Civilized Tribes, Five

CIVILIZED TRIBES, FIVE

CIVILIZED TRIBES, FIVE. Five Civilized Tribes was a collective name used to describe the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole Indians during the nineteenth century. The term "civilized" stemmed from the willingness of many of these natives to adopt Christianity and to use the tools of white American culture to preserve their Indian identity. While living in their homelands in the American Southeast, some members of these tribes adopted commercial agriculture and chose to live like their American neighbors. Some established plantations and owned slaves. By 1867, all five tribes had been removed to Indian Territory and were ruled by constitutional governments, which mirrored the political institutions of the United States. These practices continued into the late nineteenth century, as did the tension between those who adopted the majority culture's traditions and those who did not. Those more inclined to white ways were keen on integrating Indian Territory into the national economy, often welcoming white settlers to their homeland and renting out parcels of land to them. By 1890, Indians in the Territory were outnumbered by more than two to one by whites and African Americans. The United States abolished the governments of the Five Tribes in 1898 and admitted Oklahoma to the Union in 1907. In the twentieth century members of these tribes sought to establish unity amongst themselves by defining "Indianness" in terms of blood, not traditional cultural practices.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Debo, Angie. And Still the Waters Run: The Betrayal of the Five Civilized Tribes. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1940.

Perdue, Theda. Nations Remembered: An Oral History of the Five Civilized Tribes, 1865–1907. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980.

Nathan Ross Kozuskanich

See also vol. 9: The Origin of the League of Five Nations .