Don Wildman

So ironically, the favorable relationships or the more developed relationships end up putting them in the crosshairs more quickly and efficiently than any others.

It ends up backfiring.

The whole thing ends up backfiring on them.

I mean, the simple fact is that, as we've said before, this is all about land, not relationships.

We're not building relationships here.

We're getting land.

The territory of the Choctaw was extremely valuable, especially to cotton growers.

Now, who had been since the late 1700s equipped with a cotton gin, which had created, you know, much more efficient means of processing cotton, therefore needing more land to grow more cotton.

And they were running into lots of problems with that because they didn't have rotational crops.

technology or science.

And so their lands were becoming infertile and they were needing new ones to the West.

Well, where does that come from?

That comes from land that is settled already.

So let's get rid of these people.

That's really at the center of this, isn't it?

This leads to the Treaty of Dancing Creek, 1831.

Can you explain that?

I see.

And we're talking about 11 million acres of land, which includes Naniwaya Cave, which is the cave of the origin story of the birth of the Choctaw Nation.

These are precious lands that are being given up.