The Treaty Of Dancing Creek Is Signed

On September 27, 1830, the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek was signed.

It represented one of the largest transfers of land that was signed between the U.S. Government and Native Americans without being instigated by warfare. By the treaty, the Choctaws signed away their remaining traditional homelands, opening them up for European-American settlement. Article 14 allowed for nearly 1,300 Choctaws to remain in the state of Mississippi and to become the first major non-European ethnic group to become U.S. citizens. Article 22 sought to put a Choctaw representative in the U.S. House of Representatives. The Choctaw at this crucial time split into two distinct groups: the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. The nation retained its autonomy, but the tribe in Mississippi submitted to state and federal laws.

The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek was a treaty signed on September 27, 1830 (and proclaimed on 24 February 1831) between the Choctaw (an American Indian tribe) and the United States Government. This was the first removal treaty carried into effect under the Indian Removal Act. The treaty ceded about 11 million acres (45,000 km2) of the Choctaw Nation (now Mississippi) in exchange for about 15 million acres (61,000 km2) in the Indian territory (now the state of Oklahoma). The principal Choctaw negotiators was Chief Greenwood LeFlore, Musholatubbee, and Nittucachee; U.S. negotiators were Colonel John Coffee and Secretary of War John Eaton. Site of the signing of this treaty is located in the south west corner of Noxubee County, Mississippi in the United States; the site was known to the Choctaws as Chukfi Ahihla Bogue (Dancing Rabbit Creek). The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek was the last major land secession treaty the Choctaws signed. After the treaty was ratified by U.S. Congress in 1831, it would allow the Mississippi Choctaws to become the first major non-European ethnic group to officially gain recognition of U.S. citizenship.