The Chickasaw Nation () is a federally recognized Native American tribe with headquarters in Ada, Oklahoma, in the United States. They are an Indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands, originally from northern Mississippi, northwestern Alabama, southwestern Kentucky, and western Tennessee. Today, the Chickasaw Nation is the 13th largest tribe in the United States.
Currently, the nation's jurisdictional territory and reservation includes about 7,648 square miles of south-central Oklahoma, including Bryan, Carter, Coal, Garvin, Grady, Jefferson, Johnston, Love, McClain, Marshall, Murray, Pontotoc, and Stephens counties.
These counties are separated into four districts, the Pontotoc, Pickens, Tishomingo, and Panola, with relatively equal populations. Their population today is estimated to be 38,000, with the majority residing in the state of Oklahoma.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, European Americans considered the Chickasaw one of the historic Five Civilized Tribes, along with the Cherokee, Choctaw, Muscogee, and Seminole nations, due to their agrarian culture and later adoption of centralized governments with written constitutions, intermarriages with white settlers, literacy, Christianity, market participation, and slave holding.
The Chickasaw language, Chikashshanompa’, belongs to the Muskogean language family. This is primarily an oral language, with no historic written component. A significant part of their culture is passed on to each generation through their oral history, consisting of intergenerational stories that speak to the tribe’s legacy and close relationship with the Choctaw. The similarities in the language of the Chickasaw and the Choctaw have prompted anthropologists to propose a number of theories regarding the origins of the Chickasaw Nation, as it continues to remain uncertain.
Clans within the Chickasaw Nation are separated into two moieties: the and the , with each clan having their own leaders. Their tradition of matrilineal descent provides the basic societal structure of the nation, with children becoming members of and under the care of their mother’s clan.
History
Origins
Mississippian cultures developed between around 800 CE along the Mississippi River and across the Eastern Woodlands with some regional variations. This was a period of increasing sociopolitical complexity, with the intensification of agriculture, settlements in larger towns or chiefdoms, and the formation of strategic alliances to facilitate communication. Organization of labor is evidenced by mounds, and the skill and craftmanship of artisans is reflected in the elaborate and intricate remains of burials. Furthermore, as chiefdoms arose within the Chickasaw Nation—and across the Southeast in general—the increased social complexity and population growth were sustained by effective and widespread farming practices.
While the origins of the Chickasaw continue to remain uncertain, anthropologists and historians have proposed several theories. One theory is that the Chickasaw were at one time a part of the Choctaw and later branched off, given their close connections linguistically and geographically. Another is that they were descendants of the pre-historic Mississippian tribes, having migrated from the West given their oral histories. According to some of their oral stories, the Chickasaw first settled in the Chickasaw Old Fields, what is currently northern Alabama today, and later re-established themselves near the Tombigbee River.
European contact, 16th–17th century
Hernando de Soto is credited as being the first European to contact the Chickasaw during his travels of 1540, and along with his army, were some of the first, and last, European explorers to come into contact with the Mississippian cultures and nations of the Southeast. He learned they were an agrarian nation with the political organization of a chiefdom governmental system, with the head chief residing in the largest and main temple mound in the chiefdom, with the remaining family lineage and commoners spreading out across the villages. Months after an uneasy truce permitting the Spanish stay in their camps for the winter and survive on the tribe's food supply, the Chickasaws planned a surprise night attack on Desoto and his men as they prepared to leave. By this, they successfully sent a defiant message to their European enemies not to return to their land. As a result, 150 years passed before the Chickasaw received another European expedition.