MOWA Band of Choctaw Indians
Encyclopedia
The MOWA Band of Choctaw Indians are a state-recognized Native American
tribe
located in southern Alabama
, primarily in Washington
and Mobile
counties. The MOWA Choctaw Reservation is located along the banks of the Mobile
and Tombigbee rivers
, on 300 acres (1.2 km²) near the small southwestern Alabama communities of McIntosh
, Mount Vernon
and Citronelle
, and north of Mobile
. In addition to those members on the reservation, about 3,600 tribal citizens live in 10 small settlements near the reservation community. They are led by elected Chief Wilford Taylor. They claim descent from small groups of Choctaw
people of Mississippi
and Alabama who avoided removal
to Indian Territory
in present-day Oklahoma
at the time of the 1830 Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek
.
Since the late 20th century, the MOWA Choctaw have attempted to gain recognition as a federally recognized tribe. They have encountered difficulties in trying to satisfy dcumentation of continuity requirements of the Bureau of Indian Affairs
(BIA). So far they have been unsuccessful in gaining recognition. In addition, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians
and the Poarch Band of Creek Indians
, both federally recognized tribes that operate successful gambling casinos in the area, oppose recognition of the MOWA Choctaw Band.
cultures. The Mississippian culture is believed to have been ancestral to the historical tribes of the Muskogean-speaking Creek
and Choctaw
.
The first European settlers in Mobile and southern Alabama were Roman Catholic French
and later Spanish
. English
and Scots
traders before the American Revolutionary War
were followed by settlers arriving in the early 19th century.
During the antebellum years of the cotton kingdom, the wealthiest white planters were the ones most likely to take mistresses from among enslaved
African-American women and to have more than one family, with the "second", or shadow family, having mixed-race children.
Some Native Americans who came to this area were refugees after the Creek War
. Others were Choctaw who refused removal to the Indian Territory
in 1830. By their treaty, they were allowed to stay as state residents if they gave up Choctaw self-government. In 1835 the state government built an Indian school at Mount Vernon, Alabama
, with labor supplied by the Choctaw. Before the American Civil War
, the Choctaw were at risk in periodic "Indian roundups" by the federal government, as well as in raids by slave traders.
Whites in Alabama and the South
hardened racial lines as they worked to restore their social and political dominance after the Reconstruction era. Following paramilitary intimidation at the polls, whites regained power and disfranchised most Blacks and Native Americans, and many poor whites after the Reconstruction era through passage of a new constitution and laws making voter registration more difficult. The state government arbitrarily included the Choctaw and other Native Americans remaining in the state among the "colored" or black freedmen population, in part because whites had observed intermarriage between the groups. According to hypodescent
, the whites thought that black ancestry outweighed a person's cultural identification; they discounted mixed-race Choctaw as not really Indian. Through racial segregation
during the Jim Crow years, the state effectively barred blacks and Choctaw from the use of most public facilities. Because the freedmen could no longer elect representatives, the legislature consistently underfunded services for "colored" (blacks). Combined with blacks in a binary system, "[c]onsequently, American Indians living in the South became a group of people who officially did not exist. They were made, in effect, extinct by reclassification."
"In the 1890s the state legislature defined a mulatto
as anyone who was five or fewer generations removed from a black ancestor. By 1927 the state legislature defined mulatto as any person 'descended from a Negro'." The one-drop rule
was an example of hypodescent
classification that often went against appearances and the community with which a person identified. Alabama passed laws imposing Jim Crow and divided society into only two races: white and "colored". They created legal segregation
by two races, but in Washington and Mobile counties, there were too many mixed-race people to fit into those simple categories. Another factor affecting this was the region's relative isolation up until World War II
.
During the Jim Crow era, which lasted deep into the 20th century, the state senator L.W. McCrae popularized the term "Cajan" for the mixed-race population along the counties' frontier. The difference in spelling indicated recognition that the people were different from the Acadian
descendants (Cajuns) in Louisiana. People also called the people "Creoles
", as they seemed similar to the mixed-race Creoles in the next state, although their European-American heritage was primarily English and Scots-Irish rather than French, reflecting the major European settlers in Alabama. The surnames among Cajans and Choctaw descendants are primarily English or Scots. As of 2006 about 5,000 of self-identified Choctaw live along the Mobile-Washington county line.
