The subjects of these profiles are not famous, but they are accomplished and remarkable. The subjects include a former
major league pitcher, a diplomat in the making, a convicted murderer, and a language expert who is making sense of colonial
attempts to spell Chickasaw words before the tribe had a written language.
These articles are meant to describe the Chickasaw culture in a meaningful way by citing a few very good sources of
information from their contemporaries and ours. Subjects include the sacred rite of retaliation and women’s roles during
a time of unrelenting warfare.
This section has been divided into two parts that correspond to the Chickasaw people’s occupations east and west of
the Mississippi River. They cover not only different geographic locales, but different epochs. While Chickasaw
society changed in fundamental ways, important common threads remain.
Homelands
These historical accounts are arranged in chronological order. They range from prehistory (before the people became a tribe)
to their first meeting with white men through the late 18th century when Chickasaws had to choose whether to ally with the
fledgling United States or the Spanish Empire.
Indian Territory/Oklahoma
Most of these articles describe an important part of the development of the modern Chickasaw Nation under former Governor
Overton James. Other articles involve an earlier era when tribal government was abolished or about to be. For students of
tribal culture, Josiah Mikey was the most influential information source you’ve never heard of.
These articles range from Gov. Anoatubby's initiatives to reestablish a meaningful presence in the Old Homeland,
to the tribe’s interest in disinterred prehistoric Indian remains near Nashville, to the offer to acquire thousands
of items that belonged to ancestral Chickasaws who lived and died in the Homeland.
