Additional Resources

Compiled by Choctaw Nation Historic Preservation

This list is composed of secondary sources on Choctaws. Authors' writings do not represent the views of Choctaw Nation. Books available at the Choctaw Store have a link after the citation. For further questions or copies of articles, please contact [email protected]

Last updated: 27 April 2021

Early Anthropological Sources

During the 1800s, Cushman and Swanton conducted field research with the help of Choctaw informants to observe Choctaws and other Southeastern Indigenous nations. While not entirely accurate given the misunderstandings of Indigenous people and racism, they are important written resources regarding pre-Removal Choctaw history and culture.

Cushman, Horatio Bardwell. History of the Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Natchez Indians. University of Oklahoma Press, 1899.

Swanton, John R. Source Material for the Social and Ceremonial Life of the Choctaw Indians. Smithsonian Institute: Forgotten Books, 2018.

Choctaw Language and Culture

Oklahoma Choctaw

The New Choctaw Dictionary. Durant: Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, 2016.
https://www.choctawstore.com/choctaw-nation-dictionary-hard-cover.html

Byington, Cyrus. A Dictionary of the Choctaw Language (edited by John R. Swanton and Henry S. Halbert). Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1915.

Haag, Marcia, and Henry Willis. Choctaw Language and Culture: Chahta Anumpa, Volume 1. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001.

Haag, Marcia, and Henry Willis. Choctaw Language and Culture: Chahta Anumpa, Volume 2. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007.

Oklahoma and Mississippi Choctaw

Howard, James H., and Victoria Lindsay Levine. Choctaw Music and Dance. Norman; London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997.

Levine, Victoria Lindsay. "Musical Revitalization among the Choctaw." American Music11, no. 4 (1993): 391-411. https://doi.org/10.2307/3052538.

Choctaw History

Early Choctaw History (Pre-Removal)

Covers the span of Choctaw emergence, the arrival of European settlers, early formation of the United States and the lead up to Choctaw removal by the U.S. government

Carson, James Taylor. "Horses and the Economy and Culture of the Choctaw Indians, 1690-1840." Ethnohistory42, no. 3 (1995): 495-513. https://doi.org/10.2307/483216.

Carson, James Taylor. Searching for the Bright Path: The Mississippi Choctaw from Prehistory to Removal. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999.

Galloway, Patricia Kay. Choctaw Genesis, 1500-1700. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998.

O'Brien, Greg. Choctaws in a Revolutionary Age, 1750-1830. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005.

O'Brien, Greg, ed. Pre-Removal Choctaw History: Exploring New Paths. University of Oklahoma Press, 2015.

McKee, Jesse O., and Jon A. Schlenker. The Choctaws: Cultural Evolution of a Native American Tribe. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2008.

(Choctaw author) Pesantubbee, Michelene E. "Beyond Domesticity: Choctaw Women Negotiating the Tension between Choctaw Culture and Protestantism."Journal of the American Academy of Religion67, no. 2 (1999): 387-409.

(Choctaw author) Pesantubbee, Michelene E. Choctaw Women in a Chaotic World: The Clash of Cultures in the Colonial Southeast. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005.

Reeves, Carolyn Keller, ed. The Choctaw before Removal. Jackson, Miss: University Press of Mississippi, 2004.

Sparacio, Matthew. "In Time of Iron-Age: The Choctaw Civil War and the Southern Frontier." PhD dissertation, University of Auburn, 2018. https://etd.auburn.edu/handle/10415/6121.

Hoak, Stephen P. van. "Untangling the Roots of Dependency: Choctaw Economics, 1700-1860." American Indian Quarterly23, no. 3/4 (1999): 113-28. https://doi.org/10.2307/1185831.

Removal

With the signing of the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek in 1830, the U.S. government forced Choctaws to leave our ancestral homelands for lands west of the Mississippi that later became known as Indian Territory.

(Choctaw author) Akers, Donna L. "Removing the Heart of the Choctaw People: Indian Removal from a Native Perspective." American Indian Culture and Research Journal23, no. 3 (January 1, 1999): 63-76. https://doi.org/10.17953/aicr.23.3.p52341016666h822.

Derosier, Arthur H. The Removal of the Choctaw Indians. Knoxville, Tenn.: University of Tennessee Press, 1981.

Choctaws in Indian Territory (1830-1907)

Once in Indian Territory, Choctaws rebuilt our nation and entered an era that Choctaw elder Curtis Billy describes as a "golden age". In this period, Choctaw Nation established a government that constantly had to fight against American encroachment on their lands and sovereignty.