Mid-twentieth century magazine articles described varied speech and cuisine that borrowed from black, Creole, American Indian and European-American traditions. In one article from 1970, the Cajans were described as the "Lost Tribe of Alabama". The terms of Cajans and Creoles were both used by the white majority population to reflect their perception that the Choctaw also had black heritage; this was part of the way the white society divided Alabama society into two parts: white and all other.
(BIA) to "examine the historical and legal background of federal-Indian relations and to determine if policies and programs should be revised. The commission found that the results of non-recognition were devastating for Indian communities."
In 1979, the Choctaw in this area of Alabama organized as the MOWA Band of Choctaw Indians. "MOWA" is a contraction of Mobile
and Washington
, the two counties which this group inhabits. Its tribal office is located in McIntosh
, named after a prominent Creek chief of Scots and Creek ancestry.
Tribal members purchased their first 160 acre (0.6474976 km²) of land in south Washington County in 1983. They claim descent from several Indian tribes: Choctaw, Creek, Cherokee
, Mescalero
, and Apache
. Their annual cultural festival, which includes Choctaw social dancing, stickball games, a Choctaw princess contest, and an inter-tribal pow wow
, occurs on the third weekend of June on their reservation lands.
The MOWA petitioned the federal government for federal recognition as an Indian tribe. In 1994 the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) denied the MOWA petition because the petitioners failed to prove Indian ancestry by BIA standards, one of seven requirements for tribal recognition. The BIA requires tribes to prove "internal cohesion, external boundaries, and a distinct Indian identity," the latter traced by genealogical descent from members of historical tribes listed in the early 1900s in records such as the Dawes Rolls
. According to the BIA spokesperson: "What we found was that the Indians that the MOWA claimed as their ancestors were not their ancestors."
The Choctaw note numerous historical factors have made it difficult for them to satisfy BIA requirements: differences in traditional naming practices and difficulty in following name variations through records; the US government inconsistency in record keeping, not only in recording names but also races (for instance, listing all people with visible African ancestry as Choctaw Freedmen, regardless of whether they had direct Choctaw ancestry as well); the state's classifying all Choctaw as among the black population and recording them as black, effectively ending separate record keeping of them as Choctaw or Indian; and the reluctance of federal officials to accept oral histories of family lineage.
The MOWA filed a lawsuit against the BIA, requesting that the federal court overturn the BIA's decision. The suit was rejected in 2008 by federal court on a technicality. The court ruled the tribe had waited too long to file the lawsuit and had passed the six-year statute of limitations. It noted a 1999 letter from the Secretary of Interior that had rejected any further consideration of the tribe's claim.
Leon Taylor, a revered elder, said in testimony to the US Senate: "Today, I am Choctaw. My mother was Choctaw. My grandfather was Choctaw. Tomorrow, I will still be Choctaw."
These findings of virtually no Native American biological ancestry does not mean that the members of MOWA Band of Choctaw are not culturally Native American. Since before removal, through intermarriage they have absorbed new members from outside the original tribe and continued to practice Choctaw culture.
In 2007, Wilford Taylor, the Chief of the MOWA Choctaw Indians, agreed to participate in a DNA autosomal
test that would map his genes, as part of the Genographic Project
administered by the National Geographic Society
. This type test looks at the full make-up of a person's genes, rather than only Y-DNA or mTDNA from the paternal or maternal direct lines. The study team found that Taylor's ancestry was mostly of the R1B Haplogroup, which is concentrated in Western Europe, for instance, England and Germany.
Most of his ancestors split away 40,000 years ago from those related to Native Americans ancestors in Central Asia. When his ancestors migrated from Central Asia to Europe, they became concentrated in that region and developed additional characteristic mutations that differentiated them from people who moved east in Asia. The R1b haplotype is concentrated in the British Isles and Western Europe. It is also found primarily among those peoples who migrated from Europe to North America from the 16th century on, and among their descendants in the United States. The British and Europeans entered North America from the east. The Paleo-Indians immigrated to North America from the west.
