Five Civilized Nations

The term Five Civilized Tribes was applied by European Americans in the colonial and early federal period in the history of the United States to the five major Native American nations in the Southeast—the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek (Muscogee), and Seminole. Americans of European descent classified them as "civilized" because they had adopted attributes of the Anglo-American culture. Examples of such colonial attributes adopted by these five tribes included Christianity, centralized governments, literacy, market participation, written constitutions, intermarriage with white Americans, and chattel slavery practices, including purchase of enslaved African Americans. For a period, the Five Civilized Tribes tended to maintain stable political relations with the European Americans, before the United States promoted Indian Removal of these tribes from the Southeast.

In the 21st century, this term has been criticized by some scholars for its ethnocentric assumptions by Anglo-Americans of what they considered civilized, but representatives of these tribes continue to meet regularly on a quarterly basis in their Inter-Tribal Council of the Five Civilized Tribes.

The descendants of these tribes, who primarily live in what is now Oklahoma, are sometimes referred to as the Five Tribes of Oklahoma. Numerous other federally recognized tribes are also located in Oklahoma.

History

The Five Civilized Tribes is a term used by European Americans for five major indigenous tribes who lived in the Southeastern United States. They coalesced historically in an area that had been strongly influenced by the Mississippian culture. Before European contact, these tribes generally had matrilineal kinship systems, with property and hereditary positions passed through the mother's family. But they were much more egalitarian and decentralized than the Mississippian culture peoples at their height.

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.

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. At the time of the Declaration of Independence, the culture of the rebel colonies seeking to form a union was itself, emergent. The Five Tribes generally adopted cultural practices from European Americans that they found useful. Typically the bands who had towns or villages closer to whites, or interacted more with them through trading or intermarriage, took up more of such new practices. Those towns that were more isolated from whites tended to keep to their traditional cultures.

Experiment of "civilizing"

Washington promulgated a doctrine that held that American Indians were biologically equals, but that their society was inferior. He formulated and implemented a policy to encourage the "civilizing" process, which Thomas Jefferson continued. 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 white Americans. Washington's six-point plan included impartial justice toward Indians; regulated buying of Indian lands; promotion of commerce; promotion of experiments to "civilize" or improve Indian society; presidential authority to give presents; and punishing those who violated Indian rights.

The government appointed Indian agents, such as Benjamin Hawkins in the Southeast, to live among Indians and to encourage them, through example and instruction, to live like whites. The tribes of the Southeast adopted Washington's policy as they established schools, took up yeoman farming practices, converted to Christianity, and built homes similar to those of their colonial neighbors. These five tribes also adopted the practice of chattel slavery: holding enslaved African Americans as forced workers.

Indian removal

In the early Federal period, after the US became independent, white settlers pushed into the interior and into the Deep South, areas that were still largely dominated by Native Americans. They were land-hungry. The invention of the cotton gin had made cultivation of short-staple cotton profitable in the interior, and settlers encroached on Native American lands in the Upper South, western Georgia, and the future states of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. They demanded the chance to cultivate these lands for agriculture. Armed conflicts occurred between some of the tribes and the settlers, who kept pushing west. They demanded that state and federal governments let them buy land.

In the early 19th century, under such leaders as Andrew Jackson, elected president in 1828, and others, the U.S. 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.

Indian Territory

Once the tribes had been relocated to Indian Territory, the United States government promised that their lands would be free of white settlement. But settlers soon began to violate that, and enforcement was difficult in the western frontier.

In the late 19th century, under the Dawes Act and related legislation, the US government decided to break up communal tribal lands, allocating 160-acre plots to heads of households of enrolled members of the tribes. It determined that land left over was "surplus" and could be sold, including to non-Native Americans. Allotment was also a means to extinguish Indian title to these lands, and the US government required the dissolution of tribal governments prior to admission of the territories as the US state of Oklahoma.

Later, as European-American settlement increased in the Oklahoma Territory, pressure built to combine the territories and admit Oklahoma as a state. In 1893, the government opened the "Cherokee Strip" to outside settlement in the Oklahoma Land Run. In 1907, the Oklahoma Territory and the Indian Territory were merged to form the state of Oklahoma. Relative to other states, all Five Tribes are represented in significant numbers in the population of Oklahoma today.

