23 Facts About Chickasaw

Chickasaw are an indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands.

Chickasaw people have a migration story in which they moved from a land west of the Mississippi River, where they settled mostly in present-day northeast Mississippi, northwest Alabama, and into Lawrence County, Tennessee.

The Chickasaw were divided into two groups: the Imosak Cha'a' (chopped hickory) and the Inchokka' Lhipa' (worn out house), though the characteristics of these groups in relation to Chickasaw villages, clans, and house groups is uncertain.

Name Chickasaw, as noted by anthropologist John Swanton, belonged to a Chickasaw leader.

Origin of the Chickasaw is uncertain; 20th-century scholars, such as the archaeologist Patricia Galloway, theorize that the Chickasaw and Choctaw split into distinct peoples in the 17th century from the remains of Plaquemine culture and other groups whose ancestors had lived in the lower Mississippi Valley for thousands of years.

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When Europeans first encountered them, the Chickasaw were living in villages in what is northeastern Mississippi.

Chickasaw are believed to have migrated into Mississippi from the west, as their oral history attests.

Chickasaw began to establish trading relationships with English colonists in the Province of Carolina after that colony was established in 1670.

Chickasaw formulated a policy to encourage the "civilizing" process, and Thomas Jefferson continued it.

In 1818, leaders of the Chickasaw signed several treaties, including the Treaty of Tuscaloosa, which ceded all claims to land north of the southern border of Tennessee up to the Ohio River.

Chickasaw lived there for the next 40 years, where he married three high-ranking Chickasaw women in succession.

Chickasaw had a matrilineal system, in which children were considered born into the mother's clan; and they gained their status in the tribe from her family.

Chickasaw had served during the Revolutionary wars and received a commission from President George Washington in 1786 along with his namesake grandfather.

An example is that more than 40 chiefs from the Chickasaw Council, representing clans and villages, signed a letter in November 1832 by Levi Colbert to President Andrew Jackson, complaining about treaty negotiations with his appointee General John Coffee.

Between 1832 and 1837, the Chickasaw would make further negotiations and arrangements for their removal.

Unlike other tribes who received land grants in exchange for ceding territory, the Chickasaw held out for financial compensation: they were to receive $3 million U S dollars from the United States for their lands east of the Mississippi River.

In 1836 after a bitter five-year debate within the tribe, the Chickasaw had reached an agreement to purchase land in Indian Territory from the previously removed Choctaw.

Chickasaw gathered at Memphis, Tennessee, on July 4, 1837, with all of their portable assets: belongings, livestock, and enslaved African Americans.

Three thousand and one Chickasaw crossed the Mississippi River, following routes established by the Choctaw and Creek.

The Chickasaw wrote their own constitution in the 1850s, an effort contributed to by Holmes Colbert.

Chickasaw Nation was the first of the Five Civilized Tribes to become allies of the Confederate States of America.

Chickasaw passed a resolution allying with the Confederacy, which was signed by Governor Cyrus Harris on May 25, 1861.

Chickasaw allied with the Confederacy, after the Civil War the United States government required the nation to make a new peace treaty in 1866.