horses and the economy and culture of the choctaw indians, 1690-1840_copy

7/17/2019 Horses and the Economy and Culture of the Choctaw Indians, 1690-1840_copy

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/horses-and-the-economy-and-culture-of-the-choctaw-indians-1690-1840copy 1/22

Horses and the Economy and Culture of the Choctaw Indians, 1690-1840

James Taylor Carson

Ethnohistory, Vol. 42, No. 3. (Summer, 1995), pp. 495-513.

Stable URL:

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0014-1801%28199522%2942%3A3%3C495%3AHATEAC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-N

Ethnohistory is currently published by Duke University Press.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtainedprior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content inthe JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/journals/duke.html.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.

The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers,and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community takeadvantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

http://www.jstor.orgThu Aug 2 07:32:10 2007


http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html

http://www.jstor.org/journals/duke.html

http://www.jstor.org/journals/duke.html

http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html




Horses and the Economy and Culture of the

Choctaw Indians

1690-1 40

James Taylor Carson,

University

of

entucky

Abstract. Although scholars have studied horses extensively among the Plains

tribes of North America, they have largely overlooked the importance of horses

in the economic and cultural life of the Southeastern Indians. As the Choctaws

adjusted to profound changes caused by contact with E uropeans and Am ericans,

horses became agents of both cultural continuity and econom ic change. Ho rses

were im por tant in activities ranging from ball games to funerary rituals, and they

were essential to the development of the deerskin trade , the Cho ctaw m arket ec on-

omy, and the cattle economy that flourished in Indian Territory. Unfolding over

a ce ntu ry and a half, the horse s role in the cultural an d econom ic evolution of

the Cho ctaw s demonstrated the tribe s remarkable capacity to a da pt to their chang -

ing world.

In the course of a generation, horses revolutionized life among many of

the Plains tribes. M any agricultural peoples were able to d ro p their hoes

and to pick u p and follow the buffalo herds in a nom adic hunting lifestyle.

Unlike the Plains Indians experience, however, horses did not sudden ly

transform Choctaw society. Lacking expansive flat plains and roving buf-

falo herds, the dense woodlands of Mississippi precluded the innovative

use of horses in nomadic hunting and predatory warfare. Nevertheless,

among the Choctaws, horses proved to be an equally influential, i less

dramatic, social, economic, and symbolic innovation that stimulated an

evolution , ra the r than a revolution, of lifestyle. From the 169os, when the

Choctaws first acquired horses, to the 183os, when the United States re-

moved the Ch octaw s to Indian Territory, horses allowed the Ch octaw s to

alter sub stantially their econom ic life an d simultaneously to preserve m uch

of their social values and traditions.

In traditional Choctaw society, men and women performed distinct



96

James Taylor Carson

socioe cono m ic tasks. Wom en directed dom estic life and enjoyed a special

relationship with the plant world. Among their many duties, they fab-

ricated utensils and earthen containers, prepared food, drew water, and

sowed and harvested crops. Their wide fields of corn, beans, pumpkins,

and squash provided two-thirds of the C hoctaw diet and made the Ch oc-

taws wha t Bernard Roman s termed a nation of farmers. l In addition

to their household and farming duties, women accompanied men on long

hunting expeditions to prepare the men's meals because cultural taboos

forbad e m ales fro m doing so. Wom en also transported the game killed by

the men , which contributed the remaining third of the Ch oc taw diet, from

the forest back to the villages, where they processed the animals' skins,

meat, an d bones into clothing, food, and tools.

Men also performed certain functions in Choctaw society. They di-

rected th e exte rna l affairs of the village o r natio n, and they shared a u niq ue

relationship with the animal world. They performed rituals, oversaw re-

lations w ith surrou nding peoples, and, abdve all, waged war a nd h unted .

O n e comm on ritua l activity th at combined the strength and end uranc e of

w arfa re and the close relationship to animals characterized by hunting was

the ball game. In the mid-eighteenth century Frenchman Jean-Bernard

Bossu visited the Ch oc taw Nation and observed such a game between tw o

rival villages. Commenting on the fast-paced action and furious contact

between opposing players, Bossu noted that many Choctaw players had

affixed wildcat tails an d wh ite bird feathers to their ballsticks an d breech-

clouts. For the C hoctaw s, such decoration imbued the ballplayer with the

wildcat's spiri t and ferocity an d the bird's sw iftness. T he ball game, o r the

little broth er of war, provided entertainmen t for wom en and men alike

and allowed men to test the skills that would be essential in hunting and

warfare?

H un ting a nd w arfare were the C hoctaw male's greatest social respon-

sibilities, and his importance in society often depended on his success

in these endeavors. During the fall and winter hunting season, Choctaw

ma les, often accom panied by women and children, set up in winter hu nting

camps far from their villages or relied on their knowledge of the Choc-

taw bord erlands to locate white-tailed deer closer to hom e. M ore th an any

other wild animal, deer provided Choctaw families with meat for food,

skins for clothing, and antlers and bones for tools. If Ch octa w m en could

contro l its timing, they preferred to make war after the hunting season d ur-

ing the spring and summ er months. Exhorted by their wives wh o followed

them o n distant forays to die like real men, Ch octaw s used warfare to

defend their hunting grounds and to still the crying blood of kinsm en



97

orses and the Choctaw Indians

the judgm ent and expe rtise that society esteemed. Exploits on the battle-

field led to civic responsibilities, and leaders often intro duc ed them selves

to assemblies and diplom atic delegations with a recital of [the ir] feats in

war. Such success perm itted gradual advancem ent up the social hierarchy ,

bu t advan cem ent and prom inence cam e with risk. If a chief failed in war,

he could lose his position. Although Choctaw males served a variety of

im po rtan t functions in their society, warfare and hunting were the co rner-

stones of their lives, and without these activities Choctaw males would

have lost m uch of the ir social, econo m ic, an d political significance.

Hunting, fighting, and trading carried Choctaws far and wide, put

them into contact with tribes west of the Mississippi River, and exposed

them to a vast and ancient trade network that stretched as far as New

Mexico. By the 1690s the Choctaws had encountered horses as trade

goo ds. Acquired originally in N ew Mexico, horses were traded across the

G rea t Plains and distributed among several tribes that bordered the west-

ern reaches of th e C ho cta w Natio n. By 1690, the C ad do Ind ians as well as

the neighboring Osage, Wichita, and Avoyello tribes had acquired horses.

Th e C ad do in particular had been carrying on a substantial trade in horses

with the Spanish and other Indian groups but had not integrated horses

into th eir culture. The ir nam e for horses, cauali, derived from the Sp anish

caballo, suggests the regional trade of horses in conformity with Spanish

con cep tion s of trade and alliance. Consequently, horses served these tribe s

as an im po rtan t exchangeable comm odity in the trade with E uropeans for

guns, c loth , and oth er m anufactured items.'

Unlike the Caddo, the Choctaws developed an indigenous term for

the new anim al. Jesuit priest Jacques Gravier recorded in 1701 tha t C hoc-

taws called horses isuba, which derived from isi holba, or deer-resembler.

