During its Sept. 5 meeting, the Mississippi Hic-A-Sha-Ba-Ha chapter of National Society Daughters of the American Revolution listened to a presentation by Rufus Ward.
Ward is a noted historian, author and attorney from Columbus. His presentation, “The 100th Anniversary of American Indian Citizenship,” focused on the Mississippi Choctaw Indians.
Historically, Native Americans couldn’t be U.S. citizens when the country ratified its Constitution in 1788, and wouldn’t win the right to be for 136 years. When Black Americans won citizenship with the 14th Amendment in 1868, the government specifically interpreted the law so it didn’t apply to Native people. It wasn’t until 1924 that Native people won the right to full citizenship when President Calvin Coolidge signed the Indian Citizenship Act into law, also known as the Snyder Act.
What is not well known is that the State of Mississippi offered citizenship to its Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians as a result of the 1830 Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, almost 90 years before the national right to vote was passed. The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek was the last major land cession treaty which was signed by the Choctaw. The treaty ceded about 11 million acres of the Choctaw Nation in what is now Mississippi in exchange for about 15 million acres in the Indian territory, now the state of Oklahoma. Nearly 15,000 Choctaws together with 1,000 slaves made the move to what would be called Indian Territory and then later Oklahoma along what became known as the Trail of Tears.
The population transfer occurred in three migrations during the 1831-33 period including the devastating winter blizzard of 1830-31 and the cholera epidemic of 1832. About 2,500 died along the Trail of Tears. Approximately 5,000 to 6,000 Choctaws remained in Mississippi in 1831 after the initial removal efforts. With ratification by the U.S. Congress in 1831, the treaty allowed those Choctaw who chose to remain in Mississippi to become the first major non-European ethnic group to gain recognition as U.S. citizens.
The Choctaw at this crucial time became two distinct groups: the Nation in Oklahoma and the Tribe in Mississippi. The Nation retained its autonomy to regulate itself, but the Tribe left in Mississippi had to submit to state and U.S. laws. Under article XIV, the Mississippi Choctaws became one of the first major non-European ethnic group to gain U.S. citizenship. Article 14 of the 1830 Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek promised that the Choctaw who remained in Mississippi would receive land and that anyone who resided on the land for five years would hold the political status of a free white citizen.
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