Choctaw Corner
{{Location map | USA Alabama
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| caption = Map of modern Alabama showing location of Choctaw Corner
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The Choctaw Corner is a former Native American boundary location near the modern border between Clarke and Marengo counties in Alabama, United States. It was established as the northernmost terminus for a mutually agreed upon boundary line between the Choctaw and Creek peoples during the Mississippi Territory period.{{cite web |url=http://www.clarkecountyal.com/historical_markers.htm |title=Clarke County's Historical Markers |work=Clarke County Historical Society |publisher=Clarke County, Alabama official website |accessdate=July 27, 2011 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20070730235342/http://www.clarkecountyal.com/historical_markers.htm |archivedate=July 30, 2007 }}{{cite web |url=http://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=38586 |title=Choctaw Corner |work=Clarke County Historical Society |publisher=The Historical Marker Database |accessdate=July 27, 2011}} This boundary line, now known as the “Old Indian Treaty Boundary,” starts at the Alabama River cut-off in southernmost Clarke County and follows a northward path through the county along the drainage divide between the Tombigbee and Alabama rivers to the Choctaw Corner, then turns ninety degrees to the west and follows the modern county-line between Clarke and Marengo to the Tombigbee River.{{cite book |title=The Creek War of 1813 and 1814 |last1=Halbert |first1=H. S. |last2=Ball |first2=T. H. |year=1895 |publisher=Donohue and Henneberry |location=Chicago |isbn=0-8173-0775-3 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/creekwarand00ballgoog/page/n42 35]–36 |url=https://archive.org/details/creekwarand00ballgoog|quote=Choctaw Corner. }}
History
Beginning a decade prior to the eruption of the Creek War, the Choctaw Corner had its roots in white settlement of territory that the Creek saw as encroachment upon their western lands. They had already experienced white encroachment on their eastern lands in Georgia. The Choctaw claimed the lands in modern Clarke County from the Tombigbee River eastward to the watershed as theirs.{{cite web|url={{NRHP url|id=64500005}}|title="Clarke County MPS"|work=National Register of Historic Places|publisher=National Park Service |accessdate=July 27, 2011}} Although the Creek had traditionally claimed the lands from the Alabama River westward to the watershed, as early as 1802 the Alibamu people, as the closest members of the Creek Confederacy to the new settlers, claimed that their territory reached all the way across to the Tombigbee.
File:Choctaw Corner Historical Marker.jpg
After much persuasion, veiled threats, and a payment of $50,000 plus an annuity in goods of $3000, the Choctaw signed the Treaty of Mount Dexter with the United States on November 16, 1805 that ceded 4,142,720 acres (16,765.0 km2) of their territory, including the disputed land east of the Tombigbee, to the Americans.{{cite book |title=The Old Southwest 1795–1830: Frontiers in Conflict |last=Clark |first=Thomas D. |author2=John D. W. Guice |year=1989 |publisher=University of New Mexico Press |location=Albuquerque |isbn=0-8061-2836-4 |pages=36–37}}
In about 1808 the two Native American peoples decided to settle their argument over control of the strip of land between the two rivers by a traditional ball game. The Choctaw won but the Creek were dissatisfied with the results. The two groups decided to let the women play, and the Choctaw women won as well, which settled the dispute.
Possibly disappointed that the treaty did not include the fertile lands on the east bank of the Mississippi River, President Thomas Jefferson had delayed ratification in the Senate for over two years after the signing. The boundary line was finally surveyed in 1809, with both Creek and Choctaw assisting.{{cite journal|last=Finlay|first=Louis M. Jr.|title=The Mitchell Reserve|journal=Clarke County Historical Society Quarterly|date=Summer 2000|volume=25|issue=1|pages=9}}
Several years after the Indian Removal in the 1830s, European-American settlers founded a new town named Choctaw Corner a few miles southeast of the old boundary marker.
See also
References
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Category:Geography of Clarke County, Alabama
Category:Native American history of Alabama