Ryan Spring

And for the most part, it was a good relationship.

Without our food and without our advanced knowledge on agriculture,

The French colonies could never have survived in the Gulf.

They relied on us to teach them how to live on this land.

And we did that.

And in exchange, we got trade goods from the French.

However, this was a time of turbulence.

The French were on and off at war with the British.

And the British had agreements with some of our related tribes.

Some of the other tribes in the southeast began to raid us for slaves.

I see.

And so they would kill our men and take our women and children as part of this slave trade.

And so Choctaw people relied on the French because we needed their trade goods.

We needed their metal implements and those sort of things because they made things in our society easier.

They made advancements in our society.

And so we became fairly close with the French throughout that 63-year period.

Yeah.

So when the French were forced to leave control of Choctaw country, the British came in.

And so Choctaws had interacted with the British, they had interacted with the Spanish and the French, and we played these powers off back and forth.

And so by the 1790s, there was someone new that came into the scene, and that was the Americans.