By contrast, the two primary Haplogroups of deep ancestry for Native American males prior to European contact are C and Q3. Contributions of the maternal line may also be tested. Female haplogroups that indicate deep Native heritage include A, B, C, D and X. These were the haplogroups of the peoples found in northern Asia by 30,000 years ago. Their descendants moved east over the Bering land bridge about 22,000 years ago. Eventually their descendants migrated and settled in the Americas as Paleo-Indians in waves beginning about 15,000 years ago, after the ice barriers broke up.
Like Taylor, many Native Americans are of mixed-race ancestry but identify with the Indian culture in which they grew up. For instance, the haplogroup R1b has been found among numerous men of the Cherokee Nation
, as the DNA was passed on by European white male ancestors of mixed-race descendants. The Cherokee allowed non-Native men to marry into the tribe; as they had a matrilineal system, the children belonged to the mother's clan
and took their status in the tribe from her people. Traditionally the mother's brother in this system was always more important to the children's rearing, especially of boys, than the biological father, who was of a different clan. Beginning with European traders in the eighteenth century, there were marriages between European men and Cherokee women.
The R1b Hapolotype in a Y-line test does not invalidate a male claim to Native American heritage, as it attests to only one line of ancestors. Even if a person has mostly European genetic ancestry, the individual and his or her direct ancestors can be culturally Choctaw from having been reared in Choctaw culture.
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
tribe
Indian tribe
In the United States, a Native American tribe is any extant or historical tribe, band, nation, or other group or community of Indigenous peoples in the United States...
located in southern Alabama
Alabama
Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...
, primarily in Washington
Washington County, Alabama
Washington County is a county of the U.S. state of Alabama. The county was named in honor of George Washington, first President of the United States of America. As of 2010, the population was 17,581. Its county seat is Chatom. Washington County is a dry county.-History:The area was long inhabited...
and Mobile
Mobile County, Alabama
Mobile County[p] is a county of the U.S. state of Alabama. Its name is in honor of a tribe of Indians, the Maubila tribe . As of 2011, its population was 415,704. Its county seat is Mobile, Alabama...
counties. The MOWA Choctaw Reservation is located along the banks of the Mobile
Mobile River
The Mobile River is located in southern Alabama in the United States. Formed out of the confluence of the Tombigbee and Alabama rivers, the approximately river drains an area of of Alabama, with a watershed extending into Mississippi, Georgia, and Tennessee. Its drainage basin is the...
and Tombigbee rivers
Tombigbee River
The Tombigbee River is a tributary of the Mobile River, approximately 200 mi long, in the U.S. states of Mississippi and Alabama. It is one of two major rivers, along with the Alabama River, that unite to form the short Mobile River before it empties into Mobile Bay on the Gulf of Mexico...
, on 300 acres (1.2 km²) near the small southwestern Alabama communities of McIntosh
McIntosh, Alabama
McIntosh is a town located in Washington County, Alabama, along U.S. Highway 43. It is 12½ miles south of Wagarville and north of Mobile. It was named for Alexander McIntosh, a prominent Creek chief of the nineteenth century...
, Mount Vernon
Mount Vernon, Alabama
Mount Vernon is a town in Mobile County, Alabama, United States. It is included in the Mobile metropolitan statistical area. At the 2000 census the population was 844.-Geography:Mount Vernon is located at .According to the U.S...
and Citronelle
Citronelle, Alabama
Citronelle is a city in Mobile County, Alabama, United States. At the 2000 census the population was 3,659. It is included in the Mobile metropolitan statistical area.-History:This was long part of the territory of thousands of years of indigenous peoples...
, and north of Mobile
Mobile, Alabama
Mobile is the third most populous city in the Southern US state of Alabama and is the county seat of Mobile County. It is located on the Mobile River and the central Gulf Coast of the United States. The population within the city limits was 195,111 during the 2010 census. It is the largest...
