Supplying Our Wants: Choctaws and Chickasaws Reassess the Trade Relationship with Britain, 1771-72

Title

Creator

Greg O'Brien See all items with this value

Date

2007

Bibliographic Citation

O'Brien, Greg. 2007. Supplying Our Wants: Choctaws and Chickasaws Reassess the Trade Relationship with Britain, 1771-72. In Coastal Encounters: The Transformation of the Gulf South in the Eighteenth Century edited by Richard F. Brown, pp. 59-90. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln.

annotates

O’Brien’s chapter in Coastal Encounters covers the congress between the representatives of the British government, the Choctaw, and Chickasaw tribes in Mobile from December 1771 to January 1772. O’Brien describes the proceedings of the meeting with a focus on the grievances of both tribes, including the lack of any congresses in seven years and the transgressions of British traders and hunters. Despite the issues facing the Choctaw and Chickasaw, O’Brien shows that both were still regionally powerful enough for the British to worry about a possible alliance with Spain, and in turn those tribes were able to assert some authority and draw some concessions during the meeting. O’Brien further describes a number of ceremonial features of both Choctaw and Chickasaw diplomacy. Just as Galloway’s article “So Many Little Republics' (1994) explored Choctaw politics and diplomacy during the 1765 congress, this chapter provides a complementary study to the 1771-72 congress in Mobile.

Subject

Chahta (Choctaw) See all items with this value

Chickasaw See all items with this value

British See all items with this value

Relations See all items with this value

Commerce See all items with this value

Indian Congress See all items with this value

Mobile (AL) See all items with this value

Temporal Coverage

Postcontact See all items with this value

18th Century See all items with this value