993 at the age of 21. She was the youngest cast member at the time, and the first bluegrass artist to join the Opry in twenty-nine years. She also collaborated on a project with the Cox Family in 1994, a bluegrass album called ''I Know Who Holds Tomorrow''. Mandolin and guitar player Dan Tyminski replaced Tim Stafford in Union Station in 1994. Late in the year, Krauss recorded with the band Shenandoah on its single "Somewhere in the Vicinity of the Heart," which brought her to the country music Top Ten for the first time. Also in 1994, Krauss collaborated with Suzy Bogguss, Kathy Mattea, and Crosby, Stills, and Nash to contribute "Teach Your Children" to the AIDS benefit album Red Hot + Country produced by the Red Hot Organization. In 1997, she recorded vocals and violin for "Half a Mind," on Tommy Shaw's 7 Deadly Zens album.

''Now That I've Found You: A Collection'', a compilation of older releases and some covers of her favorite works by other artists, was released in 1995. Some of these covers include Bad Company's "Oh Atlanta," The Foundations' "Baby, Now That I've Found You," which was used in the Australian hit comedy movie ''The Castle'', and The Beatles' "I Will." A cover of Keith Whitley's "When You Say Nothing at All" reached the top five on the Billboard country chart; the album peaked in the top fifteen on the all-genre Billboard 200 chart, and sold two million copies to become Krauss' first double-platinum album. Krauss also was nominated for four Country Music Association Awards and won all of them.

''So Long So Wrong'', another Union Station album, was released in 1997 and won the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album. One critic said its sound was "rather untraditional" and "likely [to] change quite a few . . . minds about bluegrass." Included on the album is the track "It Doesn't Matter," which was featured in the second season premiere episode of ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer'' and was included on the ''Buffy'' soundtrack in 1999.

Her next solo release in 1999, ''Forget About It'', included one of her two tracks to appear on the Billboard adult contemporary chart, "Stay." The album was certified gold, and charted within the top seventy-five of the Billboard 200 and in the top five of the country chart. In addition, the track "That Kind of Love" was included in another episode of ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer.''

2000–present: Current career

Adam Steffey left Union Station in 1998, and was replaced with renowned Dobro player Jerry Douglas. Douglas had provided studio back-up to Krauss's records since 1987's ''Too Late To Cry''. Their next album, ''New Favorite'', was released on August 14, 2001. The album went on to win the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album, with the single "The Lucky One" winning a Grammy as well. ''New Favorite'' was followed up by the double platinum double album ''Live'' in 2002 and a release of a DVD of the same live performance in 2003. Both the album and the DVD were recorded during a performance at The Louisville Palace and both the album and DVD have been certified double Platinum. Also in 2002 she played a singing voice for one of the characters in "Eight Crazy Nights"

''Lonely Runs Both Ways'' was released in 2004, and eventually became another Alison Krauss & Union Station gold certified album. Ron Block described ''Lonely Runs Both Ways'' as "pretty much... what we've always done" in terms of song selection and the style in which those songs were recorded. Krauss believes the group "was probably the most unprepared we've ever been" for the album and that songs were chosen as needed rather than planned beforehand. She also performed a duet with Brad Paisley on his album ''Mud on the Tires'' in the single "Whiskey Lullaby." The single was quickly ranked in the top fifty of the Billboard Hot 100 and the top five of the Hot Country Songs, and won the Country Music Association Awards for "Best Musical Event" and "Best Music Video" of the year.

Krauss recorded a collaborative album, ''Raising Sand'' with Robert Plant in 2007 which would ultimately be RIAA certified platinum. ''Raising Sand'' was nominated for and won 5 Grammys at the 51st Grammy Awards including Album of the Year, Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album, and Record of the Year ("Please Read the Letter"). Krauss and Plant recorded a Crossroads special in October 2007 for the Country Music Television network which first aired on February 12, 2008. The pair are currently working on a new album. Alison Krauss has announced a new album release called ''Paper Airplane'' with Union Station on April 12, 2011, the follow-up album to "Lonely Runs Both Ways" (2004)

