The Choctaw did not "choose" to be expelled from their land. Rather, they were forced to leave their homelands in the southeastern United States as a result of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which authorized the federal government to negotiate with Native American tribes for their removal to land west of the Mississippi River. The Choctaw were one of the first tribes to be forcibly removed from their land as part of this policy, and their journey became known as the Trail of Tears. The Choctaw, like other Native American tribes, were victims of the policies of the US government that sought to remove them from their ancestral lands in order to open up those lands for white settlement and development.