(Choctaw author) Akers, Donna L. Living in the Land of Death: The Choctaw Nation, 1830-1860. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2004.

Brand, Lauren. "Sovereign Spaces: Navigating Native and Federal Power in the Old Southwest." Rice University, 2016.

Debo, Angie. The Rise and Fall of the Choctaw Republic. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1975.

Burton, Jeffrey. Indian Territory and the United States, 1866-1906: Courts, Government, and the Movement for Oklahoma Statehood. Revised Edition. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997.

Fortney, Jeffrey L. "Serving the Choctaw Cause: Robert M. Jones, Sovereignty, and Pragmatic Diplomacy During the American Civil War." American Nineteenth Century History17, no. 2 (May 3, 2016): 215-33. https://doi.org/10.1080/14664658.2016.1215016.

Gunning, I.C. When Coal Was King: Coal Mining Industry in the Choctaw Nation. Eastern Oklahoma Historical Society, 1975.

(Choctaw author) Kidwell, Clara Sue. The Choctaws in Oklahoma: From Tribe to Nation, 1855-1970. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008.

Krauthamer, Barbara. Black Slaves, Indian Masters: Slavery, Emancipation, and Citizenship in the Native American South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015.

Lowery, Malinda Maynor. "Kinship and Capitalism in the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations." In The Native South, edited by Tim Alan Garrison and Greg O'Brien, 200-219. New Histories and Enduring Legacies. University of Nebraska Press, 2017. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1q1xq7h.15.

(Choctaw author) Mihesuah, Devon A. Choctaw Crime and Punishment, 1884-1907. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009.

Morrison, James Davidson. The Social History of the Choctaw Nation, 1865-1907. Creative Informatics, 1987.

Osburn, Katherine M. B. "'Any Sane Person': Race, Rights, and Tribal Sovereignty in the Construction of the Dawes Rolls for the Choctaw Nation." The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 9, no. 4 (October 2010): 451-71. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537781400004217.

Roberts, Charles. "A Choctaw Odyssey: The Life of Lesa Phillip Roberts." American Indian Quarterly14, no. 3 (1990): 259-76. https://doi.org/10.2307/1185654.

Schreier, Jesse T. "Indian or Freedman?: Enrollment, Race, and Identity in the Choctaw Nation, 1896-1907." Western Historical Quarterly42, no. 4 (November 1, 2011): 458-79. https://doi.org/10.2307/westhistquar.42.4.0459.

Scott, Kirk. "The Choctaw 'Net Proceeds' Delegation and the Treaty of 1855." Fairmount Folio: Journal of History3 (1999). https://journals.wichita.edu/index.php/ff/article/view/48.

Yarbrough, Fay A. "Women, Labor, and Power in the Nineteenth-Century Choctaw Nation." InGender and Sexuality in Indigenous North America, 1400-1850, 123-45. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2011.

Post-Statehood Choctaw History (1907-1975)

Statehood marked a new era for Choctaw government in which it had much of its formal political power stripped. Nevertheless, Choctaws founds ways to maintain our lifeways and political traditions through other means.

Faiman-Silva, Sandra L. "Tribal Land to Private Land: A Century of Oklahoma Choctaw Timberland Alienation from the 1880s to the 1980s." Forest & Conservation History32, no. 4 (October 1, 1988): 191-204. https://doi.org/10.2307/4005036.

Hardin, Randi Dawn Gardner. "Hello Choctaw! : Termination, Self-Determination, and Choctaw Tribal Governance." University of Oklahoma, 2015. https://shareok.org/handle/11244/323756.

Kotlowski, Dean J. "Limited Vision: Carl Albert, the Choctaws, and Native American Self-Determination." American Indian Culture and Research Journal26, no. 2 (January 1, 2002): 17-43. https://doi.org/10.17953/aicr.26.2.9m561063lu26rr0t.

Lambert, Valerie. "Political Protest, Conflict, and Tribal Nationalism: The Oklahoma Choctaws and the Termination Crisis of 1959-1970." The American Indian Quarterly31, no. 2 (May 10, 2007): 283-309. https://doi.org/10.1353/aiq.2007.0024.

McKee, Jesse O. "The Choctaw Indians: A Geographical Study in Cultural Change."Southern Quarterly9, no. 2 (January 1, 1971): 107-141.

