Chahta

The Chahta, anglicized as Choctaw, are a Western Muskogean people of Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana whose language is close to Chickasaw; the two share an ancestral tradition. They coalesced in the sixteenth century, organized in three divisions: Okla Falaya, Okla Tannap and the southern Okla Hannali of the Six Towns.

Tradition remembers chief Tuscaloosa, who died facing Hernando de Soto at Mabila in 1540, called the first major pitched battle between Europeans and Native Americans in North America.

The Choctaw traded and allied in turn with French, British and Spanish, and after independence fought beside the United States in the War of 1812, where chief Pushmataha made his name. Classed among the Five Civilized Tribes, they lost their lands by treaty; after the 1830 Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, most were forcibly relocated to Indian Territory in 1831 to 1833.