Portal:Indigenous peoples of North America/Selected article/September

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The Choctaws, or Chat-kas, are a Native American people originally from the southeast United States (Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana) of the Muskogean linguistic group. In the nineteenth century, they were known as one of the "Five Civilized Tribes", so-called because they had integrated a number of cultural and technological "practices" of Europeans. The Choctaws are famous for their extreme generosity in providing famine relief during the Irish Potato Famine. The Choctaw were no doubt a part of the Mississippian culture in the Mississippi River valley.

Du Pratz, in his Historie de La Louisiane (Paris, 1758) recounted that "...when I asked them from whence the Chat-kas came, to express the suddenness of their appearance they replied that they had come out from under the earth."