Researching Cherokee Ancestry

(We've moved to: http://christinesleeter.org/researching-cherokee-ancestry/)

“I’m part Cherokee.” I have heard people say this all my life, and I used to say it myself until a DNA test showed otherwise. The question of who is part Cherokee (or another tribe) comes up publicly at times, such as when Elizabeth Warren recently claimed Cherokee ancestry. The question also surfaces for many family historians. If you are investigating possible Cherokee ancestry, it is important to know why you are doing so. While the research process is similar regardless of purpose, it is much more stringent if you wish to claim tribal citizenship than if you are simply curious. I will be focusing on Cherokee ancestry, but the general issues are similar across tribes.

By the way, after writing this blog, I found the wonderful book Cherokee Proud: A Guide for Tracing and Honoring your Cherokee Ancestors, by Tony Mack McClure. It offers considerably more detail than this blog entry, so it this entry whets your interest, I recommend the book.

Historically, it was up to tribes to determine the rules for citizenship. And historically, as the Cherokee Registry explains, Cherokee were multiple bands rather than one tribe. They began to unify when trading with Europeans, who at one point halted trade because they were tired of dealing with many different tribal heads and wanted one “emperor.” Even after that unification, relationships with whites pushed different bands to move in different directions. My point is that, while you might assume Cherokee ancestry means one thing, in a historic context, it does not, and it is helpful to know something of that context.

As part of its conquest of tribes, the U.S. federal government set its own rules for tribal membership, using blood quantum, or percent of a person’s biological ancestry that can be documented as belonging to a tribe. Blood quantum is normally established by documenting direct lineage to someone officially enrolled as a tribal member. In 1893, in the context of dissolving tribes and allocating individual plots of land, the U.S. Congress established the Dawes Commission, or Final Rolls of Citizens and Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw, and Seminole). Four kinds of enrollments pertained particularly to the Cherokee:

• Citizens by blood, 
• Citizens by marriage,
• Freedmen (former black slaves of Indians), and 
• Indians of other tribes adopted by Cherokee

The rolls closed in 1907. While some Cherokee refused to participate, the great majority were enrolled. Tracing your Cherokee ancestry largely means tracing biological links between yourself and someone on the Dawes Final Rolls.

In 1934, the U.S. government elevated the concept of blood quantum with the Indian Reorganization Act, which established who could be recognized as Native American and be eligible for financial and other benefits under treaties, or sales of land. So, to be federally recognized as having Cherokee ancestry, individuals need a Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood (CDIB).

The question of who counts as Cherokee is complicated further by the Cherokee Nation’s recognition of First Families of the Cherokee Nation when its constitution was ratified in 1939. First Families include citizens according to the Dawes Final Rolls, as well as intermarried whites, whites living in the Cherokee Nation under permit, Freedmen, and others who had been granted Cherokee Nation citizenship. One can be a member of the First Families, but not a citizen as defined by blood quantum. 

Blood quantum as the criterion for Cherokee citizenship resulted in the loss of citizenship of descendants of African American Freedmen in the 1980s. Following the Civil War until that time, the U.S. government agreed to allow former slaves to be counted as Cherokee citizens, with or without Cherokee blood. Since the early 1980s, rulings have gone back and forth. As of 2012, descendants of Freedman are not counted as tribal citizens.

So how to you find out whether you have Cherokee ancestry? Start the same as you would for documenting any other kind of ancestry. Beginning with yourself, work backward, documenting names, dates and places of births, marriages, deaths. (Be aware that on the U.S. census, Cherokee have been sometimes listed as white or mulatto, sometimes not recorded at all.) For Cherokee ancestry, you are looking for roll and roll number. If you can’t find that and want to apply for citizenship, you need to collect actual documents showing biological relationship to someone who was enrolled.

Birth, death and marriage records can be found in the U.S. Census, the Oklahoma Division of Vital Records, and county clerk offices. Probate and land records are also in county clerk offices. These forms of primary documentation are essential. Secondary source documents (bible records, obituaries, newspaper articles, diaries, biographical histories) help but don’t substitute for primary documents. 

Several websites offer guidance.

The Cherokee Nation provides information about tribal citizenship, eligibility for tribal membership and downloadable citizenship forms, as well as explanations of the Dawes Final Rolls of Citizens of the Cherokee Nation, and specific directions of what to submit to document your biological relationship to someone. If you are in Oklahoma, you can also visit the Registration Department to research the index and rolls yourself.

