Choctaw, a North American Indian tribe of Muscogean linguistic stock who traditionally lived in what is now the southeastern part of the Mississippi. The Choctaw dialect is very similar to the Chickasaw, and there is evidence that they are an offshoot of the latter tribe.
By the mid-18th century, 20,000 Choctaws were living in 60 or 70 settlements along the Pearl, Chickasawhay, and Pascagoula rivers. Their dwellings were cabins with thatched roofs of logs or bark plastered with mud. The Choctaw are perhaps the most skilled of the southeastern farmers, producing a surplus of crops to sell and trade.
They grow corn (maize), beans, and pumpkins; fishing, gather nuts and wild fruits; and hunt deer and bears. Their most important community ritual is the festival of Busk, or Green Corn, a ritual of first fruits and new fires celebrated in midsummer.
Famous burial customs involved the ritual removal of the bones of the deceased from the body; next, the bones were placed in an ossuary. The ritual is performed by spiritually strong men and women, known as bone collectors or bone pickers, in the presence of the deceased's family members. Bone collectors are famous for their signature tattoos and long fingernails.
In the power struggles that followed colonization, the Choctaw generally allied with the French against the British, Chickasaw, and other Native American tribes. After the French defeat in the French and Indian War (1754–63), some of the Choctaw's lands were ceded to the United States and some members of the tribe began moving west across the Mississippi.
In the 19th century, the growth of the European cotton market increased pressure to acquire the Choctaw lands, and in 1820 they ceded 5,000,000 acres in the west mid-Mississippi to the United States. In the 1830s, Choctaw was forced to move to what is now Oklahoma, as were members of the other Five Tribes of Civilization—the Creek, Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Seminole.
For three-quarters of a century, each tribe had communal land allotments and a semi-autonomous government modeled on the United States. In preparation for becoming the state of Oklahoma (1907), portions of this land were awarded to individuals from the Five Civilized Tribes; the remainder was opened to white homeowners, trusted by the federal government, or given to freed slaves.
The tribal government was effectively dissolved in 1906 but continued to exist in a limited form. The descendants of the Choctaw numbered more than 159,000 at the start of the 21st century.