Greenwood LeFlore
| Greenwood LeFlore | |
|---|---|
Greenwood LeFlore
|
|
| Born |
June 3, 1800 LeFleur's Bluff |
| Died | August 31, 1865 |
| Residence | Choctaw nation, Mississippi |
| Nationality | Choctaw, American |
| Education | Educated by Major Donly in Nashville, Tn. |
| Occupation | Tribal chief, planter and entrepreneur; Mississippi State Senate 1841-1844 |
| Title | Chief & State Senator |
| Predecessor | Robert Cole, before Cole was Apuckshunubbee |
| Successor | George W. Harkins |
| Spouse(s) | 1st-Rosa Donley (12/4/1817), Priscilla Leflore, |
| Children | William, Benjamin, Basil, Clarissa, Forbis, Jackson, Emily, and three other daughters. |
| Parent(s) | Louis LeFleur and Rebecca Cravatt |
Greenwood LeFlore or Greenwood Le Fleur (June 3, 1800 – August 31, 1865) was elected Principal Chief of the Choctaw in 1830 before removal. Before that, the nation was governed by three district chiefs and a council of chiefs. A wealthy and regionally influential Choctaw of mixed-race, who belonged to the Choctaw elite due to his mother's rank, LeFlore had many connections in state and federal government. In 1830 LeFlore led other chiefs in signing the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, which ceded the remaining Choctaw lands in Mississippi to the US government and agreed to removal to Indian Territory. It also provided that Choctaw who chose to stay in Mississippi would have reserved lands, but the United States government failed to follow through on this provision.
While many of the leaders realized removal was inevitable, others opposed the treaty and made death threats against LeFlore. He stayed in Mississippi, where he settled in Carroll County and accepted United States citizenship. He was elected to the state government as a legislator and senator in the 1840s. During the American Civil War, he sided with the Union.
LeFlore was the first son of Rebecca Cravatt, a high-ranking Choctaw daughter of the chief Pushmataha, and Louis LeFleur, a French fur trader and explorer from French Canada who worked for Panton, Leslie & Company, based in Spanish Florida. Because the Choctaw had a matrilineal system for property and hereditary leadership, LeFlore gained elite status from his mother's family and clan. By the 1820s, as the historian Greg O'Brien notes, the Choctaw called such mixed-race children itibapishi toba (to become a brother or sister), which emphasized the connection to Choctaw, or issish iklanna (half-blood), which seemed to imitate Euro-American concepts. O'Brien notes the importance of their being first of all, part of the Choctaw elites. Choctaw chiefs recognized the advantage of using such mixed-race elite men as "trailblazers into an unprecedented universe of capitalist accumulation and renewable wealth."
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