Living in the Land of Death: The Choctaw Nation, 1830-1860

Conclusion

Conclusion he Choctaw people have a long tradition of survival as a separate, identifiable people. The greatest challenge to their independent identity was the American onslaught of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The most damaging aspect of this onslaught has been the American construction of natives as savages and Euro-Americans as civilized. Many generations of Choctaws were affected by these teachings, which engendered a sense of self-loathing. The internalization of the norms of white people and of their scorn for native cultures produced many Choctaw people who were ashamed of their heritage and who taught their children to be ashamed, living lives in which they denied the rich culture and heritage that was theirs to claim. Others were taught to hide being “Indian,” as though they suffered from some hideous, disfiguring disease. In recent times, the attitudes of whites and people of mixed heritage have begun to change. Now I am frequently asked by students and others how they can begin to make the connection with their native heritage. Native language programs have enjoyed a huge resurgence of interest, and native arts are admired and sought for the finest collections. Every third person I speak to, it sometimes seems, has a grandmother who was a “Cherokee princess.” (I have yet to meet a person outside of the native community who claims to be the descendent of a “Cherokee nobody.” Americans seem enamored of royalty.) T ■ 147 Most distressing to me and some of my native colleagues in academia is the current state of American history texts, and the way native people and relations are depicted in these texts. White scholars, especially those reared in upper-middle-class families, believe that they now can speak adequately for native people on native history and perspectives. Sometimes their liberal predispositions suggest to them that they can somehow equate speaking for a people with allowing those people to speak for themselves. It always astonishes me that white scholars apparently understand fully the necessity for cultural diversity, yet feel it is unnecessary to bring native people into the inner circles of the academy, because “we [whites] already cover all that.” Native voices are rarely allowed to speak. Usually white, liberal intellectuals take up all the places at the table of academia, allowing for no uninvited (or unauthorized) “guests.” As a result, native people have little input into the writing of academic history, and the status quo continues , cloaking itself in the form, but not the substance, of diverse and representative voices. The story of the Choctaw people has been distorted in the telling by non-native academics. For example, a fundamental problem with almost all of these accounts has been the authors’ lack of knowledge of the Choctaw language. The arrogance and condescension of historians who would presume to explain the actions of Choctaws (or of any other people) without knowing even a word of their language is as stunning as it is widespread . Doctoral students in native history are rarely required to acquire a knowledge of the language(s) of the people they study. Yet an aspiring historian of the French people would get nowhere without a working knowledge of the French language. Written sources in Choctaw and other native languages are common. These sources often are the only contemporary accounts written by native people. How can a white historian, with no knowledge of the language, presume to exclude important documentary sources? Furthermore, those who have no knowledge of a language cannot benefit from the cultural knowledge conveyed through learning about that language. Without this knowledge, how can they consider their scholarship complete? In this account of the Choctaw people I have attempted to give voice to the thousands and thousands of Choctaw people who lived before our modern times. Choctaws always preferred to remain separate from other 148 ■ Living in the Land of Death cultures, even when amalgamation was in their best interest. Choctaws living in the nineteenth-century West asserted their Choctaw identity even when they appeared, through mixed heritage, to be white. The Choctaw language has been kept alive, and many traditional practices continue. In the early years of the existence of the American Union, the Choctaw people tried to remain on friendly terms with the Americans, despite the constant and unrelenting American demands for Choctaw lands. When at last the Americans perceived that they had reached the end of voluntary Choctaw land cessions, American leaders devised a plan to dispossess the Choctaw Nation and steal the eastern...