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.^[5] They were formerly named the Mobile-Washington County Band of Choctaw Indians of South Alabama.^[1]

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.^[6] 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.^[7]

The MOWA Band traces its origins to Indigenous people who stayed in Alabama after others were coerced or forced to leave for areas west of the Mississippi River in the 1830s, including descendants of the Six Towns Choctaw, Tohomé, Naniaba and Mobilian, who had all been categorized as "Choctaw" by the English and then American colonial governments.^[8][9] Native American advocate Vine Deloria Jr. describes their historical profile as "typical" of southeastern Native Americans, with documentation connecting them to Choctaw Nation villages before the Indian removal.^[10]

Like other tribes in the region, research into the origins of the MOWA Band has historically been complicated by ambiguous terminology, the racial problems of the American South, and orders from the U.S. government not to count Native Americans in censuses during the early 19th century.^[11][12][13] In 1810, the initial reported spread of settlement in Alabama was along the lower Tombigbee and Mobile rivers. The population was recorded as including 500 whites and 250 Black people, 59 of whom were free. Native Americans were not recorded by U.S. marshals, under orders of the Office of the U.S. Secretary of State, at the time.^[14][11] Choctaw were induced to leave the area by the 1830s, but Choctaw communities were attested in south Alabama by William Armstrong in 1847.^[8][9] By 1870, only 98 people were enumerated as part of Native American tribes in the state of Alabama, 43 of which were in the vicinity of the modern Poarch Creeks.^[14][11]

Scholar Renée Ann Cramer, while noting that the tribe had free Black ancestry, states that terms historically used for Black and mixed-race people were used to describe Native Americans in the area as well, such as "mulatto" and "colored", since at least the middle of the 19th century.^[12] Historian Mark Edwin Miller similarly notes that the three families most strongly associated with the tribe were historically called "free persons of color" or Black in the antebellum period, with certain individuals listed in government documents as white. Locally, they were not considered white and were also set apart from enslaved Blacks in the area.^[13] Gary B. Miller notes that 67 percent of the "free people of color" who were able to pass as white in Alabama had some degree of Indian heritage.^[15]

Jacqueline Anderson Matte notes that locals began to call the community "Cajuns" or "Cajans" in the 1880s, after L. W. McRae, a local senator, mistook them for relatives of the Louisiana Cajuns. Although the group repudiated the term, and described it as pejorative, it likely stuck because it was an easy way to distinguish the ancestors of the MOWA Band from the area's white and Black populations.^[16][17] The community were instead observed to prefer referring to their grouping simply as "Our people".^[18]

Following a high profile criminal investigation in 1924, in which a nonliterate Native American shot the deputy sheriff of Mobile County, numerous reports circulated about the MOWA Band. According to Matte, little research was actually done at this time, and each report largely echoed the reports of previous authors.^[19]

By 1937, Edward Thomas Price reported that locals considered the MOWA Band to be of white, African-American and Native American heritage.^[20] From the 1970s, members of the community began openly identifying as Native American on censuses.^[21] By 1980, they formally organized as the MOWA Band of Choctaw Indian Commission.^[2][22]

Historian Mark Edwin Miller notes that most of the tribe descends from three families: the Weavers, Byrds, and Reeds.^[24] Matte suggests the ancestors of the MOWA Choctaw Band may have taken the surnames of families that owned the land they squatted on, similar to African-Americans.^[25] They initially raised livestock, typically on small, unimproved tracts, then moved into the lumber industry.^[26]

The Reed family initially settled near Tibbie. Local folk history suggested Daniel Reed was from Jamaica or the West Indies, but he was recorded as a free Black person on census documents. He married a Mississippi-born woman named Rose, recorded as a former slave and a mulatto, who was emancipated from a white master in 1818.^[27][28][18]

The sons of the Reed family married the daughters of Jim and Dave Weaver, who were themselves recorded as free people of color on the 1830 Mobile County census.^[29][18] They were documented to have migrated to Alabama from Georgia, with the Byrd family, also ancestral to the members of the MOWA.^[29] Lemuel Byrd was reported to have initially migrated from North Carolina to fight in the Indian Wars under Andrew Jackson. Byrd appeared on the 1840 Mobile County census report as a free person of color, and married Anne Weaver.^[18]

By the 1930s, during segregation, these families had their own school system, due to standard white schools sometimes not admitting them.^[30] In areas not served by Cajan schools, some went to Black schools if they could not pass as white.^[31] By 1969, most of them went to desegregated schools, with only Reed Chapel school remaining.^[18]

In 1922, Percy Reed successfully appealed his conviction under anti-miscegenation laws, as the prosecution was unable to prove he was Black. The appellate court ruled that the determination of his race had been based upon hearsay and appearance, while a defense witness and even his trial judge deemed him to be of Spanish and Indian heritage.^[32][33] In response, in 1927, the legislature brought in the "one-drop rule", where anyone with any Black heritage was considered Black.^[34][32]

By the 1930s, there were several isolated mixed-race communities across the South, East and Midwest who were affected by these laws. They were identified by their neighbors socially as more Native American than Black, and they tended to socialize within their own communities rather than either white or Black communities. Most identified themselves as Native, although some also said they had Black heritage. In this climate of racial essentialism, they were increasingly forced to identify either as white or Black.^[33]

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.^[35] Galas Weaver was instrumental to the formation of the Alabama Indian Affairs Commission, created by the 1984 Davis-Strong Act.^[36]

The MOWA Band of Choctaw Indians sent a letter of intent for federal recognition in 1983.^[37] They completed their petition for federal acknowledgment in 1988.^[38] Kevin Gover (Pawnee), 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."^[1]

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 (3,960) 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."^[1]

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."^[38]

Since 2000, the Census Bureau has referred to members of the band under the category "American Indian and Alaska Native", subcategory "Choctaw", as using the assigned code C12, for the label "Mowa Band of Choctaw".^[39]

As of 2022, US Senator Richard C. Shelby (R-AL) 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.^[40]

The MOWA Band is a rare state-recognized tribe with a reservation. The MOWA Reservation is a few miles west of US 43.^[41] It is 160 acres in size.^[36]

Under the leadership of Framon Weaver in 1980, the MOWA Band formally organized as a nonprofit organization in Alabama, the MOWA Band of Choctaw Indian Commission.^[22][2]

As of 2022, the commission's administration includes:

• CEO: Lebaron Byrd
• Treasurer: John Byrd
• Chairman: Edward Orso
• Vice Chairman: Kesler Weaver^[2]

The commission received grants from organizations such as the Gulf Coast Resource Conservation and Development Area, Ala-Tom RC&D Council, Alabama Business Charitable Trust Fund, and others.^[2]

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.^[3]

The MOWA operates a health clinic and a museum.^[42] The MOWA hosts an annual powwow each year.^[43]

Members of the MOWA Band of Choctaw Indians have a high frequency of Marinesco–Sjögren syndrome, a rare autosomal recessive disorder which can lead to intellectual disability, muscle weakness, and balance and coordination problems.^[44][45] They are the only known population in the United States to suffer from the rare disease.^[46]

• Redbones
• Dominickers
• Beaver Creek Indian Tribe
• Free Black people

• Miller, Mark Edwin (2013). Claiming Tribal Identity: The Five Tribes and the Politics of Federal Acknowledgment. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0806143781.
• Price, Edward Thomas (January 1950). Mixed Blood Populations of Eastern United States as to origins, localizations, and persistence. Oakland, CA: University of California. Retrieved 23 January 2026.

• Official website
• Alabama Indian Affairs Commission