When the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek was signed in 1830, about 19,000 Choctaws lived in Mississippi. Article 14 offered land to those who chose to stay, up to 640 acres for an adult, but only if they registered with the agent within six months. The agent, William Ward, allotted land to those who did. Many families then had to sell to survive, and others were cheated out of what they were given. Historians say the government never kept the promise, and that between 4,000 and 7,000 Choctaws stayed regardless, with the state of Mississippi offering them the rights of free white persons.
The roll
The claims outlasted the removals. A commission under an 1842 law finished in 1845, and no list of the Mississippi Choctaws was kept again until Congress passed the Curtis Act in 1898 and told the Dawes Commission to identify them. After hearings across the state, Commissioner McKennon's roll of March 10, 1899, named 1,923 people, most of them full-bloods whom the commission described as poor and rarely in serious trouble. The Interior Department suspended approval that June. A second identification, approved on February 14, 1903, listed some 500 full-bloods, but those who did not move west within six months were left off the final citizenship rolls. Congress set aside $20,000 to move about 3,000 Choctaws, with the fare from Meridian at $19.50 a head. The money moved 269 people. In March 1907 the department disapproved the McKennon roll, without notice or hearing, the claimants said later.
Waiting at Meridian
On May 20, 1909, a Choctaw named Pat Chitto gave a deposition at Meridian in the Winton case. He said he had stayed behind because he was waiting for a government notice that never came. Around 1900 only 1,253 Choctaws remained in Mississippi, with no recognized government and few schools. A congressional committee later called theirs the "poorest pocket of poverty in the poorest state in the country." They lived in isolated communities on public land in the east-central part of the state and along the Gulf Coast, working as sharecroppers and day laborers. In 1913 they organized a council under Wesley Johnson, and in February 1914 he and other delegates met President Woodrow Wilson in Washington. Federal hearings in 1917 drew about 100 Choctaws.
An agency at Philadelphia
In 1918, after years of lobbying, the Bureau of Indian Affairs opened the Choctaw Indian Agency at Philadelphia and agreed to build schools in seven communities, though they stopped at the tenth grade. Influenza in the war years killed as many as a quarter of the people, and the 1930 count was 1,665. The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 made a Choctaw government possible. Land was bought and placed in trust in 1939, and in December 1944 some 15,150 acres were set aside. On April 20, 1945, after members ratified a constitution, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians was federally recognized, with Joe Chitto of Standing Pine as its first council chairman.
The Dancing Rabbit Creek Treaty Site marks the council ground of 1830, and the Chahta Immi Cultural Center tells the story of the people who remained.