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Title
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Searching for the Bright Path: The Mississippi Choctaws from Prehistory to Removal
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Date
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1999
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Bibliographic Citation
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Carson, James Tyalor. 1999. Searching for the Bright Path: The Mississippi Choctaws from Prehistory to Removal. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln.
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annotates
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Carson’s 1999 book is a cultural history of the Mississippi Choctaw spanning from the Mississippian period to removal in 1830. Carson argues that four main cultural elements endured throughout Choctaw history: gendered division of labor, matrilineal kinship, chiefdom-based political structure, and a Mississippian cosmological system based around the sacred circle. Whereas other authors like White (1983) emphasized disruption and change among the Choctaw in this period, Carson shows these cultural elements endured, thereby highlighting the Choctaw’s acclimation to Euro-American economics. In analyzing the Choctaw’s entry into the market economy, Carson incorporates some of his earlier research into the Choctaw’s adoption of horses and cattle, using similar sets of source material. Chapter 1 features some brief mention of ancestral Choctaw groups including the Moundville, Bottle Creek, and Burial Urn peoples in Alabama. There is also some discussion of funerary practices in the first chapter. In discussing Choctaw factionalism during the early 1800s, Carson avoids framing the conflict as one between full-blooded Choctaw and mixed-race members, as White did. Instead, he frames the schism as between primordialist and cosmopolitan groups, which transcended racial boundaries. Carson’s book is significant for its greater exploration of the continuities and changes in Choctaw culture than earlier works.