Jena Band Of Choctaw Indians
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

The Jena Band of Choctaw Indians ( cho, Jena Chahta) are one of three
federally recognized This is a list of federally recognized tribes in the contiguous United States of America. There are also federally recognized Alaska Native tribes. , 574 Indian tribes were legally recognized by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) of the United ...
Choctaw The Choctaw (in the Choctaw language, Chahta) are a Native American people originally based in the Southeastern Woodlands, in what is now Alabama and Mississippi. Their Choctaw language is a Western Muskogean language. Today, Choctaw people are ...
tribes in the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
. They are based in La Salle, Catahoula, and
Grant Grant or Grants may refer to: Places *Grant County (disambiguation) Australia * Grant, Queensland, a locality in the Barcaldine Region, Queensland, Australia United Kingdom *Castle Grant United States * Grant, Alabama *Grant, Inyo County, C ...
parishes in the U.S. state of
Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is borde ...
. The Jena Band received
federal recognition This is a list of federally recognized tribes in the contiguous United States of America. There are also federally recognized Alaska Native tribes. , 574 Indian tribes were legally recognized by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) of the United ...
in 1995 and has a reservation in Grant Parish. Their headquarters are at
Jena, Louisiana Jena is a town in and the parish seat of LaSalle Parish, Louisiana, La Salle Parish, Louisiana, United States. The population was 3,398 at the 2010 United States Census, 2010 census. History Jena was named for Jena, Germany, where France, Fre ...
. Tribal membership totals 327.


History

The Jena Band of Choctaw Indians are related to the federally recognized Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. Both bands descend from Choctaws that remained behind in Mississippi when the Choctaw Nation was removed to Indian Territory in the 1830s after signing the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek. Between 1870 and 1880 ancestors of the Jena Band left Mississippi and settled in central Louisiana. Ten core families that included the surnames Lewis, Allen, Gibson, and Jackson, came to reside on plantations owned by the Bowie and Whatley families near Jena, Louisiana. Most worked as sharecroppers, domestics, or day laborers. A dependent and paternalistic relationship developed between the Bowie and Whatley families and the Choctaw group as witnessed by the fact band members were known locally as the "Bowie Indians" or the "Whatley Indians." Many Choctaws were forced to buy goods on credit at the Whatley family store on their plantation. The Choctaws also grew gardens for their own subsistence. Choctaw men tanned deer hides and women made baskets for sale. The original ten families were known as "full-blood" Choctaws in the local area. The Jena Band was isolated until the 1950s on Whatley and Bowie lands, having limited contact with area whites because of Choctaw determination to maintain their community and discrimination. Members of the group spoke Choctaw and maintained Choctaw names. John Allen, for example, was also known by his traditional name, Hatubbe. Jena Choctaws largely intermarried within the small group until the 1950s. They maintained Choctaw traditions such as language and folklore. Some members travelled to Muskogee, Indian Territory, in 1902 to appear before the Dawes Commission. Testimony they presented revealed that most Jena Choctaw applicants were monolingual in Choctaw. Well into the 1930s, sources report that most group members spoke Choctaw and no English. Until the 1930s the small Jena Choctaw group received no assistance from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. As part of President Franklin Roosevelt's "Indian New Deal," federal officials sought to aid non-federally recognized Indians in the Southeast that had maintained significant indigenous ancestry and community cohesion. The Bureau of Indian Affairs established a school for Jena Choctaw children during the decade. The first teacher noted that the children could not speak English and were in dire need of educational assistance. Because of the Jena Choctaw band's small size, poverty, and isolation, federal officials planned to remove the families to the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians Reservation in the late 1930s. Funding shortages stymied this effort. By the 1960s many Choctaws had moved away from Jena to take jobs in growing urban areas such as New Orleans and Houston. The core Jena Choctaw community remained, however, on lands near Jena. During the 1960s, Jena Choctaws generally remained aloof from the growing Indian activism of Louisiana and other states in the Southeast. Traditional leadership flowed to the oldest male in the community. In 1968, the last traditional leader, William Lewis, died, and younger Jena Choctaws began agitating for economic change and acknowledgement of their rights as indigenous Americans. An outgrowth of the Indian renaissance of the era, the newly created Louisiana Governor's Office on Indian Affairs sought to organize the band. In the early 1970s it helped younger Jena Choctaw leaders write a formal constitution. It established formal government structures and electoral procedures. It established formal membership criteria for the first time, with a one-quarter Choctaw blood quantum required for citizenship in the Jena Band of Choctaw Indians. In 1974, Jerry Jackson was elected its first Chairman. With a federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) grant, the band built a tribal center. With a federal grant from the Administration for Native Americans, the Jena Band researched and wrote a petition for formal federal tribal recognition through the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Federal Acknowledgment Process in the early 1980s. The Band also pursued tribal recognition legislation after 1980. In 1995, the federal government acknowledged the Jena Band as a federally-recognized tribe though the Bureau of Indian Affairs' process.


Government

The tribe is headquartered in Jena, Louisiana. Their elected Principal Chief of the Jena Band is Libby Rogers
''National Congress of American Indians''. (retrieved 7 Sept 2010)


Reservation

The Jena Band of Choctaw Reservation () is located in two separate parts in Grant Parish, Louisiana, Grant Parish, in and near the village of Creola. The larger section is located northwest of the village, while the smaller section is located within the village.


Culture

Choctaw culture has greatly evolved over the centuries, absorbing mostly
European-American European Americans (also referred to as Euro-Americans) are Americans of European ancestry. This term includes people who are descended from the first European settlers in the United States as well as people who are descended from more recent E ...
influences. It was also shaped by and contributed to
Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
, French, and
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...
colonial cultures. They were known for their rapid incorporation of modernity, developing a written language, transitioning to
yeoman Yeoman is a noun originally referring either to one who owns and cultivates land or to the middle ranks of servants in an English royal or noble household. The term was first documented in mid-14th-century England. The 14th century also witn ...
farming methods, and accepting
European American European Americans (also referred to as Euro-Americans) are Americans of European ancestry. This term includes people who are descended from the first European settlers in the United States as well as people who are descended from more recent Eu ...
s and
African Americans African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
into their society by birth, adoption or marriage.


References


External links


Jena Band of Choctaw Indians
official website {{authority control Native American tribes in Louisiana Federally recognized tribes in the United States