The Choctaw Tribe Was First to Settle in Greenwell Springs

By Mia Freneaux

Did you know?

    Many children this summer are availing themselves of the fun to be had at Camp Istrouma Summer Camp.  Owned by the United Methodist Church, Camp Istrouma was also a Boy Scout Camp, but long before that, many people called it home.

    Camp Istrouma is named after the Native American word for “Red Stick” (“Baton Rouge” in French).   An Indian mound which still exists on Greenwell Springs Road gave its name to the community of European settlers who came here in the early 1800’s.  But long before the Europeans came, the Amite and Choctaw tribes lived here.   Dr. Jesse Fairchild, life long Greenwell Springs resident, found many relics of this civilization.  Farmers along the Amite River regularly plowed up artifacts as they prepared their fields.  It would be wonderful to recover some of these artifacts for a museum in Central.

    From the Choctaw Nation website, one learns “The Choctaw are native to the Southeastern United States and members of the Muskogean linguistic family, which traces its roots to a mound-building, maize-based society that flourished in the Mississippi River Valley for more than a thousand years before European contact.  Although their first encounter with Europeans ended in a bloody battle with Hernando de Soto’s fortune-hunting expedition in 1540, the Choctaw would come to embrace European traders who arrived in their homeland nearly two centuries later. By the time President George Washington initiated a program to integrate Southeastern Indians into European American culture following the Revolutionary War, many Choctaw had already intermarried, converted to Christianity and adopted other white customs. The Choctaw became known as one of America’s Five Civilized Tribes, which also included the Chickasaw, Cherokee, Creek and Seminole.”  Sadly, despite signing 9 peace treaties with the United States Government, the Choctaw were the first tribe to be forced to relocate from their ancestral land along what is called today “The Trail of Tears”.  2,500 members of the tribe perished along the way.  Despite this, the Choctaw are the third largest tribe in the nation today, having overcome much adversity, and even served in World War I as the famous “Code Talkers” who used their native tongue to help defeat the Germans in France.

    Mound building, maize based Native American societies were settled communities that flourished in the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from about 800 B.C. to 1500 A.D.  They shared several cultural traits, including construction of platform mounds that had houses, temples , or burial buildings built on top of them.  This is why disturbing an Indian Mound can be a serious offence to Native Americans.  These communities were based on maize agriculture, which allowed them to settle in one place and develop trade routes (in some cases as far as the Rocky Mountains) and art forms such as shell tempered pottery.  They were typically ruled by a chief.  They followed the traditions of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex (SECC) which included a fairly uniform use of ritual items, weaponry, and artwork.  This culture had no system of writing, no stone architecture, did no smelting, but worked naturally occurring copper to create many beautiful artifacts. They were known for using a striped pole (Baton Rouge!), bi-lobed arrows, maces, copper masks, and pottery.  Like the SEC, the SECC was often connected to ritual game playing, specifically a game called “chunkey”, played by rolling stone discs across a huge arena that housed large audiences, then throwing spears to see who could come closest to the stopped stone.  To lose the game generally meant to lose your life. Gives a whole new meaning to the term “Death Valley,” doesn’t it! Unlike the SEC, gambling was encouraged!