The Chickasaw are a Native American tribe from Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee in the American South. The Chickasaw moved to the lands east of the Mississippi River before the arrival of European settlers, and the tribe adopted some cultural practices of the United States' white settlers after coming into contact with them. The tribe resisted white expansion and was forced to sell its lands in 1832 as a result of the Indian Removal Act, and the tribe was forced to relocate to the Indian Territory in Oklahoma. In 2005, there were 38,000 Chickasaw people living in Oklahoma.