Treaty of Doak's Stand

Based on the terms of the accord, the Choctaw were forced to give up approximately 5 million acres or roughly one-third of their remaining Choctaw homeland in the east in exchange for 13 million westward acres in the Canadian Kiamichi, Arkansas, and Red River watersheds.

The Choctaw reluctantly signed the agreement in an effort to maintain peace as they were threatened by the US commissioners that if they did not agree to move west, they would perish.

In October 1820, US General and future US President Andrew Jackson and retired US General Thomas Hinds were sent by President James Monroe as commissioners who represented the United States to negotiate and write a treaty to surrender a large portion of Choctaw country in Mississippi.

US commissioners met with the chiefs Pushmataha, Mushulatubbee, and Apuckshunubbee, who represented the three major regional divisions of the Choctaw.

Dinsmore was a former US Indian agent to the Choctaw; his passport ruling in 1812 had stirred a brief controversy with General Andrew Jackson.

Dinsmore was at the negotiations to settle a land claim; he believed the policy of the American government toward the Indian tribes was too harsh.

The white Arkansan settlers believed that their life, liberty, and happiness had been threatened by the US Government because the Choctaw would also settle on the same land.

From the moment the Treaty was ratified, both white settlers in Arkansas and the Choctaw argued for changes and amendments.

The boundaries hereby established between the Choctaw Indians and the United States, on this side of the Mississippi river, shall remain without alteration until the period at which said nation shall become so civilized and enlightened as to be made citizens of the United States and Congress shall lay off a limited parcel of land for the benefit of each family or individual in the nation.

...The preamble begins, WHEREAS it is an important object with the President of the United States, to promote the civilization of the Choctaw Indians, by the establishment of schools amongst them; and to perpetuate them as a nation, by exchanging, for a small part of their land here, a country beyond the Mississippi River, where all, who live by hunting and will not work, may be collected and settled together.

Corn, Blankets, kettles, rifle guns, bullet moulds & nippers, and ammunition to be given to Choctaws, who moved from ceded territory to lands west of the Mississippi River (Oklahoma), for one year.

The land actually owned by the United States began where the Canadian and Red Rivers crossed the 100th Meridian West, what is today the Oklahoma-Texas border.