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Enrolling as Cherokee Freedmen: Social Networks of Rejected Applicants

Cherokee Roll of 1880

The Cherokee Nation compiled a census to distribute the land that was sold in the 1870s. The census enumerated Freedmen who were both entitled and not entitled to citizenship: there were 1,976 freedmen recognized as citizens of the Nation. Of this total, thirty-two of the 531 new claimants to citizenship established their rights under the Treaty of 1866. There were also 1,821 “genuine intruders” without claims to citizenship or permits to reside in the Nation.1 This census was authenticated by the National Council, whose joint committee amended the roll. 

Citizens whose names were omitted and those listed as having doubtful citizenship were called to appear before the commission in 1881. Cherokee citizens were urged to check the list for persons they knew and to inform them to appear.2 This self-reporting system of enrollment demonstrates the importance of learning the news of enrollment itself, which frequently came from one’s friends and neighbors. 

Footnotes

  1. Daniel F. Littlefield, The Cherokee Freedmen: From Emancipation to American Citizenship (Greenwood, 1978), 113–14.↵
  2. Littlefield, Cherokee Freedmen, 115–16. ↵

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