Other work

Krauss has made multiple guest appearances on other records with lead vocals, harmony vocals, or fiddle playing. In 1993 she recorded vocals for the Phish song "If I Could" in Los Angeles. In 1997 she contributed harmony vocals in both English and Irish to Irish traditional band Altan's ''Runaway Sunday'' album. She has contributed to numerous motion picture soundtracks, most notably the soundtrack ''O Brother, Where Art Thou?'' in 2000. She and co-vocalist Dan Tyminski contributed multiple tracks to the soundtrack, including "I'll Fly Away" (with Gillian Welch), "Down to the River to Pray", and "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow." She also makes a guest appearance on Heart's March 2010 concert DVD Night At Sky Church, providing the lead vocals for the song These Dreams.

In the film, Tyminski's vocals on "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow" were used for George Clooney's character. The soundtrack sold over seven million copies and won the Grammy for Album of the Year in 2002. The unexpected success of the album has been partially credited, as was Krauss herself, with bringing a new interest in bluegrass to the United States. She has said, however, that she believes Americans already liked bluegrass and other less-heard musical genres, and that the film merely provided easy exposure to the music. She did not appear in the movie, at her own request, as she was nine months pregnant during its filming.

In 2007, Krauss released the anthology ''A Hundred Miles Or More: A Collection'' which was a collection of soundtrack work, duets with artists such as John Waite, James Taylor, Brad Paisley and esteemed fiddle player Natalie MacMaster, and newer tracks. The album was very commercially successful, but was received with a lukewarm reception from critics. One of the tracks, "Missing You", a duet with Waite (and a cover of his hit single from 1984), was similarly received as a single. On August 11, television network Great American Country aired a one-hour special, "Alison Krauss: A Hundred Miles or More" based on the album and featured many of the album's duets and solo performances.

Other soundtracks for which Krauss has performed include ''Twister'', ''The Prince of Egypt'', ''Eight Crazy Nights'', ''Mona Lisa Smile'', ''Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood'', ''Alias'', ''Bambi II'' and ''Cold Mountain''. She also contributed the song "Jubilee" to the 2004 documentary ''Paper Clips''. The ''Cold Mountain'' songs "The Scarlet Tide" by T-Bone Burnett and Elvis Costello, and "You Will Be My Ain True Love", by herself and Sting were nominated for an Academy Award, and she performed both songs at the 76th Academy Awards, the first with Costello and Burnett and the other with Sting. She also worked as a producer for Nickel Creek on their debut self-titled album in 2000 and the follow-up ''This Side'' in 2002, which won Krauss her first Grammy as a music producer.

Reception and influences

Krauss's earliest musical experience was as an instrumentalist, though her style has grown to focus more on her vocals with a band providing most of the instrumentation. Musicians she enjoys include Lou Gramm of Foreigner and Paul Rodgers of Bad Company. Krauss' family listened to "folk records" while she was growing up, but she had friends who exposed her to groups such as AC/DC, Carly Simon, The Rolling Stones, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and ELO. She cites Dolly Parton, with whom she has since collaborated a number of times, as a major influence. Some credit Krauss and Union Station, at least partially, with a recent revival of interest in bluegrass music in the United States. Despite being together for nearly two decades and winning numerous awards, she said the group was "just beginning right now" (in 2002) because "in spite of all the great things that have happened for the band, [she] feel[s] musically it's just really beginning." Although she alternates between solo releases and works with the band, she has said there is no difference in her involvement between the two. and "the tightest band around." While they have been successful as a group, many reviews note Krauss still "remains the undisputed star and rock-solid foundation" and have described her as the "band's focus" with an "angelic" voice that "flows like honey". Her work has been compared to that of The Cox Family, Bill Monroe, and Del McCoury, and has in turn been credited with influencing various "Newgrass" artists including Nickel Creek, for which she acted as record producer on two of their albums. In addition to her work with Nickel Creek, she has acted as producer to the Cox Family, Reba McEntire and Alan Jackson. Adam Sweeting of ''The Guardian'' has said Krauss and Union Station are "superb when they stick to hoedowns and hillbilly music, but much less convincing when they lurch towards the middle of the road," and ''Blender magazine'' has said the "flavorless repertoire [Krauss] sings... steers her toward Lite FM". In addition, ''Q'' magazine and ''The Onion'' AV Club have said their newer releases are "pretty much the usual," and that although Krauss is generally "adventurous," these recent releases contain nothing to "alienate the masses".

