Historical Outline of the Five Civilized Tribes

The Five Civilized Tribes of Indian Territory are of two stocks: the Cherokees of Iroquoian and the Creeks, Seminoles, Choctaws, and Chickasaws of Muskhogean stock. Originally they inhabited contiguous portions of the Atlantic coast in and below Virginia, and claimed westward to the Mississippi river. They present many tribal features peculiar to themselves, and it is to be regretted that not one of these Five Tribes has a written history of any extent. Neither Indian nor white man has been found to preserve a full record of these people, who, since the advent of the whites, have met the conditions of war or requirements of peace with dignity and ability. A vast collection of written material and legend is at hand, and many old Indians of these tribes even now can be found speaking aboriginal languages only, who could contribute much of value in relation to their people.

The local traditions and names of places in the states which were their former homes contain mach to aid a historian. No history of any of the states they originally occupied can be written without ample reference to them. The mountain chains, valleys, rivers, and towns of the southeast bear their names and -will preserve their memory. Pioneer life in the region named was a terror, owing to their warlike raids, and their resistance to encroaching white life and their gradual withdrawal before it have been carried in story and in song and live in the history of the United States. No force of Whites was too strong for them to attack, no distance too great to travel for battle. In the meantime they were noted for keeping their word when once passed, and famous for hospitality when not invaded by armed force. Osceola, Billy Bowlegs, Big Dutch, and their warriors within a century will always be famous. Take in illustration the Creek war of 1813-1814. The Creeks had adopted many of the arts of civilization, when Tecumseh, the Shawnee chief, went among them and urged them to join the northwestern confederation and abandon civilized life. With his great eloquence he pictured the restraints of civilization and the beauties of unrestrained wild life, which they enjoyed prior to the advent of the whites. This war resulted in a loss to the whites of 689 killed and wounded, while 1,300 Creek Indians were killed and thousands wounded. This war broke the back of the Creek confederacy and afterward they were at peace.

The Seminole war of 1835-1812 is an illustration of the prowess of this people. It required an army of 41,000 whites, under such generals as Scott, Taylor, Gaines, Clinch, and Worth, to subdue this handful of people, who from everglade or forest poured upon them an almost incessant fire. It cost more than $10,000,000. This war was caused by the refusal of the Seminoles to abandon their homes in Florida and remove to lands west of the Mississippi river. The whites suffered a total loss of 765 killed and wounded. Five hundred and forty Indians were killed out of a tribe estimated then at 1,000 all told.

The descendants of those fierce warriors of The Five Tribes are now the best of Indian citizens, and compare favorably with the whites about them in Indian Territory, not showing a trace of their former warlike propensities.

The tribal history, legends, beliefs, customs, and myths of The Five Civilized Tribes would fill volumes. Their traditions of heroes and warriors show the highest human courage and devotion to tribe and country. Their legends, interwoven with descriptions of the beautiful country they occupied, are classic in detail and round out into epics. Their customs were peculiar. Their form of tribal government in many features was entirely original, while useful and bringing contentment to their, people. Their myths, almost oriental in their richness of coloring, exceeded the usual aboriginal imagination.

The Cherokee Nation, by a treaty made in 1817, ceded to the United States an area of land lying east of the Mississippi river. In exchange for this the United States ceded to that part of the nation then on the. Arkansas. River as much land on that river, acre for acre, as the United. States received from them east of the Mississippi River, and provided that all treaties then in force should continue in full force with all of the Cherokees. This established the two names, eastern and western Cherokees. The eastern band of Cherokees is the portion now living in North Carolina, Georgia, and East Tennessee, but chiefly in North Carolina on a tract of land known as, the Qualls boundary. They are thus designated to distinguish them from the Cherokees who emigrated between 1809 and 1817 and located on the public domain at the headwaters of Arkansas and White Rivers, and who are now known as the Cherokee Nation, Indian Territory. The latter became known as the Cherokee Nation, west. The general term, the Cherokee Nation, includes both. Some of the eastern Cherokees after 1866, on invitation, joined the western Cherokees and are now with them in Indian Territory.

As early as 1809 the aggregate of annuities due the Cherokees on account of the sale of lands to the United States was $100,000, and it was provided by articles of the treaty of 1817 that a census should be taken of those east and of those west and of those still intending to remove west, and also that a division of the annuities should be made ratably, according to numbers as ascertained by said census, between those who were east and those who were west. Thus the Cherokees, although geographically separated, were treated as a unit, and property owned by them was treated as common property.

