was a
mound-building Native American urban culture, which flourished in the
South and
Eastern regions of the United States prior to the arrival of White settlers. The Five Civilized Tribes is a term used for five major
indigenous tribes who lived in the
Southeastern United States. They lived in an area that had been influenced by the
Mississippian culture. Prior to the arrival of white settlers, these tribes generally had
matrilineal kinship systems, with property and hereditary positions passed through the mother's family.
First to 18th centuries Based on the development of surplus foods from cultivation, Mississippian towns had more dense populations, and they developed artisan classes, and
hereditary religious and political elites. The Mississippian culture flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from 800 to 1500 CE. Agriculture was the primary economic pursuit. The bulk of the tribes lived in towns, some covering hundreds of acres and populated with thousands of people. They were known for building large, complex earthwork mounds. These communities regulated their space with planned streets, subdivided into residential and public areas. Their system of government was hereditary.
Chiefdoms were of varying size and complexity, with high levels of military organization.
18th century removals to the first Indian Territory of the Five Civilized Tribes President
George Washington and
Henry Knox, the first
Secretary of War, implemented a policy of cultural transformation in relation to Native Americans. The Cherokee and Choctaw tended, in turn, to adopt and appropriate certain cultural aspects of the federation of colonies. In 1776, assembled in
Philadelphia, the
Second Continental Congress unanimously adopted the
Declaration of Independence, which was largely written by
Thomas Jefferson. American independence was subsequently achieved by the victory of the
Continental Army, led by
George Washington, in the
American Revolutionary War and codified in the
Treaty of Paris in 1784. The Five Tribes generally adopted cultural practices from Americans that they found useful. Tribal groups who had towns or villages closer to European-descendant Americans, or interacted more with them through trading or intermarriage, took up more of such new practices. Those towns that were more isolated tended to maintain their traditional cultures. George Washington promulgated a doctrine that held that Indian Americans were biologically equals, but that their societies were inferior. He formulated and implemented a policy to encourage civilizing them, which
Thomas Jefferson continued and expanded. Historian
Robert Remini wrote that the American leaders "presumed that once the Indians adopted the practice of
private property, built homes, farmed, educated their children, and embraced
Christianity, these Native Americans would win acceptance from Americans of European descent. The
US government appointed Indian agents, such as
Benjamin Hawkins in the
Southeast, to live among Indians and to encourage them, through example and instruction, to assimilate and adopt the lifestyle of White settlers. In the early 19th century, under such leaders as
Andrew Jackson, elected president in 1828, and others, the US government formally initiated
Indian removal, forcing those tribes still living east of the
Mississippi River, including the Five Tribes, to lands west of the river. Congress passed authorizing legislation in 1830, to fund such moves and arrange for new lands in what became known as
Indian Territory to the west. Most members of the Five Tribes were forced to Indian Territory before 1840, many to what later became the states of Kansas and
Oklahoma. The
Cherokee Nation resisted removal until 1838 and lost thousands of members in removal, along what they called the
Cherokee Trail of Tears. President
Martin Van Buren had enforced the
Treaty of New Echota, although the Senate had not ratified it, and a majority of the tribe said they had not agreed to its cessions of communal land. Once the tribes had been relocated to Indian Territory, the US government promised that their lands would be free of American settlers. But settlers soon began to violate that, and enforcement was difficult in the western frontier.