. In addition to those members on the reservation, about 3,600 tribal citizens live in 10 small settlements near the reservation community. They are led by elected Chief Wilford Taylor. They claim descent from small groups of Choctaw
Choctaw
The Choctaw are a Native American people originally from the Southeastern United States...
people of Mississippi
Mississippi
Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...
and Alabama who avoided removal
Indian Removal
Indian removal was a nineteenth century policy of the government of the United States to relocate Native American tribes living east of the Mississippi River to lands west of the river...
to Indian Territory
Indian Territory
The Indian Territory, also known as the Indian Territories and the Indian Country, was land set aside within the United States for the settlement of American Indians...
in present-day Oklahoma
Oklahoma
Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...
at the time of the 1830 Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek
Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek
The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek was a treaty signed on September 27, 1830 between the Choctaw and the United States Government. This was the first removal treaty carried into effect under the Indian Removal Act...
.
Since the late 20th century, the MOWA Choctaw have attempted to gain recognition as a federally recognized tribe. They have encountered difficulties in trying to satisfy dcumentation of continuity requirements of the Bureau of Indian Affairs
Bureau of Indian Affairs
The Bureau of Indian Affairs is an agency of the federal government of the United States within the US Department of the Interior. It is responsible for the administration and management of of land held in trust by the United States for Native Americans in the United States, Native American...
(BIA). So far they have been unsuccessful in gaining recognition. In addition, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians
Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians
The Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians is one of three federally recognized tribes of Choctaw Indians. On April 20, 1945, the tribe organized under the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. Also in 1945 the Choctaw Indian Reservation was created in Neshoba and surrounding counties...
and the Poarch Band of Creek Indians
Poarch Band of Creek Indians
The Poarch Band of Creek Indians is the only federally recognized tribe of Native Americans residing in the southern part of the state of Alabama. Historically speaking the Muskogean language, they were formerly known as the Creek Nation East of the Mississippi. They are located mostly in Escambia...
, both federally recognized tribes that operate successful gambling casinos in the area, oppose recognition of the MOWA Choctaw Band.
History
This area of frontier Alabama had been inhabited for thousands of years by indigenousIndigenous
Indigenous means: belonging to a certain place.Indigenous may refer to:In Ecology and Geography*Indigenous resources, resources which exist within local geography, that are not imported...
cultures. The Mississippian culture is believed to have been ancestral to the historical tribes of the Muskogean-speaking Creek
Creek
Creek may refer to:*Creek, a small stream* Creek , an inlet of the sea, narrower than a cove * Creek, a narrow channel/small stream between islands in the Florida Keys*Muscogee , a native American people...
and Choctaw
Choctaw
The Choctaw are a Native American people originally from the Southeastern United States...
.
The first European settlers in Mobile and southern Alabama were Roman Catholic French
French people
The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...
and later Spanish
Spanish people
The Spanish are citizens of the Kingdom of Spain. Within Spain, there are also a number of vigorous nationalisms and regionalisms, reflecting the country's complex history....
. English
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
and Scots
Scots
Scots may refer to:*The Scottish people, the inhabitants of Scotland*Scots language *Scotch-Irish*Scottish English*Scots pine, a Scottish tree*Short for Pound Scots...
traders before the American Revolutionary War
American Revolutionary War
The American Revolutionary War , the American War of Independence, or simply the Revolutionary War, began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen British colonies in North America, and ended in a global war between several European great powers.The war was the result of the...
were followed by settlers arriving in the early 19th century.
During the antebellum years of the cotton kingdom, the wealthiest white planters were the ones most likely to take mistresses from among enslaved
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
African-American women and to have more than one family, with the "second", or shadow family, having mixed-race children.
Some Native Americans who came to this area were refugees after the Creek War
Creek War
The Creek War , also known as the Red Stick War and the Creek Civil War, began as a civil war within the Creek nation...
. Others were Choctaw who refused removal to the Indian Territory
Indian Territory
The Indian Territory, also known as the Indian Territories and the Indian Country, was land set aside within the United States for the settlement of American Indians...
in 1830. By their treaty, they were allowed to stay as state residents if they gave up Choctaw self-government. In 1835 the state government built an Indian school at Mount Vernon, Alabama
Mount Vernon, Alabama
Mount Vernon is a town in Mobile County, Alabama, United States. It is included in the Mobile metropolitan statistical area. At the 2000 census the population was 844.-Geography:Mount Vernon is located at .According to the U.S...