Voice, themes, and musical style

Krauss's vocal range could generally be described as mezzo soprano with little to no vibrato: her clear vocals have been described as "angelic". She has said her musical influences include J. D. Crowe, Ricky Skaggs, and Tony Rice. Many of her songs are described as sad, and are often about love, especially lost love. Krauss herself has said of her song selection that she looks for "tunes that [she] can relate to". Though she has a close involvement with her group and a long career in music, she rarely performs music she has written herself. She has also described her general approach to constructing an album as starting with a single song and selecting other tracks based on the first, to give the final album a somewhat consistent theme and mood. She most commonly performs in the bluegrass and country genres, though she has had two songs on the adult contemporary charts, has worked with rock artists such as Phish and Sting, and is sometimes said to stray into pop music.

Music videos

Krauss did not think she would make music videos at the beginning of her career, and after recording her first she was convinced it was so bad that she would never do another. Nonetheless, she has gone on to make further videos. Many of the first videos she saw were by bluegrass artists, although Dan Tyminski has noted that the video for ''Thriller'' was very popular at the time she was first exposed to music videos. She has made suggestions on the style or theme to some videos, though she tends to leave such decisions up to the director of the particular video. The group chooses directors by seeking out people who have previously directed videos bandmembers have enjoyed. The director for a video to "If I Didn't Know Any Better" from ''Lonely Runs Both Ways'', for example, was selected because Krauss enjoyed work he had done with Def Leppard, and she wondered what he could do with their music. While style decisions are generally left to the various directors of the videos, many —including for "The Lucky One", "Restless", "Goodbye is All We Have", "New Favorite", and "If I Didn't Know Any Better"—follow a pattern. In all of these videos Krauss walks, sometimes interacting with other people, while the rest of the band follows her.

Performances

Krauss has said she used to dislike working in the studio where she had to play the same song repeatedly, but has come to like studio work roughly the same as live stage performances. Her own favorite concert experiences include watching three Foreigner concerts during a single tour, a Dolly Parton concert, and a Larry Sparks concert. She appeared on ''Austin City Limits'' in 1992 and opened the show in 1995 with Union Station. The ''New Favorite'' tour, after AKUS' album of the same name, was planned to start September 12, 2001 in Cincinnati, Ohio, but was delayed until September 28 in Savannah, Georgia following the September 11 terrorist attacks Krauss also took part in the ''Down from the Mountain'' tour in 2002, which featured many artists from the ''O Brother, Where Art Thou''. ''Down from the Mountain'' was followed by the ''Great High Mountain Tour'', which was composed of musicians from both ''O Brother'' and ''Cold Mountain'', including Krauss. She has also given several notable smaller performances including at Carnegie Hall (with the Grand Ole Opry), on Lifetime Television in a concert of female performers, on the radio show ''A Prairie Home Companion'' where she sang two songs not previously recorded on any of her albums, and a performance at the White House attended by then-President Bill Clinton and then-Vice President Al Gore.

Awards

Alison Krauss has won a record twenty-six Grammy Awards over the course of her career as a solo artist, as a group with Union Station, as a duet with Robert Plant, and as a record producer. This is more than any other female artist and is the third most won by any artist overall. She overtook Aretha Franklin for the most female wins at the 46th Grammy Awards where Krauss won three, bringing her total at the time to seventeen (Franklin won her sixteenth that night). The Recording Academy (which presents the Grammy Awards) presented her with a special musical achievement honor in 2005. She has also won 14 International Bluegrass Music Association Awards, 8 Country Music Association Awards, 2 Gospel Music Association Awards, 2 CMT Music Awards, 2 Academy of Country Music Awards, and 1 Canadian Country Music Award. Country Music Television ranked Krauss 12th on their "40 Greatest Women of Country Music" list in 2002.

