James F. Barnett
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617032455
- eISBN:
- 9781617032462
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617032455.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, over twenty different American Indian tribal groups inhabited present-day Mississippi. Today, Mississippi is home to only one tribe, the Mississippi Band ...
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At the beginning of the eighteenth century, over twenty different American Indian tribal groups inhabited present-day Mississippi. Today, Mississippi is home to only one tribe, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. This book explores the historical forces and processes that led to this sweeping change in the diversity of the state’s native peoples. It begins with a chapter on Mississippi’s approximately 12,000-year prehistory, from early hunter-gatherer societies through the powerful mound building civilizations encountered by the first European expeditions. With the coming of the Spanish, French, and English to the New World, native societies in the Mississippi region connected with the Atlantic market economy, a source for guns, blankets, and many other trade items. Europeans offered these trade materials in exchange for Indian slaves and deerskins, currencies that radically altered the relationships between tribal groups. Smallpox and other diseases followed along the trading paths. Colonial competition between the French and English helped to spark the Natchez rebellion, the Chickasaw–French wars, the Choctaw civil war, and a half-century of client warfare between the Choctaws and Chickasaws. The Treaty of Paris in 1763 forced Mississippi’s pro-French tribes to move west of the Mississippi River. The Diaspora included the Tunicas, Houmas, Pascagoulas, Biloxis, and a portion of the Choctaw confederacy. In the early nineteenth century, Mississippi’s remaining Choctaws and Chickasaws faced a series of treaties with the United States government that ended in destitution and removal.Less
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, over twenty different American Indian tribal groups inhabited present-day Mississippi. Today, Mississippi is home to only one tribe, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. This book explores the historical forces and processes that led to this sweeping change in the diversity of the state’s native peoples. It begins with a chapter on Mississippi’s approximately 12,000-year prehistory, from early hunter-gatherer societies through the powerful mound building civilizations encountered by the first European expeditions. With the coming of the Spanish, French, and English to the New World, native societies in the Mississippi region connected with the Atlantic market economy, a source for guns, blankets, and many other trade items. Europeans offered these trade materials in exchange for Indian slaves and deerskins, currencies that radically altered the relationships between tribal groups. Smallpox and other diseases followed along the trading paths. Colonial competition between the French and English helped to spark the Natchez rebellion, the Chickasaw–French wars, the Choctaw civil war, and a half-century of client warfare between the Choctaws and Chickasaws. The Treaty of Paris in 1763 forced Mississippi’s pro-French tribes to move west of the Mississippi River. The Diaspora included the Tunicas, Houmas, Pascagoulas, Biloxis, and a portion of the Choctaw confederacy. In the early nineteenth century, Mississippi’s remaining Choctaws and Chickasaws faced a series of treaties with the United States government that ended in destitution and removal.
Katherine M. B. Osburn
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781496818096
- eISBN:
- 9781496818133
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496818096.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This essay approaches Faulkner’s stories about Mississippi Indians from the perspective of a historian of the Native South. It discusses shifting ideas about the role of narrative in historical ...
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This essay approaches Faulkner’s stories about Mississippi Indians from the perspective of a historian of the Native South. It discusses shifting ideas about the role of narrative in historical analysis and reviews what other scholars have said about Faulkner’s Indigenous peoples. It demonstrates the importance of stories crafted from historical documentation to understanding Faulkner’s Mississippi. At the time that Faulkner was writing, Choctaws were engaged in their own storytelling. The tales Mississippi Choctaws spun over the course of Faulkner’s life demonstrate how subaltern peoples use historical narratives, even painful ones, for powerful political purposes. Considering the actions of Mississippi’s actual Indigenous peoples locates Faulkner’s imaginary Indigenous peoples in a critical historical context of colonialism. The stories that Mississippi Choctaws crafted about themselves, excavated from the archives, deserve a place alongside Faulkner’s work as a way to think about Native Southerners and that elusive and contingent thing we call truthLess
This essay approaches Faulkner’s stories about Mississippi Indians from the perspective of a historian of the Native South. It discusses shifting ideas about the role of narrative in historical analysis and reviews what other scholars have said about Faulkner’s Indigenous peoples. It demonstrates the importance of stories crafted from historical documentation to understanding Faulkner’s Mississippi. At the time that Faulkner was writing, Choctaws were engaged in their own storytelling. The tales Mississippi Choctaws spun over the course of Faulkner’s life demonstrate how subaltern peoples use historical narratives, even painful ones, for powerful political purposes. Considering the actions of Mississippi’s actual Indigenous peoples locates Faulkner’s imaginary Indigenous peoples in a critical historical context of colonialism. The stories that Mississippi Choctaws crafted about themselves, excavated from the archives, deserve a place alongside Faulkner’s work as a way to think about Native Southerners and that elusive and contingent thing we call truth
Kenneth Watson
Douglas B. Chambers (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617033032
- eISBN:
- 9781617033056
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617033032.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This is a collection of twenty-one literary and historical chapters marking the 50th anniversary of the Southern Quarterly, one of the oldest scholarly journals (founded in 1962) dedicated to ...
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This is a collection of twenty-one literary and historical chapters marking the 50th anniversary of the Southern Quarterly, one of the oldest scholarly journals (founded in 1962) dedicated to southern studies. This book features the best of the work published in the journal. Chapters represent every decade of the journal’s history, from the 1960s to the 2000s. Topics covered range from historical chapters on the French and Indian War, the New Deal, and Emmett Till’s influence on the Black Panther Party to literary figures including William Faulkner, Robert Penn Warren, Richard Wright, Eurdora Welty, and Carson McCullers. Important regional subjects like the Natchez Trace, the Yazoo Basin, the Choctaw Indians, and Mississippi blues are given special attention.Less
This is a collection of twenty-one literary and historical chapters marking the 50th anniversary of the Southern Quarterly, one of the oldest scholarly journals (founded in 1962) dedicated to southern studies. This book features the best of the work published in the journal. Chapters represent every decade of the journal’s history, from the 1960s to the 2000s. Topics covered range from historical chapters on the French and Indian War, the New Deal, and Emmett Till’s influence on the Black Panther Party to literary figures including William Faulkner, Robert Penn Warren, Richard Wright, Eurdora Welty, and Carson McCullers. Important regional subjects like the Natchez Trace, the Yazoo Basin, the Choctaw Indians, and Mississippi blues are given special attention.