, with labor supplied by the Choctaw. Before the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, the Choctaw were at risk in periodic "Indian roundups" by the federal government, as well as in raids by slave traders.
Whites in Alabama and the South
The South
-Geography:* Southern United States* South of England* South of France* South Italy* South Korea* Republic of Ireland* South Province * Global South, the developing nations of the world-Other uses:* The South , by Victor Erice...
hardened racial lines as they worked to restore their social and political dominance after the Reconstruction era. Following paramilitary intimidation at the polls, whites regained power and disfranchised most Blacks and Native Americans, and many poor whites after the Reconstruction era through passage of a new constitution and laws making voter registration more difficult. The state government arbitrarily included the Choctaw and other Native Americans remaining in the state among the "colored" or black freedmen population, in part because whites had observed intermarriage between the groups. According to hypodescent
Hypodescent
In societies that regard some races of people as dominant or superior and others as subordinate or inferior, hypodescent is the automatic assignment of children of a mixed union or mating between members of different socioeconomic groups or ethnic groups to the subordinate group...
, the whites thought that black ancestry outweighed a person's cultural identification; they discounted mixed-race Choctaw as not really Indian. Through racial segregation
Segregation
Segregation or segregate refers to setting apart or separating things or people and may refer to:* Particle segregation* Segregation in materials* Magnetic-activated cell sorting* Segregate * Mendel's law of segregation...
during the Jim Crow years, the state effectively barred blacks and Choctaw from the use of most public facilities. Because the freedmen could no longer elect representatives, the legislature consistently underfunded services for "colored" (blacks). Combined with blacks in a binary system, "[c]onsequently, American Indians living in the South became a group of people who officially did not exist. They were made, in effect, extinct by reclassification."
"In the 1890s the state legislature defined a mulatto
Mulatto
Mulatto denotes a person with one white parent and one black parent, or more broadly, a person of mixed black and white ancestry. Contemporary usage of the term varies greatly, and the broader sense of the term makes its application rather subjective, as not all people of mixed white and black...
as anyone who was five or fewer generations removed from a black ancestor. By 1927 the state legislature defined mulatto as any person 'descended from a Negro'." The one-drop rule
One-drop rule
The one-drop rule is a historical colloquial term in the United States for the social classification as black of individuals with any African ancestry; meaning any person with "one drop of black blood" was considered black...
was an example of hypodescent
Hypodescent
In societies that regard some races of people as dominant or superior and others as subordinate or inferior, hypodescent is the automatic assignment of children of a mixed union or mating between members of different socioeconomic groups or ethnic groups to the subordinate group...
classification that often went against appearances and the community with which a person identified. Alabama passed laws imposing Jim Crow and divided society into only two races: white and "colored". They created legal segregation
Racial segregation
Racial segregation is the separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home...
by two races, but in Washington and Mobile counties, there were too many mixed-race people to fit into those simple categories. Another factor affecting this was the region's relative isolation up until World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
During the Jim Crow era, which lasted deep into the 20th century, the state senator L.W. McCrae popularized the term "Cajan" for the mixed-race population along the counties' frontier. The difference in spelling indicated recognition that the people were different from the Acadian
Acadian
The Acadians are the descendants of the 17th-century French colonists who settled in Acadia . Acadia was a colony of New France...
descendants (Cajuns) in Louisiana. People also called the people "Creoles
Creole peoples
The term Creole and its cognates in other languages — such as crioulo, criollo, créole, kriolu, criol, kreyol, kreol, kriulo, kriol, krio, etc. — have been applied to people in different countries and epochs, with rather different meanings...
", as they seemed similar to the mixed-race Creoles in the next state, although their European-American heritage was primarily English and Scots-Irish rather than French, reflecting the major European settlers in Alabama. The surnames among Cajans and Choctaw descendants are primarily English or Scots. As of 2006 about 5,000 of self-identified Choctaw live along the Mobile-Washington county line.
