There are currently574 federally agnize Indian nations(also known as tribes , banding , communities and by other terms ) in the U.S. fit in to the National Congress of American Indians . About 229 are located in Alaska and the rest are in 35 other states . Of that number , five were cry the " Five Civilized Tribes , " a term which did n’t preserve them from being forcibly remove to " Indian Territory , " in the 19th hundred . So , where did that term come from and who were they ?
By the metre the first European settlers arrived in America , there were already more than two dozen aboriginal American tribes living in and farm the fertile dirt of the Southeast , in the sphere today encompassing the Department of State of North Carolina down through Georgia , Florida and the Gulf Coast . Like other aboriginal mass who come in contact with Europeans , these Southeastern kin were harry by disease like smallpox . Over prison term , they learned to conform to the impinge white culture in means that they conceive would fasten their survival and sovereignty .
Many members of these southeast tribes converted to Christianity , for example . They took to wearing European - style wearable and living in skeleton houses . They adopted the agrarian practices of their Southern white-hot neighbour , let in ownership of enslaved people , and sell goods in a market saving . They intermarry with Elwyn Brooks White , spoke English , and sent their small fry to school run by Christian missionaries .
As a result , by 1800 , five of the largest Southeastern tribes were routinely referred to by U.S. government official as " civilized , " explainsAndrew Frank , a scholar of Indigenous and Seminole chronicle at Florida State University .
" American official drew a distinction between these five tribes — the Cherokee , Chickasaw , Choctaw , Creek and passably the Seminole — and what they would call the ' waste , wandering and barbaric ' kin elsewhere , " allege Frank .
The Cherokee were the largest of the " civilized " tribes . By 1830 , they had a drop a line constitution with a democratically elected forum and chief , and theypublished a newspaperin both Cherokee and English .
" Among Southern whites , those earmarks of ' civilization ' suggest that there was a willing acculturation into American civilisation , " sound out Mark Hirsch , an historian with the Smithsonian Institution’sNational Museum of the American Indian .
But Frank says that appearances can be deceiving . If you look back profoundly into Native American history , aboriginal people always incorporated new technologies and custom from their neighbors . And when luck in their environment alter — a drop in dotty deer universe or the introduction of maize — the citizenry vary with them .
" But in almost every example , the adoption of these new outdoor things was done for the purpose of protecting Indigenous citizenry , not abandoning them , " says Frank . " Despite the appearance of ' school ' customs , aboriginal people had no interest in becoming part of the United States . They had no interest in assimilate into a white norm . How better to resist the oppressors than to learn their speech ? "
‘Civilization’ Was No Protection
The irony , of course , is that the much - foretell " civilization " of the five large southeast federation of tribes at last did n’t protect them from being driven off of their tribal ground . In 1830 , PresidentAndrew Jacksonsigned the Indian Removal Act into law , authorizing the forced move of Southeastern tribes out West to Indian Territory ( forward-looking - day Oklahoma ) , an deed that give rise to theTrail of Tears .
Instead of fighting Jackson ’s order with guns , bows and arrows , tribes like the Cherokee write newspaper editorials charge the U.S. of die in its Christian obligation to be good neighbors . When the federal government talk terms the fallacious Treaty of New Echota that relinquished tribal control of their earth , the Cherokee take a " quintessentially civilised reply , " says Frank . " They filed a lawsuit and wrote a petition to the U.S. governance . "
The " 1836 Protest Petition , " written by Principal Chief John Ross , pleaded the Cherokee causa in voice communication that could have been torn from the Declaration of Independence .
The postulation fall on deaf ears , as did an earlier Supreme Court ruling that exclude government interference in the sovereign tribal terra firma . Jackson and his supporters would stop at nothing to get their hands on Indian lands , " civilized " or not .
" That ’s the indignity of it all , " say Frank . " The United States order , ' If you do X , Y and Z , then you could stay put . ' So they do X , Y , and Z and also A , B , and C , and lo and behold the desire for autochthonous country overwhelms it all . In the remnant , it ’s all about backwash , not about cultivation . "
Out West, the Five Tribes Embraced Their ‘Civilized’ Status
Before remotion , the five largest Southeastern tribe — the Cherokee , Chickasaw , Choctaw , Creek and Seminole — may have severally hire the Son " civilise " to differentiate themselves and lobby for discriminatory treatment , but it was n’t until their arrival in Indian Territory that they became known jointly as the " Five Civilized Tribes . "
" We see this throughout history , " says Frank . " Often terms that are bear of ridicule or ethnic mistaking get embraced by the masses themselves as cock of resistance . How serious for the Five Civilized Tribes in Indian Territory to distinguish themselves as being deserving of recognition than to embrace this terminal figure ? "
The Five Civilized Tribes joined force under this new recording label as a merged negotiating pulley with the U.S. governance . They were still independent tribe , but they partake in an identity element that they hoped would protect them in the harsh raw reality of Indian Territory . Did it work ?
" autochthonal multitude did n’t come well in the 19th century in the United States ; that ’s just a baseline fact , " says Frank . " That being said , some Indigenous people fared worse , and some Indigenous masses were treat even more raspingly by the U.S. than others . In the last , though , the Five Civilized Tribes were put on reservations and subject to all sorts of indignity . "
Hirsch at the National Museum of the American Indian says that the full term Five Civilized Tribes became " shorthand " for delineate the Cherokee , Chickasaw , Choctaw , Creek and Seminole well into the 20th century . But as an1894 census of the Five Civilized Tribesmakes clear , the " civilized " status of these tribes did n’t win them much obedience in the eyes of white-hot America .
" The terminus ' civilized ' was originally applied to them in contradistinction to the life of the wild Indian kin group , but as a whole their circumstance is not the culture of the Anglo - Saxon , " reads the census report . " The civilization of The Five Tribes has not been accomplished without a vast outgo of clip and money by white mass . No Indians in the United States have get such precaution from the White or have been aided so much by the United States . "
