Thursday, July 1, 2010

Cherokee Native Americans

INTRODUCTION

In Native American Research it is important to know that five tribes were considered as "civilized tribes" by the United States government. The following is a quote from wikipedia about the five civilized tribes:
The Five Civilized Tribes were the five Native American nations: the Cherokee,
Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole, which were considered civilized by
white settlers during that time period because they adopted many of the
colonists' customs and had generally good relations with their neighbors. The
process of cultural transformation was proposed by George Washington and Henry
Knox; the Cherokee and Choctaw were successful at integrating European-American
culture. The Five Civilized Tribes lived in the Southeastern United States
before their relocation to other parts of the country, especially the future
state of Oklahoma.
DAWES ROLLS

Today these five tribes continue to use the Dawes Rolls as the basis for determining tribal membership. They usually require applicants to provide proof of descent from a person who is listed on these rolls.

The following is a description of the Dawes Rolls from the website:
http://www.archives.gov/genealogy/tutorial/dawes/

The Dawes Rolls, also known as the "Final Rolls", are the lists of individuals who were accepted as eligible for tribal membership in the "Five Civilized Tribes": Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Seminoles.

The Rolls contain more than 101,000 names from 1898-1914 (primarily from 1899-1906). They can be searched to discover the enrollee's name, sex, blood degree, and census card number.

The census card may provide additional genealogical information, and may also contain references to earlier rolls, such as the 1880 Cherokee census. A census card was generally accompanied by an "application jacket". The jackets then sometimes contain valuable supporting documentation, such as birth and death affidavits, marriage licenses, and correspondence.

The following site will give you a step-by-step example of what you can find using the Dawes Rolls at the Family History Library. In this example, the name of the person is George Guess and he is from the Cherokee tribe.

To go to this site, click on Dawes Roll.

GUION MILLER ROLLS

The following is a description of the Guion Miller Rolls from the website:

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cherokee/miller.html


The 1906/09 "Roll of the Eastern Cherokees" is better known as "The Guion Miller Roll". It was created as a result of a successful lawsuit filed by three groups of Cherokees who had not been paid all of the money due them as a result of the 1835 Treaty of New Echota. This is the ILLEGAL "treaty" that resulted in the forcible removal from their homes of those Cherokees who refused to give up their tribal citizenship, and the infamous "Trail of Tears" in 1838/39. Thousands were first herded into "pens" and for weeks/months were given food that was not fit for human consumption, contaminated drinking water, and most were forced to sleep in the open. This was done in order to "break their spirit" so they would agree to go to the western wilderness lands of Indian Territory! It worked-- by the time they were to be transported, they would have agreed to go ANYWHERE in order to get out of the pens!

The Guion Miller Roll is the most important source of Cherokee genealogical research of any of the rolls, because the application required extensive information to be supplied by the applicant. Between 27 Aug 1906 and 18 May 1909 there were 45,940 applications filed from the United States, Canada, Mexico and-- Syria! It listed an estimated 90,000 individual applicants. Each qualifying applicant received a warrant worth $133.33 for their share of the one-time payment due to them. In order for an application to be accepted on this roll, the applicant had to prove descent from a person who was shown on the 1835 roll of Eastern Cherokees (also known as The Henderson Roll), which listed the citizenship of the tribe at that time. In order for them to have been listed on that roll as "citizens", they had to have lived in the Eastern Cherokee Nation.

Finding and even verifying an ancestor who was accepted on this roll will N-O-T qualify you for tribal membership in the Cherokee Tribe today, only the 1902 Dawes Roll will do that (see "Requirements for Enrolling"- clickable from the main page).

What it WILL do is give you at least two generations of information back from the applicant.

The following site will give you a step-by-step example of what you can find using the Dawes Rolls at the Family History Library. In this example, the name of the person is George Guess and he is from the Cherokee tribe.

To go to this site, click on Guion Miller Roll.

OTHER CHEROKEE ROLLS

Information on these rolls can be found at:

http://www.accessgenealogy.com/native/rolls.htm

Reservation Roll - 1817


Armstrong Roll - 1830

Emigration Roll - 1817-1835 - Old Settlers

Henderson Roll - 1835

Trail of Tears Roll - 1835

Mullay Roll - 1848

Muster Rolls - Ha Cubbees Band Muster Rolls - 1847

Muster Roll of the Big Black River Band - 1847

Chapman Roll - 1851

Old Settler Roll - 1851 -

Siler Roll - 1852

Act of Congress Roll - 1854

Drenen Roll - 1852

Swetland Roll - 1869

Hester Roll - 1883

Wallace Roll - 1890 - Cherokee Freedmen

Kern Clifton Roll -








CHEROKEE BIBLIOGRAPHY - Family History Library (FHL) in Salt Lake City, Utah

The information for this site is for use at the Family History Library(FHL), Salt Lake City, Utah.  It contains a bibliography of books in the FHL specifically for Cherokee Native Americans.





GEORGIA CHEROKEE

The information for this section is for use at the Family History Library(FHL), Salt Lake City, Utah. It contains a bibliography of books in the FHL specifically for Cherokee Native Americans living in Georgia.


















TENNESSEE CHEROKEE

The information for this section is for use at the Family History Library(FHL), Salt Lake City, Utah. It contains a bibliography of books in the FHL specifically for Cherokee Native Americans living in Tennessee.





Using these sources would be an important part of proving that a person was a Cherokee Indian.  If you are interested in proving that you are a Cherokee Indian go to http://www.cherokeeindianproof.com/.