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Enrolling as Cherokee Freedmen: Social Networks of Rejected Applicants

Kern-Clifton Roll (1896–1897)

Recognizing the inconsistencies in the Cherokee roll of 1880, the Kern-Clifton Roll compiled a list of authenticated and contested Freedmen, free Blacks, and their descendants. The role of the commission created to establish this roll was to identify individuals on the Cherokee roll of 1880 and their descendants who were still alive on May 3, 1894, and to confirm the residents of the Cherokee nation.1

The commission asked applicants to provide their dates and places of birth, names of their parents, names of the individuals who enslaved them, their residency, maiden names, names of former husbands, and such.2 There was an average of five witnesses for each application. The Cherokee Nation objected to using the affidavits in the Wallace Roll, and the commission was urged to make a full report of the cross-examination.3

The commission received and reviewed 651 applications from 3,277 individuals.4 The final report was submitted on December 13, 1896, including the names of 2,530 Freedmen: 1,878 on the adjusted unauthenticated roll, and 144 on the new supplemental authenticated roll. A total of 4,552 claimed Cherokee citizenship.5 The Kern-Clifton Roll was approved on the 18 January, 1897, and the next month, money was given to those named within the document. 

However, there were issues with the roll; significantly, it left out many Freedmen who were on the authenticated roll of 1880.6 The Cherokees accused the Kern-Clifton Roll of being made through bribery and fraud, both in its creation and the distribution of payments.7
 

Footnotes

  1. Daniel F. Littlefield, The Cherokee Freedmen: From Emancipation to American Citizenship (Greenwood, 1978), 180.↵
  2. Littlefield, Cherokee Freedmen, 181.↵
  3. Littlefield, Cherokee Freedmen, 183.↵
  4. Littlefield, Cherokee Freedmen, 181.↵
  5. Littlefield, Cherokee Freedmen, 184.↵
  6. Littlefield, Cherokee Freedmen, 201–2.↵
  7. Celia E. Naylor, African Cherokees in Indian Territory: From Chattel to Citizens (University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 173.↵

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