Greg O'Brien

My research interests are in ethnohistory, American Indians of the Southeast, American environmental history (particularly in the South), and the American Revolutionary era. I have focused extensively on Choctaw Indian history before the 1830s. My current book project is a study of the 1849 New Orleans flood, the worst flood to hit that city before Hurricane Katrina. My longer-range project is a study of the Seven Years War (French and Indian War) in the South (1750s-1760s) focusing on American Indian diplomatic initiatives and relations between Indians and Europeans.

There are 7 included publications by Greg O'Brien :

TitleDateViewsBrief Description
Chickasaws: The Unconquerable People 2003 4761 The Chickasaw Indians were Mississippi’s second largest Indian group after the Choctaws. Before the United States government forced their removal in the 1830s, the Chickasaw resided in north Mississippi with their villages centered between the headwa...
The Conqueror Meets the Unconquered: Negotiating Cultural Boundaries on the Post-Revolutionary Southern Frontier 2001 4528 On December 26, 1785, A group of 127 bedraggled Choctaw Indians arrived at Hopewell, Andrew Pickens's home on the Keowee River in South Carolina. They had trekked for over two months and traveled hundreds of miles from their central Mississippi homel...
Downsizing Hits Home 1997 946 On a gloomy October day in 1995, the chair of the University of Wyoming's history department summoned all graduate students in the department to a meeting. He announced that the doctoral program no longer existed. To say that we were shocked would be...
Gideon Lincecum (1793-1874): Mississippi Pioneer and Man of Many Talents 2004 1676 Gideon Lincecum moved to Mississippi in 1818. He brought his family, which included his wife Sarah Bryan, two small children, his parents, some siblings, and a few African-American slaves. They settled initially along the Tombigbee River and helped e...
Making the Mississippi River Over Again: The Development of River Control in Mississippi 2002 1477 When Mark Twain wrote those words in the 1870s the United States government was just beginning to forge a massive river control system on the Mississippi River. The post-Civil War period witnessed an explosion in levees, wing-dams, dikes, jetties, an...
Mushulatubbee and Choctaw Removal: Chiefs Confront a Changing World 2001 3694 One of Mississippi's and the United States' most inhumane actions was the forced removal of American Indians from the South to lands west of the Mississippi River in the early 1800s.

Removal occurred because of an incessant demand for Ind...
Pushmataha: Choctaw Warrior, Diplomat, and Chief 2001 2161 Few Choctaws from the early 1800s are better known than Pushmataha. He negotiated several well-publicized treaties with the United States, led Choctaws in support of the Americans during the War of 1812, is mentioned in nearly all histories of the Ch...