At the 76th Academy Awards in February 2004, where she performed two nominated songs from the ''Cold Mountain'' soundtrack, Alison Krauss was chosen by Hollywood shoe designer Stuart Weitzman to wear a pair of $2 million 'Cinderella' sandals with 4½ inch clear glass stiletto heels and two straps adorned with 565 Kwiat diamonds set in platinum. Feeling like a rather unglamorous choice, Krauss said, "When I first heard, I was like, 'What were they thinking?' I have the worst feet of anybody who will be there that night!" In addition to the fairy-tale-inspired shoes, Weitzman outfitted Krauss with a Palm Trēo 600 smartphone, bejeweled with 3,000 clear-and-topaz-colored Swarovski crystals. The shoes were returned, but Krauss kept the crystal-covered phone. Weitzman chose Krauss to show off his fashions at the urging of his daughters, who are fans of Krauss' music.

Discography

1985: ''Different Strokes''

1987: ''Too Late to Cry''

1989: ''Two Highways''

1990: ''I've Got That Old Feeling''

1992: ''Every Time You Say Goodbye''

1994: ''I Know Who Holds Tomorrow''

1997: ''So Long So Wrong''

1999: ''Forget About It''

2001: ''New Favorite''

2002 "Live"

2004: ''Lonely Runs Both Ways''

2007: ''Raising Sand''

2011: ''Paper Airplane''

Filmography

Film
Year	Film	Role	Notes
1997	''Annabelle's Wish''	Additional Voices	UncreditedVoice only
2002	''Adam Sandler's Eight Crazy Nights''	Jennifer	Voice only
Television
Year	Film	Role	Notes
1991	''Hee Haw''	Herself	1 episodeEpisode: #22.21
1996	''Austin City Limits''	Herself	5 episodes, 1996–2005
1997	''Miracle on Highway 31''	Herself	TV movie
2005	''Sesame Street''	Herself	1 episodeEpisode: "American Fruit Stand"
2006	''CMT Cross Country''	Performer	with Vince Gill
2008	''CMT Crossroads''	Performer	with Robert Plant

References

External links

Official site

Rounder Records site for Alison Krauss

[ Alison Krauss] on Allmusic database

Category:1971 births Category:Living people Category:Alison Krauss & Union Station members Category:American bluegrass fiddlers Category:American country singers Category:American female singers Category:Grammy Award winners Category:American Christians Category:People from Decatur, Illinois Category:People from Champaign, Illinois Category:Musicians from Illinois Category:Grand Ole Opry members Category:American people of Native American descent Category:American musicians of French descent Category:American people of English descent Category:American performers of Christian music Category:Rounder Records artists

ar:أليسون كروس br:Alison Krauss ca:Alison Krauss cs:Alison Krauss da:Alison Krauss de:Alison Krauss es:Alison Krauss fr:Alison Krauss gd:Alison Krauss id:Alison Krauss it:Alison Krauss he:אליסון קראוס lv:Elisona Krausa nl:Alison Krauss no:Alison Krauss nn:Alison Krauss pl:Alison Krauss pt:Alison Krauss ru:Краусс, Элисон simple:Alison Krauss fi:Alison Krauss sv:Alison Krauss th:อลิสัน เคราส์ vi:Alison Krauss zh:艾莉森·克勞絲

name	Ray Wylie Hubbard
background	solo_singer
born	November 13, 1946Soper, Oklahoma, U.S.A.
instrument	Guitar
genre	Country, cowpunk, folk
occupation	Singer-songwriter
years active	1965–present
label	Warner Bros., Lone Star, Philo
associated acts	Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Jerry Jeff Walker
website	www.raywylie.com
notable instruments	}}

Ray Wylie Hubbard (born 13 November 1946 in Soper, Oklahoma) is an American Texas Country singer and songwriter.

Early life

Hubbard grew up in southeastern town of Hugo, Oklahoma. His family moved to Oak Cliff in south Dallas, Texas in 1954. He attended W. H. Adamson High School with Michael Martin Murphey, who had his own band at the time. Hubbard graduated in 1965 and enrolled in college, at the University of North Texas, as an English major. He spent the summers in Red River, New Mexico playing folk music.