Mid-twentieth century magazine articles described varied speech and cuisine that borrowed from black, Creole, American Indian and European-American traditions. In one article from 1970, the Cajans were described as the "Lost Tribe of Alabama". The terms of Cajans and Creoles were both used by the white majority population to reflect their perception that the Choctaw also had black heritage; this was part of the way the white society divided Alabama society into two parts: white and all other.
Organization
Numerous references in historical records note the presence of Choctaw Indians in this part of Alabama. Historically, there were recognized Indian schools in the counties. In the 1970s, the American Indian Policy Review Commission (AIPRC) described the four thousand Choctaw in Mobile and Washington counties as a "non-recognized tribe." The AIPRC had been formed by the Bureau of Indian AffairsBureau of Indian Affairs
The Bureau of Indian Affairs is an agency of the federal government of the United States within the US Department of the Interior. It is responsible for the administration and management of of land held in trust by the United States for Native Americans in the United States, Native American...
(BIA) to "examine the historical and legal background of federal-Indian relations and to determine if policies and programs should be revised. The commission found that the results of non-recognition were devastating for Indian communities."
In 1979, the Choctaw in this area of Alabama organized as the MOWA Band of Choctaw Indians. "MOWA" is a contraction of Mobile
Mobile County, Alabama
Mobile County[p] is a county of the U.S. state of Alabama. Its name is in honor of a tribe of Indians, the Maubila tribe . As of 2011, its population was 415,704. Its county seat is Mobile, Alabama...
and Washington
Washington County, Alabama
Washington County is a county of the U.S. state of Alabama. The county was named in honor of George Washington, first President of the United States of America. As of 2010, the population was 17,581. Its county seat is Chatom. Washington County is a dry county.-History:The area was long inhabited...
, the two counties which this group inhabits. Its tribal office is located in McIntosh
McIntosh, Alabama
McIntosh is a town located in Washington County, Alabama, along U.S. Highway 43. It is 12½ miles south of Wagarville and north of Mobile. It was named for Alexander McIntosh, a prominent Creek chief of the nineteenth century...
, named after a prominent Creek chief of Scots and Creek ancestry.
Tribal members purchased their first 160 acre (0.6474976 km²) of land in south Washington County in 1983. They claim descent from several Indian tribes: Choctaw, Creek, Cherokee
Cherokee
The Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...
, Mescalero
Mescalero
Mescalero is an Apache tribe of Southern Athabaskan Native Americans. The tribe is federally recognized as the Mescalero Apache Tribe of the Mescalero Apache Reservation in southcentral New Mexico...
, and Apache
Apache
Apache is the collective term for several culturally related groups of Native Americans in the United States originally from the Southwest United States. These indigenous peoples of North America speak a Southern Athabaskan language, which is related linguistically to the languages of Athabaskan...
. Their annual cultural festival, which includes Choctaw social dancing, stickball games, a Choctaw princess contest, and an inter-tribal pow wow
Pow woW
Pow woW is French musical group. Their biggest hit was "Le Chat" in 1992. Their next single was the French version of song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight", titled "Le lion est mort ce soir".- Albums :* Regagner les plaines...
, occurs on the third weekend of June on their reservation lands.
The MOWA petitioned the federal government for federal recognition as an Indian tribe. In 1994 the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) denied the MOWA petition because the petitioners failed to prove Indian ancestry by BIA standards, one of seven requirements for tribal recognition. The BIA requires tribes to prove "internal cohesion, external boundaries, and a distinct Indian identity," the latter traced by genealogical descent from members of historical tribes listed in the early 1900s in records such as the Dawes Rolls
Dawes Rolls
The Dawes Rolls were created by the Dawes Commission. The Commission, authorized by United States Congress in 1893, was required to negotiate with the Five Civilized Tribes to convince them to agree to an allotment plan and dissolution of the reservation system...
. According to the BIA spokesperson: "What we found was that the Indians that the MOWA claimed as their ancestors were not their ancestors."
