>>3933881One *federally* recognized reservation, the Poarch, but the story is way more complicated than that.
There's also the MOWA Reservation, which is state-recognized (federal recognition will come, but that's a long story; they'll probably have to give up the "Choctaw" in the name, because they're more like a pan-indian diaspora with a common Choctaw thread running through them than specifically Choctaw; Mobile and Washington Counties had a lot of "Friendly" Creeks who stayed behind, especially those that could pass as white, beyond the Poarch themselves. The MoWa trace their Choctaw claim through some Choctaw families that joined the Red Sticks (and went against Pushmataha) in the Creek War, then ran off into the swamps after to avoid being killed by the Pushmataha-loyal Choctaw, who considered them traitors.
Other families joined them over time and they became the "cajans", but theres a number of lineages in that neck of the woods other than Choctaw; a lot of them have Creek kin too, and obviously black and white, and there were a bunch of Apache held at Mount Vernon in the late 1800s who were allowed to roam the vicinity of where the other families were and very likely intermingled (unofficially, of course)
South Alabama's distinct from the rest of the "white" south in that the "indian rumors" don't usually take the shape of a "cherokee princess."
Good luck talking to the average American about this shit though, they've never even heard of Fort Mims, let alone considered what became of those thousands of mixed families in the pre-removal Creek Nation. You'd think they'd know a little about it, given that their presence was part of what caused war.
Race as judged by skin color is such a goofy-ass concept. Year to year sun-lounging habits notwitstanding, Indya Moore and I are the same color, albeit from quite different heritages. Can people even process 1/8th via one ancestor vs 1/8th via eight? One is valid for enrollment, the other is not.