In 1819 they were estimated at 15,000 in lumber. By a treaty made in 1819 the formal census was dispensed with and for the purpose of distribution it was assumed that one-third had removed west and that two-thirds were yet remaining east of the Mississippi river. At the same time the nation made a further cession to the, United States of land lying east of the Mississippi. Upon the basis of this estimate of numbers, in lieu of a, census, annuities were distributed until the year 1835.

By a treaty made in 1828 with the Western Cherokees, the United States guaranteed to them 7,000,000 acres, with a perpetual outlet west as far as the sovereignty and right of soil of the United States extended. This vast tract was in what has been known as Indian Territory, and the Cherokees at the same time surrendered the lands occupied by them on the Arkansas and White rivers, to which they had removed between the years 1809 and 1817. In 1819 there were estimated to be 6,000 of them in Arkansas. By the same treaty special inducements were offered to those east to remove west, including a rifle, blanket, kettle, 5 pounds of tobacco, and cost of emigration to each person, with a just compensation for the property each might abandon.

The treaty of 1833 simply redefined the boundaries of the land mentioned in the treaty of 1828. In 1835 the Cherokees still held a quantity of land east of the Mississippi larger than the states of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut combined. It had been agreed that the United States Senate should fix the price that should be paid for these lands in contemplation of the cession of the same to the United States. The Senate fixed the price at $5,000,000. The original draft of the treaty of 1835 authorized such Cherokees as so desired to remain east, and in such event set apart certain lands to them. By supplemental treaty in 1836 the United States initiated the policy of compelling .the Eastern Cherokees to remove west. The Cherokee treaty of 1836, whereby they were to remove west from Georgia produced factions among the Cherokees and much bloodshed. The 6 Cherokees who signed that treaty in Georgia on behalf of the Cherokees always claimed that they affixed their names under a positive assurance from Rev. Mr. Schermerhorn, the United States agent, that the treaty should not be held binding until the Ross delegation, then in Washington on behalf of the Cherokees, should consent. The Ross delegation were not consulted as to the treaty going into effect, and the forced expulsion of the Cherokees began In 1838 General Winfield Scott employed 2,000 troops for the purpose. It was a fearful policy. The Indians were hunted over their native lands as if they were wild beasts. As many as escaped capture clung to their homes, and by the treaty of 1846 it was agreed that they might remain, and the present Eastern Band of Cherokees is the remnant.

All of this mixed condition has been a fruitful source of litigation and legislation, and the. rights of the Eastern and Western Cherokees, and questions growing out of treaties and laws relating to them, are not yet settled. The Cherokees since 1776 have made about 40 treaties With the United States, and claim to have ceded more than 80,000,009 acres of land to the whites.

The Cherokee Nation of Indian Territory came to the present location in 1839. The Cherokees in Arkansas, 6,000, and those removed in Georgia, estimated at 16,000, made a joint removal and thus formed the Cherokee Nation in Indian Territory. One reason for their removal was that frequent cessions of their lands had reduced their territory to less than 8,000 square miles in extent. There was also the hostility of the Georgians. They were removed in 1838 to their present reservation in the Indian Territory, excepting a number who remained in North Carolina and adjoining states. At the opening of the war of the rebellion in 1861 the Cherokees in Indian Territory had progressed to a high degree of prosperity, but they suffered great injury from both parties ravaging their country, and heavy loss by the emancipation of their slaves. Nearly all the Cherokees at first joined the Confederacy, but after the fight at Pea Ridge a majority of the nation abandoned the Southern cause and joined the Union forces; a part adhered to the Confederacy to the end. At the time of their removal west the Cherokees. were estimated at between 24,000 and 27,000. In 1867 they were reduced to 13,566, but since then they have increased. In 1871 they numbered about 18,000; in 1880, about 18,500.

Cherokees In South Carolina

Harry Hammond, in 44South Carolina, Resources and Population, Institutions and industries", published by the state board of agriculture in 1883 (page 365), gives the following outline and statement regarding the Cherokees as found by John Lawson in 1700:

Nation: Cherokee. Tribes: Echotee, Nequasse, Tehohe, Chatusee, Noyowee, Chagee, Estatoe, Tassee, Cussatee, Tugoole, Keowee, Echay, Acouee, Toxaway, Seneka, Tewraw, Tukwashwaw, Chickerohe, Naguchie, Totero, Quacoratchie, Chota, Eno, Stickoey, Esaw, Sapona, Wisack.

The Cherokees were a mountain race, occupying extensive territory in Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, North and South Carolina, and Kentucky. Less than one-tenth of this territory is in the present boundaries of South Carolina, comprising the counties of Oconee, Pickens, Anderson, Greenville, and Spartanburg, which would make the number of warriors, in this state by Adair's computation to have been 230, or a total population not exceeding 1,000. They were expelled in 1777 for siding with the British, and are now the most advanced in civilization of the Indians.