The Choctaw note numerous historical factors have made it difficult for them to satisfy BIA requirements: differences in traditional naming practices and difficulty in following name variations through records; the US government inconsistency in record keeping, not only in recording names but also races (for instance, listing all people with visible African ancestry as Choctaw Freedmen, regardless of whether they had direct Choctaw ancestry as well); the state's classifying all Choctaw as among the black population and recording them as black, effectively ending separate record keeping of them as Choctaw or Indian; and the reluctance of federal officials to accept oral histories of family lineage.
The MOWA filed a lawsuit against the BIA, requesting that the federal court overturn the BIA's decision. The suit was rejected in 2008 by federal court on a technicality. The court ruled the tribe had waited too long to file the lawsuit and had passed the six-year statute of limitations. It noted a 1999 letter from the Secretary of Interior that had rejected any further consideration of the tribe's claim.
Ethnic identity
The historian Jacqueline Anderson Matte notes that the Choctaw have preserved their identity by cultural practices:"The strongest evidence of the MOWA Choctaws' Indian ancestry is not, however, found in written documents; it is found in their lives. Their ancestors passed to them their Choctaw Indian identity and traditions, persevering and preserving their heritage despite a long history of persecution and discrimination. Interviews with elders reveal stories of survival by hunting, fishing, trapping, and sharing the kill; rituals related to marriage, birth, and death; customs associated with gardening, medicinal plants, logging, dipping turpentine, and restricted communication with outsiders; and ancestral relationships told generation to generation. Despite hardships, the Choctaw Indian community north of Mobile persisted as a system of social relationships solidified within ceremonial gathering areas, churches, schools, cemeteries, and kin-based villages. Reduced in numbers, and increasingly a dominated minority in their own homeland, the ancestors of the MOWA Choctaws made new alliances."
Leon Taylor, a revered elder, said in testimony to the US Senate: "Today, I am Choctaw. My mother was Choctaw. My grandfather was Choctaw. Tomorrow, I will still be Choctaw."
Genetic studies
In 1976, Dr. William S. Pollitzer published an analysis of gene frequencies found in a survey among 324 MOWA. He concluded from an analysis of serological (blood) traits that the MOWA have 70% white ancestry, 30% black ancestry, and little discernible American Indian ancestry. His team described the group as traditionally considered a tri-racial community, and noted that its members at one time had remained isolated by marrying within the group. Their conclusions were that the gene frequencies showed that the physical isolation of the group has been dissipated by intermarriage with people outside the group over the years.These findings of virtually no Native American biological ancestry does not mean that the members of MOWA Band of Choctaw are not culturally Native American. Since before removal, through intermarriage they have absorbed new members from outside the original tribe and continued to practice Choctaw culture.
In 2007, Wilford Taylor, the Chief of the MOWA Choctaw Indians, agreed to participate in a DNA autosomal
Autosome
An autosome is a chromosome that is not a sex chromosome, or allosome; that is to say, there is an equal number of copies of the chromosome in males and females. For example, in humans, there are 22 pairs of autosomes. In addition to autosomes, there are sex chromosomes, to be specific: X and Y...
test that would map his genes, as part of the Genographic Project
The Genographic Project
The Genographic Project, launched on April 13, 2005 by the National Geographic Society and IBM, is a multi-year genetic anthropology study that aims to map historical human migration patterns by collecting and analyzing DNA samples from hundreds of thousands of people from around the...
administered by the National Geographic Society
National Geographic Society
The National Geographic Society , headquartered in Washington, D.C. in the United States, is one of the largest non-profit scientific and educational institutions in the world. Its interests include geography, archaeology and natural science, the promotion of environmental and historical...
. This type test looks at the full make-up of a person's genes, rather than only Y-DNA or mTDNA from the paternal or maternal direct lines. The study team found that Taylor's ancestry was mostly of the R1B Haplogroup, which is concentrated in Western Europe, for instance, England and Germany.
Most of his ancestors split away 40,000 years ago from those related to Native Americans ancestors in Central Asia. When his ancestors migrated from Central Asia to Europe, they became concentrated in that region and developed additional characteristic mutations that differentiated them from people who moved east in Asia. The R1b haplotype is concentrated in the British Isles and Western Europe. It is also found primarily among those peoples who migrated from Europe to North America from the 16th century on, and among their descendants in the United States. The British and Europeans entered North America from the east. The Paleo-Indians immigrated to North America from the west.
