Since the 17th century, the Choctaw and Chickasaw have venerated Nanih Waiya mound and a nearby cave as their sacred origin location.

At one time, it was bounded on three sides by a circular earthwork enclosure about ten feet tall, which encompassed one square mile.

In 2008, the Luke family deeded control of the site to the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, a federally recognized tribe.

[5] The nineteenth-century naturalist and physician Gideon Lincecum recorded a surviving Choctaw oral tradition of their arrival in the area and the construction of the mound.

According to oral history, the Choctaw people had wandered in the wilderness for 42 Green Corn Festivals, through which they carried the bones of their dead, who outnumbered the living.

[8] Since the early 21st century, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians have regained control of these sites, acquiring the land by purchase.

[7] Under Miko Beasley Denson, the tribe purchased the site in 2008 and began holding annual Nanih Waiya Day celebrations each August with Choctaw foods and dances.

[5] (Note: As the Cherokee are an Iroquoian-language people (distantly related to the nations of the Iroquois Confederacy formerly based in New York and south of the Great Lakes), anthropologists and historians believe they migrated later than this period into the Southeast.

During the Indian Removal era, the Choctaw ceded millions of acres of their territory, including Nanih Waiya, to the United States under the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, drawn up September 15–27, 1830.

Claiborne later wrote about the investigations, "Many of the Choctaws examined... regard this mound as the mother, or birth-place of the tribe, and more than one claimant declared that he would not quit the country as long as [Nanih Waiya] remained.

In August 2008, the Luke family deeded the mound to the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, a federally recognized tribe.

The Choctaw have declared August 18 as a tribal holiday to mark the return of the mound, and have used the occasion for telling stories of their origin and history, and performances of dances.