Dispossession and Integration: Land Cessions and the Chickasaws’ Economic Revolution, 1801–34

Students of southeastern Indian history usually describe the land-cession treaties of the nineteenth century as submissions, on the part of Native American leaders, to necessity, to the superior power and land hunger of white Americans. This paper will argue that most still retained considerable agency during negotiations, and that some, particularly the leaders of the Chickasaw nation, managed to drive shrewd bargains with the United States. The Chickasaws undertook an intensifying engagement with market forces, and the lands they ceded brought compensations that improved their position within that market. These included commercial rights on the roads that the U.S. government built on their territory, debt assumption that subsequently allowed would-be Chickasaw merchants to improve their private credit, and educational and technical assistance that helped Chickasaw families make a transition to commercial farming. While some of these benefits accrued to a small elite class, others (like technical assistance) were more widespread, or became so through intra-national Chickasaw trade. Yet Chickasaw leaders retained an ethic of redistribution and communal responsibility, the latter of which they displayed in the trust-lands provisions of the nation's Removal treaties. This ethic prevented poorer Chickasaw families from losing out entirely during the market transition.