Little River National Wildlife Refuge
	P.O. Box 340 Broken Bow, OK   74728 E-mail: David_Weaver@fws.gov Phone Number: 580-584-6211
	Visit the Refuge's Web Site: http://www.fws.gov/refuge/little_river/

	Continued . . . The Caddoan people left this area by the time Europeans explored Little River in the early 1700s. A century later, in 1830, the Choctaw Indians arrived at the end of the "Trail of Tears". Thousands of Indians were forcibly removed from their homelands in Alabama and Mississippi and relocated to southeast Oklahoma. McCurtain County was named for a tribal member who became the chief of the Choctaw Nation. His three sons each served as chief. The Choctaw and other settlers started clearing. the forests to grow corn and cotton. By the mid-1900s, major timber companies arrived to log forests and eventually start loblolly pine plantations. The bottomland forests preserved at Little River stand as silent sentinels to both land and cultural changes.
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