Chickasaw (Amerind tribe)
Nation | Active
1500 CE to 2057 CE
The Chickasaw are Native American people originally from the region that would become the Southeastern United States (Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee).
They are of the Muskogean linguistic group and are federally enrolled as the Chickasaw Nation.Sometime prior to the first European contact, the Chickasaw migrated and moved east of the Mississippi River, where they settled mostly in present-day northeast Mississippi.
The Chickasaw were one of the Five Civilized Tribes, who were forced to sell their country in 1832 and move to Indian Territory (Oklahoma) during the era of Indian Removal.
Most Chickasaw now live in Oklahoma.
All historical records indicate the Chickasaw lived in northeast Mississippi from the first European contact until the Indian Removal in 1832.The Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma is the 13th largest federally recognized tribe in the United States.
They are related to the Choctaw and share a common history with them.
The Chickasaw are divided in two groups: the Impsaktea and the Intcutwalipa.
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The Natchez and the Chickasaw dominate the northern Gulf coast at the beginning of the Early Modern period.
Hernando de Soto and his party, wintering in the western panhandle of Florida, have heard of gold being mined "toward the sun's rising."
De Soto’s expedition had headed northeast through what is now the modern state of Georgia, crossing through present South Carolina to the site of present Columbia, where the expedition had been received by a friendly female chief, who had turned over her tribe's pearls, food and anything else the Spaniards wanted.
No gold was to be be found, however, other than pieces from an earlier Spanish coastal expedition, presumably that of Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón in 1526.
De Soto had next crossed into the Appalachian Mountains of present western North Carolina, where he had spent one month resting the horses while his men searched for gold in the mountains, ...
...then traversed eastern Tennessee and ...
...northern Georgia.
De Soto observes people living in fortified towns with lofty mounds and plazas, and surmises that many of the mounds served as foundations for priestly temples.
Near present-day Augusta, Georgia, de Soto encounters a mound-building group ruled over by a queen, Cofitachequi.
She tells him that the mounds within her territory serve as the burial places for nobles.
He spends another month eating native foods, then turns south toward the Gulf of Mexico to meet his two ships bearing fresh supplies from Havana.
The seminomadic Chickasaws occupy the northern part of present Mississippi at the time of the conquistador Hernando de Soto’s entry into the region in 1540.
The Chickasaw and the Choctaw of central and southern Mississippi, both of Muskogean linguistic stock, may have been a single tribe in their earlier history; the Choctaw dialect being practically identical to that of the Chickasaw.
The Chickasaw people not only patrol the immense territory that they claim for themselves but also raid tribes far to the north, absorbing the tribes that they conquer.
They scatter their dwellings for miles along a stream or river rather than cluster them in villages.
The Chickasaws tracing trace descent through the maternal line.
The Chickasaws associate their supreme deity with the sky, sun, and fire; and they annually celebrate a harvest and new-fire rite (similar to the Green Corn ceremony of the Creek people).
...Tutelo, ...
...Catawba, and ...
...Ofo (Mosopelea).
All four tribes are widely scattered and, with the exception of Biloxi and Ofo, show little relationship to one another, thus probably representing different prehistoric penetrations of Siouan speakers into the Southeast.
Hernando de Soto, at the age of eighteen or nineteen, had sailed to the New World in 1514 with the first Governor of Panama, Pedrarias Dávila.
Brave leadership, unwavering loyalty, and clever schemes for the extortion of native villages for their captured chiefs, had become de Soto's hallmark during the conquest of Central America.
Having gained fame as an excellent horseman, fighter, and tactician, he is notorious for the extreme brutality with which he has wielded these gifts.
Hearing Cabeza de Vaca’s stories of gold found routinely by the native peoples along the Chatahoochee River north of present Atlanta, De Soto had led his five hundred-man expeditionary force from the Florida Panhandle in the spring of 1540 through present Georgia, the Carolinas, and Tennessee.
Continuing his ruthless practice of ransoming captured village chiefs for food and sex slaves, de Soto turns south toward the Gulf of Mexico to meet two ships bearing fresh supplies from Havana.
En route, a river in southern Alabama leads de Soto into the fortified town of Mauvila, or Maubilla (near present Mobile).
The Spaniards, ambushed on October 18 by the Mobilians under the leadership of Tuskaloosa, manage to fight their way out, then attack and burn the city to the ground.
Twenty Spaniards die and most are wounded during this nine-hour encounter, and twenty more will die during the next few weeks.
The Native American warriors of this area, numbering between two thousand and six thousand, die fighting in the fields, by fire in the city, or suicide.