Greenwood LeFlore

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Main article: Choctaw

Greenwood LeFlore
Greenwood LeFlore
Born	June 3, 1800
Died	August 31, 1865
Residence	Choctaw nation, later Mississippi
Nationality	Choctaw, later U.S. citizen
Occupation	Tribal chief

Greenwood LeFlore (June 3, 1800 – August 31, 1865) was an American Indian/European-American leader of the Choctaw and Mississippi senator. A wealthy and regionally influential trader with many connections in state and federal government, he was elected chief of the entire Choctaw tribe shortly before the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, becoming the first Principal Chief of a Choctaw Nation that had previously been governed by regional chiefs.

LeFlore was a half-breed son of Louis LeFleur, a French trader and explorer from French Canada and a Choctaw woman Rebecca Cravat, niece of Pushmataha. ^[1] At the age of tweleve his father allowed him to go to Nashville to become educated; although never popular with the full-blood tribesmen, he became a powerful man at an early age. ^[1]

In treaty negotiations, LeFlore used his formidable personal political capital and position as head of a unified tribe not to oppose removal (which he regarded as inevitable), but to secure the largest and most desirable section of Indian Territory land possible.

In the event, the Choctaw were awarded the largest territory of any removed tribe, located in the fertile, forested southeast corner of what is now Oklahoma. LeFlore received one thousand acres (4 km²) of land in Mississippi for his part in the negotiations on the treaty, and he did not move to Indian territory with other Choctaws. LeFlore's accomplishments in unifying and strengthening the Choctaw people are still honored, but his pragmatic, bottom-line response to their removal from their ancestral lands was and remains controversial. Some Choctaws felt LeFlore wronged them because he was one of the leading chiefs involved in the treaty.

Malmaison, Greenwood LeFlore's home

In later years, LeFlore was a Mississippi representative and senator, a fixture of Mississippi high society, and a personal friend of Jefferson Davis. Greenwood and Leflore County in Mississippi and Le Flore County, Oklahoma are named for him. His magnificent Carroll County home, Malmaison, burned in 1942. The novelist James Street modeled two characters in his Dabney family saga on LeFlore.