Career

During his time in New Mexico, Hubbard wrote "Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother", made famous by Jerry Jeff Walker's 1973 recording. Hubbard recorded for various labels but struggled with sales; his mix of country, folk and blues elements didn’t find an audience. After leaving the scene and struggling with personal problems, he returned to recording with ''Lost Train of Thought'' in 1992 and ''Loco Gringo's Lament'' in 1994.

Today Ray Wylie Hubbard is an elder statesman of the Texas music scene. From New Braunfels, Texas, Hubbard hosts a Tuesday night radio show called "Roots & Branches". This program promotes new and established Americana artists. Like some other performers in his genre, he is perhaps as popular in Europe as in the US—Hubbard has been invited by record companies in the Netherlands to produce albums. His most recent recordings have been produced by Texas guitarist Gurf Morlix.

Discography

1971 - Three Faces West (Outpost)

1975 - Ray Wylie Hubbard & The Cowboy Twinkies (Reprise)

1978 - Off The Wall (Lonestar)

1980 - Something About The Night (Renegade)

1984 - Caught In The Act (Misery Loves Company)

1992 - Lost Train Of Thought (Misery Loves Company)

1994 - Loco Gringo's Lament (Dejadisc)

1997 - Dangerous Spirits (Philo)

1999 - Crusades Of The Restless Knights (Philo)

2000 - Live At Cibolo Creek Country Club (Philo)

2001 - Eternal And Lowdown (Philo)

2003 - Growl (Philo)

2005 - Delirium Tremolos (Philo)

2006 - Snake Farm (Sustain)

2010 - A. Enlightenment B. Endarkenment (Hint: There is No C) (Bordello)

See also

Folk Music Club

External links

RayWylie.com - Official website

Official MySpace page

- A Country Music Outlaw, Resurrected

- Hubbard's Path: 'Redneck Mother' to 'Wylie Lama'

Category:1946 births Category:Living people Category:People from Choctaw County, Oklahoma Category:Musicians from Oklahoma Category:Texas country musicians Category:American country singers Category:Musicians from Dallas, Texas Category:University of North Texas alumni

de:Ray Wylie Hubbard

Code talkers was a term used to describe people who talk using a coded language. It is frequently used to describe Native Americans who served in the United States Marine Corps whose primary job was the transmission of secret tactical messages. Code talkers transmitted these messages over military telephone or radio communications nets using formal or informally developed codes built upon their native languages. Their service was very valuable because it enhanced the communications security of vital front line operations during World War II.

The name ''code talkers'' is strongly associated with bilingual Navajo speakers specially recruited during World War II by the Marines to serve in their standard communications units in the Pacific Theater. Code talking, however, was pioneered by Choctaw Indians serving in the U.S. Army during World War I. These soldiers are referred to as Choctaw Code Talkers.

Other Native American code talkers were deployed by the United States Army during World War II, including Cherokee, Choctaw, Lakota Meskwaki, and Comanche soldiers. Soldiers of Basque ancestry were used for code talking by the U.S. Marines during World War II in areas where other Basque speakers were not expected to be operating.

Use of Cherokee

The first known use of Native Americans in the American military to transmit messages under fire was a group of Cherokee troops utilized by the American 30th Infantry Division serving alongside the British during the Second Battle of the Somme. According to the Division Signal Officer, this took place in September 1918. Their outfit was under British command at the time.

Use of Choctaw

In the days of World War I, company commander Captain Lawrence of the U.S. Army overheard Solomon Louis and Mitchell Bobb conversing in the Choctaw language. He found eight Choctaw men in the battalion. Eventually, fourteen Choctaw men in the Army's 36th Infantry Division trained to use their language in code. They helped the American Expeditionary Forces win several key battles in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in France, during the final big German push of the war. Within 24 hours after the Choctaw language was pressed into service, the tide of the battle had turned. In less than 72 hours the Germans were retreating and the Allies were in full attack.

These soldiers are now known as the Choctaw Code Talkers.

