The signing of the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek on Sept. 27, 1830, was the final negotiation to remove the Choctaws from their ancestral homelands in Mississippi and Alabama to Indian Territory. The trip covered 600 miles. Many small groups emigrated between the treaty and the fall of 1831 in anticipation of removal by the U.S. government, and the first organized removal left Vicksburg, Mississippi, on Nov. 2, 1831. The elderly and small children rode in wagons while the remainder walked, each person taking only what could be carried as homes, possessions, and lands were left to white settlers. Starvation and severe winter conditions followed, especially during the emigration of 1831-32, one of the worst winters in memory. Food provided by the U.S. government was often stolen, spoiled, or late in arriving. At stopping places, the Choctaws buried their loved ones, and few elderly people or young children survived the journey. The death rate along the trail averaged one death every quarter mile, with the dead left beside the trail or buried in shallow graves. Clothing and shoes wore out, blankets tattered in the cold wind, and hunger and grief echoed along the trail. Captain William Armstrong, Superintendent of Removal, reported on Nov. 10, 1832, that the Choctaws struggled for 7 days crossing 30 miles of Arkansas swamp in waist-deep water, with many dying from cholera. Upon arrival in Indian Territory, they had to carve new homes from the wilderness, plant fields, and rebuild their lives. Later, toward the end of the 19th century, the U.S. government opened the Choctaw Nation to individual allotment for non-Indian settlement, and tribal government was reduced to shambles when Oklahoma became a state in 1907. Though many feared statehood would be the death knell of the Choctaw Nation, the Choctaw people endured, recalling the faith, courage, and determination that sustained them after one-fourth of the tribe perished on the forced march.