As a four-footed grass-eating animal, the horse fit into the same category

as deer and wou ld have also been considered to be edible. Like mo st tribes

unfamiliar w ith horses and their utility, the Ch octaw hu nting parties w ho

initially enco untered the anim als most likely shot the horses and ate them ,

a practice they continued well into the eighteenth century. Initially inte-

grated into th e C ho ctaw diet, horses were soon a part of C ho ctaw culture,

for the tra de netw ork am ong the Spanish, Caddo s, W ichitas, and Avoyellos

in t roduced enormous numbers of horses in to the nat ive S o ~ t h e a s t . ~

By the 1730s horses had become a fixture among the Choctaws and

other Southeastern Indians. Moreover, the animals played a crucial role

in the development of the growing deerskin trade with the French and

the British. Indeed, the incorporation of horses into Choctaw culture is

virtually inseparable from the deerskin trade, for horses provided the



98 James Taylor arson

grou nds, a nd wom en began to use horses to fetch the game. W omen also

drov e horse trains laden with provisions when they accompanied their hus-

bands on long hunting journeys and returned with horse trains weighted

dow n by the skins ~ r o c u r e d y their husbands and processed by hand. A

Span ish ship c apt ain traveling in Janu ary 1793 on the Mississippi River

just north of its confluence with the Yazoo River observed such a party.

Twenty-five men, their wives, and their children were leading a train of

fifteen h orses lad en w ith skins and pelts.-

The rise of the deerskin trade and the importance of horses in that

trade dramatically imprinted the Choctaw landscape. Footpaths became

horsepaths, and routes previously used for intervillage and intertribal

communication expanded to serve the burgeoning deerskin trade. Conse-

quently, Cho ctaw s began to incorporate isuba into their toponymic system

and horses into their functional conception of the landscape. Traveling

fro m M obile into the C hoctaw Natio n in the early 173os, Regis du Ro ullet

reported two such toponyms. The first, conchak ou soubaille (canebrake

wh ere a horse dro wn ed) , comm emorated perhap s the personal loss of a

Cho ctaw m an o r women. The second, ouk ite tchuie souba (the bayou

wh ere th ere is a tree that m arks a h orsepa th) indicated the regular passage

of horses along the route from the Choctaw Nation to Mobile and bore

testimon y to the su bstantial horse traffic between the two.

Despite the instrumental role horses played in the deerskin trade,

Ch oc taw s did no t just use them for their labor. Th e animals also entered

into Ch oct aw ritual life, as Louis Leclerc de M ilford observed in a Ch oc-

taw funeral. Ch oct aw s placed the bodies of the dead on o pen air scaffolds

until they had decayed sufficiently for bo nepickers to rem ove the flesh. T h e

bones were then bundled for presentation to the deceased's clan and inter-

men t in the village bon ehou se. After the bonepickers completed their task ,

they slaughtered the deceased's horse (s) and roasted the ca rcass(es) for a

feast. Sha ring the feast with kinfolk or the comm unity, the deceased's rela-

tives celebrated his or her passage and reaffirmed the bond s of c om m un ity

and kinship that bound Ch octaw s together. '

Such scattered observations of the impact of horses on Choctaw life

po int to a bro ad acceptance of the animals in a num ber of functions. T he

growing need for more horses, for trade or personal use, further influ-

enced Ch oc taw behavior. C hoctaw w arriors quickly became embroiled in

a region al patte rn of horse raiding and herdin g. Sometime before 1763 a

band of C hocta ws settled permanently among the Cad do Indians along the

Red River, close to the French tradin g post at Natchitoches. These Ch oc-



99

orses and the C hoctaw Indians

ma ne and fire so as to graze the animal's neck. Stunned, the horse wo uld

collapse, an d the hunter w ould run up a nd secure the animal. By the 1780s

the areas around the Sabine, Red, and Arkansas Rivers had become thriv-

ing centers fo r such activities. In 1807 John Sibley, United States Indian

Agent at the Natchitoches post, reported several groups of Indians pass-

ing both eastw ard and westward through his district with enormo us herds

of horses.I0 Th e sam e economic imperatives that motivated Cho ctaw s to

range across the Mississippi River in quest of more horses were part of

the deerskin trade, but the fate of the latter did not determine the fate of

horses am ong the C hoctaw s, for horses had become essential to Ch oc taw

daily life and culture indepen dent of m arket fluctuations.

The French who had settled the lower Mississippi River valley at the

en d of th e seventeenth century had inau gurated the trade in deerskins, but

the trade intensified after the French ceded control of the eastern lower

Mississippi River valley to the British in 1763. By the 178os, after two

decades of British trade, the Choctaws' demand for European goods had

exceed ed their ability to pay British prices. To com pensate for this unfav or-

able balance of trade, the Cho ctaw s overhunted the white-tailed deer for

their valuable sk ins. As the deer became scarce in the im me diate vicinity,

the Ch octaw s ventured beyond the borderlands su rroun ding their tow ns

an d crossed the Mississippi River, wh ere they had alread y found horses, to

find m ore deer. Because deer hunting was essential to traditio nal Cho c-

taw male and female life and material culture, the disappearance of the

deer meant the potential disappearance of a substantial part of their cul-

ture. By the late eighteenth century, deer were harde r to com e by, and th e

deerskin trade had taken a permanent dow nw ard turn. Coinciding roughly

with the collapse of the deer economy in Mississippi, Choctaw warfare

suffered a similar fate.

Tr adit ion al forms of warfare and colonial client warfare largely ceased

afte r the United States had asserted a tenuo us sovereignty over the sout her n

frontier w ith treaties negotiated at Hopew ell, South Carolina, in the 1780s.

The treaties established peaceful relations between the United States and

the Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Cherokees and opened the way for in-

creasing American intervention and interference in Choctaw affairs. In

1798 the fed eral government organized the area surroun ding the C hoctaw s

in to the M ississippi Territory with the ex pectation of settling the region.

Because of the chronic overhunting of deer, the collapse of the deerskin

trade, and the diplomatic efforts of the United States to suppress hostili-

ties, deer hunting and warfare had declined substantially by

1800. This



5

James Taylor arson

taws dur ing the late 1700s. Natchez, formerly a French colonial tow n tha t

had produced tobacco and cattle, burgeoned with an influx of Loyalist

settlers from the East after the American Revolution. Cotton soon sup-

planted tobacc o as Natchez's most profitable staple crop, and the town 's

pop ulatio n grew from 1,926 in 1788 to 4,436 in 1792. Conseque ntly, plan-

tation agriculture began to expand along several large creeks, and settlers

crept in land along these creeks into the C hoctaw bo rderland s. Moreover,

dro ug hts had ruined the C hocta w corn crops of 1792 and 1793, exac erbat-

ing the difficulties br oug ht on by an epidem ic that s truc k the Ch octa w s in

1790 and killed most of their horses. Many observers commented on the

Choctaws' lack of food, resources, and their imminent starvation. Hold-

ing Am erican settlers responsible for these catastrophic events, C hoc taw

warriors sought to drive the settlers away from their villages and border-

lands by raiding their property, burning what they could, and stealing the

settlers ' horses. Consequently, Choctaw males transferred techniques pe r-

fected in the trans-Mississippi horse raids and brought them to bear on

American settlers.13

Choctaw horse raids combined an aggressive territorial defense with

strategies for economic gain into an innovative form of warfare that per-

petuated male values and traditions in the absence of deer hunting and

traditional warfare. Choctaw warriors commenced their horse raids on

American settlers during the traditional hunting season, between late

August and late April , perhaps because they considered horses as deer-

resemblers. However, the horse raiders also displayed certain warlike

characte ristics, for, by raiding frontier farms, they both defend ed their ter-

rito ria l bou nda ries an d punished a threa tenin g foe.' he loca tion of hors e

raids in relation to the marked boundaries between the Choctaws and

the U nited States canno t be determined precisely, but the C hoctaw s m ost

likely targeted illegal squ atte rs w ho had crossed the surveyed bor der s on to

Choctaw land. In a confrontation with such squatters, Choctaw leaders

thre aten ed: You are all Am ericans and usurpers of these lands, and as

such I wa rn you to leave them with all your property w ithin the ne xt tw o

weeks. Th en I shall retu rn w ith my w ar rio rs. o compel all of your people

to evacuate this territory. Anxious to protect their borders, Ch oct aw

headmen constantly reiterated to federal and territorial officials a desire

to hav e their national bounda ries clearly mark ed to prevent tresp assing by

Am ericans. In an a ttem pt to clarify the boundaries between the Ch octaw s

and United States, the tw o nations negotiated three treaties: Fort A dams

( I ~ o I ) ,or t C onfedera tion (1802 ) , and H oe Buckintoopa (1803 ). Dur ing

the 1801 Treaty of F ort Adam s nego tiations Cho cta w headm en specifically



5 1

orses and the C hoctaw Indians

fro m the C ho cta w side of the boundary. Governor Winthr op S argent sup-

po rted the Ch oct aw claim, fearing that as long as the United States refused

to a ccom m odate their wishes the Choctaws would continue to steal horses

and destroy farmsteads.

