Republic on the Red River: Documenting Choctaw Political Transformation from Removal to Reconstruction

Abstract

The Trail of Tears left a stain upon American history, as a betrayal of the republic’s founding principles: but out of the removal, a political transformation was underway in the Choctaw Nation. Under the leadership of men such as Mushulatubbee, Greenwood LeFlore, George W. Harkins, and Peter Pitchlynn, the Choctaw Nation progressed from its previous pre-removal tribal society into a post-removal democratic state. Operating as a republic under Western-proscribed understanding of law and government, the Choctaw maintained their distinct understanding of culture and the world, and knew their place in it depended on adaptation. The adoption of many Western ideas – Christianity, Western education, a bicameral legislature, a singular chief executive, and a written constitution – was both a demonstration to the United States of the Choctaws’ ability to survive colonization and a declaration of the Choctaws’ sovereignty from American power. The Choctaw emulated many colonized societies of the past – taking on the perceived benefits offered by the outside power while shunning that which they believed was detrimental to their interests, never losing sight of who they were. By analyzing sources left behind from those men who shaped tribal politics, as well as modern understandings of tribal politics by both Choctaw and non-Native scholars, this piece is meant to demonstrate the political transformation of the Choctaw state did not cost the nation its identity, but preserved it against all odds in an environment created to by a hostile power to facilitate their national destruction.