From 1540 to 1543, Hernando de Soto traveled through present-day Florida and Georgia, and then into the Alabama and Mississippi areas that would later be inhabited by the Choctaw. Cabeza de Vaca declined because of a payment dispute. De Soto, convinced of the 'riches', wanted Cabeza de Vaca to accompany him on the expedition. Contact era Īfter the castaway Cabeza de Vaca of the ill-fated Narváez expedition returned to Spain, he described to the Court that the New World was the 'richest country in the world.' It commissioned the Spaniard Hernando de Soto to lead the first expedition into the interior of the North American continent. When the Spanish made their first forays inland in the 16th century from the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, they encountered some chiefdoms of the Mississippians. The Mississippian Ideological Interaction Sphere was religious, cultural, and trade network, centered along the Mississippi river valley and spanning much of the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States. Photo by Jeffrey Reed.ĭuring the Mississippian era of 800 to 1500 CE, ancestral Choctaw and Chickasaw peoples are believed to have been connected to the polity surrounding Moundville in Alabama. Pre-contact history Mississippian culture The Willoughby Disk, a Mississippian ceremonial stone palette from Moundville Archaeological Park, housed onsite in the Jones Archaeological Museum.

He was elected Choctaw Principal Chief in 1860 and initially supported the idea of Choctaw neutrality in the Civil War. The 1860 slave census of Indian Territory shows that Hudson had three slaves in that year. Hudson was a slave owner and was also part owner of a manganese mine near present day Smithville. George Hudson died late in 1865 and was buried near the Moutain Fork River in current McCurtain County, Oklahoma. George Hudson, Principal Chief of the Choctaw Nation from 1860-1862, was born in 1808 in Mississippi, the son of an unknown white man and a full blood Choctaw woman known as 'the widow Hudson' who died on the trail from Mississippi to the Indian Territory in 1831. The first principle chief of Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma was Chief George Hudson. They are known for their rapid post-colonial adoption of a written language, transitioning to yeoman farming methods, and having European-American and African-Americans lifestyles enforced in their society. The History of the Choctaws, or Chahtas, are a Native American people originally from the Southeast of what is currently known as the United States.

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