The Chickasaw Nation presented Daniel F. Littlefield, director of UALR’s Sequoyah National Research Center, and two former UALR students the tribe’s Holisso Award at an award ceremony in Ada, Okla., Sept. 29.

The Holisso (a Chickasaw word that refers to writing) Award is given each year for the best unpublished book manuscript on Chickasaw history. Littlefield and his research interns Amanda Paige of Little Rock and Fuller Bumpers of Batesville began their work for the book in 2003. The manuscript is under contract to be published within the next year by the Chickasaw Nation Press.

The book, “Chickasaw Removal,” documents the forced removal of the Chickasaw people from their traditional homelands in northern Mississippi and Alabama in 1837 to 1839. It tells of their attempts to defeat the government’s plans, the actual trek across Arkansas to Indian Territory to the west, and the fraud and deprivation the people suffered once they reached the west.

“As a side note, which is not in the book, some of the Chickasaws during the removal traveled past what is now UALR’s campus on their walk to the west,” Littlefield said. He said plans are to commemorate the event with a marker in the Trail of Tears Park being developed on the south end of campus.

As part of a 30-year campus master plan, UALR removed surplus, unusable buildings and is building a park to reintroduce native tree species and other plants to the area around Coleman Creek. The plan is to make the waterway a centerpiece attraction for the campus and the neighborhood.