CNO Sources

The following is a body of evidence for the cultural affiliation between today’s Choctaw people and the Native Americans living in the southwestern fifth of present-day Alabama at the time of First Contact. It is separated according to the categories used for demonstrating cultural affiliation under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. It is derived from Thompson (2025):

Linguistic Evidence: Spanish colonial expeditions of the mid-1500s were the first Europeans to make written records about the languages of the southeastern Tribes. From the time they met Chief Tvshkalusa until they crossed into present-day Mississippi on the west side of the Tombigbee River, every Native American word that the Spanish recorded is recognizable in today’s Choctaw language. The only other potential sources for these words are the Chickasaw Tribe and the Alabama Tribe, whose languages are both related to the Choctaw language. However, the Chickasaw were living west of the Tombigbee River near present-day Starkville, Mississippi, at this time. The Alabama were living to the north and west of the Chickasaw (Biedma [1993] 1544:236-238). The Spanish also documented a boundary line existing somewhere in the central Alabama River Valley in the mid-1500s. It separated downstream towns that spoke Choctaw from upstream towns that spoke eastern Muskogean language(s), which were ancestral to the Muskogee Creek (Galloway 1995:153). Choctaw place names, some of which are now the official USGS names, blanket the Alabama landscape from Mobile Bay up the Alabama River (Sheldon et al. 2023) to the mouth of the Cahaba, and up the Tombigbee River drainage to the Mississippi state line. This triangle demarcates where, in Alabama, Choctaw-speaking communities were living at the time of European contact (See Swanton 1946:60).

Archaeological Evidence: A type of ceramics known as Fatherland Incised is the dominant decorated ware found in the archaeological deposits created by the Eastern and Southern District Choctaw communities in the 1700s (Western District Choctaw towns have not received much archaeological study to date). Fatherland Incised ceramics were made and used by Native communities in several areas, but their development was primarily associated with communities in the Mississippi Delta and Mississippi Sound areas. Through Fatherland Incised ceramics, archaeologists have inferred that the Eastern and Southern Choctaw Districts originated somewhere in those areas. Keeping in mind that controlled archaeological excavations have only taken place at a single Choctaw town, Shomo Takali, the more refined ceramic chronology put together from those excavations shows that Fatherland Incised ceramics did not appear at the site until after 1730 (Little et al. 2020). In 1729, a combined force of French and Choctaw destroyed the Natchez Tribal government (Mooney 1997). The Natchez Tribe, long-term inhabitants of the Mississippi Delta, is strongly affiliated with Fatherland Incised ceramic type. Fatherland Incised ceramics appear on Chickasaw sites in northern Mississippi after 1730, where they are interpreted as material evidence for what is known historically—the Chickasaw took in Natchez survivors after their home was destroyed. The presence of the same ceramic types on Eastern and Southern District Choctaw sites after 1730, would likewise seem to suggest that Choctaw towns may have taken in Natchez survivors, possibly captured women (the gender associated with making pottery) who were adopted into the Choctaw Tribe. Before the Fatherland Incised ceramics arrived, the most commonly produced decorated wares in the Eastern and Southern District towns were nicked rim incised types (Hayes 2016:108). These have a developmental history that can be traced from the Pensacola ceramics of the Fuhrman phase (1500s Central Alabama River Valley) to the incised ceramics of the Lydell phase (early 1600s central Alabama River Valley), to the Doctor Lake and Port Dauphin Incised types made by the Mobilian Tribe on Mobile Bay in the early 1700s (Regnier 2014; Jenkins and Sheldon 2016), and to the nicked rim incised ceramics of the early 1700s Eastern and Southern District Choctaw towns in Mississippi. This archaeological ceramic sequence has a correlate in the Choctaw language. Fossil shell temper (often made from Exogyra clams) was used to a significant extent in the globular cooking jars made by the Lydell phase potters on the Alabama River and also by potters at the Chickasaw settlements near Starkville, MS, both of which were located in the Black Belt Prairie (Regnier 2014; Little and Johnson 2018). Conversely, fossil shell temper is not known to have been used by Choctaw communities in Mississippi in the 1700s. Opahaksun is the Choctaw name for the river birch tree. It’s also the Choctaw name for the fossil clam shells of the type that are common on the Black Belt Prairie (Byington 1915:306). Birch trees and fossil clam shells look absolutely nothing alike in their natural state. However, fossil shell, like live shell (see Chapter 5), is processed into pottery temper by burning it. Burning brings about a chemical change in the shell. Through this change, the fossil shell delaminates into thin, light-colored flakes that do indeed resemble birch bark. The Choctaw word opahaksun appears to be a cultural memory that comes from ancestral groups on the Black Belt Prairie, such as Lydell phase potters, who processed fossil shells into pottery temper. In addition to the pottery sequence, numerous similarities also exist between the small earth mounds produced by the communities living on the Mobile and lower Alabama River in the 1600s (Jenkins and Sheldon 2016:94) and the distinctive Choctaw burial practices of the early 1700s (see Anonymous 2012).

