Treaty of Pontotoc Creek

The Treaty of Pontotoc Creek was a treaty signed on October 20, 1832 by representatives of the United States and the Chiefs of the Chickasaw Nation assembled at the National Council House on Pontotoc Creek in Pontotoc, Mississippi. The treaty ceded the 6,283,804 million acres of the remaining Chickasaw homeland in Mississippi in return for Chickasaw relocation on an equal amount of land west of the Mississippi River.^[1]

The treaty followed an earlier agreement to move west of the Mississippi in 1830 which the Chickasaw refused to honor after discovering the poor nature of the land they received. Pressured by the aggression of the State of Mississippi to establish its jurisdiction over the Indians, Chickasaw Chiefs relented in 1832 to President Andrew Jackson's and his representatives offer of relocation in the west. The land was ceded to the U.S. with the understanding that the proceeds made in the sale of the land to white settlers would go to the Chickasaw. The treaty led to the Chickasaw Trail of Tears, by which the entire Chickasaw Nation emigrated to new territory in present-day Oklahoma in 1837-1838.