Halito (Hello)!

Welcome to Chahta's Indigenous Alabama! This site provides resources for conducting better informed compliance (Section 106) archaeology in the ancestral homelands of the Chahta (Choctaw) Nation. Today, the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma  (CNO) defines their ancestral homelands to include 25 counties in Alabama, within which all archaeological sites, artifacts, and human remains are potentially associated with their ancestors. The Chahta Nation ceeded much of the land within these counties to the United States through various treaties. Their cultural heritage stretches back to the earliest known human occupations of the Southeast (Paleoindian), and well past the removal efforts of the early nineteenth century, and to the present.

Using the Site

It can be challenging within the confines of compliance-based archaeology to become an instant expert, particularly , that it can be challenging to know what sources to use or have sufficient time (i.e., money) to conduct the level of research required for quality compliance-based archaeology, "to do good Chahta archaeology." The intent of this website is a digital shortcut to Chahta (Choctaw) research and guidance for investigating Chahta (Choctaw) heritage in their Alabama homeland.

Consider this website your (work in progress) Chahta (Choctaw) research library: achaeological gray literature, ethnographic works, ethnohistories, histories, and historical maps that provide information about the Chahta (Choctaw) in one place. We provide summaries and limited annotations as a guide to thinking critically about the information. One might wonder why all the works of John Swanton are not included, and the short answer would be  we turned away from more obvious sources, particularly those that are biased or skewed in their presentation and/or interpretations. While one may derive useful data from such publications, we must apply a critical eye to do so, and such nuanced treatments require additional work.

You can "Browse" all of these "Items" (sources) for this site, you can view "Item Sets,"  you can perform searches using subject keywords, authors, temporal ranges, and other metadata. By clicking into an Item you will see summaries and annotations, and when possible we have provided links to obtain available copies of the Items. You may notice that some Items are denoted with "**" which indicates it includes human remains, funerary objects, or other sensitive information within the document. Also, we actively focused on including information generated by Chahta and Indigenous authors and researchers as possible, denoted by "IA" for Indigenous Author and, when identified, their national affiliation.

Acknowledgements

This project would not have been possible without the collaborative efforts of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma (CNO), particularly Dr. Ian Thompson, Amy Thompson, Ryan Spring, Karen Downen, and Lindsey Bilyeu and the people of the Choctaw Nation.

Adam Anderson, William Turner, Laura Woods, and Natasha Clay of the Alabama Department of Transportation, deserve equal thanks for supporting, envisioning, and advocating for this project.