Oral History: A Choctaw oral history places Choctaw people on the Black Belt prairie at the end of the Pleistocene (Cushman 1899:207). Another Choctaw oral history places an ancestral Choctaw community on the Alabama River when corn agriculture was adopted (Cushman 1899: 276-278). When the Natchez Tribe described the 18th century settlement of the Choctaw towns in eastern Mississippi, they talked about so many Choctaw people appearing that it was as if they had come out of the ground (du Pratz 2006 [1758]:326). If, in fact, these Choctaw people had come primarily from the Mississippi Delta or Mississippi sound—places nearer to the Natchez homeland than the new Choctaw towns in east-central Mississippi—we might expect for the Natchez account to focus on the population void that this movement created in close proximity to them. Instead of a void, the Natchez account focuses on a population increase. This implies that many of these Choctaw people moved into eastern Mississippi from an area still more distant to the Natchez, meaning farther east.

Geographic: The De Soto Commission concluded that the towns of Pafalaya encountered by de Soto were the Moundville site and its surrounding Black Warrior River Valley settlements (Hudson 1994:88). Pafalaia was a Tribal name specifically for the Choctaw people (Adair 1775:192; also cf. Romans 1999[1776]:137). Settlements in the Moundville community were occupied until 1650. The first French to arrive would have interacted with Choctaw people who grew up at those settlements on the Black Warrior. Equating the Choctaw with de Soto’s Mabila, it would not have been much of a leap for the French to name the river that these 17th century Choctaw-speaking settlements were located on after Tvshkalusa, the famous Choctaw-speaking leader whom de Soto had encountered in Alabama. An early French map entry indicates that the Mobilian Tribe moved from present-day Wilcox County in the Central Alabama River Valley, downstream to Mobile Bay where the French first encountered them in 1700 (Baron De Crenay 1733). A ceramic chronology has also been created that links the pre-contact community in Wilcox County with the Mobilian Tribe living just north of Mobile Bay in the early 1700s (Regnier 2010). The French called the Black Warrior River in present-day Alabama Tvshkalusa, which means Black Warrior in the Choctaw language. This is how the stream came to have its English name. The original Choctaw name for it was Oka Chito (Big Water) (Swanton 1946:60), but by the early 1700s, this name had switched to Apotakahvcha, meaning Boundary River (Halbert 1899b:68-69). This was a reference to the Black Warrior River Valley being part of an uninhabited no-man’s land between the Choctaw, Muskogee, Coushatta, and Chickasaw during the 1700s. Why would the French call this river “Black Warrior”? The Choctaw Nation Historic Preservation Department has been privileged to spend time in French colonial map archives with French scholars who specialize in this period. Several early French maps show the Choctaw main villages located on the Black Warrior River in present-day Alabama. One particular map has a dotted line drawn in 18th century ink, connecting the Choctaw towns shown on the Black Warrior River with a vacant area shown in east-central Mississippi where the Choctaw villages are known to have been located during the French period (de Fer 1715). Was the dotted line intended to show a cartographic correction or to show a historic movement of Choctaw-speakers out of the Black Warrior Valley and into present-day Mississippi? No documentary evidence has been found in the archives to answer this question.

The following two story maps were produced by the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and convey specific information about the topics of the 1765  Treaty of Mobile (see also this Iti Fabvssa article) and the Choctaw Trail of Tears, Chief Harkins Party Route (see also: articles 2014.06, 2014.07, 2014.08, and 2014.09; and The Trail of Tears: Why we remember, Choctaw Removals and The New Jaw Bone for additional discussion and information on the Choctaw Trail of Tears).