The Cherokee Family Research Center of the Cherokee Heritage Center provides similar information. In addition, it gives directions as to how to document membership in First Families of the Cherokee Nation. You can also find specific information about several historic cemeteries, including who is buried there.

Cherokee Registry maintains a database of registered Cherokee, as well as a useful brief history of the Cherokee.

Native Web – provides useful links for Cherokee and other tribal ancestry research.

Wars, Indigenous Peoples, and Bounty Land Warrants

(We've moved to: http://christinesleeter.org/bounty-land-warrants/)

Today being Indigenous People’s Day (known to many as Columbus Day), it is fitting to look critically at one of the historic processes in U.S. history that served to transfer Indigenous people’s land to whites. Bounty land warrants constituted a form of “thanks” for service in military campaigns that extended white control over North America. Family historians who can trace their ancestry to the 1700s or early 1800s may be able to document how their ancestors either benefited or lost from this land transfer.

Bounty land warrants entitled soldiers and officers who had served in wars, principally the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the Mexican War, to public acreage at no cost. The National Archives summarize the nature of these warrants, mentioning their connection with “Indian removal.” These warrants were established by acts of Congress, which specified the tract of land available, and how many acres would go to soldiers and officers of which level of service. For example, following the Revolutionary War, while a private or noncommissioned officer was entitled to 100 acres of bounty land, a major general was entitled to 1,100 acres; these warrants could then be sold on the open market.

As an example of the link between land warrants and dispossession of Indigenous peoples, let’s look at the 4,000 square miles that came to be known of as the U.S. Military District of Ohio, that was given to soldiers and officers of the Revolutionary War. The Shawnee had been the principle tribe expelled in this process, as detailed by Sultzman.

By the time the French and British arrived in the Ohio Valley, the Shawnee were returning to land still controlled by the Iroquois who had driven them out earlier, but who were only using it as a hunting ground. For a time, the British and French welcomed the Shawnee, viewing them as trading partners. As the French and British jockeyed for power, they drew in the Shawnee (as well as other tribes) as allies. In 1754, the Iroquois ceded the Ohio Valley to the British, which had the effect of pitting Shawnee who were living there against the British. I will skip over a lot of detail here about conflicts, raids, and rebellions that took place during the 1750s and 1760s. Of significance to the issue of land transfer, in 1749 Virginia, which laid claim to the Ohio Valley, had chartered the Ohio Company, a land speculation agency many white colonists were investing in. Refusal of the British to open the area to white colonist settlement was one of the sparks setting the Revolutionary War in motion. In all of the negotiating and trading that took place, the people who were not consulted were the Shawnee, who began to experience massacres at the hands of frontiersmen. When the Revolutionary War broke out, the British recruited the Shawnee to help attack Americans. While terms of British surrender did not specify what was to happen to the Shawnee and other Indigenous peoples in the Ohio Valley, the newly-formed U.S. government went ahead and established boundaries it wanted, negotiated with some but not all local tribes, forced white squatters and Indigenous peoples off land, and proceeded to survey it and offer it up for sale as if it were not already someone’s home.

This is a short version of the history of land that became bounty warrants that Congress offered to military veterans after the Revolutionary War. For service in the War of 1812, six million acres in the Territories of Michigan, Illinois and Louisiana were given to military veterans, transferring land of many other tribes to whites at no cost.  (Unlike the earlier land warrants, these could be transferred only through inheritance, not through sale.)

I became aware of this form of land transfer while in the process of researching some of my ancestors in Tennessee. While I have not been able to document land in my family tree acquired in this way, I do have ancestors that would have qualified for it, one of them ironically for his military involvement in helping to remove the Creek Indians from Tennessee during the War of 1812. I suspect the paper trail simply does not exist anymore.

Here are two places where you can find out more information, including whether any of your ancestors might have either gained or lost land (these sources record who gained land, but by identifying land tracts and tracing back who was there first, Indigenous peoples can estimate how their families were impacted):

• The Bureau of Land Management provides access to millions of Federal land title records for Eastern Public Land States, issued between 1820 and 1908, as well as images of Military Land Warrants that were issued to individuals as a reward for their military service.
• Ancestry.com provides some background on bounty land warrants, and has a search tool, if you know the name (and rank) of a veteran, and the state in which he was enlisted.