MOWA Band of Choctaw Indians
The MOWA Band of Choctaw Indians is a state-recognized tribe located in southwest Alabama with a population largely based in southern Washington County and some membership in northern Mobile County.
The term MOWA is a portmanteau of Mobile and Washington Counties. They were formerly named the Mobile-Washington County Band of Choctaw Indians of South Alabama.
The MOWA Band of Choctaw claims to descend from Choctaw people who evaded Indian Removal in the 1830s and remained in Alabama, which the federal government stated the Band had not proven. However, former Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Kevin Gover, who personally handled their petition, has expressed support for them having a chance to repetition under a revised process. The Cherokee Nation includes the MOWA Band of Choctaw on its list of fraudulent tribes.
History
Origins
In 1810, the initial reported spread of settlement in Alabama was along the lower Tombigbee and Mobile rivers, consisting of 500 whites and 250 black people. The Reed family ancestral to the MOWA initially settled near Tibbie. Daniel Reed was recorded to be a mixed man from the West Indies, and his wife Rose Reed was recorded to be a former slave of mulatto descent. The sons of the Reed family married the daughters of the Weavers, recorded as mulatto, who had migrated with the Byrds from Georgia to Alabama. The Reeds were initially the only free people of color on the census between 1840-1850 in the Washington and Mobile counties. These familes interbred and rapidly expanded in number of individuals and households over the generations, according to census records, which typically labelled them as Black, mulatto, or free colored.According to Jaqueline Anderson Matte, many tribes eventually took on the family names of the families that owned the land they squatted on, including the MOWA Choctaw Band. Scholar Renée Ann Cramer states "“It is clear that ‘Mulatto’ was used for Indians, even those with no African ancestry; and, in Alabama, since the mid-1800s, ‘Colored’ had been used for similar persons.”
Early history
They initially raised livestock, typically on small, unimproved tracts, then moved into the lumber industry. Genealogical analysis suggests many of them emigrated from their initial tracts and assimilated into other populations. The ancestors of the MOWA Band were dubbed "Cajans" by Alabama state senator L.W. Mcrae, which was used to refer to them in later ethnological reports. Like the nearby Redbones and Dominickers, they were noted for distilling alcohol. "Cajans" had their own school system by the 1930s, as "special" white schools, due to normal ones sometimes not allowing them in. In areas not served by "Cajan" schools, they went to black schools if they could not pass as white. Although early sources refer to them this way, the MOWA consider "Cajan" or "Cajun" to be pejorative.Petition for federal recognition
The MOWA Band of Choctaw Indians sent a letter of intent for federal recognition in 1983. They completed their petition for federal acknowledgment in 1988. Kevin Gover, then Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, and the US Department of the Interior denied their petition in 1997 and again in 1999.The final determination stated that "the Alabama group did not descend from the historical Choctaw tribe or from any one of the other five tribes it claimed."
It went on to state,
"The Final Determination noted that the petitioning group is derived from two core families that were resident in southwestern Alabama by the end of the first third of the nineteenth century. All persons on the petitioner's membership roll descend from these two families. About one percent of the members have documented Indian heritage but it derives from an ancestor whose grandchildren married into the petitioning group after 1880, and from another individual who married into the petitioning group in 1904. This insignificant Indian ancestry for a few individual members does not satisfy the criterion that the group as a whole descends from a historical tribe. The MOWA ancestors, most of whom were well documented, were not identified as American Indians or descendants of any particular tribe in the records made in their own life times."
The MOWA Band of Choctaw requested a reconsideration of the Final Determination in 1998, and the US Department of the Interior reaffirmed its declining of the MOWA petition in 1999, stating, "The Final Determination concluded that there was no evidence that established Choctaw or other Indian ancestry of 99 percent of the MOWA membership. Rather, the evidence tended to disprove Indian ancestry."
Since 2000, the Census Bureau has referred to the MOWA using the assigned code C12, under the category “American Indian and Alaska Native,” subcategory “Choctaw.”
State recognition
In 1979, the State of Alabama formally acknowledged the MOWA Band of Mobile and Washington County as a state-recognized tribe, through legislation introduced by State Representative J. E. Turner.MOWA members Galas Weaver and Framon Weaver became active leaders in Indian affairs in the state of Alabama. Galas Weaver was instrumental to the formation of the Alabama Indian Affairs Commission, created by the 1984 Davis-Strong Act.
Proposed legislation
In 2022, US Senator Richard C. Shelby introduced S.3443 MOWA Band of Choctaw Indians Recognition Act to extend federal recognition to the MOWA Choctaw. The bill has been referred to the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs.Reservation
The MOWA is a rare state-recognized tribe with a reservation. The MOWA Reservation is a few miles west of US 43. It is 160 acres in size.Organization
The organization descends from "three core families, the Weavers, Byrds, and Reeds.... these families generally were classed as nonwhites, either as 'free persons of color' or black in the antebellum period, with certain individuals listed in government documents as white. Socially they were not accepted by local whites, and because they were free the MOWA ancestors were set apart from the enslaved blacks of the area," as historian Mark Edwin Miller writes. In the 1960s, some in isolated rural group increasingly asserted their rights as nonwhite, and sometimes identified as Native American, however only 183 of the 3000+ group identified as Indian on the 1970 census.Under the leadership of Framon Weaver in 1980, they formally organized as a nonprofit organization in Alabama, the MOWA Band of Choctaw Indian Commission.
As of 2022, the commission's administration includes:
- CEO: Lebaron Byrd
- Treasurer: John Byrd
- Chairman: Edward Orso
- Vice Chairman: Kesler Weaver
The MOWA Choctaw Cultural Center in Mount Vernon is subordinate to the MOWA Band of Choctaw Indian Commission. It was formed in 2003 as an A90: Arts Service Organization. Lebaron Byrd is its president.