John Bartlett Meserve

The McCurtain's John Bartlett Meserve

Grim and heartrending emergencies confronted the Choctaw Indians as they approached the end of their "trail of tears" to the West. Baffling situations lurked in the formative days which lay before them and these situations were to challenge their tireless efforts to accomplish their own destiny as fate had ordained. The difficult processes in the decades following their removal drew them closer together and finally resulted in a unified constitution in 1860. An understanding appraisal of the concluding decades of the tribal life of the Choctaw Indians could not be approached without an acquaintance with the McCurtain dynasty of chieftains. Under the capable leadership of chieftains drawn from the McCurtain family, this powerful tribe was influenced in an intelligent manner and its membership led securely through the concluding years of their political life until the complete erasure of their last frontier was witnessed by Green McCurtain, the last elected chieftain of the Choctaw Nation.