In September 1830 thousands of Choctaw gathered on Dancing Rabbit Creek, in what is now Noxubee County, a place the Choctaw called Bok Chukfi Ahilha. John Eaton, the Secretary of War, and John Coffee negotiated for the United States under the Indian Removal Act. Many Choctaw opposed the terms offered on September 22, and many left the encampment, but three chiefs, Greenwood LeFlore, Mushulatubbee and Nittuckachee, signed on September 27. It was the first treaty made under the Removal Act and the model for those that followed.
The treaty ceded the nation's last land in Mississippi, more than ten million acres, for territory in present-day Oklahoma. The Choctaw were the first of the southeastern nations removed. Between 1831 and 1833 an estimated 14,000 people were marched west, through a blizzard the first winter and a cholera epidemic in 1832, and about 2,500 died on the way. Article 14 let families stay and take land as citizens, but the promised allotments were widely ignored, and those who remained lost their farms to swindles and settlers. Their descendants are the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians.
A National Historic Landmark since 1996, the 40-acre site lies in wooded country in the southwest of the county, off Monument Road. Daughters of the American Revolution set a granite marker here in 1928, drawing on research by the Choctaw historian Henry Halbert. No buildings stand, and the ground holds a small Choctaw cemetery that is still in use, so treat this as a place for quiet. Stay on the public road, and respect posted land.
The closest stops worth working into your route