This evocative story of the Choctaws is told through the lives of two remarkable leaders, Taboca and Franchimastabé, during a period of revolutionary change, 1750-1830. Both men achieved recognition as warriors in the eighteenth century but then followed very different paths of leadership. Taboca was a traditional Choctaw leader, a "prophet-chief" whose authority was deeply rooted in the spiritual realm. The foundation of Franchimastabé's power was more externally driven, resting on trade with Europeans and American colonists and the acquisition of manufactured goods. Franchimastabé responded to shifting circumstances outside the Choctaw nation by pushing the source of authority in novel directions, straddling spiritual and economic power in a way unfathomable to Taboca. The careers of these leaders signal a watershed moment in Choctaw history – the receding of a traditional mystically oriented world and the dawning of a new market-oriented one.

At once engaging and informative, Choctaws in a Revolutionary Age, 1750–1830 highlights the efforts of a nation to preserve its integrity and reform its strength in an increasingly complicated, multicultural world.

Greg O'Brien is an associate professor of history at the University of Southern Mississippi.

"O'Brien's work is solid and the research impeccable."—The Chronicles of Oklahoma

"A significant step forward, one of a small number of recent southeastern Indian histories that begin by taking native cultures seriously and viewing Choctaw beliefs and understandings of the world as crucial to the ways in which native people acted and reacted as historical actors. . . . O'Brien is to be commended for attempting this difficult and necessary work."—Jason Baird Jackson, The Alabama Review

“Greg O’Brian carefully contextualizes the internal dynamics of kinship and spiritual authority with the external forces of European settler encroachment and trade to analyze how the Choctaw accommodated, yet maintained, their traditional culture in an era of revolutionary change. . . . This book is an important starting point for reassessing the evolution of the Choctaw and their neighbors in the second half of the eighteenth century.”—Allan Gallay, The American Historical Review

“The appearance of another volume in the excellent University of Nebraska Press series on Indians of the Southeast . . . is always a happy occasion. . . . [O’Brian’s] use of a Choctaw frame of reference throughout the book reveals useful ways of understanding what occurred in this period.”—Jay Gitlin, Louisiana History

“A sensitive reading of a crucial era in Choctaw history that will lead historians to rethink the relationships between Native politics, religion, trade, and warfare. . . . Carefully argued, clearly structured, and extremely concise.”—Joshua Piker, The Journal of Southern History

“A refreshing interpretation of the Choctaws’ shift from a frontier exchange community to one that adopted the market-oriented agricultural and commercial practices of the United States.”—George Edward Milne, Georgia Historical Quarterly

“Choctaws in a Revolutionary Age deserves to be examined, pondered, and then applauded. . . . The volume features both excellent notes and a selected bibliography, along with a useful index.”—Arthur H. DeRosier Jr., Journal of American History

“By embedding his definition of power in Choctaw concepts, Greg O’Brien goes a long way toward writing the kind of history that Fogelson and Sioui have advocated. As such, his book points the way toward a new conception of native history that may replace the old story of conquest and dispossession with one that is more attuned to the complexities of life on colonial, national, and global frontiers.”—James Taylor Carson, William and Mary Quarterly

“Choctaws in a Revolutionary Age is an ambitious, well-written contribution to the literature. O’Brien’s theoretical approach is very clear and precise . . . his is a daring attempt to explain this very difficult and dynamic period of Choctaw history.”—Donna Akers, Journal of American Ethnic History, Fall 2006

“An important contribution to the study of Choctaw history. . . . The strength of this book lies in O’Brien’s storytelling, his ability to construct a compelling narrative history of a critical period in Choctaw culture and society. Never content to merely detail what happened, O’Brien mines the writings of missionaries, travelers, government officials, and some of the Choctaw themselves to understand how power was manipulated in order to maintain authority among a small group of elite Choctaw.”—Tom Mould, Arkansas Review

2002 McLemore Prize, sponsored by the Mississippi Historical Society, winner