Contemporary Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma (1975-present)

Chief David Gardner's reorganization of Choctaw Nation government marked a new era of Choctaw governance and change that brings us to the present.

(Choctaw author) Baker, Megan. "(Re)Developing Sovereignty: Choctaw Reconfigurations of Culture and Politics through Economic Development in Oklahoma." Master's thesis, UCLA, 2017. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9148g45r.

Faiman-Silva, Sandra. Choctaws at the Crossroads: The Political Economy of Class and Culture in the Oklahoma Timber Region. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997.

(Choctaw author) Lambert, Valerie. Choctaw Nation: A Story of American Indian Resurgence. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009.

Milligan, James C. The Choctaw of Oklahoma. Abilene: H. V. Chapman, 2003. https://www.choctawstore.com/the-choctaw-of-oklahoma-hardcover-2003-by-james-c.html

Sources by Topic (Alphabetical)

Alabama Choctaws

Matte, Jacqueline Anderson. "Extinction by Reclassification: The MOWA Choctaws of South Alabama and Their Struggle for Federal Recognition."Alabama Review59, no. 3 (2006): 163-204.

Archaeology

Brown, Ian W. Bottle Creek: A Pensacola Culture Site in South Alabama. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2003.

Carleton, Kenneth Hoffman. Eighteenth-Century Trails in the Choctaw Territory of Mississippi and Alabama. University of Georgia, 1989.

Fedoroff, Michael. "Earth-Oven Technology in the Mississippi Pine Hills: An Experimental Approach to Archaeological Investigations and Method Development." Master's thesis, University of Southern Mississippi, 2009.

Voss, Jerome A., and John H. Blitz. "Archaeological Investigations in the Choctaw Homeland." American Antiquity53, no. 1 (January 1988): 125-45. https://doi.org/10.2307/281159.

(Choctaw author) Watkins, Joe. Indigenous Archaeology: American Indian Values and Scientific Practice. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2001.

Chiefs & Leaders

Baird, W. David. Peter Pitchlynn: Chief of the Choctaws. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986.

O'Brien, Greg. "Pushmataha: Choctaw Warrior, Diplomat, and Chief." Mississippi History Now. http://mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/articles/14/pushmataha-choctaw-warrior-diplomat-and-chief.

Civil War (Five Tribes)

Abel, Annie Heloise. The American Indian and the End of the Confederacy, 1863-1866. 1st edition. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993.

Bailey, M. Thomas. Reconstruction in Indian Territory: A Story of Avarice, Discrimination, and Opportunism. Port Washington: Kennikat Press, 1972.

Cultural Revitalization - Material Culture

(Choctaw author) Byram, Jennifer. "Reawakening Chahta Nan Tvnna (Choctaw Textiles)." Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings, January 1, 2018. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/tsaconf/1076.

Gettys, Marshall. "Choctaw Cane Baskets, 1830 to 1850: An Oklahoma Perspective." InThe Work of Tribal Hands: Southeastern Indian Split Cane Basketry, edited by Dayna Bowker Lee and Hiram F. Gregory, 97-114. Natchitoches: Northwestern State University Press, 2006.

Spanos, Mary. "Mississippian Textiles at Beckum Village (1Ck24), Clarke County, Alabama." Master's thesis, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa., 2006.

(Choctaw author) Thompson, Ian. "Chahta Intikba Im Aiikhvna (Learning From the Choctaw Ancestors): Integrating Indigenous and Experimental Approaches in the Study of Mississippian Technologies." PhD dissertation, University of New Mexico, 2008.

(Choctaw author) Thompson, Ian. Choctaw Food: Remembering the Land, Rekindling Ancient Knowledge. Durant: Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, 2019.
https://www.choctawstore.com/choctaw-food-by-ian-thompson.html

Five Tribes History

Carter, Kent. The Dawes Commission: And the Allotment of the Five Civilized Tribes, 1893-1914. Orem: Ancestry Publishing, 1999.

Debo, Angie. And Still the Waters Run. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973.

Debo, Angie. "The Five Civilized Tribes: Report on Social and Economic Conditions." Indian Rights Association, 1951.

Foreman, Grant. The Five Civilized Tribes: Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Seminole. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971.

Foreman, Grant. Indian Removal: The Emigration of the Five Civilized Tribes of Indians. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1974.

Littlefield, Jr., Daniel F., and James W. Parins, eds.Encyclopedia of American Indian Removal. Santa Barbara, Calif: Greenwood, 2011.

