The Choctaws, numbering twenty-one thousand,
and the Chickasaws, numbering thirty-six hundred, together held
upwards of sixteen million acres in Mississippi--approximately the
northern half of the State--and a million and a quarter acres in
western Alabama. The four peoples thus numbered fifty-three thousand
souls, and held ancestral lands aggregating over thirty-three million
acres, or nearly the combined area of Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
Furthermore, they were no longer savages. The Creeks were the lowest
in civilization; but even they had become more settled and less
warlike since their chastisement by Jackson in 1814. The Choctaws and
Chickasaws lived in frame houses, cultivated large stretches of land,
operated workshops and mills, maintained crude but orderly
governments, and were gradually accepting Christianity. Most advanced
of all were the Cherokees. As one writer has described them, they "had
horses and cattle, goats, sheep, and swine. They raised maize, cotton,
tobacco, wheat, oats, and potatoes, and traded with their products to
New Orleans.
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