The above names are local and the Cherokee Indians in the vicinity took the local name. This designating Indian tribes by names of localities in early days gave much color to the stories of a. vast number of tribes and an enormous Indian population.

Iroquoian Family

As to the name, original location, geographical distribution, and tribal relations of the Cherokees, the Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology gives the following information (pages 76-79):

Iroquois, Gallatin in Trans, Am. Antiq. Soc., u, 2423, 305, 1836 (excludes Cherokees). Prichard, Phys. Hist. Mankind, v. 881, 1817 (follows Gallatin). Gallatin in Trans. Am. Eth. Soc., II, pt.1, xcix, 77, 1848 (as in 1836). Gallatin, in Schoolcraft, Ind. Tribes, in, 401, 1853.
Latham in Trans. Philolog. Soc. Lond., 58, 1856. Latham, Opuscula, 327, 1860. Latham, Elements Comp. Phil., 463, 1862.

Irokesen, Berghans (1845), Physik. Atlas, map 17, 1848. Ibid, 1852.
Irokesen, Berghans, Physik. Atlas, map 72, 1887 (includes Natalia and said to be derived from Dakota).

Huron-Iroquois, Bancroft, Mist. IT. S., III, 243, 1840.

Wyandot-Iroquois, Keane, App. Stanford's Comp. (Cent. and So. Am.), 460, 468, 1878.

Cherokees, Gallatin in Am. Antiq. Soc. II, 89,306, 1836 (kept apart from Iroquois though probable affinity asserted). Bancroft, History U. S., in, 246, 1840. Prichard, Phys. Hist. Mankind, v. 401, 1847. Gallatin in Trans. Am. Eth. Soc., II, pt. 1, xcix, 77, 1848. Latham in Trans. Philolog. Soc. Lond., 58, 1856 (a separate group perhaps to be classed with Iroquis and Sioux). Gallatin in Schoolcraft, Ind, Tribes, III, 401, 1853. Latham, Opuscula, 327, 1860. Keane, App. Stanford's Comp. (Cent. and So. Am.), 460, 472, 1878 (same as Chelekees or Tsalagi "apparently entirely distinct from all other American tongues").

Tschirokies, Berghaus (1845), Physik. Atlas, map 17, 1818.

Chelekees, Keane, App. Stanford's Comp. (Cent. and So. Am.), 472, 1878, (or Cherokees).

Cheroki, Gatschet, Creek Mig. Legend, I, 24, 1884. Gatschet in Science, 413, April 29, 1887.

Huron-Cherokee, Hale in Am, Antiq., 20, Jan., 1883 (proposed as a family name instead of Huron-Iroquois; relationship to Iroquois affirmed).

Derivation, French adaptation of the Iroquois word Hiro, used to conclude a speech, and koué, an exclamation (Charlevoix). Halo gives as possible derivation ierokwa, the indeterminate form of the verb to smoke, signifying "they who smoke'', also the Cayuga form of bear, iakwai. Mr. Hewitt suggests the Algonquin words irin, true or real; ako, snake; with the French termination ois, the word becomes Irinakois.

With reference to this family it is of interest to note that as early as 1798 Barton compared the Cheroki language with that of the Iroquois, and stated his belief that there was a connection between them. Gallatin, in the Archaeologia Americana, refers to the opinion expressed by Barton, and although he states that he is inclined to agree with that author, yet he does not formally refer Cheroki to that family, concluding that "we have not a sufficient knowledge of the grammar, and generally of the language of The Five Nations, or of the Wyandots, to decide that question".

Mr. Hale was the first to give formal expression to his belief in the affinity of the Cheroki to Iroquois. Recently extensive Cheroki vocabularies have come into possession of the. Bureau of Ethnology, and a careful comparison of them with ample Iroquois material has been made by Mr. Hewitt. The result is convincing proof of the relationship of the two languages as affirmed by Barton so long ago.

Geographic Distribution, Unlike most linguistic stocks, the Iroquoian tribes did not occupy a continuous area, but when first known to Europeans, were settled in 3 distinct regions, separated from each other by tribes of other lineage. The northern group was surrounded by tribes of Algonquian stock, while the more southern groups bordered upon the Catawba, and Maskoki.

A tradition of the Iroquois points to the St. Lawrence region as the early home of the Iroquoian tribes, whence they gradually moved down to the southwest along the shores of the Great Lakes.

