The Five Civilized Tribes

Tracing Ancestors Among the Five Civilized Tribes

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Tracing Ancestors Among the Five Civilized Tribes
Southeastern Indians Prior to Removal
Rachal Mills Lennon

Stories about Indian ancestors in the family tree are common among both black and white families whose roots go deep into the American Southeast, especially those with links to the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole (the Five Civilized Tribes). If the accounts of family elders can be believed, those ancestors lived in the not-too-distant past. Yet despite the strength of family convictions--and the prized portraits of forebears whose features suggest Indian heritage--most researchers who pursue these traditions feel they are chasing a phantom.

Tracing Ancestors Among the Five Civilized Tribes is designed to eliminate speculation and help you determine the truth about your Indian ancestry. It focuses on the toughest period to research--the century or so prior to the removal of the Southeastern nations to Indian Territory, the point at which records were regularly maintained. It provides the cultural, genealogical, and historical background needed to turn family stories into proved lineages. And it outlines a method of research that can carry you from the colonial period to the great tribal rolls of the mid-to-late nineteenth century, using the unique records kept by American, English, French, and Spanish governments.

The Final Rolls of Citizens and Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes in Indian Territory [and] Index to the Final Rolls

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GPC-5903

The Final Rolls of Citizens and Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes in Indian Territory [and] Index to the Final Rolls
(2 volumes)
Dawes Commission

In 1893, when the Dawes Commission was established to negotiate with the Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws. Creeks, and Seminoles (the Five Civilized Tribes) to abolish tribal governments and to provide for the allotment of land to tribal members, few could have foreseen that this would lead to the creation of one of the most important record sources in all of Native American genealogy, for the Dawes Commission was empowered to prepare citizenship rolls (membership rolls) for each tribe to determine the proper distribution of land and to hear and "determine the applications of all persons who may apply to them for citizenship and . . . determine the right of such applicant to be admitted and enrolled."

These rolls, known as the "Final Rolls," were to be the only rolls used for allotment purposes, and because of the rigorous application procedures involving proof of blood and tribal affiliation, they are the basis for the official identification of degrees of Indian blood among the Five Civilized Tribes.

Applications for enrollment were received from approximately 250,000 individuals, but the Final Rolls approved by the Commission contained the names of 101,000, of whom approximately one-fourth were full blood. The Commission enrolled individuals as "citizens" of a tribe under the following categories: Citizens by Blood, Citizens by Marriage, New Born Citizens by Blood, Minor Citizens by Blood, Freedmen (former black slaves admitted to tribal citizenship), New Born Freedmen, and Minor Freedmen. Most rolls give name, age, sex, degree of Indian blood, and the number of the census card, generally known as the "enrollment card," on which each citizen was enrolled. (Enrollment cards, as distinct from the Final Rolls themselves, are arranged by tribe, thereunder by category, and thereunder by the census card number shown as part of the individual's entry on the Final Rolls, and they usually contain parents' names and places of residence, the names of related enrollees--husband, wife, children--and references to earlier tribal rolls.)

From the original Final Rolls, which are now housed in National Archives II at College Park, Maryland, the Commission in 1907 published The Final Rolls of Citizens and Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes in Indian Territory along with the Index to the Final Rolls of Citizens and Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes in Indian Territory, now reprinted here for the first time in nearly a century. The Index volume, divided by tribe and broken down under the various categories noted above, provides the Indian's name and the roll number; while the roll number is the key to the Final Rolls volume, which lists enrollees by tribe and category and thereunder by name, age, sex, degree of blood, and the number of the census card.

Unparalleled in Native American genealogy, the work reprinted here is one of the finest printed sources relating to the genealogy of the Five Civilized Tribes and is the reference of choice for any researcher claiming even a fraction of tribal blood

A Gazetteer of Indian Territory

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CF-9861

A Gazetteer of Indian Territory
(U.S. Geological Survey No. 248, Series F, Geography, 44)
Henry Gannett

Students of Native American genealogy will welcome the re-publication of Henry Gannett's Gazetteer of Indian Territory, first published in 1905. Gannett, geographer for the U.S. Geological Survey, oversaw the publication of the Gazetteer between the Oklahoma Land Rushes of 1889 to 1895 and Oklahoma's admission as the 46th state in 1907. Indian Territory refers to those remaining southwest lands that had become home, primarily, to the Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole) following their removal from the southeastern states in 1833. (Small reservations of Quapaw, Peoria, Modoc, Ottawa, Wyandot, and Shawnee dotted the northwestern corner of the territory.)

Indian Territory is bounded on the north by Kansas, on the east by Arkansas, on the south by Texas, and on the west by Oklahoma. Readers will find a valuable description of the region's geological, geographical, demographic, and economic characteristics in Mr. Gannett's Introduction. The bulk of the book, of course, consists of an alphabetical list of 2,100 place names, scattered through Indian Territory. The place names range from villages, to railway stations, to bodies of water, and to other natural formations. Each place name is identified in relation to the Indian nation on whose reservation it could be found and with reference to Indian Nation atlas sheets published separately by the U.S. Geological Survey. All in all, this is a great tool for researchers with ancestors among the Five Civilized Tribes and other Indian nations.

The Indian Tribes of North America

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GPC-5682

The Indian Tribes of North America
John R. Swanton

This is the definitive one-volume guide to the Indian tribes of North America, and it covers all groupings such as nations, confederations, tribes, subtribes, clans, and bands. It is a vast and impressive digest of all Indian groups and their historical locations throughout the continent. Formatted as a dictionary, or gazetteer, and organized by state, it includes all known tribal groupings within the state and the many villages where they were located.

Using the year 1650 to determine the general location of most of the tribes, Swanton has drawn four over-sized fold-out maps, each depicting a different quadrant of North America and the location of the various tribes therein, including not only the tribes of the United States, Canada, Greenland, Mexico, and Central America, but the Caribbean islands as well. According to the author, the gazetteer and the maps are "intended to inform the general reader what Indian tribes occupied the territory of his State and to add enough data to indicate the place they occupied among the tribal groups of the continent and the part they played in the early period of our history. . . ."

Accordingly, the bulk of the text includes such facts as the origin of the tribal name and a brief list of the more important synonyms; the linguistic connections of the tribe; its location; a brief sketch of its history; its population at different periods; and the extent to which its name has been perpetuated geographically. As far as possible each tribe, or group, is treated as an independent entity, but the work as a whole forms an absolutely comprehensive picture of the Indian tribes of North America, and leaves no question unanswered about any tribal grouping, big or small.

Along with the bibliography and index, and the imprimatur of its original publisher, the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of American Ethnology, Swanton's book is an authoritative digest of the Indian tribes of North America, and it is the one book that you'll need as a desk reference in your Native American research.