T h e Ch octa ws possessed a legal right to protect their territory in such

a manner. The Treaty of Hopewell reserved for them the right to punish

illegal sq ua tte rs as they please, an d they emp loyed the hor se raid to fulfill

this stipulation . Th e raids frequently forced settlers to aba ndon their farm -

steads, but the complaints lodged by settlers never mentioned fatalities.

According t o the Ho pewell Treaty, i any Ch octaw murdered an American

citizen, Choctaw leaders had to deliver the perpetrator to the appropri-

ate authorities w ho wo uld punish the offender according to United States

law. By not harming American citizens, the Choctaws avoided potentially

dangerous conflicts with settlers and the federal government but still ac-

complished their ultimate

goa1.l'

American settlers and officials equated horse raids with stealing, an

antisocial and illegal appropriation of another person's private property.

Historian William McLoughlin has concurred with this assessment, argu-

ing that horse stealing among the Cherokees indicated a breakdown of

the ir culture. How ever, like their Plains Indian counterp arts, the Ch octa w s

incorp orated horse theft into their war complex. Consequently, raiding the

enemy and taking his horses became perfectly legitimate and even desir-

able activities. '' Th e Cho ctaw warriors ' determination to perpetu ate their

hun ting an d warring ways throu gh the theft of horses, an d their underlying

motivations for such behavior, surfaced secondhand in a letter penned by

the governor of Mississippi Territory, Winthrop Sargent, that demanded

the r etur n of som e stolen horses:

In a case of som e horses demanded from th e m . they have declared

their determination sooner to shoot and take them for food than make

the surrender. Observing that their Country, once affording abun-

danc e, had become desolate by the hands of a People w ho k new no t

but to increase their W retchedness hey were determined in future

to Co nsid er our D om estic Animals as fit Objects fo r the chase.I9

Ch oct aw males fully appreciated the impact American settlement had ha d

on their hun ting and warfare traditions, and roguish young men, gro w-

ing to maturity in a society where the traditional means of social and

political advancement were no longer present, provided eager levies for

the horse raids. For these young men the horse raid and horse steal-



5 2

lam es Taylor arson

of locusts -and dissuaded settlers fro m venturing too far fro m w ha t the

C ho cta w s perceived as an acceptable frontier between the t w o peoples.

Th e 1790s an d 18oos, the era of the horse raids, culminated the C ho c-

taws' ascendancy on the frontier. During this time the Ch octaw s enjoyed

a great measure of power and independence from the United States. Rue-

fully admitting the strength of the Choctaw Nation, Mississippi Territory

Go verno r William Claib orne lamented that A merican settlers had suffered

gre at inconvenience at the han ds of the Cho ctaws, but counseled them

to acq uiesce to C ho cta w aggression in the broa der interests of diplom acy.

In his instru ctio ns to the comm issioners w ho negotiated the 1801 Treaty of

Fo rt Adams, Secretary of War H enry D earborn cautioned them t o regard

the Ch oc taw s as the most powerful Nation of Indians within the limits

of the United States.

However, Choctaw political power in relation to the United States

began dete rior ating in 1803 and w as decisively broken w ith the n egotia-

tion of the Treaty of M ou nt D exter in 1805. In 1803 Gov ernor W illiam

Claiborne charged recently appointed Choctaw Agent Silas Dinsmoor

w ith reclaiming the Cho ctaw s from a State of Savage ignorance. 13 Th e

age nt's presence an d broadly conceived mission of civilization allowed

the Un ited States to affect directly Ch octa w culture, politics, and f actio n-

alism. Besides the arrival of Agent Dinsmoor, the firm of Panton, Leslie,

and Company, based in Spanish Pensacola, began to demand from the

Choctaws repayment of substantial debts incurred by their purchase of

bullets, gun s, and po wd er on credit. Unable to repay these deb ts, the credit

trap ensnared the Choctaws. With Choctaw debts totaling over forty-six

thousand dollars in 1803, the firm demanded a land cession by the Choc-

taws to retire the debt . 'W pp ose d to the cession of Indian land to private

individuals, the federal government held treaty talks with the C hoctaw s.

Negotiated in 1805, the Treaty of Mount Dexter ceded a substantial por-

tion of southeastern Mississippi to the United States for fifty thousand

dollars, and the federal government used the cash settlement to liquidate

the Choctaw debt owed to Panton, Leslie, and Company. Perhaps more

significantly, however, the treaty invalidated the right conferred by the

Treaty of Hopew ell to allow the Cho ctaws to defend their territorial integ-

rity. W h at proc eeds remained af ter paying the deb t ow ed to Panto n, Leslie,

and Company were earmarked to compensate citizens who had suffered

depre dation s comm itted on stock, and other property by evil disposed

per son s of said Ch oct aw nation. Th is stipulation successfully discour-

aged further horse raiding, for shortly after the conclusion of the treaty

horse raids disappeared from the historical record.



503


taw power that had begun in 1803. The 1814 Treaty of Fort Jackson,

negotiated with the Creeks, opened central Alabama to Am erican settle-

ment, and, consequently, settlement pressures on the Choctaws in Mis-

sissippi greatly increased. Thousands of settlers came to Mississippi; the

population soared from just over thirty thousand in 1810 to seventy-five

thousand in 1820. Immigrants typically claimed the cheap undeveloped

land on the Choctaw frontier and had no compunctions about crossing

the surv eyed lines and squatting o n the C hoctaw s' remainin g land.16 As the

American population grew to outnumber the Choctaws, the shift in the

balance of pow er w as completed. Th e decline of Cho ctaw political po we r

an d increased pressure fro m encroach ing settlers signaled the beg inning of

a new era of Cho ctaw history, one marked by instability and d ou bt ab ou t

the ir futu re in Mississippi. But the horse continued to play an integral role

in the historical evolution of Ch octa w society.

M an y of the substantive ways Cho ctaws exploited horses in the eigh-

teenth century extended well into the nineteenth century, but there were

significant alterations of earlier practices. Choctaws still used horses to

carry goods for trade with Americans, but the saddlepacks were loaded

primarily with beeswax, honey, chestnuts, and tallow, not with deerskins.

Choctaws still traveled on horseback throughout the nation and beyond,

but they also hired themselves out as guides to travelers for a cash fee.

