The area that is now Stovall, MS was originally the homeland of the Choctaw Nation. Today that nation endures with the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, which received Federal Tribal Recognition in 1945 and currently numbers 11,000 members on 35,000 acres in ten different Mississippi Counties.

In 1830 the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek displaced the Choctaw Nation and made the land they had inhabited available for sale to American settlers.

John Oldham (Jan. 21, 1793 – May 17, 1850) came to Mississippi Delta from South Carolina to cut timber and purchased land for $1.25 an acre. The Stovall family are his direct descendants, and the land has never left the family since Oldham’s purchase.

The area that is now Stovall was originally known as Prairieville, a nod to the fact that the Choctaws had cleared much of this very fertile ground for agriculture.

And we have evidence that the Choctaws staged their own events on this land. Pictured at right is a detail from a January 1930 aerial survey of the area immediately adjacent to the Stovall Store and Gin Complex. Easily visible at the bend in the road is an oval pounded into the dirt - a legacy of Choctaw horse races from the 18th century.