Ok means "it’s a deal"
in choctaw language
The Choctaw are an indigenous
North American nation that stretched across southern North America in the
eastern portion of the Mississippi River Basin and today is reduced to some
160,000 individuals in several reserves in the states of Mississippi,
Louisiana. and Oklahoma. They speak a language of the Muscogean family that was
used as a lingua franca throughout the southeastern region of North America to
the Gulf of Mexico and east to the Atlantic coastal region. Several expressions
of the Choctaw language were incorporated into American English as the word
okei (which meant "deal done") and from that language to the rest of
the world.
Originally, they lived on the
banks of the Yazoo River (lower Mississippi) and west of the Alabama and
Tombigbee rivers in an area of 200,000 km2. Like other towns in southeastern
North America, they practiced corn, pumpkin, and bean agriculture. , sunflower
and tobacco. They lived in straw-roofed houses made of logs or bark and covered
with mud.
As tools for cultivation, they
used buffalo bone sticks to remove the earth and plant the seeds, while for
digging they used utensils made with the buffalo scapula or a carved stone
attached to a cane. They built barns where they stored the products of the
harvest. The fishing was communal, with nets, bow and arrows or throwing
numbing substances in the water. Like other peoples of the North American
region, they used bows, arrows and spears as weapons. Like other tribes of
North America, they celebrated the ceremony of the green corn (busk) for which
they had built ritual temples in the city of Nanih Waiya, created around 500
AD.
They had a special body of
priests that was in charge of cleaning the bones and leaving them without meat.
The clean bones were kept in an ossuary, on which there was a catafalque with
hunting scenes, crowns and engraved images to assist the spirits. When it was
already full of bones, there was a party for the dead and the bones were buried
in a conical earth mound. They played the ishtaboli, called lacrosse by the
French and chunckey by the English, ball game similar to hockey with a leather
ball and rackets called kapucha, or with a round disc.
The first Europeans who arrived to their
territory were the Spaniards of the expedition of Hernando de Soto who called
them chaetas. After that visit there was a great mortality and its
population decreased to less than half. In 1673 their lands were invaded by the
French who in 1699 built the Fort Maurepas, like the villas of Mobile (1702)
and Fort Rosalie in 1716. Towards the year 1746 they rebelled against the
French allying themselves with the colonial government of Carolina South.
The conflict would end with the execution of
the caudillo, after which they were forced to submit again to the French
colonial authorities. After the French defeat in the war of 1756-1760,
they were forced to cede territory to the British, so in 1780 they were forced
to move westward. Then they lived in 60 or 70 villages on the banks of the
Pearl, Pascagoula and Chickasawhay rivers. On January 3, 1786 they signed with
the US colonists. UU the Treaty of Hopewell, by which they declared
"perpetual peace", treaty that was renewed in 1792. For this reason,
they did not help the English in the war of 1812. Anyway, as usual the treaty
was not fulfilled and they were forced to cede land to the United States.
In 1801 by the Treaty of Fort Adams they had to
yield the canton of the Mississippi; in 1803 by the Treaty of Hoe Buckintopae,
they had to cede all of Alabama (853,760 acres); in 1805 by the Treaty of Mound
Dexter, they had to yield 4,142,720 more acres between southern Alabama and
Mississippi; in 1816 by the Treaty of Fort Saint Stephens, the outer part of
the Tombigbee River (Alabama), which accounted for some 3 million acres; and in
1820 for Doak's Strand, 5,169,788 more acres. With all this they were practically
stripped of all their territories. Even so, another 1825 treaty signed by Chief
Mushulatubbee yielded another 2 million acres in exchange for not distributing
the land.
In 1831 some 14,000 Choctaw were forced to
cross the Mississippi and some 2,500 died in the transfer due to hunger and
cholera. And they did not pay them the compensation they had been
promised. In Oklahoma they would raise schools, churches and courts again, and
even create a militia.
During the war of secession of the USA they supported
to the South, from which they were forced to sign a new treaty in 1866 being
limited to a restricted reserve. In 1907 choctaw reserve was parceled
into individual properties, and the rest sold to whites. In 1944 they were
recognized as a tribe and returned 16,000 acres. In 1960, some 17,500 Choctaw
still lived on tribal lands, in a kind of informal reserve.
Demography
It is estimated that in 1650 there were about
15,000 individuals. By 1780 there were about 20,000 individuals in 60 or
70 populations. In 1872 there were 16,000, in 1885 some 12,816, and in 1890
some 10,017, and by 1900 they counted 25,000, of which 18,981 lived in Oklahoma
and 1,639 in Mississippi.
According to 1990 data there were a total of
45,000 tribal choctaw, of whom 8,100 lived in Mississippi, 27,500 in Oklahoma
and 11,200 in California, Louisiana and other states. Their language,
however, was spoken by about 12,000 individuals in 1980. Finally, according to
the 2000 census, the choctaw were 158,774
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