Women also probably used horses, rather than manual labor, to plow

fields. One Choctaw word for the plow, isuba inchahe, suggests the inti-

mate association between the animal and the implement. Furthermore,

C ho cta w leaders occasionally requested fancy saddles, saddlebags, bridles,

and spurs for themselves and their wives as part of the annual annuity

distr ibu ted by the federal government.'-

Although such finery separated the leaders from the comm on Cho c-

taws, who used wooden bits and rags to outfit their horses, horses still

functioned to bind the society and to reinforce the Ch octa w s' sense of com -

mu nity an d place in the wo rld. In an attem pt to interdict the alcohol trade,

to check frontier violence, and to defend the nation's borders, the Choc-

taws organized a national police force in

1823. Th is first instanc e of the

organ ization of a civil power among the Choctaws proved somew hat suc-

cessful in co ntro lling the flow of rum in to the nation.18 Significantly, the

force consisted of mounted men, and the light horse patrols thus allowed

Ch oc taw males, wh o could no longer rely on deer hunting, traditiona l war-

fare, or even horse raid s, to m aintain a m artial function in their society.lY

T he conservative function of horses in C hoctaw traditions found f ur-

ther expression in other activities, especially in the evolution of the ball



504 James Taylor arson

son, an Englishman who traveled through Mississippi while visiting the

Ch oct aw missionary stations, noted that males wore long white horsetails,

rather than wildcat tails and white bird feathers, as part of their game

dress. The shift from the association of masculinity with wild animals,

witnessed by Bossu in the mid-eightee nth century, to one with domes-

ticated animals reveals not only a transformation of the regional animal

ecology over a century bu t the creation an d acceptance of n ew sym bols of

power and manhood. Hodgson also noted a change in the funerary prac-

tices seen by L ouis Leclerc de Milford du ring his visits with th e C ho cta w s

over forty years earlier. By the late eighteenth century they had begun to

bury their dead men with their guns, tom ahaw ks, and favorite horses, so

that they would have something to ride to the afterlife. Horses had thus

attained a significance inseparable from the hunting an d warfare traditions

and essential to th e passage from life to de ath. Unfortunately, Ho dgso n

did n ot record h ow the funeral rituals for women ch anged or p e r ~ i s t e d . ~

By the 1820s, however, rather than kill the valuable animals a nd ea t

them in a communal feast as was done in the early 17oos, or bury them

as in th e late 17oos, Cho ctaw s instead preferred to believe th at the horse s

spirit accompanied the deceased into the afterworld while its body re-

m aine d to ren der useful live service on earth to the deceased s kinfolk o r

c ~ m m u n it y .~ s men and women came to depend on horses for much

of their livelihood, eating or burying horses no longer made sense, and

funeral trad ition s c hange d to reflect this new sensibility.

Horses had been an important part of the Choctaw economy since

contact with Europeans, but when the deerskin trade collapsed, horses

passed from an economic means to an economic end. In the early nine-

teenth century a Choctaw horse economy developed in response to the

broader emergence of the market economy, and it encompassed an ex-

ternal trade in horses overseen by men and an internal trade involving

horse-related products overseen by women.

The external horse economy involved the exchange of horses with

Americans, a transaction fraught with theft and violence. Attracted to

the large numbers of horses in the Choctaw Nation, Americans increas-

ingly filtered into the nation to steal, to trade, or to purchase horses and

drive them t o m arkets in surrounding towns. A Cho ctaw wo man named

Nancy Gillett complained to Choctaw Agent William Ward that some

white men had stolen one of her horses, valued at fifty dollars, while it

grazed in her fro nt yard. Quickly bo rrowin g a neighbor s horse, Gillett

pursu ed the rustlers to the Tombigbee River at the Cho ctaw Na tion bor-

der-a journey of thirty -six miles. Revealing a com mo npla ce acce ptance



5 5


who had seen the fleeing whites thought nothing of the matter, just as

Gillett tho ug ht nothing of jumping on a horse an d galloping over thirty

miles in pu rsu it of the thieves?'

Nancy Gillett's story was typical. Little Leader, a Cho cta w hea dm an,

also lost a bay mare, a stu d colt, and a brown mare and her colt to rustlers.

Having branded his horses, Little Leader hoped for several years to re-

claim them . O ne wandered back to his house, bu t he never located the

rem ainin g horses. Oth er C hoctaws accused a ring of Am erican rustlers of

coordin ating the horse thefts. On e prominent Cho ctaw leader, David Fol-

som , charged that there are some white men w ho sit near the edges of ou r

country, w ho steal ou r horses [and] w ho lay whiskey there. j3

Ch octa w leaders ha d g ood reason to be alarmed at the vulnerability

of the nation's horse stoc ks. Estimates based on a missionary census take n

in 829 indicated that the Choctaw herd was worth just under half a mil-

lion dollars. To squa nde r such a resource on alcohol drew the ire of several

headmen. Of particular concern to leaders were Choctaw men who re-

ceived rum from A merican traders, traded it to Ch octaw s for their horses

and other items, and then traded the horses to the American traders for

m ore alcohol and other supplies. On e leader from the Six Towns district,

Hwoolatahoomah, declared that he would destroy any whiskey brought

into the nation by Ch octa w warriors to trade for the blankets, guns, and

horses of the na ti0 n. 3~ w oolatahoomah's efforts suggest that the exter-

nal trade of horses was exerting an enormously disruptive influence on

the internal state of the nation. Men, who had traditionally overseen the

external affairs of their villages, oversaw the nineteenth-century external

horse economy, but they were unable to fully control its more pernicious

aspects.35

W omen , wh o had also used horses since the eighteenth century, d rew

on their traditional prerogatives to create an internal horse economy that

rivaled the external economy and seems to have had a much less delete-

rious impact on the nation. Horses required food, and Choctaw women

exploited their traditional links to the plant world to profit from this

need. The amount of corn and fodder sold to other Choctaws cannot

be ascertained, but American travelers were beholden to the women for

essential provisions. Although the cash transactions between Americans

an d C ho cta w wom en were small-seventy-five cents for pum pkin s for a

horse or a dollar f o r some corn and fodder-the women s et the prices, and

this hard currency exchange enabled them to purchase goods from fac-

tors and trad ers witho ut resorting to the barter of furs and skins procure d

by ma1es.j6



5 6

James Taylor arson

in the m id-eighte enth century a nation of farmers. How ever, in the early

nineteenth century the Choctaws were a nation of horsemen and horse-

women. They owned approximately fifteen thousand horses in 1829, a

ratio of

7

horse p er capita. (Th e state of M ississippi in 1840 had a ra tio

of .8 horse pe r capita.) Further attesting to the widespread o wn ership o f

horses, the American Board missionaries reported that even most Ch oct aw

child ren possessed some of these animal^. ^' Because horse ownership

was undifferentiated by gender or age, most Ch octaw s were able to profit

and perhaps prosper within the horse economy. However, the prosperity

would not last in Mississippi because settlers and politicians from that

state in collusion with the administration of Andrew Jackson pressured

the C ho ct aw s to rem ove to Indian Territory in 1830.

The 1830 Choctaw removal treaty made no provision for the trans-

po rtat ion of the C ho ctaw horses to Indian Territory and did n ot, as it did

with cattle, set up a program whereby the federal government agreed to

valuate and pay for animals left behind in Mississippi. To accommodate

the C ho ct aw herd, William A rmstrong, the agent supervising removal, rec-

om m end ed to Secretary of War Lewis Cass tha t the United States con struc t

a special ferryb oat for the exclusive transp ort of C ho ctaw horses over th e

Mississippi River.