Use of Comanche

Adolf Hitler knew about the successful use of code talkers during World War I. He sent a team of some thirty anthropologists to learn Native American languages before the outbreak of World War II. However, it proved too difficult for them to learn the many languages and dialects that existed. Because of Nazi German anthropologists' attempts to learn the languages, the U.S. Army did not implement a large-scale code talker program in the European Theater. Fourteen Comanche code talkers took part in the Invasion of Normandy, and continued to serve in the 4th Infantry Division during further European operations. Comanches of the 4th Signal Company compiled a vocabulary of over 100 code terms using words or phrases in their own language. Using a substitution method similar to the Navajo, the Comanche code word for tank was "turtle", bomber was "pregnant airplane", machine gun was "sewing machine" and Adolf Hitler became "crazy white man."

Two Comanche code-talkers were assigned to each regiment, the rest to 4th Infantry Division headquarters. Shortly after landing on Utah Beach on June 6, 1944, the Comanches began transmitting messages. Some were wounded but none killed.

In 1989, the French government awarded the Comanche code-talkers the Chevalier of the National Order of Merit. On November 30, 1999, the United States Department of Defense presented Charles Chibitty with the Knowlton Award.

Use of Meskwaki

Meskwaki men used their language against the Germans in North Africa. Twenty-seven Meskwaki, then 16% of Iowa's Meskwaki population, enlisted in the U.S. Army together in January 1941.

Use of Basque

Captain Frank D. Carranza conceived the idea of using the Basque language for codes in May 1942 upon meeting about 60 U.S. Marines of Basque ancestry in a San Francisco camp. His superiors were justifiably wary. There were 35 Basque Jesuits in Hiroshima, led by Pedro Arrupe. In China and the Philippines, there was a colony of Basque jai alai players and there were Basque supporters of Falange in Asia. The American Basque code talkers were kept from these theaters; they were initially used in tests and in transmitting logistic information for Hawaii and Australia.

On August 1, 1942, Lieutenants Nemesio Aguirre, Fernández Bakaicoa and Juanna received a Basque-coded message from San Diego for Admiral Chester Nimitz warning him of the upcoming Operation Apple to remove the Japanese from the Solomon Islands. They also translated the start date, August 7, for the attack on Guadalcanal. As the war extended over the Pacific, there was a shortage of Basque speakers and the parallel Navajo program came to be preferred.

Use of Navajo

Bear Cat Deer Elk Fox Goat Horse Ice Jackass Kid Lamb Mouse Nut Owl Pig Quiver Rabbit Sheep Turkey Ute Victor Weasel Cross Yucca Zinc

Alphabets (English) !! Code Language (English) !! Code Language (Navajo) !! Modern spelling
A	Ant	Wol-la-chee
B	|	Shush
C	|	Moashi
D	|	Be
E	|	Dzeh
F	|	Ma-e
G	|	Klizzie
H	|	Lin
I	|	Tkin
J	|	Tkele-cho-gi
K	|	Klizzie-yazzi
L	|	Dibeh-yazzi
M	|	Na-as-tso-si
N	|	Nesh-chee
O	|	Ne-ash-jsn
P	|	Bi-sodih
Q	|	Ca-yeilth
R	|	Gah
S	|	Dibeh
T	|	Than-zie
U	|	No-da-ih
V	|	a-keh-di-glini
W	|	Gloe-ih
X	|	Al-an-as-dzoh
Y	|	Tsah-as-zih
Z	|	Besh-do-gliz

Philip Johnston proposed the use of Navajo to the United States Marine Corps at the beginning of World War II. Johnston, a World War I veteran, was raised on the Navajo reservation as the son of a missionary to the Navajos, and was one of the few non-Navajos who spoke their language fluently. Because Navajo has a complex grammar, it is not nearly mutually intelligible enough with even its closest relatives within the Na-Dene family to provide meaningful information, and was at this time an unwritten language, Johnston saw Navajo as answering the military requirement for an undecipherable code. Navajo was spoken only on the Navajo lands of the American Southwest, and its syntax and tonal qualities, not to mention dialects, made it unintelligible to anyone without extensive exposure and training. One estimate indicates that at the outbreak of World War II fewer than 30 non-Navajos, none of them Japanese, could understand the language.