Tribes

Cherokee

The Cherokee, (; chr, ᎠᏂᏴᏫᏯᎢ, translit=Aniyvwiyaʔi) are people of the Southeastern United States, principally upland Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. They speak an Iroquoian language. In the 19th century, historians and ethnographers recorded their oral tradition that told of the tribe having migrated south in ancient times from the Great Lakes region, the base of most other Iroquoian-speaking peoples.

Of the three federally recognized Cherokee tribes, the Cherokee Nation and the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians (UKB) have headquarters in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. The UKB are mostly descendants of "Old Settlers", Cherokee who migrated to Arkansas and Oklahoma about 1817. They are related to the Cherokee who were forcibly relocated there in the 1830s under the Indian Removal Act. The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians is on the Qualla Boundary in western North Carolina, and are descendants of those who resisted or avoided relocation. Although the Cherokee Nation sponsors some satellite communities, it does not recognize Cherokee heritage groups that are seeking federal recognition. The Cherokee tribe has 729,533 enrolled members.

Chickasaw

The Chickasaw are Indian people of the United States who originally resided along the Tennessee River and other parts of Tennessee, in the southwest side of Kentucky, west of present-day Huntsville, Alabama, and in parts of Mississippi. They spoke some French and some English. Some historians credit the Chickasaws' intervention in the French and Indian War on the side of the British as decisive in ensuring that the United States became an English-speaking nation. Originating further west, the Chickasaw moved east of the Mississippi River long before European contact. All historical records indicate the Chickasaw lived in northeastern Mississippi from the first European contact until they were forced to remove to Oklahoma, where most now live. They are related to the Choctaws, who speak a similar language, both forming the Western Group of the Muskogean languages. "Chickasaw" is the English spelling of ''Chikasha'' (), that either means "rebel" or "comes from Chicsa". The Chickasaw are divided in two groups: the "Impsaktea" and the "Intcutwalipa". The Chickasaws were one of the "Five Civilized Tribes" who went to the Indian Territory during the era of Indian Removal. Unlike other tribes, who exchanged land grants, the Chickasaw received financial compensation from the United States for their lands east of the Mississippi River.
The Chickasaw Nation is the thirteenth largest federally recognized tribe in the United States. The Chickasaws built some of the first banks, schools, and businesses in Indian territory. They also signed a treaty with the Southern United States during the Civil War and brought troops to fight for the Confederates.

Choctaw

The ''Choctaw'' are Native American people originally from the Southeastern United States (Mississippi, Alabama and, to a lesser extent, Louisiana). There were about 20,000 members of this tribe when they were forced to move to Indian territory. Many of them did not survive. They are of the Muskogean linguistic group. The word ''Choctaw'' (also rendered as ''Chahta'', ''Chato'', ''Tchakta'', and ''Chocktaw'') is possibly a corruption of the Spanish ''chato'', meaning flattened, in allusion to the tribe's custom of flattening the heads of infants. Noted anthropologist John Swanton, however, suggests that the name belonged to a Choctaw leader. They were descended from people of the Mississippian culture which was located throughout the Mississippi River valley. Historians such as Walter Lee Williams have documented some early Spanish explorers encountering chiefs of the Mississippian culture, ancestors of some of the Five Tribes.

Although smaller Choctaw groups are located in the southern region, the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians are the two primary federally recognized tribes. This people historically cultivated beans, maize and squash, like other settled Indians. They also hunted and fished for some of their diet. Since the early nineteenth century, the tribe has recovered and increased in number. The federally recognized tribes have about 231,000 members in total, making the Choctaw the third-largest Native American population in the United States. The capital of the Choctaw Nation is in Tuskahoma, Oklahoma.

Creek

The Creek, or Muscogee, are originally from Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, and Alabama. They resided there from approximately 1500 AD until they were forcibly displaced by the American government in the early 19th century. ''Mvskoke'' is their name in the Muskogee language. The Muscogee Creek were not one tribe but a confederacy of several, each of which had their own distinct land and sometimes dialects or languages in the Muskogean family.

Starting in 1836, the American government forced them to remove west of the Mississippi along with the other Southeast tribes to what was designated as Indian Territory. About 20,000 Muscogee members were forced to walk the Trail of Tears, the same number as the Choctaw. Modern Muscogee live primarily in Oklahoma, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. Their language, ''Mvskoke

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