24 Facts About Greenwood LeFlore

In 1830 Greenwood LeFlore led other chiefs in signing the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, which ceded the remaining Choctaw lands in Mississippi to the US government and agreed to removal to Indian Territory.

Greenwood LeFlore was elected to the state government as a legislator and senator in the 1840s.

Some, like Greenwood LeFlore, gained a Euro-American education that enabled them to negotiate the changing world developing in the American South.

When Greenwood LeFlore was twelve, his father sent him to Nashville to be educated by Americans.

At age 17, Greenwood LeFlore married Rosa Donley in Nashville, whom he met there and brought back with him to the Choctaw Nation when he returned in 1817.

Greenwood LeFlore is credited with abolishing the Choctaw "blood for blood" law, which dictated rounds of revenge for murders.

Greenwood LeFlore supported the "civilization" program, which US President George Washington and Henry Knox developed during the Washington administration.

Greenwood LeFlore drafted a treaty which he sent to Washington, to try to secure the best terms for the Choctaw.

Greenwood LeFlore regarded removal as inevitable, given his assessment of the politics and the sheer numbers of the growing European-American population.

Many Choctaw at the time believed that Greenwood LeFlore had let them down and could have refused removal.

Greenwood LeFlore considers LeFlore and leaders like him to have been a new Creole generation, raised as Choctaw but absorbing what they could of the changing world to make a place for their peoples.

Greenwood LeFlore was a fixture of Mississippi high society and a personal friend of Jefferson Davis.

Greenwood LeFlore was elected to represent Carroll County in the state house for two terms, and elected by the legislature as a state senator, serving one term.

Greenwood LeFlore became a wealthy planter and amassed a huge estate, where slaves worked acres of cotton.

Greenwood LeFlore sided with the Union when Mississippi seceded from the United States.

Greenwood LeFlore commissioned James Harris, a Georgian, to design it.

Greenwood LeFlore descendants used the mansion until it was destroyed in a fire in 1942.

The horse carriage used to transport Greenwood LeFlore to visit Andrew Jackson and other Washington, DC officials was saved and has been preserved.

Greenwood LeFlore was openly and notoriously opposed to secession and to the rebellion throughout its progress.

Greenwood LeFlore died a few months after the war ended at the age of 65.

Greenwood LeFlore left, in addition to the mansion, an estate of 15,000 acres and 400 slaves.

Greenwood LeFlore was buried wrapped in the American flag, on the estate.

Greenwood LeFlore was first and foremost a man whose family had positioned him to draw together Choctaw and Anglo-American worlds.

Greenwood LeFlore owned slaves which became freedmen, read and wrote, and prayed at camp meetings, but he presided over a political hierarchy of pipe lighters and captains, provided food, shelter, and educational opportunities for his followers, and promulgated his vision of the Choctaw future at the foot of the mound [Nanih Waiya] that had given his people life.