Early in 1942, Johnston met with Major General Clayton B. Vogel, the commanding general of Amphibious Corps, Pacific Fleet, and his staff. Johnston staged tests under simulated combat conditions which demonstrated that Navajos could encode, transmit, and decode a three-line English message in 20 seconds, versus the 30 minutes required by machines at that time. The idea was accepted, with Vogel recommending that the Marines recruit 200 Navajos. The first 29 Navajo recruits attended boot camp in May 1942. This first group then created the Navajo code at Camp Pendleton, Oceanside, California. The Navajo code was formally developed and modeled on the Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet that uses agreed-upon English words to represent letters. As it was determined that phonetically spelling out all military terms letter by letter into words—while in combat—would be too time consuming, some terms, concepts, tactics and instruments of modern warfare were given uniquely formal descriptive nomenclatures in Navajo (the word for "potato" being used to refer to a hand grenade, or "tortoise" to a tank, for example). Several of these portmanteaus (such as gofasters referring to running shoes, ink sticks for pens) entered Marine corps vocabulary and are commonly used today to refer to the appropriate objects.

A codebook was developed to teach the many relevant words and concepts to new initiates. The text was for classroom purposes only, and was never to be taken into the field. The code talkers memorized all these variations and practiced their rapid use under stressful conditions during training. Uninitiated Navajo speakers would have no idea what the code talkers' messages meant; they would hear only truncated and disjointed strings of individual, unrelated nouns and verbs.

The Navajo code talkers were commended for their skill, speed and accuracy accrued throughout the war. At the Battle of Iwo Jima, Major Howard Connor, 5th Marine Division signal officer, had six Navajo code talkers working around the clock during the first two days of the battle. These six sent and received over 800 messages, all without error. Connor later stated, "Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima."

As the war progressed, additional code words were added on and incorporated program-wide. In other instances, informal short-cut code words were devised for a particular campaign and not disseminated beyond the area of operation. To ensure a consistent use of code terminologies throughout the Pacific Theater, representative code talkers of each of the U.S. Marine divisions met in Hawaii to discuss shortcomings in the code, incorporate new terms into the system, and update their codebooks. These representatives in turn trained other code talkers who could not attend the meeting. For example, the Navajo word for buzzard, , was used for bomber, while the code word used for submarine, , meant iron fish in Navajo.

The deployment of the Navajo code talkers continued through the Korean War and after, until it was ended early in the Vietnam War.

Cryptographic properties

Non-speakers would find it extremely difficult to accurately distinguish unfamiliar sounds used in these languages. Additionally, a speaker who has acquired a language during their childhood sounds distinctly different from a person who acquired the same language in later life, thus reducing the chance of successful impostors sending false messages. Finally, the additional layer of an alphabet cypher was added to prevent interception by native speakers not trained as code talkers, in the event of their capture by the Japanese. A similar system employing Welsh was used by British forces, but not to any great extent during World War II. Welsh was used more recently in the Balkan peace-keeping efforts for non-vital messages.

Navajo was an attractive choice for code use because few people outside the Navajo themselves had ever learned to speak the language. Virtually no books in Navajo had ever been published. Outside of the language itself, the Navajo spoken code was not very complex by cryptographic standards and would likely have been broken if a native speaker and trained cryptographers worked together effectively. The Japanese had an opportunity to attempt this when they captured Joe Kieyoomia in the Philippines in 1942 during the Bataan Death March. Kieyoomia, a Navajo Sergeant in the U.S. Army, but not a code talker, was ordered to interpret the radio messages later in the war. However, since Kieyoomia had not participated in the code training, the messages made no sense to him. When he reported that he could not understand the messages, his captors tortured him. Given the simplicity of the alphabet code involved, it is probable that the code could have been broken easily if Kieyoomia's knowledge of the language had been exploited more effectively by Japanese cryptographers. The Japanese Imperial Army and Navy never cracked the spoken code.

Post-war recognition

The code talkers received no recognition until the declassification of the operation in 1968. In 1982, the code talkers were given a Certificate of Recognition by U.S. President Ronald Reagan, who also named August 14, 1982 "Navajo Code Talkers Day".

On December 21, 2000 the U.S. Congress passed, and President Bill Clinton signed, Public Law 106-554, 114 Statute 2763, which awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to twenty-nine World War II Navajo code talkers. In July 2001, U.S. President George W. Bush personally presented the Medal to four surviving code talkers (the fifth living code talker was not able to attend) at a ceremony held in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, DC. Gold medals were presented to the families of the 24 code talkers no longer living.