T h e federal governm ent never built such a boat, an d after three years

of removal t o Indian Territory, Agent Arm strong estimated tha t the C hoc-

taws had lost two thousand horses to death, disease, and theft. David

Folsom, one of the Choctaws' principal leaders, lost seven horses valued

at $235, and his archrival Nittakechi lost twelve valued at $310. Women

also suffered. Unnohoka claimed $140 for the five horses she lost, and

N anc y Gillett, w h o had earlier been victimized by horse thieves, suffered

even mo re. She lost six horses wo rth $230 . Altogether, hun dre ds of C hoc -

taws requested compensation in Indian Territory for the loss of over two

tho usa nd horses wo rth almo st eighty thousan d dollars. '

Desp ite the eno rm ou s num bers of horses lost during rem oval, the ani-

mals assum ed a critical importance in Indian Territory. Th e enviro nm ent

of Indian Te rritory was conducive to large-scale cattle raising, an d C ho c-

taw cowboys bou ght new stocks of horses to help them control their vast

herds . Ho rses were so essential that for most Choctaws to ride on horse-

back was the first lesson ever learned. 41 Rivaling the he rds of th e Texas

cattle barons, the C ho ctaw cattle economy thrived until their herd s were

dec im ated in the Civil War. Nevertheless, the horse-driven cattle econo my

dre w the Choctaw s further into the nineteenth-century market economy



Horses an d the Cho ctaw Indians

507

society before contact with Europeans. However, certain traditions did

remain intact .

O n e old trad ition tha t survived the rough journey from M ississippi

to Indian Territory was the ball game. Visiting the Choctaws in Indian

Territory som e years after removal, George Catlin witnessed a game and

record ed his impressions in ink on paper and in oils on canvas. Tho se w ho

played the ball game no longer wore wildcat tails or white bird feathers.

Like their cou nterpa rts in the 182os, Ch octaw ballplayers continued to at-

tach tails ma de of white horsehair to their backsides and drape d colored

man es of horsehair aro un d their necks."' Their dress transform ed the m

into horses, a vital part of their contemporary economy and life, but it

also symbolically transform ed them in to deer-resemblers, thus linking the

players and spectators to a lifestyle and culture far removed in time and

space. Ho rses had prom pted substantial changes in the C hoctaw s' culture

and economy over a century and a half, but their power as symbols en-

abled equally important continuities that underlay the first one hundred

fifty years of tumu ltuo us contact with Euro peans and Am ericans.

Notes

This essay is an expanded version of a paper given at the Annual Meeting of

the Southern Anthropological Society, Atlanta, GA, April 1994. I would like to

thank Theda Purdue and Michael

D. Green for their advice, encouragement, an d

criticisms, as well as the anonymous readers at Ethnohistory.

I For a discussion of innovation theory see Everett M. Rogers, Diffusion of

Innovation

(L on do n, 1962), 77-124; Ro bert L. Rands an d Caro l L. Riley, "Dif-

fusion and Discontinuous Distribution,"

American Anthropologist 60 (1958):

247-97; an d Lawrence P. Brown , Innovation Diffusion: A New Perspective

(Lo ndo n, 1981).

Horses among the Plains Indians have attracted more interest than horses

am ong the Indians of the Sou theast. See John C. Ewers, The Horse in Black-

foot lndian Culture Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 159 (Washington,

DC 1955); Gilb ert L. Wilson, "The Horse and the Dog in Hidatsa Culture,"

Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History vol. 15,

p t. z ( N ew York, 1 9z4 ), 125-310; Clark Wissler, "M aterial C ulture of the

Blackfoot Indians," Anthropological Papers of the American M useum of Na tu-

ral History vol. 5, pt. I ( N ew York, I ~ I O ) ,-17?; David G . M and elbau m,

"The Plains Cree," Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natu-

ral Histo ry

vol. 37, pt. z (N ew York, 19 40); Frank Gilbert Roe,

The Indian and

the Horse

(Norman, O 1955); and Willard H . Rollings,

The Osage: An Ethno-

historical Study of Hegemony on the Prairie-Plains (Columbia, MO 1992).

z Bernard Romans, A Concise Natural H istory o f East and West Florida; a



508 James Taylor Carson

exp ou nde d on th e agricultural capabili ties of the Cho ctaw s, their prod uction

of surplus co rn fo r trade, and the richness of their soil. Such an impre ssion has

echoed to the present, for many historians have accepted Romans's judgment

(see John R. Swanton, Source Material for t he Social and C eremonial Life of the

Choctaw Indians Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 103, [Washington,

DC 19311, 46; and Carolyn Keller Reeves, ed., The Ch octaw Before Removal

Uackson,

M S

19851, 31-34. W illiam Willis has critically exa min ed Rom ans's

claims in The Na tion of Bread,

Ethnohistory

4 (1957): 126-41. H e argu es

tha t the British had employed Romans t o survey the Florida Territory and th at

Romans's resulting work was largely propaganda to attract British settlers.

Therefore, according to Willis, Rom ans's p ronoun cements m ust be questioned

for their historical merit. Nevertheless, most historians agree that agriculture

comprised the lion's share of Choctaw subsistence. For the most extensive

treatment of Choctaw subsistence see Richard White, The Roots of Depen-

dency: Subsistence Environm ent and Social Change amon g the Choctaws

Pawnees and Navajos (Lincoln, N E 1983), chaps. 2, 4 .

3 Jean-Bernard Bossu, Travels in the lnterior of North America 1751-1762,

trans. and ed. Seymour Feiler (Norman, OK 1962), 169-70; Sw anton , Source

Material 44 ; and Mar y Haa s, Creek Inter-town Relations, American

Anthropologist 42 (1 940 ): 483.

4 Romans, Concise History 76; John McKee to Choctaw Headm en, Decem-

ber 1815, United States, War Department, Letters Received by the Secretary of

War R elating to Indian Affairs, 1800-1823, M z7 1, hereafter cited as

us ,

WD

M z ~ I ;n d Bossu,

Travels

164-65.

5 Antoine Le Page du Pratz,

The History of Louisiana

ed. Joseph G . Tragle Jr.

(Baton Rouge,

LA,

1975), 71-72, 166; Dun bar Row land, A. G . Sanders, and

Patricia Galloway, eds., Mississippi Provincial Archives: French Dominion

1729-1748 (Bato n Rouge, LA, 1984), 4 :3 z; William B artram, The Travels of

William Bartram

ed. Ma rkV an Doren (N ew York, 1940), 185; and T imothy K.

Perttula,

The Caddo Nation: Archaeological and Ethnohistoric Perspectives

(Aust in ,

T X

~ q q z ) ,1, 29 .

Francis Haines, Wh ere Did the Plains Indians Get Their Ho rses? Ameri-

can Anthrop ologist 40 (193 8): 112-17, counters anthrop ologist C lark Wissler's

theory that the Plains Indians' horses originated from lost or stolen horses

from th e De So to expedition. The Spaniards brought with them just over tw o

hundred horses, and, according to Haines, the fastidious records kept by the

expedition regarding losses of horses fail to reveal the loss of enough live

horses to co nstitute a viable breeding pop ulation. M oreover, the Span iards had

neither the t ime nor the inclination to teach the often hostile Indians how to

care for and manag e horses.

De Soto apparently did not visit the Choctaws, but he did pass through

the protohistoric Chickasaws' vil lages. Rather than steal the Spanish horses,

the Chickasaws apparently preferred to kill the animals, for De Soto lost fifty

horse s, as well as four hun dred hogs, durin g his sojou rn in Ch icaza ( A

Narrative of the Expedition of Hernando De Soto into Florida. By a Gentle-

ma n of Elvas ; and Luis Fernandez de Biedma, A Na rrative of the Exp edi-

tion of H ern an do DeSoto, in Historical Collections o f Louisiana pt . z , ed.



