Laws, Policies,
and Treaties
and Treaties
This 1866 treaty between the U.S. and the Cherokee Nation granted full citizenship to Freedmen formerly enslaved by Cherokee citizens
What is the Treaty of 1866?
Black Native people have historically been excluded from tribal rolls and identity claims due to this imposed system, which forced individuals to be categorized as either “Black” or “Indian,” erasing complex Afro-Indigenous identities.
What is racial categorization?
Though rarely mentioned in textbooks, hundreds of African-descended people—many enslaved by tribal citizens—were forced to endure this brutal journey westward alongside Native communities in the 1830s.
What is the Trail of Tears?
Many Black Native people trace their lineage to these communities in the southeastern U.S.
What are the five civilized tribes?
Many Afro-Indigenous people resisted erasure through these acts of cultural preservation.
What are language retention and ceremony?
This U.S. federal act in the early 20th century further complicated Freedmen land rights by dividing tribal lands.
What is the Dawes Act?
Many Freedmen's descendants were discouraged from learning or speaking this, limiting their ability to claim tribal belonging.
What is native languages from the five civilized tribes?
She was dubbed the richest Black girl in America after oil was discovered on the land allotted to her in the Dawes Act.
Who is Sarah Rector a Creek Freedmen descendant?
These communities in Oklahoma included large populations of Black Native families after removal.
What are Freedmen towns or All-Black towns?
During slavery, Black and Native people often formed these kinds of alliances.
What are resistance communities or maroon societies?
This term refers to laws that banned interracial marriage and relationships, especially between Black and non-Black people.
What is miscegenation?
The amount of "black blood" that black people had in society to enforce discriminatory laws and, even in the earlier days, enslaved.
What is the one-drop rule?
This former enslaved interpreter and tribal leader helped negotiate treaties between the US and Muscogee Nation
Who is Cow Tom?
Black Native Freedmen built this affluent town, also known as Black Wall Street.
What is Greenwood/Tulsa?
This concept explains how multiple systems of oppression—like racism, white supremacy, and colonialism—interact in Afro-Indigenous lives.
What is intersectionality?
Tribal enrollment systems like this were combined with miscegenation laws to erase Black Native identity.
What is the Dawes Rolls and the “blood quantum” system?
A group of free Africans and runaway enslaved people joined the Seminole nation, creating communities that allied in Spanish Florida and blended African and Indigenous cultural practices.
What are the Maroon communities?
This Black Seminole leader was known for resisting slavery and leading military efforts in defense. Also, leading a mass exodus to Mexico after the Seminole nation ruled to establish slavery in the Seminole tribe.
Who is John Horse AKA Juan Caballo?
Due to colonial disruptions, many Black Native individuals have struggled to access these personal documents.
What are genealogical records or tribal enrollment papers?
In the late 19th century, Freedmen from the Cherokee and Creek Nations created these institutions to resist racial oppression and educate their children.
What are Freedmen schools?
Despite their ancestral ties to the tribe, Freedmen descendants are often barred from marketing or selling these cultural items under tribal affiliation due to their exclusion from official citizenship rolls.
What are Indian arts and crafts?
This group, often composed of both enslaved and free African-descended people, not only survived the Trail of Tears but helped rebuild tribal nations in Indian Territory by farming, laboring, and preserving cultural traditions.
Who are the Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes?
This prominent Chickasaw Freedman leader advocated for the rights of Black Chickasaw people in the late 19th century and famously resisted tribal exclusion policies by appealing directly to the U.S. government.
Who is King Blue?
This theory, often contested in public discourse, helps analyze how racialized systems like blood quantum and anti-Blackness have disrupted Indigenous kinship structures—particularly for Black Native people denied tribal belonging.
What is Critical Race Theory (CRT)?
This was the largest slave revolt in Indian Territory in this tribal nation in 1842. A group of twenty-five enslaved blacks, mostly from the Joseph Vann plantation, attempted to escape to Mexico where slavery was abolished.
What is the Slave Revolt in the Cherokee Nation?