On September 17, 2007, 18 Choctaw code talkers were posthumously awarded the Texas Medal of Valor from the Adjutant General of the State of Texas for their World War I service. On December 13, 2007, H.R. 4544, the Code Talker Recognition Act, was introduced to the House of Representatives. The Code Talker Recognition Act recognizes every code talker who served in the United States military with a Congressional Gold Medal for his tribe, and a silver medal duplicate to each code talker, including eight Meskwakis.

Popular culture

The 2002 movie ''Windtalkers'' was a fictional story based on Navajo code talkers who were enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in World War II. The movie was criticized for featuring the Navajo characters only in supporting roles, not as the primary focus of the film. The film's plot was fabricated about white bodyguards being ordered to kill them should they fall into enemy hands. It was further criticized for its use of stereotypes of both Native Americans and east Asians.

The 1959 movie ''Never So Few'' features Charles Bronson as Sgt. John Danforth, a Navajo code talker.

The historical novel ''Code Talker'' portrays a group of Navajos serving in the Marine Corps in the Pacific Theater during World War II.

See also

Native Americans and World War II

Navajo Nation

Navajo people

Navajo language

Southern Athabaskan languages

Choctaw code talkers of World War I

United States Army Indian Scouts

Navajo I

Notes

References

;Bibliography

Aaseng, Nathan. ''Navajo Code Talkers: America’s Secret Weapon in World War II.'' New York: Walker & Company, 1992.

Durrett, Deanne. ''Unsung Heroes of World War II: The Story of the Navajo Code Talkers.'' Library of American Indian History, Facts on File, Inc., 1998.

McClain, Salley. ''Navajo Weapon: The Navajo Code Talkers.'' Tucson, Arizona: Rio Nuevo Publishers, 2001.

Meadows, William C. ''The Comanche Code Talkers of World War II.'' Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002.

Stanley, Captain John W. ''Personal Experience of a Battalion Commander and Brigade Signal Officer, 105th Field Signal Battalion in the Somme Offensive, September 29 – October 12, 1918. U.S.Army, 1932.

Gawne, Jonathan. ''Spearheading D-Day.'' Paris: Histoire et Collections, 1999.

David Kahn, "The Codebreakers – The Story of Secret Writing", 1967. ISBN 0-684-83130-9

Simon Singh, ''The Code Book: Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography'', 2000. ISBN 978-0385495325

Web

National Museum of the American Indian- Codetalkers

Listen online – The Story of The Code Talkers – The American Storyteller Radio Journal

Samuel Tom Holiday – 4th Marine Division – 25th Regiment – H & S Company

Origins of the Navajo Code Talkers

Dept. of Navy Navajo Code Talkers' Dictionary

Dept. of Navy Navajo Code Talkers: World War II fact Sheet

Northern Arizona University Special Collections, regarding Navajo Codetalkers

Teaching with Documents: Memorandum Regarding the Enlistment of Navajo Indians. U.S. National Archives.

"Semper Fidelis, Code Talkers," U.S National Archives. Prologue Magazine: Winter 2001, Vol. 33, No. 4

Smithsonian Institution: American Indian Codetalkers

Native Americans in the U.S. Army Portal at the United States Army Center of Military History

American Indian Code Talker Medals Become Law

U.S. Sen. Bingaman: Navajo code talkers page

The Navajo Code Talkers: Code Talkers (Part of the Story)

How Effective Was Navajo Code? "One Former Captive Knows" Captured Navajo

Hopi Code Talker

Code Talkers Exhibit, Burger King, Kayenta, Navajo Nation

Windtalker

Navajo Code Talkers Association

Code Talkers roll of honour and images

External links

Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture – Code Talkers

Official website of the Navajo Code talkers

Category:Code talkers Category:History of cryptography Category:Linguistics Category:Basque language Category:Navajo language Category:Native American history Category:Congressional Gold Medal recipients *Code talker Category:World War II espionage Category:World War II Pacific Theatre Category:Native American United States military personnel Category:Military units and formations of the United States in World War II Category:American people of Basque descent Category:United States Marine Corps in World War II

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