Ryan Spring

And so Choctaw leaders...

We created relationships and alliances.

We were large, we were prosperous, and these colonial powers feared our military.

And so we would make military alliances with these different European powers.

And so what you see is in the late 1790s, you see Choctaw warriors traveling up the Mississippi River to go fight in the Northwest Indian War.

Alongside the United States.

Okay.

You see Choctaw scouts that are volunteering themselves during the revolution.

But for the most part, the Choctaw nation stayed out of the revolutionary war.

They stayed out of, you know, to them, it was just another colonial conflict.

You know, they had bigger and better things to do.

So it wasn't until the war of 1812, the Choctaw nation really got involved.

In the 1790s, we can see from writings by the United States at that time that the United States was afraid of Choctaws.

They said, if we do not secure an alliance with the Choctaws and the other Southeastern tribes, and they ally with the Spanish, they could wipe out the United States.

And so the U.S.

created an Indian agent for the Southeast to try to broker peace and relationships.

So in 1786, we had our first treaty with the United States, the Treaty of Hopewell.

And this is an important treaty.

There's a lot that goes into this treaty.

I won't go into all of it, but this is the beginning of the relationship between the Choctaw people and the United States.