509


In The No rth w ard Spread of Horses amon g the Plains Indians, Ameri-

can A nthro polog ist 40 (1938 ): 429-37, Hain es ma ps the diffusion of the Plains

horse trade and examines exchange patterns. According to Haines, the Plains

Indians' horses had originated from the Spanish settlement at Santa Fe. At this

outpost, horses existed in large numbers, and the friendly trade relationships

betw een the Spanish an d surround ing tribes made the teaching of riding horses

and horse care possible. Without the transmission of such essential informa-

tion, horses would have perished beyond the confines of the settlement. The

limited trade in horses, however, did not provide the impetus for the creation

of the great herds of Plains horses. Only after the Pueblo Rebellion of 1680

released thousands of horses and cattle from the Spanish corrals at Santa Fe

did ho rses proliferate th rou gh ou t the West. Seizing the runa way livestock, local

Indians initiated a trade in horses that dispersed them across the Great Plains.

The t rade network that introduced the horse to the C hoctaw s probably

originated long before the seventeenth century. Archaeological evidence indi-

cates that Mississippian Cu lture Complex trade, of which the Cho ctaw s were

descendants, stretched from the coastal regions of Florida to Oklahoma and

from Louisiana to Iowa and Illinois. Cultural remnants of Mississippian cul-

ture even reached Sask atchewan and M anitob a. This far-flung range of trad e

and culture might have been the precursor of later trade networks, but this

topic requires much more study before the extent of contact between pre-

historic peoples and the persistence of these contacts into the historic period

can be adequ ately described (P atricia Galloway, ed., The Sou theastern Cul-

tura l Comp lex: A rtifacts a n d Analysis [Lincoln,

NE

19891; Duane C. A nderson

and Joseph A. Tiffany,

A

Caddoan Trade Vessel from Northwestern Iowa,

Plains An throp olog ist 32 119761: 93-96; Jam es H ow ard , The S outh ern Cult in

the N or th er n Plains, Am erican An tiquity 19 [1953]: 130-38; Perttula, Ca dd o

Nation, 199; and Pierre Margry, Decouuertes et etablissements des Franqais

dans l 'ouest et dans le sud de I 'Amerique septentrionale, 1614 1754 [Paris,

1888 ],6: 230).

6 Gravier transcribed the term as su'ba ; Ma rc de Villiers, Notes sur les Ch actas

d'apres les Jou rnau x de Voyage de Regis du Roullet (17 r9-1 73~ ), ]ou rnal de

la So ciett des Americanistes d e Paris 15 (192 3): 234; an d Cy rus Byington, A

Dic tionar y of the C hoc taw Language, Bureau of Am erican Ethnology B ulletin

46, ed. John R. Swanton and He nry S. Ha lbert (W ashington,

DC

I ~ I S ) ,97.

Francis Haines has argued that when Plains Indian tribes first encoun-

tered horses, they often sh ot and ate them. Presumably the Cho ctaw s followed

the sam e pa ttern of behavior ( H orses among , 429-31).

Although the analysis of the C hoc taw term for horse ca nno t completely

reveal their cognitive world, it offers insights that can be matched with docu-

mented behavioral evidence (see Charles 0 . Frake, L anguage a nd Cultural

Description [Stanford,

CA

19801).

7 Ro wla nd, Sanders, and Galloway, French Do min ion, 4:151; Ho rat io B. Cush-

man, History of the Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Natchez lndians (Greenville,

TX 189 9), 180, 235 (Cu sh m an was the son of missionaries and lived am on g

the Ch octaw d urin g the 1810s and 1820s); Lawrence Kinnaird, ed., Spain in

the Mississippi Valley, 1765-1794, An nual Rep ort of the Am erican H isto rica l



510 James Taylor Carson

of the American Indian ed. Samuel Cole W illiams (Johnson City, TN , 1930;

rpt. Nashville, TN,1953), 139,142, 24 2,3 40 , 457.

8 Villiers, "Notes," 236-37; an d

P.

L. Rainwater, ed., "The Autobiography of

Benjamin G ru bb Hum phreys, August 26, 1808-December 20, 1882,"

Missis-

sippi Valley Historical Review 21

(193 4): 232.

9 Louis Leclerc de Milford, Mem oir or a Cursory Glance at M y Different Travels

and My Sojourn in the Creek Nation ed. John Francis McDermott , t rans .

Geraldine de Courcy (Chica go, 1956), 204.

10 W illiam G lover, "A H istory of the C ad do Indians," 888, an d Jo hn Sibley,

"H istorica l Sketches of the Several Indian Tribes in Louisiana," 721-23, in

The Southern Caddo: An Anthology ed. H . F. Gregory (N ew York, 1986 );

Gi lber t C. Din and Abraham

P.

Nasatir, The lmperial Osages: Spanish-Indian

Diplomacy in the Mississippi Valley

(Norman,

OK

1983), 31,9 7, 162-63, 222 ,

263, 279-81,30 7,342; Dun bar Rowland and A. G . Sanders, eds., The Missis-

sippi Provincial Archives: French Dominion (Jackson, MS,1927, ~ q j z ) ,: 100,

3 529-32; Jo hn Sibley to Henry D earborn, 8 August 1807, us ,

WD

M z 7 1 ; a n d

Milford , Memoir 64.

White , Roots chaps. 2, 4.

12 United States, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Ratified Indian Treaties, 1722-1869,

M668 (hereafter cited as us , B IA M 66 8); and Clarence Edwin C arter , com p.,

ed., Th e Territorial Papers of th e United States: Th e Territory of M ississippi

1798-18

17

(Washington, DC 1937) ,5 16-18. Th e Cho ctaw s signed the Treaty

of Hope well on 3 Jan uary 1786. It established the bound aries of the C ho cta w

Na tion , described the r ights of A mericans wh o ventured into Ch octaw terri-

tory an d the rights of C hoc taw s w ho crossed into United States territory, an d

pledged pe rpetual friendship and peace between both parties.

13 Jack D. L. Holmes, "Law and Order in Spanish Natchez, 1781-17q8,"jour-

nal of Mississippi History 25 (19 63): 192-95; D. Clay ton James, Antebellum

Natchez (Baton Rouge,

L A

1968), 5-46; Kin naird , "Spain in the M ississippi

Valley," 4:77; and White,

Roots

28, 101. The horse raid was n ot new to the

Choctaws, but by 1800 the raids seemed to have increased in frequency and

intensity. In another time of crisis, 1765, just two years after the French had

been forced out of the lower Mississippi valley, the British demanded in a con-

ference held at Mobile that the Choctaws refrain from horse raiding on the

Florida frontier (Cecil Joh nso n, British W est Florida 1763-1783 (N ew Haven,

CT, 19 43 ), 39-40.

14 For descriptions of the horse raids see Dun bar R owlan d, ed., The Mississippi

Territorial Archives 1798-1803 (Nashville, T N ,1905), 1: 33 , 45-46, 148, 350,

393, 402, 405, 460; Rowland, Of fic ial Letter Books of W. C . C . Claiborne

1801-1816 (Jackson, MS, 1917), 2:6 7, 193, 203, 6:138, 151; an d K inna ird,

"Spain in the Mississippi Valley," 3 72, 4 100, 265, 281.

15 Ki nn air d, "Spain in the Mississipp i Valley," 3 38.

16 Henry Dearborn to Benjamin Hawkins, 24 January 1803, United States, War

Department, Letters Sent by the Secretary of War Relating to Indian Affairs,

1800-1824, M I S (hereafter cited as us ,

WD

M IS ) ; J ames W i lk inson and

Benjamin Hawkins to Henry Dearborn, 18 December 1802, us , WD M r 7 1 ;

Treaty of Fort Adams, 17 December 1801, us, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Docu-



Horses and the Choctaw Indians

511

1869, T 49 4; R owlan d, Letter B ooks, I : 193; and Row land, T erritorial Archives,

1:46.