Freedmen of the Five Tribes The Five Tribes participated in
Native American slave ownership that had enslaved Black people before and during the
American Civil War. The Five Tribes largely supported the
Confederacy, which had severed ties with the
Union prior to the war, in large part because they were promised their own state if the Confederacy won. During removal to Indian Territory, "the Five Tribes considered enslaved Black people an ideal way of transporting capital to the West" because they were "movable property." After the end of the Civil War, the US required these tribes to make new peace treaties, and to emancipate their slaves, as slaves had been emancipated and were granted citizenship in the US. All Five Tribes acknowledged "in writing that, because of the agreements they had made with the Confederate States during the Civil War, previous treaties made with the United States would no longer be upheld, thus prompting the need for a new treaty and an opportunity for the United States to fulfill its goal of wrenching more land" from their grasp. The
Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 declared all slaves in the
Confederacy, which were states that had separated from the
Union, to be permanently free - except for
Tennessee and other parts of the Confederacy already under Union Army control. The proclamation did not end slavery in the five
border states that remained in the Union, but slavery everywhere in the nation was abolished, except as punishment for a crime, with the ratification of the
Thirteenth Amendment to the
United States Constitution in December 1865. The
Civil Rights Act of 1866, passed over the veto of
President Andrew Johnson, gave ex-slaves full
citizenship, except for voting, in the United States. The
Fourteenth Amendment was ratified to make clear that Congress had the legal authority to do so. The
Fifteenth Amendment extended the franchise to all adult males; only adult males among Whites had previously had the franchise, and it was sometimes limited by certain requirements. The 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments are known as the "civil rights amendments", the "post-Civil War amendments", and the "
Reconstruction Amendments". To help freedmen transition from slavery to freedom, including a free labor market, President
Abraham Lincoln created the
Freedmen's Bureau, which assigned agents throughout the former Confederate states. The Bureau also founded schools to educate freedmen, both adults and children; helped freedmen negotiate labor contracts; and tried to minimize violence against freedmen. The era of
Reconstruction was an attempt to establish new governments in the former Confederacy and to bring freedmen into society as voting citizens. Northern church bodies, such as the
American Missionary Association and the
Freewill Baptists, sent teachers to the South to assist in educating freedmen and their children, and eventually established several colleges for higher education.
US Army occupation soldiers were stationed throughout the South via military districts enacted by the
Reconstruction Acts; they tried to protect freedmen in voting polls and public facilities from violence and intimidation by White Southerners, which were common throughout the region. The Chickasaw were allied with the Confederacy. After the Civil War, the US government required the nation also to make a new peace treaty in 1866. It included the provision that they
emancipate the
enslaved African Americans and provide full citizenship to those who wanted to stay in the Chickasaw Nation. The Chickasaw and Choctaw negotiated new treaties "without a clause accepting their guilt, allowing them to declare that they had been forced into a Confederate alliance by American desertion." Unlike other tribes, Chickasaw tribal leaders never offered freedpeople citizenship. The slaves were freed and they could continue to live within the boundaries of the nation as second-class citizens, or they could move to Union states and no longer be associated with the tribe, which meant they did not participate in the
Dawes Rolls of the 1890s, which registered tribal members. The freed people of the Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole nations were able to enjoy most citizenship rights immediately after emancipation. But the Chickasaw Nation and Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma never granted citizenship to their Freedmen. They enacted legislation similar to the US
Black Codes, which set certain wages for ex-slaves and attempted to force freed people to find employment under Indian tribal members. The Cherokee Nation was the first among the five tribes to update its constitution to include the Cherokee Freedmen as full citizens. In 2018, the US Congress removed the blood quantum requirement for land allotment for the Five Tribes, though it had not been a tribal citizenship requirement. Historian Mark Miller noted: Even so-called purely 'descendancy' tribes such as the Five Tribes with no blood quantum requirement jealously guard some proven, documentary link by blood to distant ancestors. More than any single BIA requirement, however, this criterion has proven troublesome for southeastern groups [seeking federal recognition] because of its reliance on non-Indian records and the confused (and confusing) nature of surviving documents. In July 2021, the
Cherokee Freedmen asked Congress to withhold housing assistance money until the Five Civilized Tribes addressed the citizenship status of freedmen's descendants. They took this action although the Cherokee Nation had already updated its constitution to end their exclusion of the Cherokee Freedmen as members. Like other federally-recognized tribes, the Five Tribes have participated in shaping the current BIA Federal Acknowledgment Process for tribes under consideration for such recognition. They are suspicious of groups that claim Indian identity but appear to have no history of culture and community. ==Tribes==