Chickasaw in the context of "Indian removal"

The term Five Civilized Tribes was applied by the United States government in the early federal period of the history of the United States to the five major Native American nations in the Southeast: the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee (Creek), and Seminoles. White Americans classified them as "civilized" because they had adopted attributes of the Anglo-American culture.

Examples of such colonial attributes adopted by these five tribes included Christianity, centralized governments, literacy, market participation, written constitutions, intermarriage with White Americans, and chattel slavery practices, including purchase of enslaved Black Americans. For a period, the Five Civilized Tribes tended to maintain stable political relations with the White population. However, White encroachment continued and eventually led to the removal of these tribes from the Southeast, most prominently along the Trail of Tears.

The Trail of Tears was the forced displacement and ethnic cleansing of about 60,000 Native Americans of the "Five Civilized Tribes", including their black slaves, between 1830 and 1850 by the United States government.

As part of Indian removal, members of the Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations were forcibly removed from their ancestral homelands in the Southeastern United States to newly designated Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River after the passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830. The Cherokee removal in 1838 was the last forced removal east of the Mississippi and was brought on by the discovery of gold near Dahlonega, Georgia, in 1828, resulting in the Georgia Gold Rush. The relocated peoples suffered from exposure, disease, and starvation while en route to their newly designated Indian reserve. Thousands died from disease before reaching their destinations or shortly after. A variety of scholars have classified the Trail of Tears as an example of the genocide of Native Americans; others categorize it as ethnic cleansing.

West Tennessee is one of the three Grand Divisions of Tennessee that roughly comprises the western quarter of the state. The region includes 21 counties between the Tennessee and Mississippi rivers, delineated by state law. Its geography consists primarily of flat lands with rich soil and vast floodplain areas of the Mississippi River. Of the three regions, West Tennessee is the most sharply defined geographically, and is the lowest-lying. It is both the least populous and smallest, in land area, of the three Grand Divisions. Its largest city is Memphis, the state's second most populous city.

West Tennessee was originally inhabited by the Chickasaw, and was the last of the three Grand Divisions to be settled by Europeans. The region officially became part of the United States with the Jackson Purchase in 1818, 22 years after Tennessee's statehood. As part of the Mississippi River basin, West Tennessee enjoys rich soil that led to large-scale cotton farming during the antebellum period that was heavily dependent on slave labor. As a result, it forms the northwestern tip of the Black Belt.

Hopayi' Minko' (often written as Piomingo or Piominko; c.1750 – c.1799) was a Chickasaw chief and diplomat. President George Washington and Piomingo considered themselves to be friends. He was a signatory to the Chickasaw Treaty of Hopewell. Piomingo received a presidential peace medal from Washington for his loyalty to the US.

The Curtis Act of 1898 was an amendment to the United States Dawes Act; it resulted in the break-up of tribal governments and communal lands in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) of the Five Civilized Tribes of Indian Territory: the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Muscogee (Creek), Cherokee, and Seminole. These tribes had been previously exempt from the 1887 General Allotment Act (Dawes Act) because of the terms of their treaties. In total, the tribes immediately lost control of about 90 million acres of their communal lands; they lost more in subsequent years.

The act also transferred the authority to determine members of tribes to the Dawes Commission as part of the registration of members. Thus, individuals could be enrolled as members without tribal consent. By effectively abolishing the remainder of tribal courts, tribal governments, and tribal land claims in the Indian Territory of Oklahoma, the act enabled Oklahoma to be admitted as a state, which followed in 1907.