Ryan Spring

And for a long time, as I said, you know, we helped in the Northwest Indian War.

And individual warriors may help here and there.

But we weren't really involved with the United States' conflicts too much.

However, in 1801 and 1802, 1803 and 1805, the United States approached us several times for treaties of land cession.

And so land cessions are not a new thing to Choctaw people.

The British did it to us in 1765.

And so we knew that for whatever reason, these colonial powers wanted land.

They wouldn't share it as Choctaw people would often do, but they wanted in perpetuity, which is a completely different concept that Choctaw and other indigenous people have.

You can't own land, but that's what the United States wanted to do.

So the first treaty was about trade, and Choctaws are all about establishing trade.

That's more items, that's more power coming in to these chiefs and being able to provide for their people.

In 1802, we seed a small part of land so that they can build a fort next to us.

But more importantly, next to the fort, they built a trade house, also known as a trade factory.

They used this factory to put our people into debt.

So President Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to William Henry Harrison, talks about how if we put these peoples in debt, he's specifically talking about the chiefs, the people in power, then we can leverage them to give us land in exchange for the debts.

Wow.

So this is a practice that's illegal today in the United States.

But at that time, it wasn't.

And so the Treaty of Hobuck and Topa in 1803 and the Treaty of Mount Dexter in 1805 were both done to settle Choctaw debts with this trading company in exchange for land cessions of our southern hunting lands.

Yeah.