Dawes Commission

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Cherokee Freedmen Enrollment Notice

The American Dawes Commission, named for its first chairman Henry L. Dawes, was authorized under a rider to an Indian Office appropriation bill, March 3, 1893. Its purpose was to convince the Five Civilized Tribes to agree to cede tribal title of Indian lands under an allotment process to the individual Indian, enacted in 1887 (See Dawes Act for other tribes). In November 1893, President Grover Cleveland appointed Dawes as chairman, and Meridith H. Kidd and Archibald S. McKennon as members.

During this process, the Indian nations were stripped of their communally-held national lands, and the land was divided up into single lots and given to individual members of the nation. However, to prove you were a member of a tribe, you had to declare membership in one and only one tribe to a national registry known as the Rolls. Many people did not sign up to these rolls because they feared government persecution if their ethnicity was formally entered into the system. Furthermore, people often had mixed blood sharing several tribes, so 1/4 Cherokee and 1/4 Creek must register simply as '1/4 Cherokee,' thereby formally losing part of their heritage by fiat of government. On top of all this, many Indian tribes did not consider 'blood' the only criteria as to whether you belonged to a tribe, but the Dawes commission did. The last blow to logic was that many Freedmen or Slaves of Indians who were freed after the civil war, were kept off the rolls.

Many Creek Freedmen are still fighting this battle today against the Creek Nation, attempting to get benefits the nation offers its citizens. But it only considers people citizens if they descended from someone on the Dawes Commission rolls.

The result of the Dawes Commission was that Indian nations lost most of their national land. This cleared the way for white settlers looking for oil riches and rich farm land to come into the territories in areas such as Tulsa, buy up the small lots from the Indians, and set up towns. The Indians now had more money but had lost their territory to such an extent that it crippled their nations for many years to come.