17 Treaty of Hop ewell, 3 Jan uary 1786, Articles 4 and 5 us , BIA M 6 6 8 ; a n d

Rowland, Letter Books, 6:138, 234. The adaptation of the livestock raid as

a replacement for more traditional forms of warfare is a common phenome-

non frequently associated with conflicts between European colonial interests

an d indigeno us cultures. In the A frican chiefdom of Ukag aru, Th om as Biedel-

m an has foun d patterns of behavior similar to those of the Ch octa ws between

the Kaguru and Baraguyu of Tanzania ( Beer Drinking and Cattle Theft in

Uk aga ru: Intertribal Relations in a Tanganyika Chiefdom, American An th ro -

polo gist 63 [1961]: 534-44). Furth erm ore, L ouise Sweet has identified strik ing

similarities to this process among the Bedouin ( Camel Raiding of North

Arabian Bedou in: A Me chanism of Ecological Adaptation, Am erican A nt hr o-

polo gist 67 [1965]: 1132-45) See also R. Brian Ferguson, ed., W arfare, Cultur e,

an d E nvironment (N ew York, 1984) , 17 ,24 ,37 , 41.

18 Th e horse raid dem onstrates ethnocen tricity as described by William Su mn er,

wh ose theories have come under much criticism. Nevertheless, S umn er's sche-

matic use of in-groups and out-groups provides the most plausible ex-

plan atio n of C hoc taw gr oup behavior (see Robe rt A. LeVine and Don ald T.

Campb ell , Ethnocentr ism: Theories of Conflict , Ethnic Atti tudes, an d G ro up

Behavior [N ew York, 19721, 1-68). W illiam G. McL oughlin, in T he Che ro-

kee Gho s t Dance (M acon , GA 1984), 30-36, dem onstrated th at the Cherokees

started horse stealing, like the Choctaws, because hunting and warfare had

declined substan tially in the late 17 90 s F or a discussion of stealing and its in-

corp orat ion i nto the Plains Indians' war com plex see Ewers, Blackfoot Culture,

173-77; an d M and elba um , Plains Cree, 195.

19 Ro wla nd, Territorial Archives, I 148.

zo John McKee to Cho ctaw Hea dm en, December 1815,

us,

W D ,M271 .

2 Kin naird , Spain in the Mississippi Valley, 3 117.

2 2 Rowland, Letter Books, I : 25; Henry Dearborn to William Davie, James Wil-

kinson, and Benjamin H aw kin s, 24 June 1801, us, W D ,M I S .

23 William C laib orn e to Silas Dinsm oor, 28 January 1803, Proceedings of the

Governor of the Mississippi Territory as Superintendent of Indian Affairs,

Territorial Governor's Papers, Alabama Department of Archives and History,

Montgomery .

24 William Simpson, Abstract of Debts Owed to Panton, Leslie, and Company,

r o Augus t 1803, us, W D ,Mz71.

25 Tre aty of M ou nt Dex ter, 16 Nove mber 1805, Article 2, us , BIA M668.

26 Bureau of the Census, The Statistical History of the United States, fro m Colo-

nial Times to the Present (N ew York, 1976), 30; and James Taylor Carso n,

Frontier Development and Indian Removal: Mississippi and the Choctaws,

1788-1833 (M .A . thesis, Tulane University, ~ q q z ) ,hap. 2.

27 Ch oc taw Agent John McKee's Journal , z Novem ber 1817, and James Wilkinson

to Silas Dinsm oor, 19 Augu st 1805,

us,

B IA

M271; W ill iam Ward to Thom as

McKenney, 2 December 1825, Estimated Travel Expenses of C hoc taw Delega-

t ion Traveling from Washington to the Choctaw N ation, 1825, M em orandu m

o f G oo ds for the Annuity for Tapa nahoo ma's District for the Year 1826,16 July



James Taylor Carson

27 August 1825, Ab stract of Articles Delivered to Ch oc taw Leaders for

the Year

1828,

and William Ward to Thomas McKenney,

2 6

M a r c h

1825,

US,

BI

M 2 3 4 ;

Joh n Hersey to Thom as McKenney,

25

June

1821,

and Eden Bras-

hears to Thomas McKenney,

2 6

April

1820,

United States, Bureau of Indian

Affairs, Letters Received by the Superintendent of Indian Trade,

1806-1824,

T 5 8 ; Hen ry Dearbo rn to Silas Dinsmoor, 9 January 1804, us, BI M I S ; A da m

Hodgson,

Remarks During a Journey through Nor th Am erica in the Years

1819 , 1820 , and 1 8 2 1 , in a Series of Letters.

(N ew York,

1824) , 272;

and

Byington,

Choctaw Dictionary, 520.

28 Cushman,

History,

393.

29 Missionary Herald 19 (January 1823) : 8 ; William Ward to Th om as McK enney,

2 6 M a r c h 1825, us, BI M z 3 4 .

30

As part of their horse complex, the Ch oc taw s learned rudimen tary veterinary

skills, probably from Europ eans or Americans. Hodg son reported th at to cure

colic in their ho rses, Cho ctaw s wo uld slice open a vein in the horse's m ou th,

force it to swallow the blood, p our a qu art of alcohol mixed w ith soo t dow n the

animal's throat. and wa lk the horse for hours. Horses get certain form s of colic

from drink ing cold w ater too fast, and the mixture of bloo d and alcohol heated

the hors e internally, dissipating the effect of the cold water. A similar treatm en t

was being recommended by specialists in the treatment of horse ailments into

the twent ieth centurv (Adam Hodeson.

Letters from North America Written

,

During a Tour in the United States and ~anada

London,

1824) , I 214, 220;

Hodgson,

Remarks,

271;

Cushman,

History,

363;

Panoplist and Missionary

Herald 15 (Oc tobe r 1819): 461; and Leonard Pearson et al., Special Report on

Diseases of th e Horse

(Washington,

DC I ~ o ? ) , 7 .

31 H odgs on , Remarks, 271.

32

Will iam Ward to Thomas McKenney,

4

November

1825

and

14

September

1826;

and Iahocautubbee and TishohuabbeeTestimony,

14

September

1826, us ,

BI M 2 3 4 .

33 George Gaines to W illiam W ard, 2 4 January 1824; Middleton Mackey D eposi-

t ion,

4

July

1826;

William Ward to Jam es Barbour, July

1826,

us, BI

M z 3 4 ;

a nd Missionary Herald 25 (December 1829 ): 378.

34

Missionary Herald,

19 (January 1823): 10

35

H ors e values fluctuated between twenty-five an d seventy-five dollars. have

used sixty dollars as an average price because it was the standard price of a

horse according to the m issionaries in the Ch octaw n ation

(Missionary Herald

17 [April 18211: 110; 25 [February 18291: 62; and 25 [May 18291: 62,153).

36 Panoplist and Missionary Herald 15

(October

1819): 460;

and various lists of

sun dry travel expenses, Records of the Ch octaw Trading House, U nder the

Office of In dian Trad e, 1803-1824, Miscellaneous Accounts, 1811-1815, T ~ o o .

Ero n O ph a Ro wland, "Peter Chester, Th ird Gov ernor of the Province of West

Florida under British Dominion, 1770-1781," Publications of the M ississippi

Historical Society,

Centenary Series (Jackson, MS, 19z5), 5:83-84.

3 7 Missionary Herald 25 (February 182 9): 61.

