Montgomery, AL: NewSouth Books, 2002 (1999)

$19.95 (paper); 224 pp.

Some twenty-two years ago, Jacqueline Matte set about writing The History of Washington County: The First County in Alabama. She knew vaguely of the existence of a local Choctaw tribe, and in the interest of completeness wished to include their story in her county history. The History was published in 1982, but Matte’s work on the history of the MOWA, that is capital M-O-W-A, short for Mobile and Washington Counties Choctaw, has endured and resulted in this book, first published in 1999 and now revised, updated, and reissued in 2002.

Jackie Matte is as determined to get this story before the public as the MOWA Choctaw themselves. This is a book written for a purpose.

There are seven Indian Tribes recognized by the state of Alabama. The only one of these recognized by the federal government is the Poarch Band of Creeks. There is an intricate process in achieving federal recognition as a tribe and a number of benefits to be derived in the forms of tribal autonomy and federal aid through the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Matte’s book has as its primary purpose to tell the historical story of the MOWA and thus convince the government to recognize, finally, after several attempts, their tribal status. She seems to succeed pretty well.

The story of how white government and white settlers treated Indians in Alabama is not pretty. Indians were encroached upon, cheated, and duped. In 1803 Thomas Jefferson wrote, encouraging trading posts to allow Indians to run up large debts on credit, "because we observe that when these debts get beyond what the individual can pay they become willing to lop off by a cession of lands." This is pretty much the same ethical system that offers a handful of credit cards to college freshman upon arrival on campus.

Much land was turned over to cover debts. Some was "purchased." In 1801 the Choctaw were asked to "sign a treaty ceding over two million acres of land. In return, the Choctaw were granted ‘two thousand dollars in goods and merchandise and three sets of blacksmith’s tools.’" Apparently the same real estate agent who handled the Manhattan Island deal was used in Alabama.

In the early nineteenth century, assimilation of Indians was the national policy. This gave way, with the election of Andrew Jackson to the removal of all Indians east of the Mississippi River. This is where the story of the MOWA Choctaw really begins, because they chose not to go to Oklahoma. Imagine that.

The Choctaws, hidden in the swamps and thickets of southwest Alabama, remained where they were. They lay low, out of sight, and out of the white government’s mind as much as possible, and that is the basis of much of the present trouble. They were accidentally omitted from some census reports, maliciously excluded from others. As the Civil War approached, was fought, and lost, and Reconstruction and Jim Crow took over, Alabama became a state in which the "modern concept of the American Indian did not officially exist . . . laws written in the South were for either whites or blacks." American Indians living in the South became a group of people who did not officially exist. This now makes it difficult to produce convincing written records, especially when a huge percentage of the MOWA were illiterate or did not have English names anyway.

Matte has done the research in courthouses, churches, libraries, and legal statutes to produce their history. She tells us that the MOWA in fact continue to live in ten sub-districts, in some twenty-one villages. She has written the genealogies of many of the Choctaw families and has some fascinating mini-biographies. Matte describes Choctaw herbal and folk remedies, customs, beliefs, and legends, and their traditional polygamy.

Matte hopes readers of this book will be moved to help the MOWA at last achieve tribal recognition. They have an uphill fight, for in 1991, perhaps to avoid sharing of the federal pie, the Poarch Creek Indians hired researchers to help refute the MOWA claims. The MOWA were most recently denied tribal status in 1998, but as Matte suggests, the story will not end there.