By contrast, the two primary Haplogroups of deep ancestry for Native American males prior to European contact are C and Q3. Contributions of the maternal line may also be tested. Female haplogroups that indicate deep Native heritage include A, B, C, D and X. These were the haplogroups of the peoples found in northern Asia by 30,000 years ago. Their descendants moved east over the Bering land bridge about 22,000 years ago. Eventually their descendants migrated and settled in the Americas as Paleo-Indians in waves beginning about 15,000 years ago, after the ice barriers broke up.
Like Taylor, many Native Americans are of mixed-race ancestry but identify with the Indian culture in which they grew up. For instance, the haplogroup R1b has been found among numerous men of the Cherokee Nation
Cherokee Nation
The Cherokee Nation is the largest of three Cherokee federally recognized tribes in the United States. It was established in the 20th century, and includes people descended from members of the old Cherokee Nation who relocated voluntarily from the Southeast to Indian Territory and Cherokees who...
, as the DNA was passed on by European white male ancestors of mixed-race descendants. The Cherokee allowed non-Native men to marry into the tribe; as they had a matrilineal system, the children belonged to the mother's clan
Clan
A clan is a group of people united by actual or perceived kinship and descent. Even if lineage details are unknown, clan members may be organized around a founding member or apical ancestor. The kinship-based bonds may be symbolical, whereby the clan shares a "stipulated" common ancestor that is a...
and took their status in the tribe from her people. Traditionally the mother's brother in this system was always more important to the children's rearing, especially of boys, than the biological father, who was of a different clan. Beginning with European traders in the eighteenth century, there were marriages between European men and Cherokee women.
The R1b Hapolotype in a Y-line test does not invalidate a male claim to Native American heritage, as it attests to only one line of ancestors. Even if a person has mostly European genetic ancestry, the individual and his or her direct ancestors can be culturally Choctaw from having been reared in Choctaw culture.
Further reading
- Calvin L. Beale, “An Overview of the Phenomenon of Mixed Racial Isolates in the United States,” American Anthropologist 74 (June 1972): 704–10.
- Renée Ann Cramer, Cash, Color, and Colonialism: The Politics of Tribal Acknowledgment, Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma, 2005
- Angie Debo, The Rise and Fall of the Choctaw Republic (1934; repr., Norman, Okla., 1972)
- Virginia Easley DeMarce, “‘Verry Slitly Mixt’: Tri-Racial Isolate Families of the Upper South—A Genealogical Study,” National Genealogical Society Quarterly 80 (March 1992)
- B. Eugene Griessman, “The American Isolates,” American Anthropologist n.s. 74 (June 1972): 693–94
- B. Eugene Griessman and Curtis T. Henson Jr., “The History and Social Topography of an Ethnic Island in Alabama” (paper, annual meeting of the Southern Sociological Society, Atlanta, Georgia, 1974)
- Jacqueline Anderson Matte, They Say the Wind is Red: The Alabama Choctaw Lost in Their Own Land, Montgomery, Alabama: NewSouth Books, 2002
- Jesse O. McKee and Jon A. Schlenker, The Choctaws: Cultural Evolution of a Native American Tribe (Jackson, Mississippi: 1980)
- Laura Frances Murphy, “Mobile County Cajans,” Alabama Historical Quarterly 1 (Spring 1930), 76–86
External links
- MOWA Band of Choctaw Indians Official Website
- Cedric Sunray of the MOWA Choctaw questions Phillip Martin, chief of the Mississippi Choctaw, 2006 University of Oklahoma conference, related to the Jack AbramoffJack AbramoffJack Abramoff is an American former lobbyist and businessman. Convicted in 2006 of mail fraud and conspiracy, he was at the heart of an extensive corruption investigation that led to the conviction of White House officials J. Steven Griles and David Safavian, U.S. Representative Bob Ney, and nine...
lobbying scandal and gambling on Indian reservations