38 Romans, Concise History, 71; Missionary Herald 25 ( M a y 182 9): 153; D O C U -

ment

27, Senate D ocum ents, 20th

Cong.

zd

sess. (Washington, DC

1829) , I 6 ;

Bureau of the Census, Statistical History, 30; Lewis Cecil Gray, History of



Horses and the Choctaw Indians

513

8 Oc to be r 1837, United States, Bureau of Indian A ffairs, Choc taw Agency W est,

1825-1838, M234.

Th e Cho ctaw horse population of .7 horse per capita offers an interesting

com parison with various Plains Indian horse populations. A mo ng Plains tribes

one finds the following horse per capita ratio: Apache (1 871) 3.3, Com anc he

(17 86) 2.7, Osa ge (1850) 2.2, Cr ow (1833) z, Flathead (1805) 1.2, Cheyenne

(1864) 1 .2 , Navahos (1786) . j or .4, H ida tsa (1833) .z, Pawnee (1820) .7. For a

m ore c omp lete census of Plains Indian horse po pulations see Ewers, Blackfoo t

Culture, 21-27.

19 W illiam Arm stron g to Lewis Cass, zo April 1832,

us ,

BI

M234.

40 Jona than olem m n to Lewis Cass, 1 February 1833; William Arm strong to

Elb ert H errin g, 25 April 1 834,12 May 1834, and 25 Ma y 1834; and Schedule of

horses alleged to have been lost during removal, 8 Octo ber 1837,

us ,

BI

M z 3 4 .

Th e schedule co rrob ora tes Arm strong's estimate. Th e figure of twelve thousand

five hundred removed Choctaws left a remaining population of six thousand

to eight thousan d Cho ctaws in Mississ ippi (see Arthur H. DeRosier Jr. , The

Rem oval of the Cho ctaw ln dians (Knoxville, TN 1970), 147, 153,16z.

41 Mich ael Do ran , Antebellum Cattle Herding : Indian Territory, Ge ogra phic al

Review 66 (January 1976): 48-58; and H enry C lark Benson, Life Amo ng the

Cho ctaw Indians. (Cincinnati, OH 186 o), 55.

42 G eorge Catl in, N orth American Indians (Edinburgh, 1926), 2:142. Calvin

Brown witnessed the use of horsehair manes in a ball play among the Mis-

sissippi C ho cta ws in 1923 as well (Archaeology of Mississippi Uackson ,

~ s ,

19261,363).



You have printed the following article:

Horses and the Economy and Culture of the Choctaw Indians, 1690-1840

James Taylor Carson

Ethnohistory, Vol. 42, No. 3. (Summer, 1995), pp. 495-513.

Stable URL:


This article references the following linked citations. If you are trying to access articles from anoff-campus location, you may be required to first logon via your library web site to access JSTOR. Pleasevisit your library's website or contact a librarian to learn about options for remote access to JSTOR.

Notes

1 Diffusion and Discontinuous Distribution

Robert L. Rands; Carroll L. Riley

American Anthropologist , New Series, Vol. 60, No. 2. (Apr., 1958), pp. 274-297.

Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-7294%28195804%292%3A60%3A2%3C274%3ADADD%3E2.0.CO%3B2-C

3Creek Inter-Town Relations

Mary R. Haas

American Anthropologist , New Series, Vol. 42, No. 3, Part 1. (Jul. - Sep., 1940), pp. 479-489.

Stable URL:

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-7294%28194007%2F09%292%3A42%3A3%3C479%3ACIR%3E2.0.CO%3B2-1

5 Where did the Plains Indians Get Their Horses?

Francis Haines

American Anthropologist , New Series, Vol. 40, No. 1. (Jan. - Mar., 1938), pp. 112-117.

Stable URL:

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-7294%28193801%2F03%292%3A40%3A1%3C112%3AWDTPIG%3E2.0.CO%3B2-P

5The Northward Spread of Horses among the Plains Indians

Francis Haines

American Anthropologist , New Series, Vol. 40, No. 3. (Jul. - Sep., 1938), pp. 429-437.

Stable URL:

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-7294%28193807%2F09%292%3A40%3A3%3C429%3ATNSOHA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-J

http://www.jstor.org

LINKED CITATIONS- Page 1 of 2 -

NOTE: The reference numbering from the original has been maintained in this citation list.

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0014-1801%28199522%2942%3A3%3C495%3AHATEAC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-N&origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-7294%28195804%292%3A60%3A2%3C274%3ADADD%3E2.0.CO%3B2-C&origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-7294%28194007%2F09%292%3A42%3A3%3C479%3ACIR%3E2.0.CO%3B2-1&origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-7294%28193801%2F03%292%3A40%3A1%3C112%3AWDTPIG%3E2.0.CO%3B2-P&origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-7294%28193807%2F09%292%3A40%3A3%3C429%3ATNSOHA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-J&origin=JSTOR-pdf


http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-7294%28193801%2F03%292%3A40%3A1%3C112%3AWDTPIG%3E2.0.CO%3B2-P&origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-7294%28194007%2F09%292%3A42%3A3%3C479%3ACIR%3E2.0.CO%3B2-1&origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-7294%28195804%292%3A60%3A2%3C274%3ADADD%3E2.0.CO%3B2-C&origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0014-1801%28199522%2942%3A3%3C495%3AHATEAC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-N&origin=JSTOR-pdf



5 The Southern Cult in the Northern Plains

James H. Howard

American Antiquity, Vol. 19, No. 2. (Oct., 1953), pp. 130-138.

Stable URL:

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-7316%28195310%2919%3A2%3C130%3ATSCITN%3E2.0.CO%3B2-G

6The Northward Spread of Horses among the Plains Indians

Francis Haines American Anthropologist , New Series, Vol. 40, No. 3. (Jul. - Sep., 1938), pp. 429-437.

Stable URL:

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-7294%28193807%2F09%292%3A40%3A3%3C429%3ATNSOHA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-J

17 Camel Raiding of North Arabian Bedouin: A Mechanism of Ecological Adaptation

Louise E. Sweet

American Anthropologist , New Series, Vol. 67, No. 5, Part 1. (Oct., 1965), pp. 1132-1150.

Stable URL:

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-7294%28196510%292%3A67%3A5%3C1132%3ACRONAB%3E2.0.CO%3B2-1

41 Antebellum Cattle Herding in the Indian Territory

Michael F. Doran

Geographical Review, Vol. 66, No. 1. (Jan., 1976), pp. 48-58.

Stable URL:

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0016-7428%28197601%2966%3A1%3C48%3AACHITI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-J

http://www.jstor.org

LINKED CITATIONS- Page 2 of 2 -

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-7316%28195310%2919%3A2%3C130%3ATSCITN%3E2.0.CO%3B2-G&origin=JSTOR-pdf


http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-7294%28196510%292%3A67%3A5%3C1132%3ACRONAB%3E2.0.CO%3B2-1&origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0016-7428%28197601%2966%3A1%3C48%3AACHITI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-J&origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0016-7428%28197601%2966%3A1%3C48%3AACHITI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-J&origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-7294%28196510%292%3A67%3A5%3C1132%3ACRONAB%3E2.0.CO%3B2-1&origin=JSTOR-pdf


http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-7316%28195310%2919%3A2%3C130%3ATSCITN%3E2.0.CO%3B2-G&origin=JSTOR-pdf

horses and the economy and culture of the choctaw indians, 1690-1840_copy

Documents

innovative use of horses

horses role

importance of horses

jstor archive

jstor transmission

conditions of use

choctaw indians

initiative of jstor