Miner, H. Craig. The Corporation and the Indian: Tribal Sovereignty in Indian Territory, 1865-1907. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989.

Roberts, Alaina E. I've Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021.

Encounters with De Soto and Spanish

Hudson, Charles, John E. Worth, Eugene Lyon, Jeffrey P. Brain, John H. Hann, Frances G. Crowley, David Bost, et al.The De Soto Chronicles: The Expedition of Hernando de Soto to North America in 1539-1543. Edited by Lawrence A. Clayton, Edward C. Moore, and Vernon James Knight Jr. Tuscaloosa, Ala. London: University Alabama Press, 1995.

Louisiana Choctaws

Bushnell, Jr., David I. The Choctaw of Bayou Lacomb, St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana. Government Printing Office, 1909.

Bushnell, David I. "Myths of the Louisiana Choctaw." American Anthropologist12, no. 4 (1910): 526-35. https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1910.12.4.02a00050.

Jones, Mary Jackson, and Herman Jackson. "Keeping It Alive: Choctaw Language." http://www.louisianafolklife.org/LT/Virtual_Books/Keeping_It/creole_book_keep_choc.html.

Klopotek, Brian. Recognition Odysseys: Indigeneity, Race, and Federal Tribal Recognition Policy in Three Louisiana Indian Communities. Durham: Duke University Press, 2011.

Kniffen, Fred B., Hiram F. Gregory, and George A. Stokes. The Historic Indian Tribes of Louisiana: From 1542 to the Present Louisiana. Reprint edition. Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1994.

Mapping

Watkins, Bradley W. "Reconstructing the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, 1894-1898: Landscape and Settlement on the Eve of Allotment." Ph.D., Oklahoma State University, 2007 https://shareok.org/handle/11244/6774

Missionaries

Coleman, Louis. Cyrus Byington: Missionary and Choctaw Linguist. Kearney: Morris Publishing, 1996.
https://www.choctawstore.com/cyrus-byington-missionary-and-choctaw-linguist.html

(Choctaw author) Kidwell, Clara Sue. Choctaws and Missionaries in Mississippi, 1818-1918. Revised edition. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997.

Mississippi Choctaws

Osburn, Katherine M. B. Choctaw Resurgence in Mississippi: Race, Class, and Nation Building in the Jim Crow South, 1830-1977. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2014.

Tubby, Roseanna. After Removal: The Choctaw in Mississippi. Edited by Samuel J. Wells. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2004.

York, Kennith H. Choctaw Nationalism: Choctaw Culture, Language and History. Outskirts Press, 2013.

Oklahoma History

(Choctaw author) Wright, Muriel H. The Story of Oklahoma. Webb Publishing Co., 1930.

(Choctaw author) Wright, Muriel H. Our Oklahoma. Co-Operative Publishing Company, 1939.

Southeastern Indians (Pre-Choctaw Removal)

Fundaburk, Emma Lila. Southeastern Indians Life Portraits: A Catalogue of Pictures 1564-1935. Tuscaloosa: University Alabama Press, 2000.

Fundaburk, Emma Lila, Mary Douglass Fundaburk Foreman, and Vernon James Knight Jr. Sun Circles and Human Hands: The Southeastern Indians Art and Industries. Tuscaloosa: University Alabama Press, 2001.

Myer, William Edward. Indian Trails of the Southeast. J. Crutchfield Publishers, 2007.

Usner, Daniel H. "American Indians on the Cotton Frontier: Changing Economic Relations with Citizens and Slaves in the Mississippi Territory." The Journal of American History72, no. 2 (1985): 297-317. https://doi.org/10.2307/1903377.

Usner, Daniel H. Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley Before 1783. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992.

Schooling

Crum, Steven. "The Choctaw Nation: Changing the Appearance of American Higher Education, 1830-1907." History of Education Quarterly47, no. 1 (February 2007): 49-68. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1748-5959.2007.00074.x.

Morrison, James D. Schools for the Choctaws. Durant: Ameba Publishing, 2016.
https://www.choctawstore.com/schools-for-the-choctaws-paperback-2016-by-dr-jame.html

Snyder, Christina. Great Crossings: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in the Age of Jackson. Oxford, UK ; New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Stories

Kirwan, Padraig. "Choctaw Tales: An Interview with LeAnne Howe." Women: A Cultural Review27, no. 3 (July 2, 2016): 265-79. https://doi.org/10.1080/09574042.2016.1267468.

Mould, Tom.Choctaw Tales. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2004.