The Choctaw lived in Mississippi and other areas of the Southeast since well before the Revolutionary War, and were recognized by their treaty with the United States in 1786. When Mississippi became a state in 1817, the Choctaw still held three-quarters of the land in the state. There was pressure from European Americans on the federal government and state to open these lands for white settlement. Federal policy at that time was to encourage the removal of the Choctaw and other Native Americans to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River, in what became present-day Oklahoma. In 1820 and again in 1830, the tribe signed two treaties ceding almost all of their land in Mississippi to the United States.