Mississippi Choctaw Women: Preservation and Adaptation from Post-Removal to the 1970s

Pepper, Elisabeth H (2017) Mississippi Choctaw Women: Preservation and Adaptation from Post-Removal to the 1970s. Undergraduate thesis, under the direction of Mikaela Adams from History, The University of Mississippi.

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Abstract

This project analyzes the processes of adaptation and preservation utilized by Choctaw women in Mississippi from the post-Removal period to the end of the 1970s. It focuses specifically on the areas of women’s lives concerning work, the domestic sphere, leadership roles, and recreational activities. To inform my research, I used a variety of primary and secondary sources concerning the Mississippi Choctaws, even covering the period before Removal. I studied archival documents, microfilm, newspapers, magazines and pamphlets, as well as secondary resource books concerning this topic. From my research, I concluded that women actively engaged in strategies to preserve their Choctaw identity, while simultaneously adapting to their changing environment. Choctaw women held on to their cultural pattern of gender distinctions and adapted them to fit with their generation. This process of preservation resulted in many of these gender ideas still being present within the tribe at the end of the twentieth century.

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