Ryan Spring

And then as people are trying to get reestablished, our brother tribe, the Chickasaw come in later on and they bring a smallpox epidemic with them that hits our community.

And so despite all this, though, Choctaw people persevered.

And by 1834, we had met, we had restarted our government, established our second constitution.

And just 10 years later, by the 1840s, we were sending kids to college again on the East Coast.

Was the governance structure similar to that which was in the native lands?

There was a lot of changes in Choctaw country.

So in 1826, the Choctaw Nation established its first constitution while we were still in Mississippi.

But the 1834 constitution was different.

And it was different because our people were different now.

You know, their experiences changed.

both negative and positive, reshaped our people.

And so we drew upon a lot of aspects from our original constitution, which came from traditional law that our communities had already.

And we reshaped that into something that would help propel us into the future.

And that new form of governance that we had was very successful.

By the 1850s, the Choctaw Nation had completely

rebounded from the Trail of Tears.

We were the strongest economic power in Indian Territory.

We had the largest school system west of the Mississippi River and the most progressive school system in all of the United States.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, as you stated, we had 15,000 Choctaws removed in those first three years, and about 25 to 30 percent of them died on