When Cartier, in 1531, first explored the bays and inlets of the Gulf of St. Lawrence he met a Huron-Iroquoian people on the shores of the bay of Gaspe, who also visited the northern coast of the gulf. In the following year when he sailed up the St. Lawrence River he found the banks of the river from Quebec to Montreal occupied by an Iroquoian people. Front statements of Champlain and other early explorers it seems probable that the Wyandot once occupied the country along the northern shore of Lake Ontario.

The Conestoga, and perhaps some allied tribes, occupied the country about the lower Susquehanna, in Pennsylvania and Maryland, and have commonly been regarded as an isolated body, but it seems probable that their territory was contiguous to that of The Five Nations on the north before the Delaware began their westward movement.

As the Cherokee were the principal tribe on the borders of the southern colonies and occupied the leading place in all the treaty negotiations, they cause to be considered as the owners of as large territory to which they Iliad no real claim. Their first sale, in 1721, embraced a tract in South Carolina between the Congaree and the south fork of the Edisto, bat about one-half of this tract, forming the present Lexington County, belonged to the Congaree. In 1700 they sold a second tract above the first and extending across South Carolina from the Savannah to the Catawba (or Wuteree), but all of this tract east of Broad River belonged to other tribes. The lower part, between the Congaree and the Wateree, had been sold 20 years before, and in the upper part the Broad River was acknowledged as the western Catawba boundary. In 1770 they sold a tract, principally in Virginia and West Virginia, bounded east by the Greet Kanawha, but the Iroquois claimed by conquest all of this tract northwest of the main ridge of the Alleghany and Cumberland mountains, and extending at least to the Kentucky River, and 2 years previously they had made a treaty with Sir William Johnson by which they were recognised as the owners of all between Cumberland Mountains and the Ohio down to the Tennessee. The Cumberland River basin was the only part of this tract to which the Cherokee had any real title, having driven out the former occupants, the Shawnee, about 1721. The Cherokee had no villages north of the Tennessee (this probably includes the Holston as its upper part), and at a conference at Albany the Cherokee delegates presented to the Iroquois the skin of a deer, which they said belonged to the Iroquois, as the animal had been killed north of the Tennessee, In 1805, 1806, and 1817 they sold. several tracts, mainly in middle Tennessee, north of the Tennessee River, and extending to the Cumberland River watershed, but this territory was claimed and had been occupied by the Chickasaw, and at one conference the Cherokee admitted their claim. The adjacent tract in northern Alabama and Georgia, on the headwaters of the Coosa, was not permanently occupied by the Cherokee until they began to move westward, about 1770.

The whole region of West Virginia, Kentucky, and the Cumberland River region of Tennessee was claimed by the Iroquois and Cherokee, but the Iroquois never occupied any of it and the Cherokee could not be said to occupy tiny beyond the Cumberland mountains. The Cumberland river was originally Mild by the Shawnee, and the rest was occupied, so far as it was occupied at all, by the Shawnee, Delaware, and occasionally by the Wyandot and Mingo (Iroquoian), who made regular excursions southward across the Ohio every year to hunt and to make salt at the licks. Most of the temporary camps or villages in Kentucky and West Virginia were built by the Shawnee and Delaware. The Shawnee and Delaware were the principal barrier to the settlement of Kentucky and West, Virginia for a period of 20 years, while in all that time neither the Cherokee het the Iroquois offered any resistance or checked the opposition of the Ohio tribes.

The Cherokee bounds in Virginia should do extended along the mountain region as far at least as the James River, as they claim to have lived at the Peaks of Otter, and seem to be identical with the Rickohockan or Rechahecrian of the early Virginia writers, who lived in the mountains beyond the Monacan, and in 1650 ravaged the lowland country as far as the site of Richmond, and defeated the English and the Powhatan Indians in a pitched battle at that place.

The language of the Tuscarora, formerly of northeastern North Carolina, connects them directly with the northern Iroquois. The Chowanoc and Nottoway and other cognate tribes adjoining the Tuscarora may have been offshoots from that tribe.

Principal Tribes, Cayuga, Cherokee, Conestoga, Erie, Mohawk, Neuter, Nottoway, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca, Tiouontate, Tuscarora, Wyandot.

Condition of the Indian by State, 1890

Notes About the Book:

Source:  Report on Indians Taxed and Indians not Taxed in the United States, Except Alaska at the Eleventh Census: 1890, Department of the Interior, Government Printing Office, Washington DC., 1894

A Report to the Secretary of War of the United States on Indian Affairs, by Rev. Jedidiah Morse, 1822, Printed by S. Converse

Online Publication: The manuscript was scanned and then ocr'd. Minimal editing has been done, and readers can and should expect some errors in the textual output. Several spellings have been used for the same tribe of Indians.

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