Learn about the little-known Choctaw hog breed that is steeped in history through the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and the promise this pig can bring.
Choctaw hogs are wild-looking pigs with European origins and a connection with Indigenous Americans for over 500 years. Although they can have an aggressive temperament that requires at least intermediate experience with livestock to raise them, this breed also possesses important characteristics: Since they’re extremely hardy and athletic, they require little husbandry and can subsist on food they forage, if given adequate land.
Distinguishing traits of the Choctaw hog breed include black coloring with some white marks; relatively lengthy legs; hooves with fused toes, similar to those of a mule; and wattles, one on each side of its neck. The Choctaw hog tends to be on the smaller side, with its mature weight ranging from 120 to 150 pounds. While some physical characteristics of the Choctaw hog overlap with those of the Mulefoot hog, they’re separate pig breeds. The Livestock Conservancy lists Choctaw hogs as a critically endangered breed, because there are fewer than 200 annual registrations in the United States and the estimated global population is less than 2,000.
As its name suggests, the Choctaw hog has its origins in pigs brought by southeastern Indigenous tribes to Oklahoma in the 1830s during the tribes’ forcible removal by the U.S. government from their ancestral homelands. This breed is of particular historical and cultural importance to the Choctaw people.
Ian Thompson is the tribal historic preservation officer of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and senior director of the Historic Preservation Department. With a doctorate in anthropology and a focus in Native American studies, he provides unique knowledge about the history of the Choctaw hog, its changing role in Choctaw culture, and the future of the breed.
Steeped in History
A species similar to the modern hog used to live in the Choctaw ancestral homeland, near present-day western Alabama and eastern Mississippi, up until the end of the last ice age. This ancestral peccary, Mylohyus, went extinct about 9,000 years ago, according to Thompson.
“To the best of our knowledge, the first hogs after European contact that Choctaws interacted with came with Hernando de Soto and his group of Spanish conquistadors in the 1540s,” Thompson says. “So, there were no hogs for Choctaw people to interact with until European arrival.”
The Spanish settler-colonists traveled with hogs as meat on the hoof – an efficient way to transport food. While de Soto gifted hogs to Indigenous people in the Southeast, Thompson isn’t aware of any of those pigs surviving into the Choctaw hog we know today.
“Hogs came in permanently in the Choctaw country through contacts with the French, beginning in the 1700s,” Thompson says. “The Choctaw people saw them as being similar to the opossum. So, there’s actually a linguistic reversal that happened. We took our old name for opossum and transferred it to pig, and the native opossum became what we refer to as ‘silver pig.'”
Initially, the Choctaw people saw the hog as an unclean animal, so they didn’t eat the meat from the hog but rather raised the hogs for sell or trade. That taboo continued for several generations to the best of Thompson’s knowledge. By the late 1700s, though, the Choctaw people had started eating the hogs.
Hogs have since become a cornerstone of traditional Choctaw food. “Today, one of the Choctaw national dishes is tanchi labona, which is a hominy pork dish. Now, all the Choctaw traditional gatherings have pork meat in them,” Thompson says. “So, hogs became fully integrated into the Choctaw diet.”
Pork jerky, or nipi shila (Choctaw for “salt pork” or “jerky”), is now popular at Choctaw gatherings. To traditionally prepare nipi shila, you smoke thin strips of meat over a fire. This method was used prior to the arrival of the Europeans as a means of preserving fruit and fish.
Tracing the Ancestry of Choctaw Hogs
“We’re doing research right now with a Ph.D. student who’s looking at the origins of the hogs that came specifically to Choctaw villages,” Thompson says. “There were some excavations that took place at a Choctaw village site in Kemper County, Mississippi.”
That village, Shomo Takali, or “Hanging Moss,” was inhabited from the 1650s until the 1830s, which spans the time the Choctaw people were adopting the hog into their culture. Researchers are analyzing DNA of the hog bones from the Shomo Takali site to compare it with DNA of the hog bones recovered at Mobile Bay. This will provide clarity as to whether today’s Choctaw hogs descended from Spanish or French origins. The Livestock Conservancy is funding this project.
“It’s interesting that there have been some studies in the Southeast that show the spread of hogs from Jamestown,” Thompson says. “Jamestown was founded in 1607 on the East Coast and, over time, hogs spread from that area outward. It looks like feral hogs became common in the Choctaw homeland in the 1840s, so that would be in the decade after much of the tribe was moved to Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears.” Before the Choctaw people were forcibly relocated, they had been keeping the destructive wild-hog population under control.
Today, only 40 or so hogs of this rare, critically endangered breed are raised by the Choctaw Nation. “To the best of my knowledge, there are two different entities that own them. One is Bryant Rickman, and he’s a private individual who lives around Antlers, Oklahoma,” Thompson says. “My understanding is that Mr. Rickman saw the hog breed as something highly significant and went and collected animals in the area that had the characteristics of the Choctaw hog and has worked to keep the breed from going extinct.”
Last year, Rickman gave around 27 hogs to the Choctaw Nation. Jody Standifer, the tribe’s executive officer of agriculture and commercial leasing, now manages about 40 hogs.
Future Choctaw Hogs
Populations of Choctaw hogs are incredibly rare, and the Choctaw Nation and individual breeders now have the responsibility to get their numbers up before people can start eating a lot of them. For those in the Choctaw community who are unfamiliar with the breed, when Thompson tells them about it, many express interest in seeing the hogs or trying their meat.
Thompson hopes the Choctaw hogs will be an easy sell for potential hog farmers. Although the hog is a non-native animal, the Choctaw breed was selected over centuries for characteristics that helped it adapt to the southeastern United States and let it thrive with minimal inputs. “I understand that they are relatively smaller compared to some of the domesticated hogs, but they’re able to fend for themselves,” Thompson says. “I believe their meat is less marbled, which means less fat.”
Another strength of the breed is its untapped genetic diversity. “There are possibilities that the hog contains genetics that could be significant to overcoming some of the food issues that Choctaw Nation or the United States or the world is facing now or in the future,” Thompson says. “Obviously, it’s got important heritage connections for Choctaw people, so by preserving it, we preserve a part of the Choctaw story.”
While the Choctaw hog might have a ways to go before it becomes a household name, this piece of living history has a lot to offer.
Choctaw Vocabulary
- Shukha Hog
- Shukhta Opossum (white pig)
- Issuba Horse (like a deer)
- Tanchi labona Choctaw hominy and pork dish
- Nipi shila Salt pork or jerky
Found in Folklore
The Choctaw Nation has stories about animals that’re told both for entertainment and to teach kids important social lessons. These are called Shukha Anumpa, or “pig talk,” or, more anciently, “possum talk.”
“One of the main characters in those stories is the possum, and that’s why they’re called that,” Thompson explains. “Originally, it meant ‘possum tales,’ but with the linguistic shift I was telling you about, it now means ‘hog tales’ or ‘pig talk,’ even though a pig’s not a character in it. That’s what those stories are interpreted as, which is kind of interesting, how dominant the hogs have become linguistically. I guess that reflects what it’s become in terms of culinary aspects too.”
Find out more about the cultural traditions, language, and history of the Choctaw people of Oklahoma.
Kenny Coogan earned a master’s degree in global sustainability and co-hosts the “Mother Earth News and Friends” Podcast. He also created and hosts the TV show Florida’s Flora and Fauna with Conservationist Kenny Coogan.
