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7 Making Death Literal uring the period before the Civil War, the Choctaw people were assailed by new forms of old, familiar problems. Three major issues emerged to threaten their future existence. These issues were interrelated, and derived from their subjugation by the United States, and the Americans’ efforts to increase their hegemony. First, the whole nation seemed to be erupting into a state of anarchy. Serious crimes occurred daily, and “who was killed this week” became an almost daily topic of conversation.1 Second, conflict escalated with American encroachments on Choctaw legal jurisdiction. This concern was, in actuality, a gradual, but constant, erosion of Choctaw sovereignty, one that produced stark echoes of the years leading up to their so-called removal in the 1830s. The U.S. government claimed jurisdiction over all crimes that involved a white person, no matter whether they occurred on U.S. or Choctaw soil. The Americans continually expanded their jurisdiction. Defining who was “white” and who was “Indian” made the difference between a trial in the U.S. federal court in Fort Smith or answering to the tribal system of justice. Disputes also arose over the differing criminal codes of the Choctaws, as opposed to the Americans. Crimes and punishments varied markedly, depending on which legal system applied. As the United States asserted increasingly broad jurisdiction, the Choctaws worried that they did so as a prelude to forcing the Choctaw national lands into the U.S. market, by breaking up D ■ 117 the communal landholdings into small plots of land owned by individuals . No one could sell the Choctaw lands in their communal, undivided state. Yet, as soon as they were individually allotted, the Choctaws knew most of the land would be gone in a generation. The Choctaws and other Indian nations of the Territory fought “allotment” tooth and nail. They recognized it to be a thinly disguised device that the U.S. government would use to destroy the Indian nations. Once their land was owned by individuals within the tribes, the Indians knew that fraud, violence, and sharp dealing would hound them until all the Indian lands were in the hands of the whites. The third major problem facing the Choctaws and other Indians of Indian Territory was the growing conflict over slavery. In each of the “Five Civilized Tribes” the Choctaws, Cherokees, Chickasaws, Creeks (Muscogees ), and Seminoles—slavery was legal. The nature of slavery among the Indians varied in several respects from white southern plantation slavery, but it nonetheless constituted a labor system of forced lifetime servitude. Most Indians owned no slaves at all, but the richest Indians usually had dozens of them. The growing national debate ensnared the native people of Indian Territory. In addition, significant acts of violence associated with slavery occurred in Indian Territory with increasing frequency. Efforts to retain control of their future were compromised by this insidious institution . It restricted their room to maneuver in the coming cataclysm in the States, and presaged their involvement with the South, despite significant sentiment favoring the North or neutrality. Violence in the new Choctaw Nation became more and more of a problem in the 1840s and 1850s. Many Choctaws complained that the young men drank too much whiskey and then got into drunken brawls in which someone was killed. Almost all the men carried handguns. They were ready to take offense, and ready to use their guns. Drinking of alcohol was a daily affair with many, and with the decline of the traditional social controls that had once held violence in check, very little stood between men and sudden death. The old male gender roles—those of warrior and hunter—became increasingly irrelevant as the years passed. Young men now had no way to mark their passage into manhood and no distinct, socially sanctioned and sustained role into which they passed. As one of the missionaries stated, “Still there is manifested much of recklessness and desperate depravity, especially by a portion of the young men.”2 Traditionally, Choctaw men had 118 ■ Living in the Land of Death always had warfare, preparations for warfare, and hunting as activities that occupied the bulk of their time. Not only did rituals mark their passage into manhood, but also their progress over their lives was publicly recognized by their membership in age-graded societies comprised entirely of men. Women had their societies, too, but many women’s activities in the new Choctaw Nation substituted effortlessly for the older ways, so they had far less...

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